Friday, September 18, 2009

Deutsch

Some things that are true;

1. I have a friend who occasionally talks in his sleep. When he does so, he speaks German. He has never had a German lesson in his life, and I am told that the reason he does this is that he's seen faaaar too many war movies. When asked, he cannot translate what he has said (or often shouted).

2. For GCSE English lit, we studied some poetry. In one piece the poet - who's name I forget - describes being worried that she has lost touch with her mother tongue, and therefor a part of her culture. She becomes happy and relieved when she dreams in Gujarati again. I remember it being mentioned that one cannot consider themselves fluent in a language until they dream in it.

3. I watched Goodbye Lenin last night. It was in German but had English subtitles (thank goodness).

4. I can speak a very small amount of German. I used to be better, but never fluent, just good enough to get by in basic conversation.

5. Last night I dreamed in German. Unfortunately, I did not understand a word of it. Somehow, I don't think this means I'm fluent. I remember "machen sie..." but not what I was told to do, probably because I didn't know what it meant.

Moral: Don't watch German films when you've had too much Baileys.

No comments:

Post a Comment