Wow, what a busy thread!
Thank you all for the welcome. What a nice little international family.
I see this thread has turned into a language thread, don't worry, I don't mind. As a matter of fact I enjoy these kind of conversations a lot, you can learn so much more about each other by speaking with natives. Believe it's much better than learning from the local media.
Nowadays, kids start learning English in kindergarten, I believe it's the second or third year and in my opinion it's not too early. Kids at this age usually don't have as many problems as older kids have with the grammar and the pronounciation.
There is a public elementary school near Ludwigshafen am Rhein where they run a multilingual school system, they teach in German, English and French and this school is very popular among parents as you can imagine. My brother has a little baby girl and he told me that when she gets old enough to go to school, she's four months old now, she'll go to one of those international school where they teach the kids in German and at least English.
English is so important nowadays, especially in business and when you travel. As Marion said you get around with English almost everywhere but if you speak another language, for instance Spanish when you visit Spain the natives will open up more and be more friendly if you make an effort to speak their language. I like to say nobody is perfect and we don't have to have perfect pronounciation when we speak a foreign language, as long as you speak it as often as you can...practice makes perfect. I kept telling myself that when I was in France cause I used to think before I spoke. What's so bad about that you say? Not much really but it gets in the way when you're right in the middle of a conversation.
Germans usually make an effort to go for perfect pronounciation but there are some who don't give a you know what
to make it sound right and this upsets me cause I know they could do better than that. As for my pronounciation, I was told by some guy in Houston that I have a Texas drawl. Don't believe him. I do have more of an American English than British English, yes, but it's definitely not Texas drawl.
I also speak French and know some Spanish. We don't really need Spanish here, French is more important since France is so close. I can drive to France and be there in an hour.
I started English in 5th grade and French in 7th grade. That was in the mid 80s. A lot has changed since. I swear when I lived in Ireland I forgot how to speak German. I used to call my parents in Germany and they kept telling me that I didn't remember most of the German words. Took me about half a year to get back into German. Strange but true.
When I was in the States in 1994, Floyds Knobs, IN near Louisville I went to high school for about three weeks and I remember they used to teach German, French and Spanish. I joined one of the German classes and I didn't think it was that bad. They took us to an elementary school one day and the teacher asked us to speak German and the kids thought we were talking awfully fast.
Speaking of languages and French. I know that some Americans used to think that the French don't particularly like them. I didn't have that impression when I was in Paris about two years ago. I didn't hear one single bad word. I guess it's all about how you are and interact with the natives. Oh and if you like the Alsace in France, make sure you visit the cities Strasbourg, Colmar and Obernai.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... 0_5670.jpg
Oh one more thing about me...I co-wrote a book about the UNIX elements in Mac OS X with a dear friend from England about three years ago called "Mac OS X Unix 101 Byte-Sized Projects".
And these are fairly recent pictures of me:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... 5-2008.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... -2008b.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... h2008b.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... urbach.jpg
Wow, I did write a lot!!!
Hope you survived.
Domi
).
