The Lernen to Talk Show: Episode 8 – The Principal’s Office!

Hello friends! Yesterday I had the daunting privilege of sitting down with the director of the language school where I’ve been studying. I’d been a little nervous about this conversation ever since it was arranged a couple weeks ago. This is partly because for the first time I needed to use the formal “Sie” form to talk to somebody on film! It tripped me up a couple times. It’s hard to believe that almost eight weeks have already passed since I first sat down in that same office to stumble through a verbal assessment for my placement. I think I’ve come a long way… but that’s nothing compared with how far I’ve yet to go.

Thanks to Elisabeth for working the camera!

0:21 – Sorry about the weird edit here. You didn’t miss much. Just an awkward walk through the office outside of her office.

0:26 – Here I say the word “sprachen”, when I should have said “sprechen”. I promise it won’t happen again (except for the four or so times it happens again in the remainder of this video).

0:28 – Mike!

0:40 – I swore I’d have this figured out by now. In fact, moments before this was filmed I was practicing this line. But I still screwed it up. I should have said “sind”, and not “sein”.

0:41 – If you want to get technical about it.

0:52 – Wrong preposition here… you don’t “freuen für” things. You “freuen auf” them.

1:02 – I was very close on this one. Speaking in the past tense usually involves conjugating the verb “to be” or “to have”, then using the past participle of the actual verb you want to use, putting it at the end. Here I used “to have” when I should have used “to be”. Sein vs. haben. The struggle continues.

1:21 – If I say “I don’t know”, it’s usually a good sign that I tried to think of something to say and then gave up. In this case I was going to make a remark about how time seems to go faster as one gets older and then I thought better of it.

1:36 – I seem to have fused the masculine article “der” and the neutral article “das” into a new and innovative masceutral article, “ders”. It turns out the correct article is “der”.

1:38 – CDC = Carl Duisberg Centrum, the language school at which I’ve been studying.

1:59 – I’ve regressed – “das” (see 1:36).

2:29 – I thought at first I was misunderstanding this… but it’s true! People who want to go to school in Germany need to learn English to do so!

2:43 – I feel like she’s not supposed to say this.

3:02 – Actually, I started in A2.1. I don’t know why I said A2.2.

3:12 – The verb literally translates to “overjumped”!

3:29 – It’s still feels awkward to verbs until the end of a sentence wait to use.

3:46 – I knew there’d be trouble as soon as I started saying this…

3:53 – I love it when she does this.

4:25 – Nailed it!