**German Chat**everyone welcome* - macht es euch gemütlich

[ZZZen]

reden wir weiter...

They should maybe meet , sounds as if they'd get on!

what IS it with foreigners telling you how to speak English? I honestly could never imagine telling an Italian how to pronounce Italian properly or correcting their grammar. Weird. Maybe we just don't generally speak foreign languages well enough to presume.

Has anyone ever corrected a German on their German and told them it is actually say: was isT and not wassis for instance? Hmm maybe we should , what do you think?

Ernest - sorry you had such a shit time with your mum, but as someone else said, you´ll have learned from her mistakes and be a great mum to your dc.
I bet you were so relieved when the boys reacted positively to staying in Germany. Hopefully they make a few local friends quite quickly once they start at the new schools.

I´ve not got a distinctive accent - grew up in the midlands and then moved to London. The dc actually have quite a German lilt to their English which is a bit disappointing. The thing that drives me crazy is that neither can say "th" so I hear zis and zat or worse dis and dat and they sound like some comedy characters out of "Allo, allo."

hee, hee, yes! Let's! It's a perfect match!

DH astutely pointed out that she's actually petrified of spending the whole day alone with her kids and that she wasn't being stalker-ish or sinister. Even so. I was having a coffee with her one day and before I knew it, she'd chopped off an inch of my hair and stuck it in this glass test tube, which sat in this frame and had a huge metal phallus pointing at it. It was supposed to concentrate my aura or something. My aura was screwed 'cos I had a inch missing off my kopf.

OMG. Is anyone watching Lorraine Kelly's piece on Slummy Mummy's this morning?! If we don't brush our hair and put on lipstick, our husband's will us leave in droves!!!!

Anyone, what are those adaptor plugs called in German so I can plug in my German dvd player in UK and the dc's nintendo ds chargers?

OMG - you definately win the prize for having the nuttieset neighbour!

I think you win the prize for the dodgiest neighbour Frosch. She sounds like my FIL (now deceased): all Reiki and aura and seeing my past lives when I walk in a room (apparently too frightening for him to reveal). I just used to bite my tongue, really hard and let him get on it with it. Visiting him in Holland meant going through rebirthing ceremonies, Native American indian rituals, having tea with a Reiki crowd or a Shaman, wind chimes going, little fountains in all the rooms, having him place his hands on your head at any time of the day etc.

snap admylin!

My Geordie friend still has a strong accent and her German DH speaks like her. He even says, Way-eh, man (or however you write that) and calls her "pet". It is really sweet.

I should not talk though, as DH goes on about "a wee bit" and "jammy buggers". It is so funny when we get together and we hear the two German guys speak in their regional UK accents.

How rude, to correct your English, but I have had that too. I said that we were going to London. [blank faces] Where? London, capital city of UK. Ah, you mean Loondooon. No, I mean London and since it is my capital city, I bloody well know how to pronounce it.

I'm SO glad that all this will be a thing of the past soon. Although, Ernest it sounds as if your dc are quiet happy about staying which is great news and takes a weight off your mind. You can still check things out in UK in the holidays.

hello - newcomer to thread. Can I ask some advice? We are considering a year in Berlin or environs from Sept 2010 (dp is an academic and would be on a funded research trip). We did this before when it was just the two of us and had a lovely time! This time we'd have two dds - who would be 6 and 3 then - so the oldest I guess would have to enrol in a school, the younger would want something or other to do rather than hang out with me the whole time! Can anyone suggest where would be a good place to look to live, explain about schooling and anything else I might need to know? (I'm thinking I'd be a bit scared of them being in a big city school, so perhaps looking at somewhere suburban or even in the country, tho this is pure prejudice!) All advice very gratefully received!

Frosch
She sounds deranged.

Ernest
No, a teelöffel is pronounced "deelöffel" in Franconia, they pronounce t like d and k like g.

They all say, "Domade" and spell their names "Domas, mit ein harten D". I think the "hart" one is the T but I always get them muddled as I learnt German in Würzburg.

hupa btw when dd was at German kiga she didn't pronounce the "th" either. She used to do "dis" and "dat" and "ze" for the. Used to drive me barmy but she turned a corner when she was about 6-7 and started pronouncing it.

