You guys...

[highlyeccentric]

This language is going to drive me mad¹. I think modern German may have been designed to bamboozle whatever weird people learn Anglo-Saxon first.

Consider the matter of first person pronouns:

1. Anglo Saxon: Ic - pronounced "ick" or "ich", there might even be a rule to which one you use, but I've forgotten it (Sorry, Venerable Alex.)
2. Middle English: Ich - pronounched "ich" or "i-ch", depending on who you're listening to.
3. German: Ich - prounounced some way I can't possibly reproduce, but which is most definitely not "ich" or "i-ch".

And then tonight, because I'm weird, I was reading the grammar at the back of my dictionary, and discovered that the past participle is formed by whacking 'ge-' onto the present tense. I HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO IGNORE RANDOM GE- prefixes, people!
... although, glod, what wouldn't I give to know what this wandering ge- thing did in Proto-Germanic...

~

1. For those new to the world of Me Learning New Languages, this is my battle-cry and expression of glee.

Comments

[metaphoroflife.livejournal.com]

I think Deutsche Welle does iTunes radio streaming again (after having been down for goodness knows how long) so that's a decent place to start just to expose yourself to the phonemes of the language, and so you have an idea how it sounds. The only tip I can think of is to speak in the front of your mouth ('vorn im Mund!') like my Austrian German teacher told me to all the time, because English is spoken in the throat by comparison. Apparently it helps? Uh. Yes. And there are my learnings.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I can has linky to this radio streaming thing?

[metaphoroflife.livejournal.com]

There's a whole page of German radio here - http://www.listenlive.eu/germany.html - (I think my German student uses this, and there are a huge number of stations you can stream/download, so go nuts). For Deutsche Welle in German, look for the 'Deutsche Welle' link, with the 'in German' description, click on the stream link next to the little icon that looks like a diamond with a yellow thing (this (http://www.listenlive.eu/dw-de.m3u) is the link) and it should open in iTunes as a continuous track and will begin playing. I tried going to their website but I just got German news in English.

You can also try going to iTunes, clicking on 'Radio' in the sidebar, choosing 'Talk/Spoken Word', going to 'Deutsche Welle' and selecting the one with its description in German.

I'm sorry those instructions are so long. And you need to have iTunes for both of them, which is unfortunate if you don't.

[metaphoroflife.livejournal.com]

Delta Radio! That's the one he listens to. http://www.deltaradio.de/

The front page is funny even if you can't speak German.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

But I DO have iTunes, so that is excellent ;)

[metaphoroflife.livejournal.com]

Yay! I hope it helps some.