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10 common German beginner mistakes.
I found this article to be very helpful to me. I thought I would share it with ya'll.
http://www.vistawide.com/german/common_german_beginner_mistakes.htm
22 Comments
I'm a German native speaker, but this article helped me to reflect my english. Very interesting
Reflect auf english heißt "spiegeln" :D man kann das nicht wie im deutschen verwenden :D
"In English, "to study" means to learn, read, memorize, practice, and reflect on a subject. In German, the verb lernen is used to encompass these learning activities. The German verb studieren has a much more limited meaning than its English cognate. It means "to be a university student" or "to major in" a particular subject."
According to Wiktionary, the English meaning of "to study" seems to be covered under the 3a definition. https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/studieren
965
Errors happen, but an article about errors explaining something wrong is funny.
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/studieren
Ich studiere. Means somone is matriculated (inscribed?) in an university (or FH) and will get an BSc, Master, Doctor or whatever degree in the end.
Ich studiere die Betriebsanleitung. Just means: I study the manual. No framed diploma at the end. :-(
But using "lernen" for stuyding is probably nevertheless more common. "Studieren" has a little more "intensity" implied.
The article seems to be pretty focused on American English - interestingly, non-American speakers wouldn't make a lot of these mistakes. E.g. it's only in America that you'd refer to university as 'school', as far as I'm aware. Certainly in the UK you'd never say "I went to school at Oxford", unless you meant that's where you went to school as a child! Similarly, in the UK "student", at least when used in the sense of "I am a student", would normally refer to specifically to university students - although this one's a little more fuzzy, since it can also be used by sixth form/ college students. It can of course be used to refer to school-age children as well, but rarely in the sense of a profession - a school-age child would almost always say "I am at school/ college/ sixth form", but hardly ever "I am a student". But like I said, that one's a bit fuzzy!
