Language Journey

I'm sure you know it. I love languages. I always loved languages. I could write a whole book with the title Antonia and the languages - A weird way in no direction. Here's the "short" version. (I love to talk about languages...you have to cope with it ;) )

I had my first language obsession when I was about 8 years old. I loved Italian. We had a tiny dictionary with the most important Italian words and I think it was my favorite book. I only learned to count from 1-10 and the word otorinolaringoiatra (because it's such a funny, long word).

My next obsession was German. Yes. It is my mother tongue, but I got obsessed with it. I always read a lot and was honestly addicted to reading when I was 10-13 years old. And I started writing.
I still read (or let's say, I read again (I stopped reading two years ago)), but I don't write anymore. It's sad. I don't have any ideas. :(
Anyway, I decided that it is possible to live without writing.

When I was 12 the only language I liked was German (and Italian). I had English at school, but I didn't like it. I was good in English (at this time I was good at everything...I was an excellent student before I turned 15...after that I was terrible), but I couldn't stand it. I had the chance to take Latin or French at school. I decided not to take it and took more Math and Science instead (I love Math).

At the age of 15 I had to take French at school. First I loved it, then I hated it, then I liked it, then I disliked my French teacher, then I hated French and now I regret that I hated it.
That's my story about French. French is such a difficult language and you have to know that I'm amazingly bad at learning languages. I'm not an ambitious student, I don't like studying and I don't like to learn words or study grammar (and I don't do it). I love to learn languages by using them. Unfortunately that's not how you are supposed to learn a language at school or university (that's why I fail all the time).

Back to my language journey.
At the age of 17 I took Italian for a year. Oh, it was like a dream. I always wanted to learn Italian and now I had the chance.
It was awful!
The were too many students in this class and the teacher wasn't that great. I quickly lost interest in it and I forgot almost everything. I still know how to introduce myself and some easy sentences.
I still want to learn Italian one day.

At the same time I started Italian I got obsessed with English and as you all know, I'm still obsessed with it (even more).
In my opinion English is something like the best language ever. You can do much more things with the English language than with German and so many people speak English. That's cool! :)
I also wanted to learn Spanish when I was 17. I have two Spanish study books, but it's hard to learn a language without someone teaching you (especially if you are not ambitious).

At the same time I also got obsessed with Swedish and Russian. That's why I started to study Swedish in October 2010, but I quit it. I learned nothing. The teacher was bad. She was really nice and I liked her a lot. But she couldn't really teach. Too bad.
I also started Dutch last October and I'm still studying it. I like it a lot, even though I failed at every exam *cough*

So here I am now. I'm obsessed with English. I love Dutch. German is my mother tongue. I would like to get fluent in French (and Dutch). I wish I could speak Swedish, Russian, Spanish and Italian. And I'm doing a bad job at all this things.

I don't know what's coming next. I'll definitely love English forever and I think I can manage to improve my Dutch skills (it's a lot like German). I'm not sure about my French skills (to complicated) and I doubt that I'll ever learn Spanish.
Sadly I'll probably have to quit Dutch after the summer and it could happen that I'll study Russian after the summer (I'm not sure about it yet...I can't get around it...maybe).
I also have to study Latin. I dislike Latin so much! I never learned it, but Latin is all about grammar!!!! Argh... :(

One more thing to add: I would love to teach German abroad one day or English in Austria or abroad. Maybe...

That's about me, but what's about you?

Do you like foreign languages?

Do you speak another language besides your mother tongue? How good are you?

Which languages would you like to learn?

p.s: I did a tiny blog makeover :P And I accidently deleted everything from my sidebar. I'm working on it. Don't worry if you've suddenly disappeared from my "Blogs I Love" list. It's not that I don't like you anymore ;)

Languages: thoughts, facts, stories and funnies

My first day back at university was better than expected. I wanted to post about my DVD collection yesterday, but the internet didn't work. How wonderful. I love it when the internet doesn't work (sarcasm, sarcasm, you are my best friend).
I'm not in the mood of posting about DVDs right now. I'll do that tomorrow or something like that.
Instead some things about languages...completely random. I love random things...and talking about languages...enjoy.

• Our Nederlands History teacher at university comes from the Nederlands. Her German isn't perfect and she makes some funny mistakes, but she is really good at talking German. Today she read a short part of a poem (or something like that) in English. After reading this poem she continued talking in English.
  First we were a bit confused, then some students started to giggle. After a while a students said to our teacher (in German):
  

  "Um...sorry...you know...you are not talking German anymore."

  She stared at him and was confused.
  She haven't noticed that she was talking English. So funny! :D
  
  
• I went shopping with Ines before Christmas and I told her about a movie and I didn't know how to say what I wanted to say. And I said (In German):
  

  "In English you would say "creepy". You know what I mean?"

  and she said
  

  "No."

  
  
• First reaction: How can someone not know what creepy means?
  
