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Happy Friday!  If you would be so kind, could you please send me some extra brain power and a few gallons of coffee?  I could really use both right now…

Hurray for Friday’s Featured Language!

My guest today is Annie, who blogs over here in both German and English.  Annie grew up and still lives in Germany.  She says she started learning English in school in the 5th grade, and “also gained a lot of English by trying to figure out the meaning of some songs and by watching movies on DVD using the English language feature.” That sounds like a great language learning tip! (Another great tip would be to read a German blog if you’re learning German…hint-hint!)

Annie has selected a poem to share with us, to show us that “German isn’t a hard, uncomfy language one can’t bear to hear. Or speak.” She thinks German is a much more poetic language than we might realize!  She adds that she really likes this poem, and notes that it is “a bit funny and a bit sad. Both, fun and sadness, are topics of which German sounds great when talking about.”

The poem is by Theodor Fontane, who is a famous and important writer in Germany, and this poem is sometimes learned in school; Annie says, “I still remember the poem in my German book, on a double page, which a lovely pear tree on it.”

{Note: the text of the poem is a little long, so I’ve posted it here as an image with English translation side-by-side.  If you’d like to enlarge the text, just click on the image and a larger version will open in a new window.}

The source for this poem in German is here and its translation is available on this webpage that also includes a Hindi and an Afrikaans translation, if you’re interested 🙂  By the way, Annie says that we should compare the sounds of German with Dutch or Danish.  “You’ll be surprised!”

Thank you so much for sharing, Annie!