Guus Bosman

Tonight we had the last lesson of the German language course. We did a (short) final test on grammar, to measure what we've learned in the last few months. I think the course has been very useful. I have really improved my grammar knowledge, and it was very helpful to have this extra exercise in German conversation.

I would definitely recommend the Goethe Institute if someone wants to learn German. The lessons are efficient and professional but given in a very friendly atmosphere.

After the test we talked about a more relaxed subject: Schimpfwörter, cusswords. We received a Teilnahmebestätigung, and we spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and talking. It's a bit sad that the course is over, it has been great fun.

I took some pictures today: click on Read More... to see them.

Yesterday we watched the soccer game between Germany and the Netherlands in the Goethe Institute. I was there with Rene, Suzanne and Noortje, people from the German course I'm doing. Our teacher Sandra and her little son were there too.

The Goethe Institute had invited around 100 people to come and watch the game, and all the tickets had been sold out. There was a large number of TVs and screen throughout the building, as well as in the garden. On the first floor there was a video projection in the main hall.

I had a great evening. Everything was very well organized -- leave that to the Germans! The atmosphere was excellent and we had a lot of fun together. The soccer game was very exciting. Germany scored in the first half, which made half-time a uncomfortable. I think most Dutch fans were quite relieved with the final result, a 1-1 draw!

I took my camera, and there are some pictures online of the Samen kijken experience.

Yesterday's lesson was a fun evening. We revised our knowledge on the past tenses in German, das Präteritum and das Perfekt.

At work it's getting busy now. I'm discussing last minutes changes to external interfaces, keeping the developers busy, talking a lot with the firm that delivers the HTML layout, making sure the server is ready and configured, requesting SSL certificates... hardly any programming this time. It's great fun though -- I enjoy work like this.

Yesterday we studied about the Subjunctive I, or Konjunktiv I in German. It was a logical next step after learning about the Subjunctive II last week. The Konjunktive is a so-called Modus: a way of structure a sentence.

We also watched TV: we saw the German 20:00 o'clock news together and discussed it afterwards.

Yesterday we learned about the Subjunctive II, or Konjunktiv II in German. Next week we'll get the Subjunctive I; it's useful to refresh all these things.

At my work I started on a new project. It's a small project, but with a tight deadline: in about two weeks the program has to be ready. I enjoy the fact that there's a mixture of short-term speedy projects and long-term projects at Chess.

I'm reading an interesting on-line article on the German grammar, written for English-speakers. The introductionary chapter explains a lot of language theory, which is quite useful. It describes the eight possible functions of a word (such as case, gender, voice, mood etc.) and how the function of a word is indicated ('signalled') in English and German.

Compound nouns:

"Germans (like English speakers) connect nouns together to form compound nouns. Examples in English are streetcar, airport, and flowerpot. Germans seem to get carried away with the concept. They keep sticking nouns together until at times they come up with humongous verbal edifices."

The last few weeks I have been watching German television in the morning. We only have one German TV station at home, but it's ZDF which has a nice morning show: "ZDF Heute".

"Die Holländer haben es uns vorgemacht. So bereitet man sich vor auf die EM."

I lost count how many times I heard the
word "Blamage" this morning.

Today we studied about the passive form of verbs. It has always been confusing to me, I never knew which word to choose: worden, würden, geworden, werden... I'm slowly starting to understand it.

The weather was great, and in the coffee break we were sitting in the garden of the Goethe Institute which I liked a lot.