On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 19:41 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> > Learning french in school was always very difficult for me since there
> > were so many things like this which didn't seem to have any reason for
> > being. 
> 
> I'm not sure how that is in German (you know, I just "know" it :), but
> while English has some things going for it in terms of being easy to learn,
> pronunciation is pure hell. As a non-native speaker, even after many many
> years, I still don't know how to pronounce a new word that I've never heard
> before. I don't have that problem in Portuguese. After a few weeks, I could
> read (pronounce, not necessarily understand) pretty much any text. With a
> thick accent, but otherwise correctly. 

Oh, don't get me wrong, IMHO english IS a hell language to learn. It's
such a jumble of multiple roots, with all kinds of "exceptions" to the
rules. There are probably MORE exceptions then there are cases of the
rules being followed.

Pronunciation is certainly one of the dark areas of english. German OTOH
is quite easy for me. I can read out German in a way that is quite close
to the proper pronounciation (once you know how to pronounce the "double
dot" vowels, and the double s that looks like a B). Of course, the odd
thing is when I read something in German I have a BIG problem
understanding it. Yet, if someone reads me the same passage I almost
have no problem understanding it.

The other thing that always fascinated me about German is how almost
every younger German speaking person knows TWO versions of German. Once
is their local dialect (where milch sounds like muech, in the case of
Sterya where my parents of from) and "hoch (sp?) deutsch", which they
learned in school. The funniest thing is when I think about it, most of
he words I know are also in two forms, yet I was never formally
schooled!

Anyways, languages can be quite fascinating, listening to dutch is a
treat because of the mix of German and French, it's just too bad that
I'm not very good at learning them. TTYL

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