  
• Second reaction: What's the German word for creepy? (still don't know it...)
  
  
• Situations like the one above happens to me all the time. Two years ago I had to search words if I wanted to say something in English, now I always forget German words.
  
  
• I use English words in the middle of sentences in my journal. It's a bit bilingual :D
  
  
• Watching English movies in German is odd.
  
  
• The German voices are always higher than the original English ones. If you know the original voice it sounds completely stupid. But it seems to be true. German people have higher voices. For example kids.
  
  
• I can't hear accents. Let's explain that.
  I can hear it when somebody's mother tongue is not English. The German accent is horrible, terrible, awful ;)
  I can hear it (most of the time) when somebody's from Scotland (it always sounds like the pronounce all the words the German way...it's cute :) )
  I think I can hear it when someone's from England. I watch some British vloggers on YouTube and in the comments I often read "Love you accent". And I always thought "Accent? What are they talking about?" Now I can hear it a bit better....a tiny bit ;)
  All Americans sound the same to me...sorry...
  
  
• I hate grammar. I hardly ever use the word "hate", but I really hate grammar. No matter which language it is.
  I'm a user, I don't have to know how it is like it is. It's like using a computer. I use it, I don't have to know what's going on inside.
  
  
• People in Germany and Austria (and many other countries) listen to English music all the time, but they hardly ever listen to the lyrics. People don't care what songs are about...
  
  
• I don't like German music. It's boring.
  
  
• I DO listen to the words. ;)
  
  
• My brother sent me this today. It's German, but watch it. It's funny :)
  

Queer language from 1911

Every language changes over the decades. There are new words and old words gets different meanings and others get old-fashioned. That's how languages works and that's great.
I really like how peopled talked 100 years ago or even earlier, but honestly, I'm glad that I don't have to talk like that!
I'm sure you know which words are old-fashioned in English and you know which words are now used in different ways and mean something different.
I'm familiar with "old" language as well...but only in German...

I'm reading "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett at the moment. First published in 1911.
I haven't finished it yet, but I want to tell you two things that happened while reading the first pages of the book.

1. In the middle of the first page you can read this sentence: "...her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people."
Guess which word made me stunned. Yes, it's the word "gay".
I only knew this word as a word for homosexual people, so I was quite surprised to read this word in a book published in 1911. And I thought "why does a woman want to hang out with gay people"?
I had no dictionary with me, so I decided that the author had some strange ideas and I continued reading.
I checked the word "gay" later and found out, that it is not only a word for homosexual people, but also for cheerful people who love fun.
Well...I think that's what the author wanted to say... ;)

My question: Do you still use the word "gay" for cheerful people? I've never heard it before...

2. The word queer.
I knew what the word queer means. It means something like strange or weird. But again it is also a word often associated with homosexuals. And that's why I know the word. Every time I read the word "queer" I automatically think the word "homosexual" the same time. It's a bit annoying, but what shall I do? Most of the time (and that isn't very often) I hear or read the word queer it HAS to do something with homosexuals.
In "The Secret Garden" the word queer appears in nearly every paragraph (the author was amazingly creative... *cough*). It's the most used word in the book. She used it for everything. Women in queer grand costumes, a queer morning, a queer place etc.
I don't want to see this word anymore!!! ;)

I wanted to share this with you, because I would like to know how often and in what way these two words are nowadays used and I wanted to show you the difficulties you come across when you read and use a foreign languages.

Have a wonderful, lovely weekend! :)

Exhausted!!!

I'm exhausted! I feel like I'm lying in the Savanna after being knocked down by an elephant. Okay, I have no idea how this would be, but I feel like this.
The main reason for this exhaustion is the heat. It has 35°C/95°F (in the shaddow) and that's way too much for me. I'm not a person who love the hot season. Everything above 30°C/86°F is too much. Less than two weeks ago we had only 17°C/62°F. That's not normal anymore! Strange Austrian climate. Temperatures down to -17°C/0°F in the winter and up to 35°C/95°F in summer! No, no, I don't like that.
But stop talking about the Austrian climate. I just wanted to teach you something about Austria :P
The other thing why I'm terrible exhausted is the "First Cambridge Certificate" I had today. First I wanted to do the "Advanced Cambridge Certificate", but I didn't have time to study for it (because my final exams are much more important) and I decided to do the easier one. It was okay. Some parts were easy, some parts were awful and I'm glad you didn't hear me talking. But the speaking part was easier than expected, but I think sometimes there was no sense in what came out of my mouth. Same thing with my blog. Sometimes I'm not sure what I'm talking about (for example: NOW! :P ) But who cares? It's over. I'm no hoping that I passed it. I'll be happy with a C (which means passed). I would be more than happy with a B and I can't describe how I would react after receiving an A!
Oh, and did I mention that this exam was 6 hours long?

