Ihr dachtet, dass wir den zweiten Weltkrieg gewonnen hatten??

[deptfordmarmoset]

Not quite hors sujet but a short while ago the M25 motorway was appearing on googlemaps as an autoroute. It doesn't any more but it was odd.

 

[Andy in Sig]

Gah! Flippin' German grammar ... it makes my head hurt! How long do you suppose it takes for German grammar to become second-nature, if you speak the language every day?

Six months or less IMHO, (assuming you've done a moderately high level course first e.g. das kleine Sprachdiplom from the Goethe Institut, which is their version of the British Council and has branches throughout the UK) depending on how motivated you are and how much you can psychologically approach it as a game. A tip: WH Smith used to stock Stern, the weekly news mag. A copy will usually last a month. Take a longish article a week, read it quickly to get the gist and then go through it translating accurately or as accurately as you can, then hand your work over to a native speaker for checking. Another thing you can do is try Deutschlandfunk (on the net as www.dradio.de I think or just google it) and download one of their articles, then just play it through and transcribe it. That will bring up your listening comprehension no end.

 

[ComedyPilot]

No one 'wins' a war - we're all losers as soon as it kicks off.