I already know and understand the way fahren is used not because I've studied it before, but because of how one of my Austrian friends used the word in English. We were having a conversation and he said he would drive back home which confused me for a multitude of reasons (he didn't have a car, for one). It turned out that he really meant he would take the train. Where we would say "I rode the bus" or "I took a train/taxi/subway", German uses fahren ("Ich fahre mit dem Bus" or "Ich fahre mit dem Zug"). This is also how I learned "ein Foto machen" (literally, to make a picture) and a few others.
This also gives me the chance to touch on something else...
When I was in Austria last time, I mostly refused to speak German because I knew very little and using the language with native speakers intimidates the crap out of me. I have absolutely no problem rambling in German at work where no one understands me; in fact, I think it's all sorts of fun. But I get nervous about butchering the language when I'm talking to someone who should actually understand what I'm saying. I know it's completely counter-intuitive because I'm never going to get better if I don't make mistakes and learn from them.
I need to get over my incessant need to be perfect or I'm never going to become fluent. I'll spend the rest of this year being too afraid to actually speak the language I'm trying to learn and I won't accomplish my goal. If I wait until I understand everything to actually attempt speaking German to native speakers, I won't ever get anywhere. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to manage fixing this, but I know I need to figure something out.
In any event, I'm not going to solve that problem tonight so I'm going to go to bed and sleep on it.
Tschüss!
EDIT
I forgot to talk add this last night and I didn't feel like making a whole new post, so I'm talking about it here...
I wanted to give an apple update. It's been about 5 weeks now and the apple is decidedly unedible. It looks fine for the most part, but it has a couple of big bruises and it's kind of squishy all the way around. I think I'm going to leave it out until week 6 and then I'm going to cut it open and see what it looks like on the inside, mostly out of morbid curiosity.
Anyway, that's all I had. Till next time...
I understand completely as a Spanish major. I understand it on paper perfectly and when someone is speaking it (if they aren't going like 5,000 words per second), but speaking to native speakers is intimidating. Fortunately I got a lot more practice this summer in Costa Rica, but I really learned that native speakers for other languages don't really get upset. I think that's mostly an American phenomenon where we're all just like, "Learn English". Other cultures are more open to people learning their language, I think. In my experience at least. The only way to really find out is to try. I know its intimidating and scary and embarrassing, but...how else can you learn it?
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