On March 7th we had our third meeting in a really international setting. We had a lovely group of exchange students from many countries around the table and had some pancakes together. I could have a great opportunity to practice my German with them, but for some reason it felt uncomfortable to try. I know I should just try regardless the mistakes I would make. I know… But it is so damn hard to start speaking.
Afterwards we used the resources of the Internet to keep on studying. Amelie showed me a kind of German soap opera / educational series on Youtube, which I could use to improve my vocabulary and also pronounciation. In addition, the show was actually also kind of funny. I tried to find something similar for learning Finnish, but most of the videos I found on Youtube weren’t that helpful. Unless one wants to learn all the swear words…
Therefore, we used other material for Finnish. We translated a story about Finnish people swimming in ‘avanto’ that was found on www.uuno.fi site. This once again teached about the crazy habits of the Finns along with the vocabulary.
A new problem I found out today was that the German language is filled with ’empty words’. They use words like ‘noch’ or ‘denn’ in sentences for no apparent reason and without a real meaning in a certain sentence. I mean, the sentence would mean the same, and just be shorter, without those words, but for some reason they are added in there. That makes no sense to me. But after thinking about it, I think we do have similar words in Finnish also and there are some in English as well.
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