My German is finally to a decent level; I've taken various C1 classes so many times that it had better be! However, that doesn't mean that my vocabulary is always adequate, especially for topics that I don't deal with often (or ever) in German, and some topics are a bit too macabre for our textbooks to deal with in detail. Take this awkward conversation I had in German (translated into English for your enjoyment), for example.
At the thrift store
Me, in German : "is this card
for when someone dead is?"
Clerk: "um, yes."
Me, delighted: "Oh, good! I
mean, it's not good that someone is dead. It's good that it's a sad
card. My vocabulary is not so good for death."
He thought that was
funny.
I love these stories! And if you got him to laugh (or grin), you might have made his day!! "My vocabulary is not so gut for death" - That is priceless! :-)
ReplyDeleteHaha, yeah, I feel like an idiot sometimes, especially at the level of German where I am, that I am sometimes lacking in very basic vocabulary.
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