was für eine Frage...

March 9, 2007 2:57 PM

Hilfe! Any resources out there to teach someone how to think German? Not think in German, but to think like a German. I've been trying to teach my other half German (at his request), but it hasn't been easy...

Words and pronunciations are pretty straightforward (apart from his sometimes adorable, sometimes maddening mispronunciations). The trouble starts when we get into phrasing and idioms.

He's very literal-minded. He understands that Fenster = window and Wasser = water with no problem. However, phrases like "Was für ein Kerl" (What a guy) completely short-circuits him. "What for a guy? What the hell does that mean? What's the for for?" etc.

To me, it's just how it is. But he insists on knowing why it is, not just that it is. I think if I could help him understand how to think like a German instead of trying to apply English logic, it might be easier.

I've been able to find idiom resources, but they all say what the idioms mean and not why they mean that, if that makes sense.

Add to this that despite being raised bilingual, I've mostly spoken English for the majority of the last 20 years. I'm not as fluent as I'd like to be and therefore probably not the most definitive resource on such matters (I sometimes hear "You're just making that up. Real Germans don't say that!").

(As a side note since it's been so long, is there a difference in pronunciation between F and V? That one keeps coming back up, too since he doesn't understand why some words are spelled with an F (Fenster) and some are with a V (Viel) but both letters sound the same. All I could come up with was "Well, English has both C and K...")

Hopefully this makes some kind of sense...I acknowledge that the problem may lie with the teacher and not the subject...

posted by geckoinpdx to writing & language (27 comments total)

It sounds like either a) he's extremely literal-minded and has never studied a language before, or b) he's resistant to the whole project of learning German (even though he asked for it), or c) he's mad at you for some unrelated reason.

I don't think thinking like a German is the issue. Instead, he needs to understand that idioms are how they are, and no, they don't always make sense, and arguing with you about it is not going to change that, and he just needs to suck it up and learn them as a unit, not word by word.

How about showing him a list of common English idioms, and asking him the same kinds of questions. "The apple of my eye?!? What apple? What eye?" etc.
posted by ottereroticist at 3:11 PM on March 9, 2007

That's a good question and I'm interested to hear some others' thoughts on it. In the language classes I've taken there are always a few people who insist on asking, "But why?" I can't help feeling that they're missing the point - language isn't logical. So I think the same way as you do.

The idea of trying to "apply English logic" is a contradiction in terms anyway - English is not at all logical.
posted by different at 3:13 PM on March 9, 2007

ottereroticist, as far as a) is concerned, the punchline is that he's half-Quebecois and speaks French much better than I do and studied Russian for some time.

This isn't like an eight-hour class type situation, more like he'll stumble on a German website and ask for translation help. This has been going on for years. I just finally got frustrated enough to ask.

different, I might have chosen a better phrase, but the short story is that he grew up speaking English almost exclusively, so he thinks within an English context, if that makes sense.
posted by geckoinpdx at 3:24 PM on March 9, 2007

As a part time German (second language as a child), if you have any success, I'd love to know.

The reasons that I come up with is that I think in English (note I did not say logical), and translate phrasing that to German. When I listen, I understand exactly what the other party is saying. But when I speak, my English brain gets in the way. Its just wrong and I sound like a total dork.

Reading is the same. I can read all kinds of German (probably with the exception of something like...you know..."Detour ahead - reduce speed") but I can't write a lick. If I spoke it more, I could get the idioms correct.

I suspect the real trick is to get him/her to write in German. This is a real challenge but I believe that makes the difference. I don't honestly know that anyone ever stops thinking in their native tongue, but I think he can get better at the phrasing so it becomes more natural.
posted by fox_terrier_guy at 3:46 PM on March 9, 2007

It seems to me all languages have expressions that don't make sense if one translates them literally. And it sounds like he's resistant to that idea, perhaps to a silly degree. Perhaps try explaining that to him, maybe that will help. Or maybe he's just not too keen on learning German and is using this as an excuse.
posted by 6550 at 4:03 PM on March 9, 2007

Find phrases in French that translate completely differently into English, or that make no sense whatsoever if you try to be literal about them. Given the amount of essays written using online translation services my peers try to pass off as authentic - and fail - it shouldn't be too hard. In fact, Babelfish may be a good helper in that aspect.

The literal-minded-ness may not necessarily be stubbornness. When I was attempting (unsuccessfully) to teach myself Japanese, I would relate different structural components to English equivalents, just so I could remember it better. It got confusing, of course, but it was better than the "Shut up, accept it and memorize it" approach.

And no, there's no difference between "f" and "v". It's not even necessarily like "c" and "k", because sometimes "c" is pronounced differently. It's like........ "k" and "qu". Or something.

