The Zeltlager Series: rolled r's and tongue twisters

I might have mentioned a few times on das Blog how much I enjoy the German language. Well get ready for a whole post about it.

One more thing I love that hasn't yet been mentioned in The Zeltlager Series, is the way German just combines any and every word it sees sitting around. It really is all about the compound words in this language.
 
For example, this was an animal created during one of the games in the Zeltlager, and even though it's a made up word, it's a completely legitimate use of compounding words in the German language. Where as in English we might call this merely the "green dot snake hunter" in German it's the "Greendotsnakehunter." This is also how we get real life words like my job title. In English: Foreign [fremd] - Language [sprachen] - Assistent [assistentin]. in German: Fremdsprachenassistentin. Way cooler. 

Right, so what does all this have to do with the Zeltlager? Along with the trip being a fun getaway in the middle of my break, it was also pretty much an intensive German course. For 5 days I didn't didn't speak any English (ok, except for a few words when we were discussing differences, or a couple tongue twisters). For the week, I got to wake up speaking German, spend the day speaking German, and go to bed speaking German. It even got to the point when I was alone and talking to myself (I definitely get that from my mom) that I would speak in German. And I loved it. It was pretty much what I imagined every year abroad would be like. Even within a mere 5 days I could tell how much I had learned, or how much more easily the right words came to my head.
 
And everyone was jumping on the "Emily, please speak better German" bandwagon. If I pronounced a word insanely wrong, I had to stop, listen to everyone else say it, then say it a million times till it got better or I just gave up.  One afternoon, we practiced saying the word "sorry" so many times it didn't even sound like a word anymore (fun fact: Sorry is basically an international word, it's just all in the pronunciation). I taught everyone how to swallow their r's and make it sound American, and they taught me how to bring the German r back to the front of my mouth. 
 
One major problem we ran into was my complete inability to roll r's. Bet you didn't know that Germans roll their r's did you! Well, I guess it depends a lot on the region and dialect, but it's true. While in the US it's pretty normal that some people can roll their r's and some people can't (it's not like we ever actually use it in the English language), in Germany (or in Franken) everyone really seemed to be in disbelief that I just completely lacked the capacity to create this sound. One night while playing Prost, Oberbürgermeister! a rule was made that instead of #6 you had to roll your r's. I counterattacked with saying the word "the" at #5.
 
On the last night around the campfire, we spent some time trading tongue twisters. I taught them "Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers" and "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" and my favorite "how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood." And they taught me "Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid" (which I really struggle with), "Fischer Fritz fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt fischer Fritz" (which basically all sounds like the same word when I say it), and "Zehn zahme Ziegen ziehen zehn zentner Zucker zum Züricher Zoo" (which I'm actually pretty good at!).
 
So I'll leave you with that. Please practice before we meet again.