The Foreign Language Thread | Page 7 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

In addition to what I wrote in the other thread, I thought it might be fun to illustrate Dutch grammar by adapting a Beatles lyric. The first one I thought of was In My Life , so apologies in advance to the Lennonistas for murdering those wonderful lyrics…

There are places I remember

All my life, though some have changed

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone, and some remain

All these places have their moments 

With lovers and friends I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life, I’ve loved them all

There are places that I me remember (er zijn plaatsen die ik me herinner)

My whole life, though some have changed (mijn hele leven, hoewel sommigen zijn veranderd)

Some for ever but not at good (sommigen voor altijd maar niet ten goede)

Some are disappeared and some are there still (sommigen zijn verdwenen en sommigen zijn er nog)

All these places have their moments (Al deze plaatsen hebben hun momenten)

With lovers and friends that I me still recall (met geliefden en vrienden die ik me nog herinner)

Some are dead and some are in life (sommigen zijn dood en sommigen zijn in leven)

In my life loved I of them all (In mijn leven hield ik van hen allemaal)

I think I’ll leave it at that, because this is already quite awful. Although, as you might notice, one line does not change at all. It’s an enigma, language. I love it. I was just thinking the other day that, had life not intervened, I would have gone to university, where I either would have studied psychology, veterinary medicine, or English. Perhaps it’s a good thing I never got that far. I wouldn’t have known which to choose!

We use ‘leven’ and ‘wonen’ to describe ‘living’ (in a house), but whereas ‘leven’ can mean both, ‘wonen’ only means ‘living in a house’. Therefore, that part of the translation was wrong. GT should have used ‘leven’, because even if it didn’t know which meaning was correct, ‘leven’ would have worked for both.

It’s like: roses are flowers, but not all flowers are roses, you know? GT doesn’t seem to get that.

My French teacher had a somewhat similar plan of attack. She’d give us our work, and that’s it. I really struggled with French grammar so I asked her to explain. She said: read it. When I said I already had, she told me to read it again. Outright refused to take a few minutes to explain it to me. So, I dropped the subject the first chance I got, which was after two years of bad grades and ruining my back sitting on a stool for two hours straight with no back rest to recline into…

AppleScruffJunior said
There must be a thing about crap French teachers. The one in my school, I used to do all my work by myself (like I learned the past & future tense at home). I got an A at Junior Cert/GCSE level and then I couldn’t do both German and French for Leaving Cert so I decided to do German in school and get a one hour class of French outside of school.

Long story short, out of the 20 people or so that were in-school and doing French, in their practice/mock Leaving Cert exam they all failed bar one girl (who was getting outside help). Everyone one of them bar the girl who passed, dropped down to ordinary level instead of higher and in the real thing they all get C’s.

Three of us did it outside school:

-Myself

-A lad whose mam is a French teacher

-A girl who only wanted to get a pass in ordinary level French so she could go to university (the majority of courses in Ireland’s universities require that you have a 3rd language that’s not Irish or English).

 

All of us (I sh*t you not) got A1’s/A* in French. While the highest level in the in-school group was a B3/B- and like I said before she was doing the 5 hours or so of school inside and then an hour extra with another teacher.

 

So after all that ramble: We need better French teachers!

I so agree! The one I had was so irritating and monotonous. We even had to complain about her to the principal because she refused to teach it with interest because some students pissed her off. It got so unbearable to a point that we had to take that step. After that she started treating us as if we were ol’ school buddies