Tips for learning German

I was asked the other day for a few tips on learning German. These may usefully be split in two – those which are useful for any language, and those which are useful specifically for German.

Any Language

Know the key words. These form the core vocabulary of any language without which it is impossible to speak it fluently, and they are perhaps the one thing it is worth outright learning. Some languages actually lack certain “key words” (effectively Danish lacks “please”, Spanish lacks “become”, English lacks “ainsi/so/asi/cosi“) which is in itself good to know so you instantly know to work round them.

Know key prepositions, negative forms and pronouns – noting that their use varies considerably from language to language. Without these, you can’t put the language together – but the key is to recognise them first of all. Precise usage can come later.

Listen to music. Picking up the lyrics of songs is a great way to get used to how a language is put together. Soon, you will find full phrases and even grammatical forms just flow together instinctively.

Read/watch stuff you’re interested in. Like football? Watch after-game analysis (widely available on YouTube). Keen on cars? Read an online car magazine. It is important to use subjects you are interested in partly because you will be more motivated, and partly because you’ll already have a head start with understanding the subject. As with music above, soon you will find entire phrases and terminology just spring to mind naturally.

Visit the place (and not just as a tourist). This seems incredibly obvious, but it is amazing how many people try to learn languages while never visiting anywhere where they are spoken – not least thousands of schoolchildren up and down the UK who can even reach A-Level without doing so! Languages are part of an overall culture – they have their own character and feel, and this is heavily informed by where they are spoken and the people who speak them natively.

Forget vocabulary lists. I have covered this before – partly because you cannot learn a language by clinically learning off ever word and then learning off how to put them together like an IKEA set; but mainly because there is almost never a one-to-one correspondence between any two individual words.

German

As for German, it is notorious as one of the “harder” languages to learn. To speak it accurately, this is probably true. However, to speak it competently, it need not be.

German and English are basically the same language. German and English were the same language until around 1,200 years ago, and it still shows. Almost the entire core vocabulary consists of cognates (see above); even where meanings initially look different, they are sometimes closer than you think (e.g. English “I will” is usually translated as “ich werde” and German “ich will” as “I want”, but in fact the ideas of “volition” and “future” are closely linked and sometimes the direct translation works).

Look for patterns to recognise words. For example, if “zehn” is “ten”, “zahl” is “tell”; if “wasser” is “water”, “besser” is “better”; if “Pfeffer” is “pepper”, “Pfeife” is “pipe”; if “haben” is “have”, “geben” is “give” and if “vergeben” is “forgive”, “verloren” is “forlorn”. (Again, meanings vary slightly – actually “zählen” is “count” but cf. “teller”; “pfeifen” is “whistle”; “verloren” means “lost” generally.)

The verb goes to the end of the sentence… with the exception of the main verb in main clauses (which goes second regardless of what comes first) and the main verb in interrogative clauses (i.e. questions; which goes first). This is the best way to understand the basics of word order.

German likes nouns. In general, look for a noun phrase if you possibly can. Where in English you say “If the weather is bad, I will stay at home”, in German you say “Bei schlechtem Wetter, bleibe ich zuhause” (i.e. “By bad weather, I stay at home”).

There are only two tenses in German… and in English. Contrary to what we are taught, English doesn’t have a future, it merely has ways of indicating it. It is the same in German – just the ways (and times) you do so are different.

Invent long words. It is the most fun part of the language! Just be creative and try to be purposeful – for example, Germany doesn’t have a speed limit because that would require a Bundesgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzungsgesetz… who wouldn’t want to learn a language with a potential word like that?!

 

First Minister owes apology on Shared Future failure

The First Minister and his DUP colleagues accused the Alliance Party and John McCallister (then of the UUP) of not being serious about a Shared Future because they walked out of talks between the Assembly parties on the subject.

Now, however, the DUP admits there is still no Shared Future strategy, and has indeed taken to advocating that there should not even be one – with Finance Minister Sammy Wilson arguing it will only be needed once the economy is sorted out.

In other words, the talks the DUP, Sinn Fein and the SDLP remained involved in were an utter sham. The DUP and Sinn Fein never had any intention of delivering a Shared Future strategy. The only thing they wanted to share was the blame for not delivering one – by bringing all the other parties around the table and then refusing to make any progress.

