Helga
about learning a language To learn a new language is much more difficult that i thought. The most difficulties I have, is, that I translate everything, how I speak or write it in German. But most of time it is not used like this in English. For example: We say "Unter der Woche I go to work." Literally translated it means "Under the week I go to work." :-D I now know the correct form is "During the week..." This is what makes me feel confused sometimes. And we also have another wordorder. This is also tricky to me. The next problem is that a lot of words have more than one meanings. When I look for a word in my translator, for example "Schwierigkeit - difficulty" then there are 15 words for only this word. So how can I know which one is the right one to use? So you see it is really not simple at all. But no matter, nobody is perfect!!! :-D
Jan 27, 2015 9:48 AM
Corrections · 6
2

Helga, 

All the little color corrections are lost, (due to Italki's inability to paste from MS Word correctly), but at least the native rephrasing remains, which I quickly colored blue. I hope this helps. By the way, your English is really quite good. 

 

about learning a language

To learn a new language is much more difficult that i thought. The most difficulties I have, is, that I have to translate everything, how I speak or write it in German.

Learning a new language is much more difficult than I'd previously thought. The hardest part, is how I have to translate everything from how I speak and write in German.

 

But most of time it is not used like this in English.

Most of the time, it’s not used this way in English.

 

For example: We say, "Unter der Woche I go to work."

For example; we say, “Unter der Woche I go to work.”

 

Literally translated, this means "Under the week I go to work." :-D

Perfect sentence here!

 

I now know the correct form is "During the week..." This is what makes me feel confused sometimes. 

I now know the correct form is "During the week..." This makes me feel confused sometimes.

 

And we also have another word order, this is also tricky to me.

We also have a different word order, which is also tricky for me.

 

The next problem is that a lot of words have more than one meanings.

Another problem is a lot of words having more than one meaning.

 

When I look for a word in my translator, "Schwierigkeit - difficulty" for example, then there are 15 words for only this word.

When I look for a word in my translator, "Schwierigkeit - difficulty" for example, there are 15 words for this.

 

So how can I know which one is the right one to use? 

How can I know which is the right one to use?

 

So you see, it is really not simple at all. But no matter, nobody is perfect!!! :-D

So you see, it’s really not simple at all. No matter though, nobody’s perfect!!! :-D

 

 

All in all, this was pretty good Helga :)

Your mini lesson from is this: although grammatically correct, it requires skill to sound proper when starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction (used to join words, phrases, and clauses that are balanced as logical equals). The seven coordinating conjunctions are; and,but,or,nor,for,so,yet. I'm not discouraging your use, just be aware that they are tricky to get right. Even natives make mistakes with these!

 

It's safer to use; also, therefore, whereas, insofar, however. Each of these has it's own nuance/flavor and serve to make your writing more impressive.

 

Lastly, beware of the word "that". it's doesn't sound weird to use it, but it's usually unnecessary, as was the case in every time you used it in this entry. I used "that" unnecessarily well into my 20's, so don't feel bad.

 

Keep up the good work!

February 2, 2015
Hello Anastasia! I only have one idea, why people can be upset about kittens, when they are allergic. I know exactly what I am talking about, because my daughter has this problem and she even cannot breath very well when she is in the same room with kittens. But you are really right when you say they are cute. :-)
February 1, 2015
Learning another language is never easy but, you see, by noticing these differences you learn about the way other people think. it's so interesting, isn't it? And idioms. Most of them differ from language to language and it's fascinating to learn about their orgins. I would really like to know why 'have kittens' means 'be extremely upset or nervous'. Why would anyone be upset about having kittens? They are so cute :)
January 28, 2015
Hi Helga, I made an in-depth correction to your notebook entry, but when I paste from MS Word, all the colors are lost :( I submitted a bug report to tech support, we'll see what happens. I don't want to have to write the whole correction over again, it took like 30 minutes. I'll either wait until tech support gets back to me with a solution (hopefully). Or, If you'd like me to email or Skype the word doc to you I'd be happy to. -Chase
January 27, 2015
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