I had my Goethe-Zertifikat A1: Start Deutsch 1 exam about 3 weeks ago. The exam has four parts: listening, reading, writing and speaking. I was most nervous about the oral exam, but once it started, I felt more comfortable. The third part of the oral exam is about making and responding to requests. One of the other candidates took a card with a “no smoking” sign on it, but I think he forgot the word “smoking”. He was smart, though, and said, “Please do not give the children cigarettes”. I think my speaking skills were good enough, though unfortunately not as humorous.
Vor drei Woche habe ich meine Goethe-Zertifikat A1 Prüfung gemacht. Die Prüfung hat vier Teilen, nämlich Lesen, Hören, Schreiben und Sprechen. Ich war am nervösesten über die mundliche Prüfung, aber als sie angefangen hat, fühle ich mich besser. Das dritte Teil der mundlichen Prüfung ist über Bitten formulieren und reagieren. Ein anderer Kandidat hat eine Karte mit einem “Rauchen verboten” Schild genommen. Ich habe gedacht, dass er hat das Wort “rauchen” vergessen. Er war intelligent, und hat gesagt “Bitte geben Sie meinen Kindern keine Zigaretten”. Ich denke, dass ich habe gut genug gesprochen, aber ich war leider nicht so lustig.
Taboo is a game where one needs to communicate a word to one’s partner, without saying a list of “taboo” words. For example, for the word “Twister” one might have Tornado, Game, Colours, Legs and Arms as taboo words. If I still wanted to go for the party game approach (which I think is easier than the tornado approach as it’s very precise if done correctly), I might say something like “Something played at a party where a wheel is spun and players contort their limbs to place them on red, green, blue or yellow circles”.
I’ve found some similarities between playing Taboo and speaking in German (and even in Mandarin), in that I can’t always use the most direct approach of communicating something. The reason for this is different: in Taboo, it is the rules of the game, while with second and third languages it is typically because I lack vocabulary required to use the most direct approach. For example, if I wanted to communicate “I want a pair of chopsticks”, I could do this easily in English or Chinese (我要筷子), but I don’t know the word for that in German (Essstäbchen, it turns out). I might thus need to work around it via description, with something like “Könnten Sie mir chinesisches Besteck geben?”. There are a number of English words that have been adopted into German, so I could just take a shot in the dark with “Geben Sie mir ein Paar Chopsticks, bitte.” which would probably get the point across especially to a German speaker, though it’s wrong.
I’ve also tried playing Taboo myself in German. Even sticking to simple sentences (to avoid struggling with stringing together subclauses or neighbouring-sentences on the fly) not having a broad vocabulary makes it tricky. For example, I saw a card with goal word Biene or bee (banned: gelb or yellow, Stachel or sting, Summen or sum, Honig or honey, Blütenstaub or pollen). In English, this isn’t very hard: “there’s a queen, they make hexagonal structures, produce golden liquid good for coughs… you can say you have this in your bonnet, or if you’re in a rush you’re making a this-line for something”. I found this tricky in German. Even trying to translate what I’d say in English, I might begin “Es hat Königin”, but it goes downhill from there (turns out hexagon is just das Hexagon, and I could improvise liquid by just saying Wasser). I wouldn’t be able to give the idioms and I’m not sure they still work in German. Effectively, all of the missing vocabulary items are permanent Taboo words.
I think one of my strengths in English communication is being able to make statements fairly precisely (for example, “I don’t have a particularly strong opinion; while I agree with (specific parts of X), I’m not confident X is correct because I am not in a position to assess (other part of X)”, or “X is correct in principle but I’m not sure it’s appropriate to implement”). I’m not there in Chinese, and definitely not in German. This can be an issue with using possibly circumlocutory descriptions – if they accidentally indicate a preference that isn’t really there. For example, for the “chinesisches Besteck” example above, one can’t fault a server that brings a soup spoon (and depending on one’s point of view, the server could be justifiably annoyed if one rejects the soup spoon and continues to make this request without qualifying it further).
