Double-pointed (knitting) needles, a.k.a. dpn's
Apologies to the non-knitters among our readers. You can skip down a bit to read about the start of my German lessons....
First, to answer Amy's question posted in the comments of my last post: Good eye! There are actually two 8's and two 10's. I asked D. to send me two 9's for making i-cords and she didn't have them so she went up and down a size for me. Silly me! Of course I needed a whole set to make the baby hats. My circular needles of the right size(s) aren't long enough to do magic loop and I only have one long enough (maybe too long) for the two-circ. method of knitting in the round. So, today I trooped back to my favorite tiny yarn shop and all in German purchased a set of 5mm Addi DPN's. Ok, so after I paid, the lovely (lieb) shop owner said something that I didn't understand at all, but I did ask for, receive and pay for exactly what I needed. Not too shabby.
Ok, I'm done talking about needles for now. Those of you who couldn't care less about the yarn can tune in again. I just finished my fourth German lesson. We are actually meeting tomorrow to make up for a future holiday so I can't claim to have completed the first week quite yet. My brain is filling up quickly, but something must be sticking. I seem to have made an old lady on the U-Bahn happy this afternoon when I more or less understood her question about the station, despite completely botching my answer. Another woman in the car corrected my answer, I apologized (clumsily) for only speaking a little German and she grinned and seemed to say something like, "eh, most people on the train won't even talk to me. It's so nice that you try." Or maybe she grinned and said (in a deceptively kind voice), "you Americans come and get in my way and make my life miserable and you don't even have the courtesy to learn my language. Go home you stupid girl!" I'm going to pretend it was the first option and feel good about my first week of classes. I mean, at least I tried. Three days ago I would have had to stare blankly ahead and pretend I was deaf. On my way up the steps at my station, I realized that the key word in her question was "now" not "next." So, me saying "now Ober St. Veit, now Hüttledorf" instead of "next Ober St. Veit and next Hüttledorf" like I intended was ridiculous. I'm starting to think she might have said that second thing....
The most interesting, and potentially difficult, thing I learned today: the gender of nouns is not always consistent between German-German and Austrian-German. So, my 1951 dictionary let me down on my vocabulary homework and Curt may start correcting me when I'm locally right.
Jetzt, ich möchte ein Bier.
Now, I would like a beer.
One Minnesostan graduate student studies in Vienna for a semester; his Wisconsinite wife tags along. Here are some stories of their adventures in Austria.
4 comments:
You can't trust those 1951 dictionaries can you? Glad the lessons are in full swing.
You've earned a beer. Maybe two.
Well, it's not only between German & Austrian German, it's also dependent on the local accents and peeves. Within like 30 km of distance you can get two wholly different ways of noun genders, or telling the right time of the day. And it's not always logical. But seriously, it's better here than in some regions of Germany where they omit half the words in a sentence and still claim to speak German.
I cannot think of an example right now, but there are some words that can use any of our three gender forms (er/sie/es), and still be correct, depending on where you hail from.
But you've for sure earned yourself a beer!
I would like to know how your German is after you partake in a Liter of beer or two. Speaking of beer, I would like to request more pictures of you and Curt making nice with the locals in bars/pubs/sidewalks/etc. We miss you! How many more months until you come back to us?
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