It seems that French is not the only language which is alive and well in our community.

Last weekend, our small community held its first ever Oktoberfest celebration. German food, including sausages, potato salad and sauerkraut were served while an oompah band provided the musical entertainment so that our local residents could kick up their polka heels. The children even got into the act and had loads of fun. Looks like this will become the newest annual celebration in our community. Guess I will have to brush up on my German.

A friend of mine taught me a bit of the German language many years ago and I still remember some of it. At the time, I used some of the accelerated learning techniques that I teach my own students today. There is still a phrase that I remember,even though I have never used German since that time. The reason that I remember it is because I repeated the phrase over and over again, placing emphasis on different words each time, and putting as much emotion as possible into mimicking a native German speaker.

Here is the phrase that I learned: “Ich meuchte einen bratwurst kauffen bitte!” I’m not sure if the spelling is correct but if I were speaking to someone in German, they would not ask me how I spell it! The same is true for anyone learning French. If you are speaking to someone, they won’t ask you to spell what you are saying. So…if you want to become fluent in French, focus less on the written aspects of the language and more on the correct way to say things. That is why my program puts so much emphasis on rhythm, intonation and pronunciation – that is what will help you to sound like a native speaker, instead of someone learning to speak French.