Just some more "education" :D
Poor Austria. Landlocked. Sad thing...
"Austria is a small, predominantly mountainous country in Central Europe, approx. between Germany, Italy and Hungary. It has a total area of 83,859 km², about twice the size of Switzerland and slightly smaller than the state of Maine.
The landlocked country shares national borders with Switzerland (164 km) and the tiny principality of Liechtenstein (35 km) to the west, Germany (784 km) and the Czech Republic (362 km) and Slovakia (91 km) to the north, Hungary to the east (346 km), and Slovenia (311 km) and Italy (430 km) to the south (total: 2563 km)."
Source: Wikipedia
Have a nice day!

You speak real English? How wonderful!

A few days ago I realised, that I haven't heard real English for years. Real English, what's that?
For me, people whose mother tongue is English speaks real English.
The last time I heard someone talking real English was two years ago, when we were in England with school.
And now, a few days ago I was in town on my way to the library and suddenly a couple crossed my way. And I totally freaked out when I heard them talking. They spoke English! Real English! I only heard two sentences, but it was enough to make me smile. :)
And yesterday an other couple crossed my way and they spoke English too. How wonderful. I don't know what all these English speaking people are doing in our town, but who cares? English is English... ;)
Oh, it's not completley true, that I last heard English two years ago. We have Native Speaker at School every year. This year we have a Native Speaker from California.

To improve my English I enjoy watching movies in English. Not only to improve my language skills, but also to hear the real voices of the actors. The German synchronization is sometimes really bad and sounds completly different.

And here is a photos of a snowman I built on my way home from the library:

Have a nice Mardi Gras!

White, white and a language shock

That's the result of "I want to draw a picture with a white crayon!"

And I'm shocked after searching a translation for the word "Buntstift" at google translations.
The English word for Buntstift is buntstift?
I'm totally confused and don't know if it is true.
That's weird because it's a German word, but there are so many German words in the English language...like Kindergarten, Doppelgänger, ersatz, Rucksack etc etc etc...

But, do you really call a crayon a buntstift???

1 day and 2 hours too late

I'm back from France.
It was great and I've taken many pictures (coming soon!)
But the most exciting thing was the flight back to Austria. The flight from Austria to France was okay (even the plane was really old), but here is the story of the last day(s):
Monday:
14 h: we went from Cannes to the airport in Nice. Our plane should've taken of at 16:40. We were all sure, that it will not take off at this time, because in the last days the planes of SkyEurope were delayed. Always something about 5 hours!
Well, after the check-in there were some good news. Only 1,5 hours to wait, not 5 hours. We were glad. We got into the plane and we were waiting for the start.
The plane rolled back something about 5 meters and stopped!
Waiting...
Then, the bad news: The "push-back-vehicle" broke something off the plane and they have to repair the plane now.
Waiting again...
The next bad news: We cannot stay at the plane and it will not take off this evening.
So we went back to the waiting room, sitting around and waiting for news.
The flight was cancelled and there was no chance to get a flight on monday.
After getting back our luggages we went to a hotel nearby the hotel to spend the night there not knowing what will happen the following day.
It's terrible to spend 7 hours at the airport for nothing.

Tuesday:
Waiting for information.
What will happen? There were three possibilities:
1. We'll take the next plane
2. We'll take the bus (more than 12 hours from Nice to Vienna by bus)
3. We'll take the train (more than 20 hours from Nice to Vienna by train)
Finally we tried again to take the plane.
It was again delayed! But only 2 hours.
Yes, and now I'm home again.
After 1 day and 2 hours waiting.

More about France coming soon....

Work and the English language

Only three weeks left! Then I say goodbye, because then I'm going to France for 9 days. After that, there's only one week left at school! And then...Summer holiday!
But there's enough work left.
At the moment I'm working on things I need, because I'll finish school in June 2010. It's strange to work on things you need 12 month later.
I have to translate some things from English to German, because my teacher at school can't speak English very well. ^^
This is my working place at the moment:

Two computers. Non of them is mine ;) I don't have my own computer. The right one is a 13 (or something like that) years old laptop. I'm glad, that it still works.

Beside this work, school gets easier and at the same time more stressful.
Yesterday Ines, one of my friends, and I started to write a story together. Ines wrote down three lines on a sheet of paper and I continued to write the next three lines and so on... We do that sometimes, if we are bored at school and we both love to write stories.
The stories we write together are always without any sense.
Yesterday we wrote a story about an elephant, called Josef, a human, called Franz or Fritz...can't remember, and a hamster, called Hans.
The plot isn't important to talk about, but we wrote the story bilingual, because I insisted to write my parts in English, but Ines don't want to do that and wrote her parts in German.
Sometimes we had to finished the sentences, the other one started before and I found out, that Englisch and German sometimes doesn't fit together.
For example: You can't translate words with -ing. doing, writing, working...all these words doesn't exist in the German language!
So the sentences sometimes sounds really strange, if we switched between the languages during a sentence.
But it was great fun!

Wow, this was the first long post, I did! (and not only with pictures...)
But totally rubbish ;)