Yeah, I’m sure the upper title is wrong. I’m sure this is annoying to many of you, having to help a kid out with homework like this. But I’ll try to keep this short and sweet:
Skaten und Klettern in Berlin ist sehr populär. Viele Parks befinden sich in Berlin. Einige Parks sind zuhause falls vom falschen Wetter.
Das Radfahren ist ein anderer populärer Sport in Berlin. Fast alle Plätze in Berlin können mit dem Fahrrad erreicht werden. Geordnete Touren und Schleiferennen sind offten eingeplant.
Viele Leute genießen zu laufen. Die Atmosphäre ist schön und stellt eine Sichterfahrung für alle zur Verfügung, um zu genießen. Verwendbare Ausrüstung und Sachverständigengutachten sind availbe in fachkundigen Betriebsystemen in Berlin.
Eine große Sache zum Tun in der freien Zeit ist Wassersport. Alle das Baden, das Schwimmen, die Sonne, Eignung und das Segeln sind triftige Gründe, das Wasser zu genießen. Das Segeln ist sehr populär und Boote können von den lokalen Mietdienstleistungen gemietet werden.
THANKS A LOT. Obviously this isn’t something that can just be magically “googled” into answers.
Ok, enlighten me. Do you have a particular grammatical question or do you honestly expect us to just do your homework for you?
See, if you asked “Did I use the correct gender for this word” or, “what is the dative case for_______”, you will find that people are willing to help.
Just typing your test/assignment/whatever in and expecting someone to make it perfect for you is not what this website is about. We are for fighting ignorance, not spoon feeding you the answers so you do not have to actually learn anything.
Now, before you get in a huff, think about this; I bet you can salvage your post by replying with what you think might be wrong and why for each sentence. Show some effort and you will be amazed at how much people will bend over backwards to help
I spent three hours looking in dictionaries for plenty of these words. I would consider that “hard work.” I’ve been in German 1 for about 14 weeks.
This is for a poster I’m doing. The thing has to be perfect, and this place seemed like the best place to do it. I’m using having to make up grammatical rules that we haven’t learned yet, and praying to god my conjugation is correct.
I can’t point out each sentence equally, because I haven’t the slightest clue as to what is and isn’t right. It all appears correct to me, however I could use a little help.
I’m still in the process of learning at my school. In fact, I’ve had roughly 12 weeks of it, so I don’t expect an internet message board to teach me the ins and outs of German. But perhaps you understand the theory of “learning by mistakes?”
Perhaps if I hadn’t said “correct my german,” and instead said “tell me what is wrong with my German” we wouldn’t be having this problem.
First, the Straight Dope boards generally take a dim view of helping with homework (in other words, we’re not picking on you). You’re supposed to do it yourself. And I suggest leaving out the condescending tone when we decline to hand over answers. It doesn’t help. (Hint: We’re not “having this problem.” You are.)
Second, it is possible to learn without going to the Internet and asking strangers to give you the answers (regardless of the wording you use). Your textbook might be a place to start. You might also go to your instructor for help. These are the methods we used when the Internet wasn’t around. Sometimes you have to follow “hard work” with “more hard work.” (Hint: There is more to learning a language than looking in dictionaries.)
Third, I’m dismayed at the suggestion that Google can be some sort of homework answer machine. Answers are supposed to come from your own mind. Learning is as much about the journey as it is about the result, and about absorbing information rather than regurgitating it at teacher-mandated intervals.
Fourth, if you believe that it’s all correct, why not hand it in? A little confidence can go a long way, and perfection isn’t everything. (This from a hardcore perfectionist who has learned it the hard way.) If you’ve made any mistakes, your teacher will correct them and you can learn from them, just as you suggest.
I can only guess, what you mean with the last sentence. Did you mean “Some parcs are indoors in case of bad weather”?. Then you could write e.g.: “Für den Fall schlechten Wetters, sind einige Parks überdacht”. Your translation means something like: “Some parcs are at home if from the bad weather”. The rest is more or less ok although style could be improved…
You probably means “geführte Touren” and I don’t understand what you mean by “Schleiferennen” - no idea, sorry. Rest ok. Probably you should use “weiterer” instead of “anderer”, just for style.
First sentence “…genießen <i>es</i> zu laufen”. But then: "The atmosphere is nice and provides a viewexperience to enjoy for all " ??? Again I have no clue, what you mean. The third sentence is even more weird.
