@_elena you could read some good books written by germans to practice, like the zamonia books by walter moers, the kangaroo chronicles by mark-uwe kling, or das kapital by obsure german author karl marx 🙃

@_elena ❤️

@_elena Them sounds stupid. Like the people who drove me out of /r/c++ because I posted something I thought was cool and couldn't tell them why they'd want to use it, or why anyone would, and adamantly refused to even try answering that irrelevant question.

I don't even understand Them and don't want to.

@_elena Seeing posts in languages I don't understand is actually one of my favourite things about the Fediverse.

As an English speaker it's really easy to assume that everyone else speaks English too, but the Fediverse keeps politely reminding me that quite a few don't. ;)

@_elena

Ooo, how do you get a translation of a single post? Firefox doesn't offer to translate the whole page because the UI is in English. I usually have to copy/paste individual posts to ddg's translator, but I'd rather use the browser's local translate if possible.

@_elena

Ooo, how do you get a translation of a single post? Firefox doesn't offer to translate the whole page because the UI is in English. I usually have to copy/paste individual posts to ddg's translator, but I'd rather use the browser's local translate if possible.

@_elena Viel Erfolg! I'm one of the few people here who've learned German as a foreign language. Now I realize that I've been taking for granted that I can read basically half of the content here 😅
If you have questions or need help you can hit me up. I'm a linguistics student in Germany who's been studying the language for years and used to moderate one of the biggest German-learning communities online.

@_elena Will do that.

@_elena German is very high on my languages to learn list because I keep encountering so many german-speakers online. Sure it's usually written by folks who are bilingual but how much cooler is it to learn another language than to translate or make more work for others?

But first I need to get up to a better level of Italian comprehension before I start on another language

@_elena

German is a fabulous language.

One can express oneself SO precisely, and the language can be so very beautiful.

I am glad I don't have to learn it as a 3rd language as I would be too lazy (if not too stupid), it is very complicated.

My English teacher at the High School told my mom that I would never learn English well enough to have a conversation.

That's when I gave up doing my Engl.homework and my 'Vokabelheft' remained blank.

@_elena what really made it natural for me, after I did a few courses across 1,5 years was to be forced into a work environment where I was the only English speaker. So find some environment where you have to use it and that will definitely help. Viel Erfolg und viel Spaß beim lernen!

@_elena

I have been slowly resuscitating the part of my brain that took a few years of French in the early 90s because I see lots of interesting French-language posts.

@_elena My experience is that these accounts are worth the translation click.

@_elena kein Problem. ;)

@_elena do learn German and/or any other language. Every extra languagge you learn will open up new perspectives and will give you more understanding of how language and culture are connected.