Very shortly the Library will receive a donation of German grammar books. I cannot believe I shall ever be able to tell the time in German. In truth, I cannot tell the time. I never could. I know the time in that I know almost to the 5 minutes what time it is through day and night (when awake) but this must be one of those sensory compensation mechanisms that are described in books. Blind people can hear remarkably well, or deaf people can interpret waving gestures and read mood from minute facial expressions etc.
Well, I don't think in 24 hour clocks, or in five minutes before the half hour time chunks. When I was aked if I had the time in Munich I showed the woman my (12 hour) watch and she read the time of day perfectly nicely in whatever goes on in her head and we got on well. If I need a timetable time I can look at it for long enough to work out that 15 is three and 17 is, treacherously five (for some reason 17 is particularly misleading, as is 20). All this has something to do with right and left too (or at least saying 'right' or 'left' and getting it correct to the outside world), I'm sure it has because the sensation of lostness and panic I experience is identical.
But if the cruelty and time-wasting doesn't stop soon I shall just go it alone, learn lots of words, present continuous, future and perfect tenses (with a few ad hoc imperfects), get up a specialized vocabulary on neue typographie and sail out on the bosom of Berlin urbanity.
3 comments:
I find 18 a particularly silly time which means nothing to me, I don't even confuse it with 8 I just don't know what it means.
Recently on the day of a concert I was asked the time, and for some reason decided it was 6.30 -the concert started at 9. We therefore carried on rehearsing for ages thinking we had plenty of time but in fact it was 7.30, so disaster struck at 8.30sh when someone realized that the audience was arriving and we still had to tune the harpsichord, get changed, collect thoughts, etc.
We still managed to start at 9.15, which I thought was pretty good, but beware of those internal clocks for telling the time (I had actually looked at my watch and misread it so had no excuses)
i find time seems to stretch if you don't keep checking up on it. mornings in particular seem longer if you don't keep looking at the clock.
Wrong tempo eh Giules? (heh, heh)
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