Alternate title: the story of my life in Berlin.
Situation 1: Puppy was misbehaving on a walk (wie immer), and I was calling her name.
A random man yelled a garbled version of: "Dein Hund kann dein Deutsch nicht verstehen. Du sollst Chinesisch sprechen." ("Your dog can't understand your German. You should speak in Chinese.")
- My German is better than the man's German.
- I'm a Sie, not a du.
- Hau ab (oops, Schimpfwort), I don't speak Chinese.
Situation 2: In February, I started working with four new classes, and some of the newer classes have only heard me speak English. In a 9th grade class, the students were whispering about me in German (and not very subtly).
Then, a student muttered, "Sie kann aber kein Deutsch..." ("But she can't speak German.")
"Doch." (In this sense, doch means: "Yeah, I can.")
There's nothing in life that a nice doch can't fix. The students turned several shades of red after they made the connection between my doch and my ability to understand their side conversations.
Situation 3: I took half of a 9th grade class to another room to do a conversation exercise. While they were working, another teacher came in.
"Habt ihr eigentlich eine Lehrerin?" (Do you have a teacher?) ~ the other teacher
"... Das bin ich." ("... That's me.") ~ me
The teacher apologized and said that he had seen me in the Lehrerzimmer a few times and should have recognized me. (No hard feelings; I was dressed like a student that day.) The entire class thought it was very funny.
Situation 6 (which is just a funny story): One of the 10th grade classes was supposed to choose a partner for the MSA.
"You have a week to try out different partners and see which one you like best. Oh, that sounded... bad." ~ one of the English teachers
We couldn't look at each other for the rest of class without giggling. (She said that right at the end of class, so we weren't being too immature!) It also went *whoosh!* over the students' heads, even after we both cracked up. :)
Situation 1: Puppy was misbehaving on a walk (wie immer), and I was calling her name.
A random man yelled a garbled version of: "Dein Hund kann dein Deutsch nicht verstehen. Du sollst Chinesisch sprechen." ("Your dog can't understand your German. You should speak in Chinese.")
- My German is better than the man's German.
- I'm a Sie, not a du.
- Hau ab (oops, Schimpfwort), I don't speak Chinese.
Situation 2: In February, I started working with four new classes, and some of the newer classes have only heard me speak English. In a 9th grade class, the students were whispering about me in German (and not very subtly).
Then, a student muttered, "Sie kann aber kein Deutsch..." ("But she can't speak German.")
"Doch." (In this sense, doch means: "Yeah, I can.")
There's nothing in life that a nice doch can't fix. The students turned several shades of red after they made the connection between my doch and my ability to understand their side conversations.
Situation 3: I took half of a 9th grade class to another room to do a conversation exercise. While they were working, another teacher came in.
"Habt ihr eigentlich eine Lehrerin?" (Do you have a teacher?) ~ the other teacher
"... Das bin ich." ("... That's me.") ~ me
The teacher apologized and said that he had seen me in the Lehrerzimmer a few times and should have recognized me. (No hard feelings; I was dressed like a student that day.) The entire class thought it was very funny.
Situation 4: I was chatting with half of a LK, and the topic of the day was Bin Laden's death.
"I don't think Bin Laden is actually dead because they didn't show any pictures or videos. I think Obama just wanted to get reelected." ~ the entire half of the LK
"Well, I think some people believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories, that is, Verschwörungstheorien, but, um, Al Qaeda also announced his death. And I don't think governments usually release pictures of dead bodies with head wounds..." ~ me
I don't want to sit through another two hours of this next week, so I'm just going to write a new lesson plan about violent rhetoric or something cheery like that...
Situation 5: I was working on gerunds with half of a 7th grade class, and I was getting frustrated because the kids kept talking. I eventually snapped and semi-yelled, "Hey Leute? Ihr seid zu laut!" One of the boys decided that it would be a brilliant idea to mock me, donned a slurring accent (which sounded more drunk than American), and said:
"Hehe ihr seid zu laaaut. Ich bin keine Muttersprachlerin von Deutsch, hehe."
"Haha, you're too louuud. I'm not a native speaker of German, haha."
My far-too-nice response was, "I don't make fun of your English, so don't make fun of my German." I lästerte about the class and the student in the Lehrerzimmer, and the other teachers actually reacted much more strongly than I did. This came right on the heels of the dog walking disaster, so meh... I'm semi-used to it by now. My new BL wrote him a Tadel because it's against my ETA contract to give out punishments. (Oh, bureaucracy. On the other hand, it's probably good that a native speaker wrote the formal letter to the mother.)
Situation 5: I was working on gerunds with half of a 7th grade class, and I was getting frustrated because the kids kept talking. I eventually snapped and semi-yelled, "Hey Leute? Ihr seid zu laut!" One of the boys decided that it would be a brilliant idea to mock me, donned a slurring accent (which sounded more drunk than American), and said:
"Hehe ihr seid zu laaaut. Ich bin keine Muttersprachlerin von Deutsch, hehe."
"Haha, you're too louuud. I'm not a native speaker of German, haha."
My far-too-nice response was, "I don't make fun of your English, so don't make fun of my German." I lästerte about the class and the student in the Lehrerzimmer, and the other teachers actually reacted much more strongly than I did. This came right on the heels of the dog walking disaster, so meh... I'm semi-used to it by now. My new BL wrote him a Tadel because it's against my ETA contract to give out punishments. (Oh, bureaucracy. On the other hand, it's probably good that a native speaker wrote the formal letter to the mother.)
Situation 6 (which is just a funny story): One of the 10th grade classes was supposed to choose a partner for the MSA.
"You have a week to try out different partners and see which one you like best. Oh, that sounded... bad." ~ one of the English teachers
We couldn't look at each other for the rest of class without giggling. (She said that right at the end of class, so we weren't being too immature!) It also went *whoosh!* over the students' heads, even after we both cracked up. :)
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