If anything, it took the Alliance Party too long to walk out. Like most advocates of better community relations, the Alliance Party has to realise that communal parties – whose interests are directly served by not having a Shared Future – are no friends. People who will make progress on good relations are not those who are motivated to maintain bad relations in order to keep in place the very division from which they derive their power (except where irrelevant partisan posturing is involved, everything in the Assembly – from same-sex marriage to whether or not to take jackets off on a warm day – gets split along those lines).

It turns out the Alliance Party and John McCallister were entirely right in their analysis that the DUP/Sinn Fein-led talks on a Shared Future were a total sham. Their walk out was fully justified. Those who condemned them for it – from the First Minister downwards – now owe them, and us, an apology; and perhaps an analysis of what precisely is wrong with the Alliance Party’s own proposals, published earlier this year. Of course the Alliance Party, which only entered the Executive in return for a commitment to a Shared Future strategy, will have to decide its own position in due course – it cannot be complicit in a blatant failure to deliver, which has social and economic consequences for us all.

Same-sex marriage would do more for NI economy than any conference

I am reminded of this scene from Father Ted: “Another mass? That’s our best idea?”

It seems the discussion is similar around the NI Executive table. “Another investment conference? That’s our best idea?”

The truth is NI can have as many investment conferences as it likes, it will scarcely create a single job until Northern Ireland develops a truly open economy. And for an open economy, you need an open society.

Think of all the seriously successful and prosperous cities and regions (excluding those which have got there by dint purely of a lucky oil strike or some such), and you will think of truly open, multi-cultural, diverse and socially liberal cities – Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, New York, Vancouver, Sydney and so on. These are cities which embrace change and innovation in business and thus lead the world in it – and inevitably they are cities which embrace social change and social innovation. In some ways, Dublin or Edinburgh could be placed on the above list. Could Belfast?

Belfast, and Northern Ireland as a whole, is a closed economy. Segregated into silos, the primacy of “who you know not what you know” when looking for jobs, tenders or contracts is taken for granted. If you’re looking for international investment where merit and innovation are essential, that is hopeless!

It is a closed economy primarily because it is a closed society. We saw another example this week, with an Assembly vote comfortably opposing same-sex marriage. Tell me, which of the above prosperous cities does not allow or plan to allow same-sex marriage? Not one.

Prosperous cities and regions – the type international investors will choose – are open and embracing of social change and thus trusted with economic innovation and ultimately wealth creation. Closed societies – ones which rely on “who you know” and even just outright corruption – remain backward and poor. This is a universal truth – but for a lucky oil strike or some such, there are no exceptions at all to it.

So frankly Arlene Foster can have all the international investment conferences she likes – until she votes for same-sex marriage and other socially progressive and open policies, she is merely fiddling in the wind.

The euro is the problem – someone needs to say it!

I remember distinctly arriving in the south of Spain from Germany for a five-month stay in early 1998, and sitting in a pizza parlour noting that it was pretty much one peseta to one pfennig – there were around 90 pesetas to the deutschmark. I opened a guidebook my parents had given me from a generation beforehand, which noted that at the time that there were 11 deutschmarks to the pound sterling and 70 pesetas. The maths are not difficult – the peseta had devalued versus the deutschmark so dramatically that, from the early ’70s to the late ’90s, the average German resident’s income had doubled compared to a Spanish resident’s due solely to currency differentials alone every two years.

As I looked out into the February heat over the wonderful city of Granada, Spain’s reliance on the tourist trade (and thus on cheap currency) was not hard to understand; as I drifted up into the Andalusian pueblos to where they grew the olives (cheap currency is good for that too) it was noteworthy, however, that the machinery used to crush them was German – a quality, necessary engineering product not needing cheap currency at all. This is grossly simplified, but it is still not a million miles from the trading truth that the German engineer went on holiday to Spain and brought home some olives while he was at it and, with the proceeds, the Spanish bought his machinery – for this arrangement to work, Spain had to be ever cheaper (and thus devalue its currency versus the deutschmark regularly).

The following year, in 1999, this perfectly successful arrangement for both sides abruptly ended. Spain could no longer devalue its currency versus the deutschmark because, in effect, it was using the deutschmark! The outcome was that the Spanish, to make ends meet in the new reality where they could no longer rely on cheap currency, had to go on a mad construction and credit binge – which ended, when the bubble finally burst on the realisation that this was nothing but money from thin air – in a horrendous 25% unemployment rate.