This is a fun read on all the illogical idioms of the English language. Maybe that'll help in readjusting his mindset.

(side note: interesting example. I can't even begin to think of how to explain the "What for a guy" example because I'm so used to thinking of "was für" as perfectly natural. =\...)
posted by Phire at 4:56 PM on March 9, 2007

Speaking as someone who is in your husband's shoes (almost the exact same situation), what you might call adorable, sometimes maddening mispronunciations may in fact sound the exact same to us when we pronounce them as when our German halves pronounce them.

I find it very frustrating to be constantly corrected for something that, to my ears, is the exact same pronunciation as my spouse. Add to that the seemingly bizarre grammar rules (I still tell stories about being taught that a 20 word sentence can change meanings on the last word) and my wife's crazy dialect (not to mention the whole high/low german thing) and I swear that she's just screwing with my head. And I'm more willing to accept that my in-laws will always say "making vacation" and other literal translations than my spouse is to accept my mispronunciations in German.

Anyways, to end my rant on a positive note we now have 2 kids who she speaks German to exclusively. I am finding myself able to understand conversations better than I ever have (although I still refuse to try speaking it, partly so as not to confuse the kids).
posted by smcniven at 5:08 PM on March 9, 2007

What's he been reading? I think something that really helped me (when I was at the peak of my Deutsch-reading ability) was reading things that normal German speakers wrote. I'm thinking German blogs, comments, forums, informal articles - things like that. They all got me into the mindset that there were certain ways German "just is." Z.B. - "Wo sind die?" statt "Wo sind sie?"

Incidentally, here's an idiom dictionary that tries to explain a fair number of idioms (most of which I don't know).
posted by god hates math at 5:11 PM on March 9, 2007

My girl is on a lifelong mission to teach me better german as well. The only advise I can give you is to practice. It sinks in after a while and the thought process becomes more natural. The phrasing and such are just like new words; they must be learned and practiced.
posted by Slenny at 5:20 PM on March 9, 2007

It's probably not practical in your situation, but in my experience total immersion is the best way to tackle this. My first experience learning German was at a summer camp, and for three weeks our teachers spoke nothing to us (or in front of us) but German. That was from the very first day, even though we didn't know a single bit of it. Within a week, I started to find it floating around in my subconscious, like bits of a song you can't get out of your head. I'd hear it in my dreams. I'd find myself mentally reciting phrases in the shower that I didn't even understand. In a way I think it really helped once I started "traditional" German classes in high school, because the rhythms and logic of it had already been imprinted in my brain.

Could you plan a trip to Germany anytime soon? :)
posted by web-goddess at 5:29 PM on March 9, 2007

Thanks for all the responses!

Phire: Vielen Dank.

I didn't think there was a difference, but I wanted a second opinion, thanks. So far I've been able to get him to hear (although not reproduce) the German R. He's still working on the German L (he has trouble hearing it).

(regarding it being perfectly natural): genau.

Don't get me started on doch.

smcniven: He acknowledges the difference. I know some things are hard for beginners to get right (or close) such as ö or ü. He just insists on pronouncing things with, for example, a hard American R instead of a German R, which are two totally different things. For example, he pronounces hart like "heart" and not the way I explained it (closer to "hot")

As to the reading/writing suggestions, thanks, but I can't get him to write a shopping list, much less anything else. Most of his reading in German has been commercial websites and the occasional forum. As a half-serious joke, I picked up a couple of picture books such as First 1000 German Words usw. which have helped somewhat. but again, the words themselves aren't the problem, it's phrasing and idioms.
posted by geckoinpdx at 6:18 PM on March 9, 2007

oh, and god hates math, that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. Thanks!
posted by geckoinpdx at 6:21 PM on March 9, 2007

"Doch", actually, I find to be a bit similar to "whatever". The sheer range of meanings within that one word just can't be explained. It's one of those things that has to come with practice. And I didn't even notice that there was a difference in the two types of Ls until you pointed it out and I consciously compared the two sounds. Wow. Um, good luck.
posted by Phire at 6:35 PM on March 9, 2007

Heh, thanks. I've been dealing with this for several years, but I can take all the luck I can get.

I'm not completely pedantic about the pronunciation for the most part. Usually it doesn't make that much of a difference and he can be understood. However, he sometimes has difficulty understanding that neu is pronounced noi and not new, even though that's what it means.
posted by geckoinpdx at 7:41 PM on March 9, 2007

Strangely, the thing that threw me about "was für ein Kerl" and similar phrases with masculine nouns is that it's not "was für einen Kerl."

