Taking German in French

I'm taking two morning classes. I'm all happy that I finally have the children off my hands four mornings a week. Two classes, can you believe, are a bit much. The problem are opening hours. I thought, oh, go shopping, whatever before German and Yoga, at 10am Tuesdays and Fridays... Monday mornings, a lot of stores are closed so that day is cancelled...then craming everything plus my trips to the pool (which is closed till 9:30 on Mondays too...) Eek! Thought I could swing this. Not sure if I can...

So German is priority. It's funny since my native language is closer to German than the one he's teaching in... It's also amusing to the others when I open my mouth, I have an entirely different accent to everyone else's. The Frenchies keep dropping the ends of the words off. They also mispronounce things I don't find difficult at all. The German teacher was surprised that I could say the "ch". He said English speakers find it difficult and then I told him I had done some Hebrew which explained it (they noticed this 17 years ago when I took German in Luebeck too).

I'm still finding it funny that he'll say "Now don't forget that you ARE thirty-seven years old. You don't HAVE thirty seven years." or "It's seven years long, not makes"... Funny as they were precisely the things I had to get myself in the habit of doing when I learned French!

He gave a big explanation on "wachs" which is both wax and to grow. I thought, how odd...but then it occurred to me-a waxing moon! I said, yes we have it. He's finding me the Odd Facts on English person. No you don't. Yes, we did. It's really old. Things waxed in Shakespere's time but not any more. He also didn't realize we had the two versions on "you" a long time ago. No, you only have "You". We used to have "thou" a few centuries back. Oh yes, I was right...

He says he remembers my name because of Roman Polanski. Sharon Tate. Todd would love it (he has been ribbing me with signing off "love from the family, Charles" for over 20 years now). "Do you realize that I remind you of someone who is banned from the U.S.? Oh yeah, now he remembers. Sex with a minor, right? She's my age, a middle aged housewife back in California who "forgives" him but he still can't come back. Can't you think of Sharon Stone??

Now the French pick up words from English but they tend to take them out of context and misuse them. Examples; basketball shoes are called "les baskets" and can be any sort of sports shoe. Sweatsuits are simply called "les sweats". So this teacher, being the Remote Keeper of Funky Language facts himself, explains to the class that German also borrows from English, but differently. Correctly usually, I add... Germans tend to use the English word in the right context.

"Do you know what the word 'sweat' means in English?" he asks them. "Perspiration! you all are calling jogging suits perspirations! Isn't that right Sharon?"

I agree.

"Pull over, do you know what that is? It means it goes over your head. You just say 'le pull'. You're calling it a Pull?!? Isn't that right Sharon?"

Yup. What about baskets? They have baskets on their feet!

The other students were amazed. It was funny. They had no idea what English words they were using.

"but what about what the Germans call a 'handy'?" I asked, not wanting him to get too egotistical about his English knowedge.

"Isn't that what you call it in English?"

The English say mobile. Americans say "cell phone". Handy means it's useful and neither would understand what that meant.

"You don't call it a 'handy'?" (of course I'd know this-I have to ask Daniel's German clients if they have his "handy nummer" when they call me!)

No, it's not a handy in English!!