So when is someone finally going to say it? The euro doesn’t work; it could never possibly work; and it has to be dismantled so we can return to the type of trading relationship which actually suits all Europeans?

Bundesliga rise may be temporary

Ten years ago, Bayern Munich lent Borussia Dortmund 2 million euro to help the Westphalian club play its wages. Next month, the two clubs will likely meet in the first all-German European Cup Final (as I insist on calling it).

Anyone who knows me will know that I have long talked up the merits of the Bundesliga. It is the second best attended sports league in the world (behind American Football’s NFL); it remains seriously competitive (with teams challenging for Europe one season and fending off relegation the next); it contains seriously talented players (only the Premier League provided more players for the 2010 World Cup); and it is the most entertaining of the big leagues (with more goals per game as well as more regular shock results). I also like the relative honesty of the players, the relative modesty of the press coverage, and the relative craziness of the supporters (Germans can indeed be passionate… who knew?!)

Germany has also long been the master of team sports. One of the reasons its club football has remained competitive is that the very concept that a sports club should be a profit-making business is comparatively alien. Sports clubs are community, not-for-profit organisations – even Bayern Munich. They integrate with local commerce and the local community much more effectively than elsewhere. Even within education, sports clubs play a comparatively more important role (and schools a less important one) in a child’s sporting development. Furthermore, if you play for one of the lower teams or are associated with the club in any way whatsoever, you are expected to take an interest in the first team’s fortunes. Thus Germany has often failed, comparatively, to produce outstanding individual players – yet has consistently produced outstanding teams. It is, simply put, a more collective society.

It is all highly admirable – and yet here is the thing: in reality the media have, as usual, gone totally overboard about the Bundesliga’s success this season.

There is, you know, a parallel universe in which Bayern’s freaky third goal in the Round of 16 first leg bounced over the crossbar; Borussia Dortmund’s Santana was rightly flagged offside at the end of the quarterfinal; and the semifinals thus consist entirely predictably of three La Liga teams and one Premier League outfit. In so far as the Bundesliga is mentioned at all in this parallel universe, it is to note that its runaway leader now has twice as much spending power as any other team and is thus bound to dominate the league by such a distance that it will be unable to compete in Europe due to lack of internal competition…

The Bundesliga’s rise is deserved, welcome and good for football. But it may be temporary…

Irish number plates point to chaos

Oh dear.

New number plates in the Republic of Ireland contain far too many digits

To do a post on vehicle registration plates is slightly depraved. But here is the thing: if there is one thing wrong with modern Ireland it is some of the crazy, insular decisions made in public administration.

Irish vehicle registration plates (those used in the Republic) used to have the value, at least, of simplicity – two digits for the year, one for cities or two for counties, and then a number. Even then, this wasn’t perfect – it resulted in too many digits to be easily memorable, because even assuming you remember the year and the city/county, you have still a five- or even six-digit serial number to remember in most cases.

That system, simple though it was, still breached the European norm which has always been no more than eight digits in total, and preferably no more than seven. France and Italy, countries with high car ownership at over 60 million people, have recently introduced systems which have seven (rather than eight as previously); the Netherlands, with close to 20 million, makes do with just six. Only Germany (82 million) really now allows eight digits, and even that is infrequent. The only exception to all of this, already, was Ireland, which typically had eight (plus two hyphens, where even Germany makes do with one) despite a population of just 4.5 million. So the system was simple, but not particularly memorable or user-friendly.

Politicians and car dealers got agitated, however, by the prospect of the two-digit plates for 2013, starting as they would with ’13′ and then the city/county code. This would not do, decided the authorities – and promptly added another digit, and worse still had it added to the year code! So now, where even France and Italy are making do with seven digits, Ireland (population half of Greater Paris and about the same as Rome) will frequently have nine! Not only that, but the simplicity of the system is wiped and the memorability limited – and to make matters truly awful, the extra digit may only be a ’1′ (for January-June) or a ’2′ (for July-December). If the above plate looks bad, imagine what it will be like in the second half of 2020 with fewer ’1s’!

