For our third meeting Alex and I met at TAMK for lunch with the intention of revising some of the foods I had learned and discussing the construction of sentences do I would be able to order food. However as is the norm for lunch at TAMK some of our friends came to join us, this was great for Alex as he got to learn the differences between my accent, which can be difficult to understand, and my friend Ailis’ American accent.
Some of or Austrian friends also joined us and we discussed some general language rules for example in German if there is a double T then the I sound is short for example, in the word bitte – Thank you. This was useful to work on my pronunciation although apparently when I speak German it is hilarious because of my accent, I suppose it’s like hearing English spoken with a German accent but as that is so common I have stopped questioning it or finding it unusual! Perhaps I should work on my accent!
We also spoke about how all nouns get a capital letter in German including the word name! In English it tends just to be pronouns;
Hallo mein Name ist Joanne, ich bin 22 jahre alt.
A language rule I mentioned to Alex was that in English if there is a vowel in the middle of a word and an ‘e’ at the end then the vowel make the sound of the letter name so I is eye. However if there is no ‘e’ at the end the the vowel make the letter sound so I would be ih like in kit, adding an ‘e’ makes it kite. The vowel changes sound, some other examples would be fat – fate, rate- rate, bit- bite.
While not a massive difference sometimes people pronounce it like eat making the phrase eat it rather difficult to say and differentiating between words like hit and heat are difficult.
I find it difficult to comment on someones English language ability as no matter how much they struggle they make a valiant effort and their ability in English far surpasses my ability in any other language.
I am looking forward to my next meeting with Alex but until then I will continue to practise the words I have and work on my accent!
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