Just a Few Tid Bits of Information

Hallo,

Craig is away this weekend rock climbing in a place called Sachsen Switzerland. It is near Dresden, Germany. He was invited to go by a woman he meets with once a week who is from Leipzig, Germany. She is Craig's language partner which means they meet once a week and she teaches him German and he teaches her English.

We had a moment last weekend where we realized we were not tourist anymore. We spent our weekend as ordinarily as could be and realized at the end of it, that it was so ordinary it was weird. We didn't have any trouble catching the bus to go out to IKEA and we didn't walk around confused as to the world around us. We met up with friends, we went to church, and we went shopping. Needless to say, we are settling in quite nicely.

An interesting piece of information I have learned, and would like to share, is that everyone in Germany speaks German differently. Which, we know in the States, everyone speaks English differently too. Supposedly, Leipzigers speak a really "different" form of German. Both my German teacher and Craig's German teacher said they would NOT teach us how to speak German like they do here in Leipzig. We have been told that if people from Leipzig travel to Bavaria, they can't understand what is being said.

Another thing that is different is how they say time. In Leipzig, if they say "a quarter nine" that actually means 8:15 and "half nine" means 8:30. Usually, when people are talking about time, the conversations ends up with "what exactly do you mean???"

Going with the topic of "language," at my school I am asked to speak "British English" not "American English." So, along with learning German I am also learning English :). In the States, when referring to the mark at the end of a sentence, we say it's a "period." However, in the UK they say it's a "full stop." Also, instead of going to the "pharmasict" they go to the "chemist." In the alphabet the "z" which we pronounce as "zee" is actually pronounced as "zed" in the UK. Your "mom" is "mum" and words that are typically spelled with a "z" such as organization are spelled with an "s" like this: organisation. Words such as "flavor" and "color" are spelled "flavour" and "colour."

I have a list of American words and then their UK translation posted into my planner as an easy reference. It might not seem like a huge deal, but when I am teaching Grammar to 10 year olds it comes in handy not to appear that I am "mispelling" words. Plus, if I taught it different than they learned it then it would just confuse them to pieces.

Ok.. now that I have supplied you with your language lesson of the day, I think I will go and finish my coffee.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this :).

~Amy Goodwin