Another pointless thread

My Daughter-in-law is German and my son is pretty fluent in German too. Not sure how good their Swiss German is . I may feel a bit left out at meal times, but that's OK, I can always talk to their dog .

It will cost me €60 for the food, I get my bed for free. Which is daft really - they will lose money on this trip which they can't really afford to do. I have offered to pay the going rate for it.

Anyway I am going. 3 days on the Wad. Great! Not very relaxing as we are expected to help with sailing - raising and lowering 220sq m of sails is hard work, but hopefully enough photo ops to keep me happy.

Alan is staying behind to dogsit and attend endless meetings.
He gets the Thursday and Friday off for Ascension Day, but I'll be back by then.

"two beers rejoicingly, my [boy]friend will pay"?

Try "zwei bier bitte - er zahlt"

And in CH it's always "Grüezi" to greet and "merci" for thanks, whether it's a German or French-speaking part, at least in my experience...and the Swiss revel in the fact that they speak a different language and rub it in wherever possible.

Yes, my (hochdeutsch) German is fluent, but it doesn't help much, at least it didn't last time I was in Zürich....

Bret

Just use the "British abroad" language course......................."Oi o you o duo beeros now" in a loud voice..........................or as heard in a Chinese restaurant........." Oi you - come `ere" ......to which the waiter replied "How you know my name ?"

I`ll go now..........................................

T

Sorry if I got the grammar wrong, my first thought was "bitte" but my studies never got as far as future tense, so I have to admit - I cheated - I used google to translate what I thought would be a bit of levity and copied it verbatim.

As a native of the UK I freely admit I am, like most of my countrymen, "not the best" at foreign languages.

Happily I've found that all the "foreigners" I meet have a very good command of English and are polite enough not to be-little me when I try to use theirs, albeit often limited to asking the way, getting food, transport etc. Passing the time of day in another language must be great.

regards
Bernard

Well I won't be abroad of course - the Swiss will be. I'm sure it will all be fine, but I don't won't them to feel they must speak English just because of me - I hate that, and besides they are the paying guests!
As for ordering a beer - I can do that just fine in Dutch. Or pick one out of the crate on board .

It will be really good if the weather brightens up a bit. We had summer in April and now seem to be into autumn already .

the Germans don't do "future" in that way - they make a statement about what will happen. Here it's even more extreme - you can walk into a petrol station, utter the word for coffee and it will be delivered. No greetings, no Ps or Qs, just minimal necessary communication. No future tense at all, either, which may explain some things....

I know, I'm wierd, I speak three languages at least semi-fluently and tourist-speak another two.

Bret

I could speak two languages fluently, problem is having not spoken one of them for ten years you start to forget words.



I can say odd or silly things in French or German but nothing generally useful.

I have a smattering of 3 (German, French, Italian + Latin if that counts these days) and rarely get a chance to practice and when I do its shameful how I manage to mix up the words from one to another when I get stuck

regards
Bernard

I have schoolgirl French, and (nearly)fluent Dutch, though with an English accent .
Also smattering of Spanish, and the ability to understand some German, and some Swedish and Norwegian.

I have completely forgotten my Welsh. It is as if I never spoke it. I never had formal training, couldn't read much of it, and it was only what I picked up on family visits, but it has gone totally.

I should very much like to improve my Spanish, but learning it through Dutch is too confusing for my poor brain so evening classes are out. Maybe I'll look for a language holiday and see if that works.

At one time I had good French - albeit Swiss French after 8 months in Geneva

I've found that my vocabulary comes back pretty quickly - I need about 24 hours then I'm chattering away in ungrammatical French but it has never let me down . While we had stays of 6 weeks at a time in France it was great - now I'm only there for about a week at a time so I'm not getting as much practice as I did. I find I can still read aloud easily and I'm told my accent is good [ that came from some native Parisians ]

I have a little Portugese [ relied on Raymond for that ] but I can understand far more than I could ever speak .

Now I'm working on Ukrainian - now that is a strange language !

Some of the local youngsters are learning Japanese (maybe because Toyota have a plant nearby).
I'm just waiting to find out what the local venacular "hey up me duck" sounds like when translated.

My grand-daughter and grandson will probably be subjected to learning Welsh as my daughter in law is Welsh (only just though - omes from bewteen Wrexham and Chester) and her mother is determined that they hear it.

regards
Bernard

Bernard, learning another language while young (even if it is Welsh:wink will help with learning languages when they are older. Especially if they some formal lessons in the language.

I still think it is a pity my son chose not to raise his sons bilingually.

Some schools here are adding Mandarin to the curriculum. I think they probably have the right idea.

Like most Brits of my age I'd never heard another language until secondary school. - French & Latin were shocks I wasn't expecting. There was Latin in church, but that wasn't conversational just mantra

We used to have oranges at school when I was a kid, I think they were Seville or Satsuma, certainly not Mandarin.

There's a thought - Mandarin Duck a l'Orange (made with Mandarin Oranges)

Bernard

English I can cope with. A surprising amount of schoolboy French sticks when we go to France, enough to get by. Spanish I have retained, "Juan y Pablo son estudiantes de linguas," which is not a particularly useful phrase, certainly not in high demand.

As for latin, Oh me miserum!

Welsh was there for communicating with ancient relatives of my mother, and later impressing the local boys when I knew what they were talking about .

Latin and French are the only languages I had formal teaching in. They were both a horrible shock to me, especially as my primary school had never taught us any grammar, where as all the other kids, who came from another primary school had learned grammar and knew what a past participle was.

Useless words that stick from language lessons include amo amas amat and mensa mensa mensam from my Latin lessons and tischtennis from my sons learning German. Very useful.

My youngest daughter-in-law reads Latin and Ancient Greek books for the fun of it.