This is just a quirk, surely? Yet sadly it seems to typify too many public administration decisions. No one sat down and thought what a good number plate system would do and what was important about it (say, by comparison with other countries); no one gave any consideration to the memorability of the system (the whole point of the plates to start with); no one thought of the legibility of a plate with nine digits and two hyphens; and I daresay no one thought of the aesthetics of it either. If that is what happens with vehicle numbering systems, we have to wonder what is going on with the system for giving out prescription drugs, or assessing education standards, or ensuring efficient policing? That is the real issue.

Carelessness, insularity and laziness typified the decision to make Irish number plates look so daft – an example of two many aspects of public decision making. The public should demand much better.

Loyalists have not been “neglected” at all

It is not quite what Jonathan Powell said, nor what he meant, but there is an on-going development of a nonsensical narrative that in the decade and a half since the Agreement working-class Protestants, often referred to simply as Loyalists, have been “neglected”. This is not only untrue, it is fundamentally part of the very system of political self-empowerment of the few at the expense of the many which has resulted in many inner-city majority-Protestant areas becoming increasingly isolated. As ever, leftie voluntary sector types should know better than to buy into this false narrative!

On the contrary, inner-city areas of NI have received more spending per head than any other part of the UK; masses of extra funding came through EU Regional Aid, other European programmes, US and international funds, and from elsewhere. As a result, new community centres, IT suites, sports facilities and so on have sprung up; and many activities have been provided by taxpayers’ money (and not always even UK taxpayers at that), typically free of charge in majority Protestant areas (in fact, these usually attract a charge in majority Catholic areas). This is a serious peace dividend – the fact it hasn’t really turned around any communities is because, by and large, it was misdirected and wasted. It is not because it didn’t exist!

Inner-city majority-Protestant areas suffer much the same type of social isolation as any other across the British Isles, particularly in post-industrial cities. Family and community breakdown, lack of education, worklessness, indebtedness and addiction play out in much the same way in the estates of Greater Belfast as they do in Liverpool or Glasgow or Newcastle upon Tyne. One fundamental barrier to the problem is gangsterism (what we call “paramilitarism”); another barrier is well-meaning people diverting heaps of resources in a sporadic, untargeted way; and a third barrier is less well-meaning people (typically seeking votes or funding) deliberately creating “client communities” of people by promising them the world, citing a “bogey man” (all too easy in NI), but never actually doing anything to reverse the community’s decline.

Note that none of this constitutes “neglect”. In all post-industrial cities, the first barrier is the elephant in the room – by buying into the gangs rather than seeking to break them up, funders (most obviously the government) ended up feeding part of the problem. The second barrier is the way funding is distributed – in an essentially completely haphazard and short-termist way in which even the best third sector organisations end up spending half their time filling in funding applications (or subsequent audits) rather than actually doing the work; and the third of course is the deliberate way in which people who benefit from having poor communities in their midst (not least politicians) have sought to create “issues” (such as flags) while ignoring the real fundamental challenges – such as an ill-fitting education system, absence of skills, inability to budget effectively, and rising levels of addiction.

How will we turn this around? As I have written elsewhere, we probably won’t bother. Most of those who are genuine about turning it around get alienated by people (often politicians) whose position would be endangered if people worked out how truly ineffective they are.

How should we turn this around? Firstly, we need to identify that gangs are fundamental to the problem, not the solution; community representatives must be elected or appointed on merit. This isn’t likely – it is too sensitive. Secondly, we need to change (and de-bureaucratise) our funding system completely, so that organisations are assessed on merit but allowed to operate in the long term (and so that all an organisation’s funding streams are audited together, once). This isn’t likely either – it would cost a few administrative posts. Thirdly, we need to elect politicians with a comprehensive grasp of the problems (and how they are interlinked), throw out all those who talk in simplistic terms of how it’s all the fault of ‘themmuns’, and actually bring some intellectual rigour (rather than sectarian hearsay) to how we tackle social isolation. You can guess how likely that is!

The narrative that Loyalists have been “neglected” is an enticing one for the very politicians and civic leaders who have failed to deliver. But it isn’t actually true – and people who really care should realise they are doing immense harm by buying into such a falsehood.

SDLP shows true colours on pro-Catholic discrimination

For all the focus on Unionists’ exclusive tendencies in recent months – and rightly so given their political leaders have been so overt about it – perhaps the most disappointing form has been shown by the SDLP. Yesterday, it openly voted for a continuation of sectarian discrimination – which even Sinn Fein opposed!

