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

[eggs-maledict.livejournal.com]

Um I hate to be the one to bring it up, but Rammstein can be helpful for pronunciation, and for 'ich' in particular, they've done a song called Ich Will (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlPhAmaFtVE) which gives a pretty good idea of what it should sound like. I know there are massively varying opinions on the usefulness of Rammstein to German students but it worked for me...can't hurt for pronunciation.