The R in words like hart is actually a vowel that you glide to from the preceding vowel. I think it's usually [ɐ]. It definitely is [ɐ] in words like Kerl and Herz; this can make it difficult, since English has [ə] but not [ɐ], and er almost always comes out as [əɐ]. It might help to tell him this, or just to have him pronounce vowel-plus-R as though he's affecting a British accent.

And, to be fair, if you try to speak Quebec French, and you're not a native speaker, you're likely to mispronounce it. (For instance, the word tu in Quebec French is pronounced like Züge, not like Thüringen.)
posted by oaf at 7:59 PM on March 9, 2007

Good luck. Idioms have to be the most difficult part of any language. Other than trying to memorize them I have nothing to offer. As for pronounciation, where are you from? Is your accent different than what he may be hearing elsewhere? It amazes me that people in Bonn can barely understand Bavarians... And don't get me started on Kolsh.
posted by Gungho at 8:31 PM on March 9, 2007

I second Gungho: the variation within German speakers is HUGE. Maybe from a scientific point of view, your SO's German is schon within that range?

As mentioned before, language is not a question of logic. So asking "Why?" is not immer helpful. His refusal to accept this fact and your Wunsch for improving his German COULD be because of completely other reasons.

I would like to step back and add a more goal-oriented Perspektive: What is the goal of your SO's learning German? What is HIS goal? And why do YOU want him to speak a besser German? Is it necessary to change for a valid reason, except for being 95% korrekt instead of 90%? What is the benefit to his or your overall life? Who is having a Problem with the as-is state?

If both of you agree on a goal, I am sure, you will find the notwendigen actions to solve the situation. Could be Alles from "no need to improve" to "I accept the illogicness of language and will not ask Why again"...

Give it a Versuch!
posted by cwittmann at 1:45 AM on March 10, 2007

On the pronunciation thing; I agree that imitating someone (south-of-England-)English will bring him closer to the North German pronunciation for vowel + r. Though for the r in other contexts, he wants the sound from Standard French (which has become relatively prevalent in Quebec French recently, IIRC), not that from American English.

As to the idioms, it doesn’t work for ‚was für ein‘ as far as I know, but for some of the others, they are related to various New York/Borscht Belt Yinglish idioms, which he may know already from general North American culture. Googling a cite isn’t working for me right now, sorry, but there is some usage of ‘from’ there that doesn’t really work as standard English, but corresponds fine to ‚von‘ in standard German.

And no, there's no difference between "f" and "v". It's not even necessarily like "c" and "k", because sometimes "c" is pronounced differently. It's like........ "k" and "qu". Or something.

Note that one thing that may contribute to geckoinpdx’s other half's confusion on this, is that in some words of Latin or Western European origin, written v is pronounced as German w (or English V). A few examples; die Vase sounds like it’s written die Wase, das Verb as if it's written das Werb, das Video as if it's written das Wideo.

But for the majority of cases (and even for the above words, in colloqual contexts), German written v is pronounced as f. If you look at the German Wikipedia articles for the two letters, there is a bit more context; the choice between f and v to write the f sound has been chaotic for 1200 years now, but it doesn’t give a reason why. But hey, tell him that if he can handle English and French orthography, he really has no reason to complain about this small piece of chaos in an otherwise sane writing system ;-) .
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 2:42 AM on March 10, 2007

As a side note since it's been so long, is there a difference in pronunciation between F and V? That one keeps coming back up, too since he doesn't understand why some words are spelled with an F (Fenster) and some are with a V (Viel) but both letters sound the same. All I could come up with was "Well, English has both C and K...

Most of the time they're pronounced the same, but unless you're speaking Bavarian, "v" is pronounced like a German "w" in some words (for example in "Valentin" and "Vagina"). I doubt there's a good explanation for this, but overall German orthography is much more consistent than that of English or French.
posted by snownoid at 2:53 AM on March 10, 2007

oaf: My French is terrible anyway, and I only ever attempt it when I need to let him know I can't talk on the phone and so forth (je ne suis pas seul is my favourite phrase).

Your explanation is pretty helpful, thanks. He might understand it when put into those terms...whenever I've tried to explain it, I get accused of being Aglocentric (I grew up in the States but was taught British spelling...it's a long story).

Gungho: I can sound like a Northern Californian when I need to, and I speak fluent Dude. For the most part, my accent is West Coast English, although I'm much softer on my Rs than most. When people call, they have to ask who they're talking to because we apparently sound identical on the phone. So I think it's more stubbornness than an accent thing.

