Tuesday, June 13, 2006

My father got me a 1960s-era linguistics textbook called "The Science of Language" some weeks back, and after summarily ignoring it for some time, I've leafed through it and am now glad I did. More recent advances in the field aside, it's very much an intro linguistics book in the modern trasition, complete with humorous footnotes.

"5. It has been humorously observed that one might gain the reputation of speaking fluent and elegant German by simply learning to say correctly a few expressions like, ach so? wie Schade! Ja, Ja, natürlich, and ausgezeichnet, and at every pause throwing in whichever one seems most appropriate." (182)

Wow, such have been my experiences with German. And Polish and Bulgarian, come to think of it.

5 comments:

notroberttowne said...

stimmt das oder stimmt das nicht?

Anonymous said...

I'd add "schade" to the list.

since it is the most important word in the phrase: schade Deutschland, alles ist vorbei!

This world cup soccer thing might start getting to my head :S

Anonymous said...

come to think of it.. schade is in the list..

I blame soccer

Andrew said...

I was waiting for that realization.

Anonymous said...

Hey I graduated, that's the point in time where you can stop thinking and start working.. you're my great rollmodel!