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Monday, July 14, 2008

Learning German, der die das, Help Me Out!


Living abroad requires a consequence. Other than English, that I, well I could say master it, Austria obliges me to learn German. Don't ask, this language is totally heavy. As Indonesian who gets used to speak mother language without structure, grammar, and tenses, it's obviously difficult to learn others that use considerable language regulation. As for English, that might be already an up hilling language for Indonesians in fact that the language has been subjected to the education curriculum and world widely spread by media, what about German? I must say, this language (lang.) could take your head away, if we don't bear it down on learning it. My pursuit of this lang. was quite long way run. Three months prior to Vienna, I and mas Rangga drilled the essentials of the lang. By a native speaker, Rosy,  together we learned basic German. Rosy was a dedicated teacher, I think though she didn't have any teaching background. Yet, she knew exactly what beginners must focus early on learning German. She introduced us to the rule of three sexes in the German practice. The der , die, das articles. In German, every noun has sex. The articles describe the sex. Der is for male, die for female, and das for the neutral. And it takes maybe the whole lifetime to memorize each word together with the articles as they don't click the sense at all. Although the word sounds female, it doesn't mean we use the die article, but we use the das , instead. For example, we say das Madchen which means the girl instead of saying die Madchen which more applies the common sense. Or other nouns like chair (der Stuhl), bag (die Tasche), book (das Buch) etc, we never find out the root reason why such things are titled with various sexes:) That's only the beginning, the preface of the lang. what's more is just burning out the brain. Well, anyway, here in Vienna, in my first months living, I took a short German course at one of the most outstanding and reputable institution. Thanks God that I managed to skip 3 levels in a row. Well, if Rosy happened to read this blog, I would like to utter my gratitude to her, you were so helpful in the learning process. Now I get the certificate that announces me as a good German learner. The class was over three days before the European Cup. Now it's Summer time and they have a short break during this long long holiday. As for me, hmm... I get little bored that I lose friends and mates, however I sense there is an emerging feeling coming from my heart. I think it's a love to this language, German.  

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