@frohesmaedchen: Yes, BYKI's a fairly good resource for basic vocab and phrases, but alas, it covers almost nothing of grammar (for any of its available languages). Great for pronunciation, though, as I'm at least 90% certain their speakers are natives. It was a great help to me...although the finicky "type in your answer" quizzes were seriously,
seriously flawed.
@PiercedPixie2:
The Wikipedia article for Pennsylvania Dutch should have some resourceful links at the bottom of the page.
@apiyo (post 1):
Well, the sentences you wrote are understandable, I'll give you that much.
wink Here's how they should look, assuming I'm correctly getting at what you were trying to say:
Ich
verstehe meine Schwester. (I understand my sister.)
1 - 'versteh' is the root of the verb 'verstehen', and most verbs take a -e ending in the 'ich' form.
2 - 'Schwester' is a feminine word, so 'meine' is used in place of 'mein'.
Wann
geht sie zur Kirche? (When is she going to the church?)
1 - when forming a question, the verb typically comes before the object.
2 - 'zu', meaning 'to', is combined with the dative form of 'die', which is 'der' - this provides the contraction 'zur', meaning 'to the'.
Wir kaufen das
Haus. (We're buying the house.)
1 - Haus is spelled without an -e, but the rest of that sentence is fine.
Donald Trump kauft
die Haeuser. (Donald Trump is buying the houses.)
1 - you can omit 'er' because with 'Donald Trump', the subject of the sentence is already established (it'd be like saying in English "Donald Trump he buys the houses").
2 - like the article 'la' pluralizes to 'las' in Spanish, 'das' pluralizes to 'die'.
3 - remember: when you are unable to use an umlaut because of computer issues, substitute 'ä' with 'ae', 'ö' with 'oe' and 'ü' with 'ue'.
Mein Bruder spricht Deutsch nicht, aber spricht meine Schwester ein bisschen Deutsch. (My brother doesn't speak German, but my sister speaks a little bit of German. [Right?])
1 - again, 'Bruder' establishes the subject, so 'er' is redundant; same thing with 'Schwester' and 'sie'.
2 - 'sprechen', 'to speak', is a strong verb - the stem vowel, E, changes to I in the 'du' and 'er/sie' forms - thus 'sprecht' becomes 'spricht'.
3 - to say that 'my brother doesn't speak German but my sister doesn't speak very much German' sounds a little odd; if you're aiming to say 'a little', use 'ein bisschen' - it literally means the same as English's 'a little bit (of)'.
4 - German word order is pretty flexible, so don't feel like you're obligated to carry on the SVO order as if Big Brother were monitoring your sentence structures.
@apiyo (post 2):
Visit ielanguages.com . It is by far one of the most useful sites you'll ever find pertaining to the grammar of Indo-European languages. There should be a section in the German lessons about reflexive verbs which provides a list of them.
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