What? German? Yes, I think it is. But the long words are quite difficult and sometimes we make fun of them. 
For your amusement - this has been the longest German word for some time:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

It describes a law for the supervision of the labelling of beef. 

I am fluent in French and English, gaining fluency in Spanish, and have studied Italian, German, Latin, Mandarin, and Japanese. I think that every language as its own quirks and the more languages you're introduced to, the easier it gets to gain a toehold into another.

Some languages, like Japanese and Mandarin, are in theory very easy -- little to no grammar and syntax compared to, say, German which is almost as hard as Latin with all the declensions. Japanese is a little easier than Mandarin because the written form is partially phonetic, but you do have a lot of kanji (pictographs) to memorize. Mandarin is orally a bear because there are essentially five ways of pronouncing anything because of tones and if you don't have a musical ear, it's very difficult.

French is my first language, but I learned English so early in life that I can pretty much say I learned them simultaneously. I remember major challenges with both.

I'm presently in a Spanish-speaking country and my lessons have taught me well, but I'm seeing that the best language school is to be out there with the people rather than hunching over pages of declensions and tenses for hours. You might not learn the language exactly and perfectly, but you will pick it up as it is used in day to day life, much as you learn your mother tongue.

As for Sherlock and John being inordinately polite to each other in the German version, I caught a whiff of the version released in Quebec and, yup, using vous rather than tu. Whaaaaat???

Mary

SusiGo wrote:

For your amusement - this has been the longest German word for some time:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
It describes a law for the supervision of the labelling of beef. 

I went to google and found out on Wiki that the longest word in English, published in the Oxford English dictionary, is  Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
the dictionary gives the meaning as "an artificial long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust."
Coulda fooled me.  heh
 

It´s slightly offensive if you adress a total stranger like that, but imo from the moment he said "Sherlock, please" in ASiP it would have been okay to just use the informal "you" together with his first name. No one would ever adress their future room-mate formally, best friends or not.. 

It´s funny that the German broadcasting company decided to use this very German form of adressing someone to "emphasize the "Britishness" of their relationship".. according to an official e-mail posted somewhere here in the forum. Whatever that´s supposed to mean. Probably that all Brits are terribly formal.. lol. 

Last edited by Zatoichi (November 13, 2014 9:56 am)

Benedict Cumberbatch doing 11 impressions in 60 seconds - so good
http://theandiepants.tumblr.com/post/102498874255/eggsbenediict-benedict-cumberbatch-doing-11

Last edited by Neferu (November 13, 2014 10:21 am)

Zatoichi wrote:

It´s slightly offensive if you adress a total stranger like that, but imo from the moment he said "Sherlock, please" in ASiP

That's the point where I would have gone from vous to tu also. I mean, they're on a first name basis and the same age and living together!

Spanish also has a polite form and I'm using my French to decide when to use it in my new almost overwhelming social context unless the person is a child, we're clearly friendly and close in age, or I'm told flat out to use the informal term.

I'm keeping my out for some Spanish language Sherlock, as I'm sure it exists, to see if they are using tu or usted.

Mary

Neferu wrote:

Benedict Cumberbatch doing 11 impressions in 60 seconds - so good
http://theandiepants.tumblr.com/post/102498874255/eggsbenediict-benedict-cumberbatch-doing-11

lol The only reason he started to stutter towards the end is that he couldn't come up with anything new for the next personality to say. He's quite a mimic!
 

This is a good interview, not just about TIG but I was not sure where to put it. 

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/benedict-cumberbatch-it-s-fantastic-to-realise-how-insignificant-you-are-1.1999578?page=1

One cannot say it often enough. 

ancientsgate wrote:

Neferu wrote:

Benedict Cumberbatch doing 11 impressions in 60 seconds - so good
http://theandiepants.tumblr.com/post/102498874255/eggsbenediict-benedict-cumberbatch-doing-11

lol The only reason he started to stutter towards the end is that he couldn't come up with anything new for the next personality to say. He's quite a mimic!
 

His Michael Caine was brilliant!