Oh, and I wanted to remark that that blasted language has changed considerably just since my high school German teacher learned the language ninety or a hundred years ago. They seem to have simplified it some, though I have nothing to demonstrate that at the moment.
Not noticably, I’d say. Read some Heine, for instance - it could have been written yesterday! Some people had a more verbose writing style in the 19th century , of course (Nietzsche anyone?). And loan words keep flowing in. But the grammar is unchanged.
People say “du” (familiar “you”) a lot more now than they used to, though.
Not using Fraktur fonts so much anymore probably helps German readability a lot.
I’d also like to point out that German has many advantages for a student:
- Easy, consistent pronounciation and spelling
- Large number of compund words whose meaning is easy to figure out if you know the component words
- Realatively simple, logical grammar (but with some major quirks)
- Easy verb grammar
- An active web community including the web’s best news site, Der Spiegel
I never got comfortable with fraktur. And maybe the language seems so different because it is so much less formal. Not that I ever learned to SPEAK it, though. Teacher was more interested in us reading “the greatest literature the world ever knew,” so we were translating Heine, Goethe, and Mann. In some cases I liked our translations better than the store-bought ones; they were more poetic and I felt closer to the author’s intent.
Aufmerksamkeit!
One must always capitalize nouns!!