learn german

I have the basics in German at the moment, after having done one class a week for a year. But by the end of the year, I want to be fluent and that is going to mean a lot of extra work on top of what we’ll be doing in class. I want to be fluent to increase my chances of winning a scholarship to a German opera house, or at least so that I can do a kickass job speaking German in my German opera house auditions which I imagine will happen in 2009 or 2010.

I tell you, classes at the Australian Opera studio are SO much better than me taking a community course. I am doing well.

I don’t think I added an entry about lesson 5. So 5 and 6 in a nutshell – we did ordering at a restaurant/taking orders, asking questions about meals and drinks. Then today we spent the first hour singing cute German folk songs, and the second hour learning how to tell the time.

Es ist halb zehen.
Or if i was in the military :-)
Es ist einundzwanzig hundert Uhr dreizig.

Today we discussed ihr as a plural form of “du” and also as a possessive form for sie (she). Then we did months and days of the year and talked about birthdays. Ich habe Geburtstag am Mittwoch sechst April.

Then we discussed the family in great detail (a bit list of nouns essentially).

So with all this knowledge (colours, numbers, family, adjectives, verbs heissen, wohnen, haben, sein, etc.) I would like to say:

Ich heisse Kathleen. Ich bin dreiundzwanzig Jahre alt. Ich bin eine Frau. Ich wohne in Brisbane, es ist die Haupfstadt von Queensland. Meine Augen sind grau, mein Haar ist braun. Ich habe eine Schwester – sie heisst Jodie. Ich habe Geburtstag am Mittwoch sechst April. Mein freund (es nicht mein Mann?) heisst Matt.

We did numbers and fractions and stuff
Eg erste, zweite, dritte, vierte, neunzehnte, einundzwanzigste…
Fractions: ha’‘lfte, drittel, viertel, zwanzigstel…
fu’‘nf sechstel etc.

Then we did the verb wohnen
ich wohne in Brisbane
du wohnst in Brisbane
sie wohnt etc, mein Bruder wohnt in Kenmore etc.
Sie wohnen hier?

Then we did die Farben
rot, gru’‘n, blau, braun, weiss, schwarz, etc. Leicht und dunkel.

Then we moved into adjectives for describing people.
Haar: schwarz, braun, blond, kurz, lang, glatt, kraus, lockig
Augen: blau, grun, schwarz, grau
Die Manchen: lang, kurz, gross, klein, du’‘nn, fett, schlank, kahlkopf, alt, junge.

And finally possessives: mein, dein, sein, ihr, uns.

A decent amount of stuff in the one lesson, I thought.

had my first class today. We did numbers, greeting and the verbs to call oneself and to be. And the alphabet. Mostly stuff I already knew.

there’s a german night class in my local community that im thinking of joining. $105 for 8 lessons. Basic german. Can’t really go wrong, hey?

fleen

To be an opera singer knowing German is important. I’m almost fluent in Italian and suddenly everything is so much easier. German and Russian are the next 2 languages I’d like to conquer.