Ich spreche Deutsch...sort of

WELL, AS I intimated in an earlier post, I am currently learning German.  I'm doing so via Babbel.com and finding it a good way to learn - I took advantage of a Groupon voucher and got six months' worth at a discounted price.  As I go quite fast this means I can get a lot of learning in for what I've paid!

I do have an elementary though rusty grasp of French - but when called upon to speak it I have very little confidence. I decided to start with German because I want to be able to read it - especially academic writing. Okay, so telling the time and asking you where you're from won't help me tackle German theologians yet, but I have to start somewhere!

My sister is learning French, and for fun I am attempting to email her in French to try and practise. I arduously composed the first one yesterday with constant help from my dictionary, and although I'm certain it was full of errors I was pleased to discover I could understand everything in her reply without looking at the dictionary once!

Once I've whetted my language appetite it seems my enthusiasm increases for all of them. I'm reading about the brain at the moment for research purposes (a lot of my book entails my thinking about thinking!) and I'm fascinated how our behaviours, be they physical and mental, have an impact on our brains -  creating changes at an anatomical level. No wonder the more you do something the easier it gets; your brain is shaping itself accordingly!

I'm enjoying learning a language from scratch and discovering the differences, such as the fact that where English would say half past eight the German effectively says half (to) nine - so 8.30 = halb neun, not halb acht. Different endings and articles don't faze me in the slightest since learning NT Greek.  Have to remember to capitalize all my nouns though...

I do have a link from Babbel for a week's free language learning if you wish to try it out.  Being the conscientious type (as attested to in many school reports) I checked with the support team if it would be all right to post it here and they said yes.  I also tried to clarify what you would have access to - as I wasn't clear whether it would be any language or whether you'd be stuck with German just because I am.
They said:

The link will give your friends access to any one of the languages we offer, not necessarily the one you are learning. It all depends upon which language is currently set as the learning language on their Babbel homepage.

So...perhaps it's best to sign up at the website first (there's no cost involved in that) and set your preferred language before following the link?  If you try it, let us know how it works for you!

Here it is: http://www.babbel.com/?code=21291048537

Auf Wiedersehen!