As far as German, my family is from Hessen (Bindsachsen), so we would probably sound more like Frankfurt than Bavaria or Hamburg or Berlin.
posted by geckoinpdx at 3:28 AM on March 10, 2007

If he speaks French then surely he should be able to do the R sound as they're very similar, no? (I'm not an expert in québecois but I didn't think it was that different from Standard French, apart from the awful accent)

Same thing with "doch" - French has "si" which is basically the same thing.
oui. non. si!
ja. nein. doch!
Or am I missing something here?
posted by ClarissaWAM at 5:23 AM on March 10, 2007

he's half-Quebecois and speaks French much better than I do and studied Russian for some time.

I was going to say he obviously has never studied another language, but now I'm completely flummoxed. How does he manage in French and Russian if he refuses to understand idioms? Why doesn't he go "Qu'est-ce que c'est—'what is that that that is'? What is this shit? I'm not saying that" or "eshchë by—'still + hypothetical particle' is supposed to mean 'Sure!'? Bullshit"? The only thing I can think is that he doesn't actually want to learn German and this is how it's coming out. (I actually sympathize; I didn't want to learn German either. But they wouldn't let me into grad school without it.)
posted by languagehat at 7:05 AM on March 10, 2007

Oh, and to answer your actual question: this isn't about "learning to think like a German," this is about accepting that language is not logical and that insisting that everything be explained logically is tantamount to refusing to learn the language.
posted by languagehat at 7:07 AM on March 10, 2007

Sounds like he may actually resistant to the idea of learning German. If he wants to improve, he should simply try to speak using a one-to-one translation from English to German at the beginning. You can correct him as he goes.

One important thing to remember is that many in German do not map one-to-one to words in English. This is especially true for prepositions. So, "was für" in "was für ein Kerl" doesn't map to "what for", but more to "what kind of".

In my case (English native speaker, have grown highly proficient in German over the past six years living in Vienna) I had to realize that the only way to speak German well was to speak German poorly first. most people can't go from zero to a hundred over night. I spoke German with word-for-word translations from English at the start. Most everyone understood me, and as I grew more comfortable using German, I began to pick up more natural formulations. Now it feels like I have two brains - one that thinks and dreams in German, and one in English.
posted by syzygy at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2007

Personally, when I'm learning a language, I do tend to find it helpful to think of idioms in terms that make sense to me logically, rather than just memorizing them. For example, I might have thought through "Was für ein Kerl" as something like "For a guy/as far as guys are concerned, what a guy he is". Eventually it becomes much more automatic and intuitive, and I don't actually go through that process for each phrase I hear now, but it did help me become more comfortable starting to "think in" another language. I didn't necessarily need to look up the actual origin of an idiom, I just needed to be able to think it through in a way that helped me make my own sense of it. I think that for native or fluent speakers of a language, the "why" of many aspects of the language is just intuitive, and I've found that making an effort in the early-ish stages of language learning to actively think about why phrases or idioms are formed the way they are helped me eventually start to move toward a more intuitive understanding of them and the language.
posted by not me at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2007

This might be a time when a little study of post-structuralist thought could benefit your SO.

Try to imagine an isoceles triangle turned pointy-end down. On one upper corner is the phrase "Was fuer ein Kerl!"; on the other corner is the phrase "What a guy!" At the bottom corner is the idea the phrases both convey, namely, elation at the quality some individual's character, performance, etc.

It seems your SO is focusing on the line running between the English phrase and the German, while neglecting that each phrase independantly refers to the same IDEA. The connection between the phrases is irrelevant--all that matters is their shared connection to the idea they convey.

This is most clearly illustrated by idioms meant to convey the same idea yet radically dissimilar. For instance, "Ich habe Hunger vie einen Baer" and "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!"

The point is perhaps even BETTER illustrated by ideas that have a word to describe them in one language, but only a phrase in the other.

I'll never forget being asked by a friend, "What do you say in English for when you have a song stuck in your head?"

"We say, 'I have a song stuck in my head...'. What do you say?"

"We say, 'Ich habe einen Ohrwurm fuer...'."


"Treppenwitz" is another favorite...
posted by jefficator at 4:00 PM on March 10, 2007

Thanks for all the responses! I guess that the short story seems to be that it's the student and not the teacher, after all. At least I hope that's the case.

I think he's just going to have to suck up and accept that literal, one-to-one translations won't work. Which will be hard, since he's quite literal-minded.

Part of it is that German is such a precise language (whereas the more malleable English has know, German has weiss and kennen, since you can know (be familiar with) something but not really know (understand) it.

There is hope, though. I was able to finally get him to grok that wie is how, but it is also like. Up until then, it was pretty much the same story ("Exactly how that? Young how me? What the hell?!")
posted by geckoinpdx at 8:07 PM on March 10, 2007