Better:
Eine beliebte Freizeitbeschäftigung ist Wassersport. Das Baden und Schwimmen, die Sonne und das Segeln sind gute Wege, das Wasser zu geniessen. (I have no idea what you could mean by “Eignung” in this case). Segeln ist sehr populär und Boote können von lokalen Vermietern ausgeliehen werden.
I would say, not bad for 12 weeks of learning… hope I could help.
Sorry for the condescending tone, but that’s the way my writing comes across as. I can be telling someone I like their joke and I get accused of being sarcastic.
I’ve checked my textbook for help, but I already know all the grammar rules it teaches.
This isn’t something I can just erase and do over, it’s a poster done in permanent ink.
I was wary at first of coming to this board at first, as I suspected things like this would arise. I finally posted it when I realized how many people there are from Germany on this board who needed a helping hand with their English from time to time.
I tried to think of some Korean kid asking for BASIC help in English, and whether or not I would help him. The answer was a resounding yes, and I assumed everyone else would be as willing to help as I.
I guess I’ve been proven wrong.
I mentioned the google thing because foreign. languages are hard enough to learn, and even harder online. A real person-to-person talk is much more informative than a giant FAQ on the language.
Let me provide an analogy. Say I give you an excessively hard math problem. You have know idea how to work some of the formulai, and you are given an hour to provide a correct answer. Only this mathematical problem filled with variables doesn’t have an (math problem)=Answer. There is only the problem. You have to keep taking the problem to your instructor over and over and over until you finally have the right answer. I would hardly call this an efficient method. How much learning are you going to do if you don’t know the final destination?
OK, I’m not so good with explaining analogies. But I hope you get my point. Learning by trial and error isn’t exactly the best way to learn by anything.
And instead of using this trial and error method and losing points, why not just apply it to another scenario where there are no penalties?
For a few of those words I admit I had to use an online translator. That is why it may be hard to understand. These large sentences are impossible to keep track of.
I’m obviously not going to write anything comparable to Nietzsche or anything, this has to be basic. We mainly learn a few words at a time, and just use what little Grammar we have learned so far to apply. I’m terrible at writing in my own native tounge, so imagine how classy my German must be.
Yeah. I forgot to include the word “Pleasurable.” As in “The atmosphere is nice and provides a pleasurable viewing experience for all.” (not too good even in English, but the structure is simple)
All in all, it was very helpful. This is exactly what I was looking for. A citizen of Germany was exactly what I needed, as it wouldn’t be more than 10 minutes of work maximum for one. Thank you, Nils.
I’ve just been Engrished :smack:
First, let me say you’ve done an excellent job for being 12 weeks into a first-level class. Also, it’s not unusual for homework questions to get completely wrong & joking answers here. That hasn’t happened here … probably.
The point is that your instructor is best equipped to help you learn (it is, after all, their job). The point of the class is not (I would presume) to produce perfect posters, the point is to learn the language. And handing off your work to be corrected by someone who has no knowledge of the work you’ve done so far is not an efficient way to learn. Your analogy’s a bit unclear, but it seems that if you took your work to someone else and simply said, ‘do this math problem’, and they did it, you still wouldn’t have a clue how to solve the problem.
The instructor does know your work to this point, and over time should be able to point out the sorts of things you could use help with. Give them a shot at what you’ve done. If he or she is truly unwilling to help you, then maybe look elsewhere.
If you really want it to be perfekt, I’d suggest you go back and look up every word you’ve used. Check the meanings as well. The advantage of this is that your teacher will know exactly what words you’re using, and if you’ve used them correctly or not (as opposed to attempting to resolve misspelled words).
I suppose it’s not unexpected that ‘skaten’ has a new meaning in German these days. Used to be something you’d only find in Hoyle, not in the park.
Well “skaten” now means to different things depending on how you pronounce it. If you say SKAY-ten (like the english word “skate” plus the ending-“N”) it means either Inline-Skating. That the way it was used in ForumBot’s text. If you pronounce it “SKAA-ten” you mean playing the popular card-game of “Skat” (long a).
I don’t now what you mean by “Hoyle”
Nils - Edmund Hoyle wrote the definitive English book on card games; thus I was indeed talking about Skat. There’s also an expression, “according to Hoyle” which is used to indicate the strict rules for playing a game, sport, or some other endeavor.