The SDLP likes to play all innocent on such things. “Oh, but anyone can go for the Catholic teaching certificate, you don’t have to be Catholic” – yet it is an obvious advantage to be Catholic. “Oh, but that’s like saying it’s an advantage to be Spanish to be a Spanish teacher” – there wasn’t a conflict costing nearly 4,000 lives in NI along Spanish/non-Spanish lines, nor is contemporary NI so divided. “Oh, but it’s about religious freedom” – no one is stopping churches providing classes for Holy Communion and such like, but I don’t see why the atheist, agnostic, Protestant or Muslim taxpayer should be funding it.

The real madness here is that clearly many of the SDLP’s own representatives couldn’t possibly hope to defend this line in reality. At the very same moment SDLP MLAs were voting on this issue, SDLP Councillors were arguing for same-sex marriage – in direct and blatant contravention of the Pope’s position. So it is important for children to be brought up Catholic, as long as they give it all up in adulthood…

The SDLP was also the only party to back an Alliance motion calling for the promotion of integrated education to be an expressly stated objective of the Department of Education’s area planning policy. That would be integrated education sans Catholic teaching certificates.

Fundamentally, we are back to the old maxim that the SDLP will tackle anything except the Catholic Church, Catholic schools (and teaching certificates) and the GAA. What kind of self-respecting social democratic and republican party would be so in thrall to religious and sporting institutions along sectarian lines? The SDLP is social democratic and republican in word, but fundamentally traditional and communal in deed.

Suarez should long since have departed

Luis Suarez headed in an equaliser yesterday which means Champions’ League qualification is back in Arsenal’s hands. As an Arsenal fan, this is theoretically good news.  As a football fan, however, the fact remains Suarez shouldn’t have been on the field.

Indeed, Suarez leaves a bitter taste when considering a once great club. The thing about the all-conquering Liverpool FC with which I grew up was that they not only played great football, but they also went about it the right way. When Arsenal went to Anfield and seized the title in injury time in 1989, the home fans stayed on and applauded the visitors – a mark of a truly magnificent football institution with fans to match.

I for one had always respected Liverpool FC for that. Yet this respect had already been shaken by the club’s abject refusal to rid itself of Suarez after a thoroughly unpleasant racist incident involving (the innocent) Patrice Evra. FIFA may be mealy mouthed about racism, but we expect this from the fundamentally corrupt institutions which run the game. We do not expect it from what had previously been the game’s greatest club.

That bitter taste rebounded yesterday as Suarez, not for the first time, did his best impression of Mike Tyson – and not with his fists. The club now has an opportunity to do what it should have done the first time. For the sake of itself and of the game, let us hope it gets it right this time.

Whatever happened to commemorating the “Belfast Blitz”

This week marks the 72nd anniversary of the “Belfast Blitz”, which was, by most reckonings, the most deadly Luftwaffe attack in the British Isles outside London during World War II. It went almost unmarked.

It had a significant impact. In addition to hundreds killed, thousands were displaced – including my own mother, then a small child, who was forced from Fortwilliam to Doagh and ultimately to Cookstown for the rest of the War.

At the weekend some people thought it a good idea to put up flags commemorating Carson, Craig and the UVF. A few weeks ago, it was the Easter Rising. A few months before that, it was the Ulster Covenant. Some or all of these may be legitimate, but they are nevertheless innately sectarian, one-sided commemorations celebrating something which some other fellow citizens do not see as cause for celebration.

The ‘Belfast Blitz’ was different. For the thousands affected, it mattered not if they were Protestant, Catholic or dissenting. So, why no commemoration?

It could be that the ‘Belfast Blitz’ isn’t worth commemorating because it doesn’t provide an opportunity to ‘annoy the other side’. It could be that it isn’t worth commemorating because in fact it is somewhat embarrassing – emphasising the callous incompetence of much of the Unionist administration while at the same time highlighting Nationalists’ willingness, in too many instances, even to endorse fascism on the grounds of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ (neither of these exactly fits neatly with Unionists’ ideals around efficiency or Nationalists’ ideals around human rights).

Perhaps that is too cynical – perhaps it isn’t worth commemorating because it isn’t an especial anniversary. However, 2016 will be the 75th anniversary. We shall see…