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I've decided to revisit German Sentence Structure in order to compare it more to English sentence structure. Understanding the core fundamentals of a language really helps me to map out and understand a language even if I know only several words.

I've taken a dive into how words can be rearranged in German to curry the emphasis onto another word. I found this interesting. My first instinct is to assume this is how emotions can be conveyed more easily - One sentence in German might simply be a joke about love, whilst the same set of words can also express a genuine attempt to express love.

To explain what I mean, this is the website I went to:
http://germanforenglishspeakers.com/basics/sentence-structure/

I read these sentences:
Ich gab dem Jungen einen Ball.
I gave the boy a ball.

Einen Ball gab ich dem Jungen.
I gave the boy a ball. (as opposed to giving him something else)

Dem Jungen gab ich einen Ball.
I gave the boy a ball. (as opposed to giving it to someone else)

Now the first is quite simple - I gave the boy a ball. It is simple and objective. However the next one down, translated into English according to myself, would mean 'A ball, is what I gave to the boy'. I love to write stories, and I can envision and elderly German man, whom had a relationship with a boy (perhaps a grandson/nephew) who reports to an officer that most recently it was 'A ball, (he) I gave to the boy' before some reveal that the ball is somehow important to the narrative of the story.

What I'm getting at here is that German seems to be fluid in how it is spoken but also that the meaning and impression given can change depending on the way it is phrased. Just as many languages can, but this is my first time realising the complexity of German sentence structure.

It's an encouraging finding, but as I said in the beginning of this journey to learn, I need to focus on deciphering the same sentence based on the sentences structure. Understanding that it can mean the same thing, but differently, will be important - Else I may just remain ignorant and assume I cannot understand what is said.

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Because it's been a while since our lectures on greetings, I decided to go through GCSE German on BBC bitesize to refresh my memory. It actually has a few interesting facts, like how children when they're growing up are asked to 'gib die Hand' when they meet new people. I can't remember going over this in the lecture but its an interesting cultural tradition. The page features questions like 'Wie alt bist du' which I'm sure we didn't cover. Still, it offers rather simple ways that cause my memories of what we learned in German to return. Like Wie heisst du, for 'How are you called' just as Wie alt bist du is 'How old are you'.

There's also ways of saying when my birthday is. I think this is pretty useful for extending conversation. For instance, mein Geburtstag ist am zweiten April. I managed to get through four pages in half an hour but I'd like to continue later so I can have answers to many of the questions it provides.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z96rk7h/revision/1

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When I speak to people online through voice for the first time, I like to start with something that'll leave a good impression. For instance, I currently say 'Hello there' - mimicking a line from Star Wars' Obi Wan Kenobi as his greeting to a character called General Grievous. So besides from 'Hallo' I wanted to look for other ways to say hello. Using google translate to give me individual words at a time, I came up with 'Hallo dort', as well as 'Wie ist der Tag'. and 'Wie ist der Fluss deiner Emotionen?'.

So now I'm starting to think about how I might navigate a conversation. If someone recognises my attempt to add the Kenobi accent, I may simply reply with 'Sehr gut!' or 'Haha ja' but if I ask how their emotions are, and they're upset, I've found I can reply with 'Awhh,  Gute Winde an dich Freund. Es ist gut' to try and make them smile at least.

My goal here is to able to reach people on a level which will make me familiar to them rather quickly, rather than being seen as a German Learner. It might make them want to help me more if they like me. Thinking over how I speak to people online, I've decided to replicate the simple 'Hello' 'How are you' routine.

I've written down an algorithm I can follow to maintain very simplistic conversation, for when I want to advance or replace. It's very basic but I think it'll help refresh my options when speaking to people through text online and keeps it simple enough that I can go back if need be or study more when I need to understand more to continue.

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Talking About Myself (Mostly Gaming stuff online)

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Talking About Myself (Mostly Gaming stuff online)

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Luckily I have very few interests so this shouldn't be too difficult. But my issue is with the variety of what people can say. I can say 'Ich  mag joggen' but that doesn't mean I can add onto that. I want to be able to express a tiny bit more detail to bring what I say to life. For instance 'I like jogging but I don't do it often' I might say as 'Ich mag Joggen, aber ich spiele lieber Videospiele' - I like jogging but I prefer videogames'. Now I think about it, what I usually find myself doing is attempting to find common ground. So asking questions like 'What games do you like/play' could be a better idea.

I've looked online and found 'Welche Spiele magst du' resembles 'What games do you like to play'. I'm assuming we'd be on some sort of gamer platform like Discord, and working together as a team online is pretty universal. But if I wanted to ask specific questions like 'Do you play Assassins Creed' or 'Do you play Minecraft', I wonder if they would recognise those words, considering they're such large games, or if I'd have to translate that too.

