Deutsch = German
There is something extremely motivating about the immersion approach to leaning a language! Our maiden voyages at attempting German have gone okay thus far. I think our hotel friends are proud of us for trying. Jesse said "tschuss" (the cool way to say bye) to the girl at the front desk last night and she did a double-take! Then I asked for coffee in German this morning and she patiently listened with a big smile on her face as I stumbled through it. I asked her (in English) if I said it right, and she said a bunch of stuff I didn't catch... but the general idea seemed to be "good job!"
On our walk I kept saying "guten morgen" (good morning!) to people that we passed, but I switched to "morgen" once I realized that's all they were saying. I'm a copycat, what can I say?
My first epic fail so far was this morning with the housekeeper. She's a sweet older lady and I ran into her in the hall after our walk and asked if she was done in our rooms. She was still working on another room, so she asked if it was okay to come in when she was finished... sure! So I put SJ down for a nap, tossed some toys in LJ's direction, and sat down on the floor with my German phrasebook. I wanted to see if I could figure out how to ask her if I'd sorted the trash/recycling properly (more on this in a minute).
When she comes in and starts taking care of the trash I proudly spout off my newly learned phrase... but to my dismay she doesn't understand! I hurry back to my phrasebook only to hear her say something to the effect of "I don't speak any Deutsch, I'm from Kosovo."
ALAS! Since I definitely do not have an Albanian or Serbian phrasebook, we happily switched to broken English and signing/pointing. Oh, the wonders of universal signs (think: baby sleeping in there...)! Also, I was surprised how much I did learn about her... she's living here with her grown son and he has a little baby like Sam! :o)
She was sooooo nice... but I will have to find someone else to practice my German on!
thought for this morning - one can only epic fail as a result of an epic attempt! kudos for you both for trying so hard- i kind of picture myself hiding behind the trash can, ooops, recycling can :) to avoid human contact and the necessity of speaking!! have you received your Rosetta Stone yet?
ReplyDeleteNope... hopefully that will be on the "early this week" list as well. I can't wait... it will be much easier to use a program (I heard RS is great!) especially to hear things pronounced SLOWLY!
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