When studying a new language, an English speaker might get frustrated with gender. Sure, gender is important in Greek and Hebrew, but in German, es ist sehr sehr wichtig. Take the following conversation for instance:
Jacob: Guten Tag Herr Paul.
Paul: Guten Tag Jacob, wie geht es Ihnen?
Jacob: Mir geht es sehr gut. Danke. Wie geht es Ihnen?
Paul: Sehr gut.
Jacob: Wie geht es das Junge?
Paul: [walks away mumbling] dummer Amerikaner.
What just happened? I was only asking how his young boy is doing. No. In fact, I asked, "How is the offspring of an animal." I doubt that Paul appreciates that I think his wife is an animal.
The moral of this story, be diligent in your studies and don't take shortcuts.
DISCLAIMER: I am sure that I have make several capitalization and punctuation mistakes. Please forgive my ignorance.
1 comments:
This makes me happy. In a "Dear Lord, if you are merciful, please don't let me offend every German person I ever speak to" terror kind of way.
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