Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
Thank you very much, Beppe!  |
You are very welcome Billi. Die Freude ist ganz meinerseits, gnädige Frau.
With German I have two stories.
One is that of my father who was of German mother tongue, worked for a German company, spoke German with mother, brothers and sisters, and who never arrived to teach me the language of Goethe. Eh. Facts of life. At that time I was quite happy to escape endless sessions of auf und zu. He refused to go on until the pronounce was perfect ...
My mother put a sudden stop to those calisthenics. Maybe she was noticing the purple color of my father neck. Now I regret it bitterly. Ah, if only the young knew and the old could.
The second story is of my philosophy teacher in high school. Before the war he was a brilliant student of medicine. After hard earned experiences that obviously changed his priorities, he wanted to contribute to the ideal progress of the new generations. He got a degree in philosophy and became a dedicated and brilliant educator. His lectures and readings are still alive in my mind. He told us that he learned German to be able to read Hegel in original.
And I had to read Mann in Italian, and Heinrich Böll, and Rainer Maria Rilke, and on and on.