This made me laugh till I had tears running

That video clip reminded me of a funny advert for English language lessons.

 

Ah, the good old days of learning a foreign language with useful phrases like "My postillion has been struck by lightning"

 

I can recall one French lesson at school where the word of the day was swimming pool.
We had a field day with that one.

 

I like the German language, but I could be biased. As to it's harshness I think it depends on the person speaking it. My mother-in-law was German and when she spoke her own language it flowed and came across a lot softer than most think.

 

Here are more "useful" phrases:

http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/useful.htm

This one has to be my favourite:

 

The act of learning another language? or Jeeves getting the coach and four out?

Or can't you remember which?

 

The occasional hand gesture helps too.

 

I think it is a British tradition to make jokes about Germans. They do make it easy for us though. Their attitude in many ways is very different to ours, at least outwardly, and of course there's the small matter of, erm, dont mention the war.

But I think it is just banter. I've met a fair few Germans over the course of my life, and I find them to be nice people. If they are abrubt, it is not through lack of manners or anything, its just plain old German efficiency, no point dressing something up (unless the thing you're dressing up is a short but stocky bearded man in which case they seem to go to great lengths to dress him up as funnily as possibly in lederhosen and braces).

In that original video, the chap, for comic effect, really spat the German words out, but when spoken by an actual German person the language flows and is actually quite pleasant to listen to I think. And when I German woman speaks in English but with her German accent, well..... sorry, going off on a tangent there

Here's my favourite German woman in my favourite video clip (don't worry, its not naughty):