Abundzu

@ Abundzu:

Hmm, I have no idea why it would be awkward. Everybody can makes a mistakes <---

Thanks for the reminder.

It's not usual for me to correct grammar mistakes on forums because it feels to me kind of like being a grammar nazi. That said, I had to reread that sentence like 3 times, because it felt a little off, but I wasn't sure. Then I saw you're a native speaker, so put it out of my mind. Then I ended up googling, and yeah. lol.

I think he means that his bird is too fat and so he is feeding it diet bird feed now.

Maybe: Mein Vogel ist viel zu dick, da füttere ich ihn jetzt mit Diätfutter.

Not sure if that's correct. Here's a fun one I learned recently:

"Da könnte ich mich reinlegen."

I thought there was really no other way the story could have went.

I see you are a native speaker, so I feel kind of awkward correcting this here, but for others reading this, technically "could/would/should + have" constructions are supposed to take the third form. So it this case "could have gone". That said, this is a fairly common mistake mistake, enough so that in certain contexts I am tempted to say it isn't a mistake at all but an idiosyncrasy of some groups of speakers. That said... in written English and especially if you are learning, I'd avoid it...

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As far as the breaking bad ending is concerned. I knew Walt had to die. It was the only way it could have ended. I thought his "redemption" was kind of rushed. I think they needed one or two more episodes so that we could see Walt realizing how badly he had mangled things, because that bit felt a little rushed in the interest of not wanting to slow down the story. I was certain for quite some time though that Jesse would have to be the one to kill Walt, but I liked the way they handled that at the end.

Knowing a ton of words is more important on the GRE than the GMAT. I've tutored both for a few years and still do so now. That said, there are some important things to keep in mind. You don't need to actually know what the words mean to get them right on the test. This is the strategy a lot of native speakers use. This can be particularly troublesome to non-native speakers because they don't have the natural confidence a native speaker has. But for example, if you know that the prefix ben- means good and mal- means bad, that can get you pretty far in answering a question. If the blank demands a word that means something negative and you see malevolent or malignant, then that is enough to get the right answer a lot of the time.

If you have a lot of time, you can of course memorize 3000 words, but I think it's much more sensible to memorize, maybe the top 500 words and then learn a lot of word roots/etymology so that you can get the questions right since that is the goal here.

I would also have to second the recommendation for the Kaplan material. I've found it to be quite well prepared though their courses are a bit overpriced.

Two slang expressions/idiomatic constructions that I find particularly interesting are when we use "like" and "go" to mean "say" or to paraphrase what someone says.

For example, the other day I was talking to my friend about the weather and he was like "rain doesn't bother me that much", and I'm like "easy for you to say, you work indoors". So he goes "maybe you should move your computer indoors." etc.

I always find these two interesting because, while I'm sure there are similar things in other languages, they sound very natural. Especially in informal speech among younger people (with like) and even older people will use "go" in this way.

Just memorize. There is a list of common separable and inseparable verbs here that I find useful:

http://german.about.com/library/verbs/blverb_pre01.htm

The hard one is that some prefixes can be separated, or not, like your example of über. I think that depending on the preposition the separable prefixes tend to have a certain meaning and my intuition is that separating implies movement of some kind related to the content. To cross something überqueeren is separable because you have motion across/over (über). To translate übersetzen is not separable because there is no such movement.

Unter follows a similar logic. Unterlegen is separable if it means to lay under and inseparable if it takes on a different meaning, like to highlight something (similar to unterstreichen - to underline (inseperable)).

I think that works for quite a few of them, though some one's that are separable or inseparable have meanings that don't involve movement, so you may have to feel those out more. Like wider und wieder.

http://german.about.com/library/verbs/blverb_pre03.htm

I think especially songs like this show how "nice" German can sound:

Before I started studying German, I had the same impression. I think, now, that a lot of is just intonation. Germans intonate things differently than people do in standard English which can make normal statements sound like accusations.

In terms of phonology, the only rough sound in my opinion in German is the "ch" in words like auch, and that phoneme is fairly rare. In standard German the "ch" in ich, dich, etc. sounds fine. I've actually found it rather interesting in that the more I've exposed myself to German and French the more the stereotypes have reversed. German sounds quite schön to me now, whereas I find it more and more difficult to ignore the "cave-man" type sounds that are common in French and make it sound much less pretty to me now. Though I can still appreciate its beauty.

(french:

I might have chosen a particularly bad sample though...

No offense meant to an Frenchmen here.

Hey everyone. I teach English to Germans and this is a nice little writing exercise that I sometimes do. Since I was planning on posting a little bit in the German lounge area, I thought I'd give back a little too, by posting here. The idea is simple: describe the most beautiful building in your home town/city (or closest city to you). Using wikipedia (especially English wikipedia) and a dictionary is encouraged. I'll do my best to correct any entries anyone posts.

As always, here is a sample text from me to give you some ideas.

The most beautiful building in my town is the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is outside of the city on a large hill overlooking the rest of the city.

A contest was held in 1895 to design the museum, but construction did not begin until 1907. The building was not finished until 1928. The delay was caused by design disagreements and material shortages during the first world war.

Because they built it outside the city, there are no other large buildings nearby. So you can still see how impressive it looked when it was first built.

Inside the museum there are several wings which hold more than 200,000 original pieces of art. There are paintings and sculptures some of which are thousands of years old. The main hall of the museum is decorated with several large, beautiful paintings paintings and and sculptures.

One thing that tourists love to do, however, is to run up the huge set of stairs outside of the museum. Year round people can be seen recreating this scene from the movie \emph{Rocky.} Of course, there is plenty to see inside the museum as well. My favorite piece inside the museum is an exhibition piece by Marcel Duchamp called: 'Etant donnésü. He spent the last 25 years of his life working on it.

It costs $20 to enter the museum, but there are discounts for students and children. If you are ever in Philadelphia it is definitely worth seeing.

You can of course write something longer or shorter and feel free to discuss what other people submit .