Today I spent the morning, from eight until half past nine teaching Hans on his own at my clients. This was a fairly pleasant affair, Hans is very talkative and interested to a certain extent in both science and etymology so he contributes a great deal to the conversation. He drew my attention to the concept of Hoch Deutsch although I may have spelt that incorrectly.
High German is considered the best German to speak although I think almost everyone is automatically excluded from that. The interesting and mistaken comparison is of course Oxford English which never fails to amuse me although I guess the students have never had the good fortune to watch a single round of University Challenge. Five minutes of the rich mosaic of accent present at Oxford these days, should produce near absolute befuddlement in the average German student of English. And Lord alone help them if the ever happen to find themselves shipwrecked on the shores of St Andrews University.
Come to think of it isn’t William doing a degree there, and he currently has a rather posh West End meets Estuary English, although I can’t promise the accuracy of that, since I only heard him talk briefly on Sky News.
I met Richard in the security cabin before the class and he appeared to be in very good spirits if a little worse from wear from an evening of celebration. Richard had the misfortune to win the quiz nite a few weeks back and has the joyful task of setting next year’s question while others heckle.
I spent the following three hours teaching two classes of documentation students in two split classes of talking or more often two classes of me providing the occasional laugh for their benefits.
Finally I finished the day with a lecture at the Uni on the subject of Vietnam the first and last Television War.
This was conducted with notes and chalk because there are absolutely no facilities for any sort of presentation in Uni Ulm and I could not be bothered converting my Powerpoint lectures into transparencies. Tomorrow is Friday, normally a completely free day but I am substituting for Michelle so no long lies this weekend. No worries though, because next Thursday is once again a public holiday celebrating Corpus Christi and being the German Fronleichnam, universally translated into ‘happy cadaver’.
The weather is still wet if reasonably warm, the one advantage of this is that I am more tempted to work than sit on the balcony reading or sunbathing.
High German is considered the best German to speak although I think almost everyone is automatically excluded from that. The interesting and mistaken comparison is of course Oxford English which never fails to amuse me although I guess the students have never had the good fortune to watch a single round of University Challenge. Five minutes of the rich mosaic of accent present at Oxford these days, should produce near absolute befuddlement in the average German student of English. And Lord alone help them if the ever happen to find themselves shipwrecked on the shores of St Andrews University.
Come to think of it isn’t William doing a degree there, and he currently has a rather posh West End meets Estuary English, although I can’t promise the accuracy of that, since I only heard him talk briefly on Sky News.
I met Richard in the security cabin before the class and he appeared to be in very good spirits if a little worse from wear from an evening of celebration. Richard had the misfortune to win the quiz nite a few weeks back and has the joyful task of setting next year’s question while others heckle.
I spent the following three hours teaching two classes of documentation students in two split classes of talking or more often two classes of me providing the occasional laugh for their benefits.
Finally I finished the day with a lecture at the Uni on the subject of Vietnam the first and last Television War.
This was conducted with notes and chalk because there are absolutely no facilities for any sort of presentation in Uni Ulm and I could not be bothered converting my Powerpoint lectures into transparencies. Tomorrow is Friday, normally a completely free day but I am substituting for Michelle so no long lies this weekend. No worries though, because next Thursday is once again a public holiday celebrating Corpus Christi and being the German Fronleichnam, universally translated into ‘happy cadaver’.
The weather is still wet if reasonably warm, the one advantage of this is that I am more tempted to work than sit on the balcony reading or sunbathing.
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