Friday, June 20, 2008

French and Italian are also useful

On Wednesday afternoon ZDG took LGG to see the doctor to have her fine motor skills evaluated.  And it was a good thing, because he was able to communicate with the doctor better than I probably could have.  My German is better than ZDG's because I studied German a long time ago in high school and one semester in college, but his French and Italian are way better than my German.  And the doctor's French and Italian were better than his English.  So ZDG and the doctor were able to communicate in French and Italian.  The doctor has recommended that LGG gets some physical therapy, but unfortunately there's a waiting list so she might not start until the fall.

I attended my first German class this week.  It's on Wednesday night from 8 to 10 pm so it's not my optimal learning time, but an easier time for ZDG to babysit.  There were nine students and I think it was the right level for me.  There's nothing like being in a classroom setting to make you actually speak the language.  Unfortunately the instructor didn't always correct the pronunciation of the other students, so that means he probably won't always correct my pronunciation.  But I'm sure that LGG will continue to do that for me ("Mama, why do you say it that way when it should be this way").  There are three more classes before the classes stops for summer holiday and then it will continue in August.

It turns out that the primary school associated with LGG's kindergarten will also offer German classes on Wednesday and Friday mornings in the fall.  However I wanted to get started with something and now that I have the books I can hopefully spend some of the summer holiday reviewing the first two thirds of the course that I theoretically already know according to the test (ack!).  

2 comments:

Twelfthknit said...

I am doing an intensive German course. I finish next week for a while and hope to styart again in the Autumn. Today I went to the Hauptbahnhof and bout my son a 4-week travel card. All in German - I was stupidly proud of myself because I think that almost all of it was actually real German!

Zurich Mama Geek said...

Hey, every conversation counts. Today I decided that I need to try harder to have conversations with the other parents/grandparents while waiting for the kids to get out of kindergarten. Otherwise it'll never get easier.