That must be so funny ML listening to those 2 together. I used to have a lovely Italian friend in Berlin who went back to Florence after about 2 years. He'd spent 5 years living in Liverpool and he had such a scouse accent. It was hilarious coming from an Italian but so nice too.

admylin - do you mean something like this?

www.thomann.de/de/thomann_traveladaptor_uk.htm

Dd made me laugh the other day. The Kiga offers an English course in the afternoon and although dd doesn´t go she said, "They don´t learn proper English there." I asked her what she meant and she said they´re learning to say "cet, beckpeck etc. instaed of cat, backpack." Made me laugh.
When I was learning German we had a passage about computers, so a lot of English words were involved. The tutor got me to read it, so the others could hear how the English words should be pronounced. Of course, as soon as I finished he told me I was wrong. Apparently it´s not laptop, but leptup.

Würzburger Dialekt

And Canella, you HAVE to go to Wü some evening, and do a Nachtwächter Führung. This is the guy from the first link. Very funny.

We lived in Berlin mitte near Friedrichstrasse which is meant to be teh new centre of unite dBerlin. It was good to be able to get to places on foot like the Alexanderplatz or the goevernment area and fairly clean and safe as big cities go. Trouble is teh accomodation is more expensive than elsewhere but still alot cheaper than most cities so it could be worth looking into.
If you want your dc to experience local school then be careful where you decide to live otherwise you could end up having an hour to and from school. Some parts of east Berlin have primary schools with under 20% foreign dc and in some areas you get up to 80% or more. My dc went to a school where ds had only 2 German dc in his class, dd had about 4 or 5. The rest were Polish, Russian, Tunisien, Turkish and Chinese! However, it wasn't a rough school as inner city schools go so it wasn't too bad.

I was trying to explain about Rugby when it was on and with my dodgy welsh accent, stadium comes out staay-di-uum and my neighbour couldn't understand me. I gave up and called it the Millennium Arena...

Oh, DD still does ze instead of the so there is hope for her. She will spend 4 weeks with my parents this summer so they will improve her English.

Just to give a good story about family: I phoned my mum yesterday and asked if they would come over for a week in October so that I could go with DH to visit my friend in Dublin. She immediately agreed and so we have already booked the flights. I am so pleased, and so is she.

Reiseadapter, that's it thanks Frosch!

Isn't that German obsession with all things "natuerlich" and homeopathic strange? I have discussions about this all the time but I'm a scientist so I have to be in the pharmaceutical industrie's pocket and my opinion can be discounted
I have some distinctly Scottish sounds sneaking into me accent now but have also picked up a few NZ terms, such as "whanau" for extended family, or I say "you reckon?" a lot. I need to be home for a few days before my Frankonian kicks in again.
Canella, my mother is from a part of Franken (Untermain) where they can barely say, and certainly not roll, their "r's". There are strange little gaps in words where an r would be when she speaks.
I'm not overly worried about Schweinegrippe, nobody outside Mexico has died so far, which is a good sign I think. I'm going to a conference in Helsinki in May and dp isn't very happy about me hanging about in crowded places and in planes but there are still a few weeks to wait and see how it develops. Incidentially, this is a conference with thousands of the world's clinical microbiologists attending. Being a firm non-believer in any deity I might change my mind should Schweinegrippe strike there of all places and take out the people who work on eradicating it.

Stickylittlefingers
The good thing about Germany is that the Kindergartens are generally very good. Your 3yo would go either half day or full day, depending on what is available and what you want. Once you decide where you want to live, then you just apply to the kindergarten nearest. There are state or private KGs, the state ones are much cheaper and often just as good as the private ones in my experience. You can expect to pay around 150EU to 200 a month I would guess. Depends on where you live.

welcome stickylittlefingers. A while back I wrote some long-winded posts about Berlin schools on another thread for someone who had dc about your dc's ages. Could you scroll down Living OVerseas till you're nearly at the bottom and you'll see the thread "Please could someone tell me about living in Berlin" or soemthing like that. Have a read and if you have any more questions, tell me, I'm happy to try and answer them but I think I covered it pretty much in that thread. Sorry I can't copy and paste because my toolbar seems to have disappeared.

where do you find these weirdos you lot.??!

Admylin, best thing is not to buy a travel adapter, but take one of you german extension cords that have 4 or 6 plug socket on, then in UK cut off the german plug and replace with anUK one, thus saving loads of money, and only having 1 thing instead of zillion converters about.

SLF, welocome. Don't know Berlin so can't advise on area, but as such good U-Bahn & S-Bahn (tube & local train) you might prefer to live further out & get place with graden, than in centre, that's my personal preference, but everyone's different). We have small local community, big house, big garden for the kids, kindergarten & school 5 mins away, but only 20 mins on S-Bahn into city centre, we counld not get house & garden etc in city, but I know plenty of people who prefer to be in a flat in the city, you need to think what you prefer). Your youngest dd could go to Kindergarten, possibly even elder one, but otherwise 1st class of primary school (Grundschule) Good luck