How is your German?

genealogy.net-users-en
1

Dear friends,

Happy New Year to All of you !!!

Hope you had a great 'New Years Eve' party and are slowly recovering from it..

We have lots of big plans for the New Year and let's start right now..

Very often we hear: "I wished I had paid more attention to
learning the German language in my younger years"..

That is very understandable, since all of us face many challenges in life, starting with 'growing up', building up a life, a family and a career... and each of them is pretty well a 'fulltime job'..

However, just 'regretting' things makes no sense at all and solves no problems..

What about taking the 'bull by the horn' and making a little
extra effort..

If you think I'm crazy.. just say so and probably you are right..

What about starting some kind of a 'nightschool', where you could learn the basics of the German language, lots of vocabulary and even the the old 'handwriting'.. and more..

Anyone interested in something like that ??
I don't want to 'overload' the mailboxes, so please answer me
privately: mailto:wolf@saxonyroots.com

I wish you all the Best for the New Year and many 'brickwall' removals..

Now keep celebrating New Years day..

Wolf [Zscheile]

2

I am trying to learn some German, got me a nice Book where the words are printed in Blue and the answers in Black. Think that I found a good one. I have printed out some of the essential things that I might need in trying to find my German Roots. My grandparents passed on before I was born so did not know them. Lucky for me I do have a picture of my Grandmother with a little sister, but she was born in 1901 and passed on in 1903. I have tried to match up words, and feel at least I am making to make some effort to learn. People on here are very helpful when asked to help us find what we might need, I am sure that whatever you feel is right to put on there will always be someone that needs it.
Happy New Year!
Glenrose

3

Would very much like to see this "night school". I had one year of German about 40 years ago and rarely used it. Now I am trying to deciper the old script and struggling. Imagine trying to transcribe German script into German and then into English. Sometimes my brain forgets the middle step and I find my self staring at a string of letters that don't make sense. When I e-mailed the word to the group who is helping me, they very gently reminded me that I was looking at a German word.

Tonia

4

Dear Wolf and friends,

As I am German that is not quite the right question for me - but if you ask
how do I controll my translations I can tell you the following link

Happy New Year to All of you !!!

Christine from Bavaria

5

Dear Christine and All,

As I am German that is not quite the right question for me -
but if you ask how do I controll my translations I can tell
you the following link http://dict.leo.org/

Of course, I knew that you wouldn't have any interest on this topic
as a 'pupil', however I could use a few good teachers.. What about you ??

OK, folks, I had the crazy idea of a German school and didn't know that the
interest was
that great.. I have received many, many replies and everyone seems to be
waiting now
how we continue... including me...

In my opinion, there is only ONE good way to learn another language and that
is to
move to the corresponding country. You have to interact and talk with the
other people.
Naturally, this is an impossible task in just about all cases..

Well, the next better thing would be to go to a real School where you can
listen to the teacher..
Again, this is only possible if you live in one of the big metropolitan
areas of the country
and have lots of time on your hands..

What else can you do ?? You can buy a lot of books and start reading and
studying, but you will be
quite a bit disappointed when, after studying long hours, you talk to
someone with your
new 'skills' and they don't understand a thing....

And that's about all that is available....

But.. just wait.. since I started that threat I felt obligated to put some
more thoughts into it
and I spent countless hours.. just thinking..

At first, everything seemed to be so easy and, yes , there are lots of
language courses on
the internet, but they all bore you with things like..Nominativ &
Akkusativ.. etc.. but that's
no way to learn a language..

Sorry, but I better stop talking and get into action..

In order to get started, I had to go into 'new territory' and as far as I
know this hasn't
been done before.The first step is a 'talking dictionary'.
Please take a look here: saxonyroots.com - Diese Website steht zum Verkauf! - Informationen zum Thema saxonyroots.

Please keep in mind, this is something very new and might not work with all
browsers and
is a VERY meager beginning and needs a lot of improvements, just to show you
the basic idea.
When you 'click' on the 'Play' button you will hear how the word is spoken (
needs improvements, of course)

Once we have this settled we will go to the old German writings. We will
display letters, etc. and then
explain everything and with the following exercises you can 'hone' your
skills..

Just to keep your mailboxes from filling up, all future annoncements will be
done on our
homepage: http://www.saxonyroots.com and the new
Nightschool page: http://wiki-en.genealogy.net/wiki/Help:Nightschool

In addition, any comments can be placed into our new Guestbook:
http://two.guestbook.de/gb.cgi?gid=873738&prot=fduaup

You all have a nice evening,

Wolf

6

I may have double-posted.....I apologize.

Speaking of German, no pun intended, can someone please help me translate
the section relating to Bassman ?

7

The site is great! Thanks so much for all of your work.
Another site that might be interesting to some is the "Say Hello To the World" site. Besides German it list several other languages. It was a site I discovered many years ago when I had children in school.
Dianne
Wolf Zscheile wrote:

8

Hello everybody,

the following link shows the several ways of writing in old times

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Walter.Dietrich/deutsche.html

the page is only in German - but you can see the several alphabetic
characters of the script "Kurrent"

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Walter.Dietrich/deutsche_2.html

here you see "Suetterlin"

Greetings from Munich
Christine