Tag Zwanzig (Day Twenty)

I have a theory. My theory states that people, who attempt to learn a foreign language by constantly comparing pieces of the foreign language to their native tongue, are merely holding themselves back from what their potential for learning could be. I have seen this happen time after time in my German class. Certain students will constantly ask about the English equivalents of words. While often grasping the English equivalent of a foreign-language concept…such as a grammatical case or tense…can be helpful, attempting to find the English equivalent to every foreign word tends to be detrimental. Instead of trying to translate every word, grasping the concept behind the foreign word is much more important.

For some words, the concept is not far removed from the literal meaning. An example of this is die Frau. Literally, this does mean “the woman” in English. Additionally the concept and feeling behind the human that is called die Frau is fairly straightforward. Other words are no so straightforward. The verb geben can be literally translated to English as “to give.” However, in German it is used for far more than just expressing the action of giving an object (to someone or something). It can be used to express that certain things exist. For example, the phrase “Gibt es das?“  translates to something along the lines of “Does that exist?” but if one were to try to literally translate it to English, one would come up with something like “It gives that?” Thus, there stands a concept behind the word geben that goes deeper than mere literal translation.

Another, more trivial example is with the German word der Schatz. This word does have a straightforward, English translation. It means “the treasure.” However, Schatz is also used as a term of affection in German. One might argue that “treasure” is sometimes used as a term of affection in English as well, which is true. However, in German, the concept behind the term of endearment goes beyond what its literal translation is. Schatz runs a gamut of meaning, encompassing the feeling and concept behind such English words as “treasure,” “sweetheart,” “darling,” and “dear.”

Moving on from linguistic theory…this morning turned out to be not as cold as yesterday and far less foggy.

In our History & Culture class, we continued with our presentations. Maddie and I gave ours today, and it went off without any problems whatsoever.

This evening holds a decent amount of homework, but I have internet again in my room and, without a presentation to complete this evening, work will hopefully not go as late tonight as it did last night.

I hope everyone in the States is doing well. There have been a decent number of people here who are getting sick as we progress into Autumn. As for me, I am just “Drink(ing) tea and Carry(ing) on.”