From Dutch to Duits

I've been concentrating on Dutch recently by reading through and copying the sentences in my Essential Dutch Grammar book to a composition notebook. I'll write the Dutch sentence, the English translation, then a literal translation. This is a good way to learn sentence patterns, which, other than basic straight-forward sentences, are often quite different from English.

Some highschoolers from Hermann's sister city in Germany (Bad Arolsen) are coming to town this weekend to perform in a concert. Two of them are staying at my parents' neighbor's house across the alley, and are coming over for a BBQ (I guess - it's been pretty chilly lately.) I told my mom with all the German in this town, from street and shop names to the many German flags flapping in the breeze, they'll probably wonder if their plane ever left the ground: "Are we still in Germany?"

Voice Over

Here's an interesting article explaining Sarah Palin's accent.

Language Refresh

I went to World Market a couple of weeks ago and bought two diaries in which to attempt to write the old-fashioned way: one for Portuguese and one for Bulgarian so far (I would definitely like to get better at handwritten Cyrillic).

Romanian Love

I was looking at my Berlitz Romanian phrasebook this morning and thinking how much I love that language.  *starry eyes*

Dutch and Deutsch

I went to the library this afternoon and checked-out a country profile book about the Netherlands called Holland by Mies Bouhuys. It's pretty dated, copyright 1971, but it's written in English, Dutch and German, so I couldn't resist. Though there are whole pages with text, most is in the form of photo captions, making it a good way to read some Dutch in small doses.

Here's a random example, showing English, Dutch and German...

~Giethoorn is a true water village.

~Giethoorn is een echt waterdorp.

~Giethoorn ist ein echtes 'Wasserdorf'.

It's interesting to be able to compare these three related languages, even if the translation is nearly never as straight-forward as the above.

You Say What I Say

I've been making Slavic vocab lists. When learning languages that share a family (and even those that don't), it's helpful to look for alike words and phrases. That is, instead of thinking in terms of a single language, condense and conquer. ;)

Adeus, inverno!

I thought I would write some quick sentences alluding to the warm temps we've been experiencing. These sentences are pretty basic, but it's been a long time since I've attempted to write anything in Portuguese.

O tempo tem estado agradável esta semana.  O sol se põe mais tarde e nasce mais cedo agora que a primavera está praticamente aqui.  Quando está outono no Brasil, está primavera em Portugal e nos Estados Unidos.

The weather has been nice this week.  The sun is setting later and rising earlier now that spring is almost here.  When it's fall in Brazil, it's spring in Portugal and the United States.