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(26,366 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,317 posts)Probably had to recover from a fit of the giggles.
I notice they took off 1/2 for non-capitalized nouns, though. Harsh.
jmowreader
(50,601 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,317 posts)jmowreader
(50,601 posts)"Du" and "Sie" (how do we give the teacher a half-point off..."du" isn't capitalized and should be) both mean "you," but Du is only used with very close friends.
The kid's translation of the "Was möchtest" sentence should be, "what would you like to eat and drink?" And his reply would get your ass kicked if you tried it in Berlin..."Brot und Milch, bitte schön" is perfectly fine. "Currywurst mit Pommes und kleine Pils, bitte" would probably get you put on in-school suspension.
War story follows: The Berlin Brigade made you go through "School of Standards" when you first arrived in the command. One of the things they did to you was gave you two weeks of German language training - this so you will go out and converse with the locals in their own language, but you'd get looked at REAL strange if you used anything they taught you there. Part of it was "role play." Specialist Mowreader, you be the German person and Private Smith, you be the brave American soldier. And naturally, they gave us a workbook written for West Germany - some of that shit don't fucking work in Berlin. So Private Smith gets up and asks me, "entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr; wo ist die Strassenbahnhaltestelle?" (Excuse me, sir, where is the streetcar stop?) This took about a minute for him to get out. I was supposed to tell the guy to go down three blocks, turn left, then take the second right. Instead I told him, "Gehen Sie Ost-Berlin." (Go to East Berlin.)
"But that's not what the script says!"
'But it's the truth! There are no streetcars in West Berlin!'
After the nice lady picked herself up off the floor from laughing, she told Private Smith to ask how to get to the U-bahn station instead.