I am afraid you are all giving ForumBot too much credit. After running the thread title through a couple of online translators, I am pretty sure that he just bashed something together that looked kind of close and then translated it back into english to check. If you run the thread title through, you get “is correct my german,” which has the germanic sentence ordering and conveys the meaning in english.
I’m not trying to cut the kid down. I really hope he did it himself. I doubt it, though. He mentions using online dictionaries and “googling” for answers. Google provides a translation service these days, and there are plenty of others available as well. I greatly fear that he is simply aware of the limitations of the online translators and wanted to get some help in improving his Google answers.
I’m araid Mort Ford is half right. I’ll explain my exact process.
First, about the title: Since that wasn’t for my paper, I didn’t fully research it. I threw it together out of my head, and I don’t know the verb form of correct (as in “correct this for me”)
Step 1) Wrote down everything I wanted to say in English.
Step 2) Translated one word at a time with a German-English dictionary or online translator.
Step 3) Put in my translation (German Version)to an online translator. It made a fairly moderate amount of sense when it came out in English, but I wasn’t sure about the grammatical structure. So I ran the original English version through the translator and wound up with a block of German text.
Step 4) Went through THAT block with a dictionary, and found out what certain words meant (i.e. the large combined words)
Step 5) I sort of combined my original translation with online translations and wound up with what you have here.
I’ll admit that whenever I was stuck (as in the case of " Verwendbare Ausrüstung und Sachverständigengutachten sind availbe in fachkundigen Betriebsystemen in Berlin.") I trusted the online translator, as it is much better at German than I.
But keep in mind I did still put in a large amount of work before posting this here. I was going to go ahead and put my original version on the post, but I got the jitters at the last minute. With all those unknown words, the chance of error was ridiculously high.
But I did not, in any way, just type in what I wanted and use that straight translation. I know the difference between getting help and cheating.
Re: Steps 1 - 5: Don’t do that any more. Really. Anybody with a dictionary (or Internet access) can translate word-by-word. That is not the same thing as learning a foreign language. The grammar, the order the words go in, things like that are the hard things to learn, but they’re the difference between speaking German and speaking Babelfish German. Online translators are (barely) adequate at word-by-word translating, which is why the output is mostly understandable; they’re hoplessly bad at the subtle things that make language not just understandable but right.
It’s great that you put so much work into this and that you obviously want to learn, but there are much better ways to go about it.
Yes, I understand that. I didn’t just translate words and slap them together, I actually tried to form coherent sentences. I used every bit of grammatical knowledge I have in German, and used it.
Think of it this way. I know that in order to have an indirect object, I need a sentence that follows a Subject-Verb-Indirect Object-Direct Object structure. I can use the example “Mary Gave Timmy a Car.” The only difference is I need to change the words to match the situation.
Ahh, forget it. I’m terrible at explaining these types of things. Word-by-word is the method my teacher proposed I use, so I used it.
FB, my point was that the online translator doesn’t know German grammar much better than you do, so you really can’t tell much about correctness from its results. You’re really better off fumbling through on your own and skipping the Babelfish step altogether, unless you just want to look up a word or two.
I think a few of your sentences are overly ambitious-- you are constructing complex English sentences and trying to Germanify them, which won’t really work as the flow and syntax of the languages are different, and you are likely to get responses like “I know what you are trying to say, but you wouldn’t say it anything like that.” Take a step back and simplify and write more simply constructed, clear sentences correctly instead of jumping in over your head. And don’t rely too much on your dictionary as. . . again, “I know what you are trying to say. . .” DON’T EVER first write down what you want to say in English-- think of the idea you want to communicate and work around with ways that you know you can get it across in German itself. Watch out for sentences with prepositional or idiomatic phrases, as they likely don’t work the same way as the English idioms do. Like your “Eine grosse Sache zu tun. . .” sentence comes off as odd, I think. Do you mean to say “A great thing to do” or “A large issue/ affair. . .”? The words “Ding” and “Sache” have slightly different connotations. . . that kind of thing. Nils offers a more “native” way to get that concept accross. Don’t be afraid to use what you already know excellently and take new challenges more slowly-- assimilate things thoroughly. It takes a while to realize just how arbitrary and untranslatable your own language is-- then you realize that you have to learn a whole new set of usage and behavior rules for the new language, and not just vocab and grammar.
(Speaking as an ex-German student from college who had similar urges and learned to beat them down)