I've discovered that 'Spielst du' means 'Do you play', so I'm figuring I can add on any game I choose onto the end and just repeat the question if I'm online with different game names. 'Spielst du Minecraft? Nein? Ich liebe Minecraft!' is something I might say playfully if they tell me they aren't into it, hopefully so I can tempt them into it playing it with me. I'd probably continue by asking a more general statement such as 'Have you ever played it?'

Once again, after searching online, I've found 'Hast du es jemals gespielt?'. At which point I'd probably have to wait for their answer to continue studying, but if they haven't played the particular game before. I've found I can ask 'Wirst du es versuchen?' to at least see if they'll ever play it.

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Whenever I find people I 'click' with, I tend to tell them all about my history and family, and it helps to connect with others much easier. So I think I'll try and think about some things I'd say about them, and then translate it as simply as possible into German so I have a rough idea of how to describe my family or siblings. But I want to be able to have a reserve on things I'd like to say, so I'm going to extend my vocabulary in simple way by going through 15 different ways of describing my brother and sister. I ended up with 15 written things but I decided to translate parts that I felt like I wanted to know in the moment, later into the initial thoughts.

I think that's what learning should be, but I don't have many people to speak German with so I'm not occasionally searching for new information for that reason, which makes my learning slower and more mechanical.

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After my previous post, I figured I should describe other friends, since there's more variety in it AND I'm motivated to think about it because I cherish my friends. Toward the end of my last study I mentioned 'Arabella' - A friend from overseas who lives in America. I'll describe her more frequently as well as other friends who I've met online if and when they come to mind and how I want to describe them. I'll start writing and see how many I get done in 30 minutes.

In the end I managed to come up with more than 15 descriptive statements about my friends, though toward the end of the timer I read the feedback given from Woche 9 so I wrote it down, and then tried to see if I could write another sentence correctly using the corrective I was given.

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I found a number of very helpful videos to watch that I'll link below. I feel like being able to listen to them speaking and saying it out loud helped me to feel almost as if I was in a conversation with them. People give different answers and I feel like that removes the mystery shroud around learning a new language, since its like words don't make sense but when 10 or so people reply in a very similar fashion you can learn whats reliable to say and what means the same thing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yaelm87PTvg

One of my favourite responses from this video was a woman answering 'What is your hobby' and she replies 'Bier trinken' lol

Afterwards I followed with this video because I need to understand the cases better than I do at the moment. I don't know them by heart just yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbWOui-V-U4&list=PLk1fjOl39-50WX8xiXwIBUcbdtMjlaZSj&index=15

The way she explained each of the cases was really helpful, especially with maskulinum/femininum and what to use when talking about specific cases. I'll definitely be going back to this video when I'm not sure because she uses such real life examples, and many examples, that it's easier to remember. However it confuses me a little bit on what exactly is masculine or feminine. When directing towards men, der, and women, die, but then objects have masculine/feminine cases? I think that's probably the more difficult part that just has to be left to learning on the go, or maybe it doesn't matter either way. Maybe it just depends on what you consider the door to be? Like to a womans room it might be die Tur but a mans might be der/das Tur. So it might just be considering the relation of the object to either a masculine or feminine description.

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I found a site that offers beginner level German texts to read through, then questions to answer and then tests you on the knowledge within it. Strictly speaking I don't understand all of the words, but I translate the words online that I don't understand and that helps me to get the gist of what's going on in the text so I'll know for later. It's A1 based so it is very simple but it means there are few words for me to learn which makes it more of a refresher.

https://german.net/reading/unser-haus/

In the text above, for instance, I didn't understand that 'Unser' meant 'Our' or that 'grob' meant big but after clarifying those words I can understand the sentence "Unser Haus ist sehr groß" Our House is very big. I think over time I'll be able to either understand the various structures of German sentences or I'll be able to fit the words into a simple English narrative.

Ich helfe meinen Eltern gerne im Garten

From taking a look over this, I could tell instantly she meant 'I like to help my parents in the garden' but I was unsure about trusting it due to not having encountered words like 'helfe'. I understood 'Eltern' must mean 'parents' in reference to 'Elder' and 'd's similarity to 't' in the English language, at least to myself. But the structure of the sentence made me confused. If I were to rearrange it to Ich helfe meinen Eltern im Garten then it'd be much easier for me to understand, so I translate 'gerne' to find out it means 'with pleasure' so she likes helping her parents with the garden. Now I know that, the initial sentence makes more sense.

Due to an earlier sentence in this text, I feel like this one is cheating 'Neben dem Sofa stehen ein Tisch und eine Lampe' As it translates to 'There is' and I've come to recognise 'gibt' as a meaning for 'there', and 'es gibt' for 'there is'. But now I've come to know that 'Stehen ein Tisch' is another way of saying 'There is a Table'. In the end I got 60% haha but I'm going to go through a couple more later.