OK took today off…mainly cuz I’m hoping my bike will arrive today and I don’t want to have to go to the post to pick it up (as I would if I wasn’t home). So since I’m bored I was reading an interesting opinion on someone learning deutsch.

http://www.expatica.com/de/life_in/blog/the-hausfrau-ruminations-on-the-german-language-46059.html

this is one of the things I really like about Germans compared to americans (especially in a work environment), they actually listen to each other and don’t interrupt. In the States in a business meeting it is common for people to interrupt and talk over each other…after spending some time here and then going back to the states I decided I really don’t like that. It’s annoying to have to have meetings with americans simply because of that.
read it, but interesting part for me is this

As I turn this all over and over in my mind, it becomes quite obvious to me why Germans are characterized as being so meticulous and precise — they have to think everything through before they say it, and they have to listen all the way to the end of the sentence in order to understand each other, else some catastrophic miscommunication might occur. Understanding this notion may perhaps make it easier for expats like me to accept the quirks and peculiarities of the German language.and from Twain…his essay is a good read.
“My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.”

OK now I go back to waiting…