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Dear Telekolleg students,
Well, in nine days’ time the Carneval period will come to an end. That’s the time when I hope you will have time to think of the most important events in Telekolleg in the coming months: The Feststellungsprüfungen. Many students believe that there are at least five million mistakes that they can make in English. The good news, dear students, is that actually (eigentlich!) there are only about thirty important mistakes and if you avoid (vermeiden) them, your mark in English will be much better. In this and the following letters I will look at some of these with you.

MISTAKE NUMBER 1 on the top ten of mistakes that students of English make in the foreign language is : 's'. They often forget to use it in the plural - one teenager, two teenagerS. Moreover (darüber hinaus), as I wrote in my first letter it is very important to put it on the end of the verb in the third person (" 'He','she','it', das 's' geht mit") This is a BIG mistake in English but it is surprising how many students – even good students – make it.: 'My wife loveS me and I love myself, too'.

MISTAKE NUMBER 2: much/many; little/few. We use 'many' when we can count a quantity (too many unemployed people, polluted beaches, unhappy children , etc.) but we use 'much' when we can't count a noun (too much unemployment, pollution, unhappiness, bad air, etc.) Obviously we cannot say 'two pollutions' XX. In German there is the same difference between ‘viel’ and ‘viele’, but many German students of English forget this when they speak and write English! By the way, do you know this corny (abgedroschenen) joke:

In the restaurant. Angry customer: "Waiter! There are too MANY flies in my beer!"
Waiter: "Don't worry, sir. They won't drink MUCH of the beer."

A similar difference exists between 'little' and 'few'. If we can count something, we use 'few', if we cannot count it we use 'little'. People who drink little (wenig) alcohol have few (wenige) problems in life. We cannot say 'two alcohols', XX but we can say 'two problems'

MISTAKE NUMBER 3: When I correct exams, I see that for my students a big problem is the difference between 'this' and 'these'. Don't forget- 'these' is used with plural nouns: 'this problem', but 'these problems.' ( A similar difference exists between ‘that’ and ‘those’)

MISTAKE NUMBER 4: who/which. Who (persons) which (things/animals) are often confused by German speakers of English. A couple of jokes should make the difference clear:

"We've got three swimming pools - a swimming pool with cold water, a swimming pool with warm water and a swimming pool w h i c h has no water in it."
" Why do you need a swimming pool WHICH is empty?"
" That's for people WHO can't swim."

Two children are standing in front of a mummy (Mumie) in a museum.
"Look!" says one of them," It says 3000 B.C. on the mummy. What does that mean?"
"Oh," says the other child, "that must be the number of the car WHICH hit it."

MISTAKE NUMBER 5: ‘false friends’. In my last letter, I talked about the word ‘chef’ which in English does not mean ‘boss’, but ‘Chefkoch’.
Another student wrote: “My colleagues were *sympathetic.” She wanted to say: “My colleagues were pleasant (nice).” The word “sympathetic” in English means “mitfühlend”. These are all good examples of what we call ‘false friends’: English words which look like German words, but which have a completely different meaning in English. There are many such words, but there are actually (“eigentlich” not “aktuell” !) only about twelve ‘false friends’ which always seem to give difficulties to German students of English:

GERMAN ENGLISH

Chef boss, employer
Küchenchef chef
________________________________
sympathisch nice, pleasant
mitfühlend, verständnisvoll sympathetic
________________________________

Meinung opinion
Bedeutung meaning
________________________________

meinen, denken to think (to be of the opinion)
bedeuten to mean
________________________________

aktuell current, topical (a problem of importance nowadays)

eigentlich, in der Tat actual, actually
________________________________

bekommen to get
werden to become*
________________________________
sparen to save
sich erübrigen to spare ________________________________
Rente pension
Miete rent
________________________________
Art kind, sort
Kunst art
________________________________

Ich will (gehen) I want to (go)
Ich werde(gehen) I will (go)
________________________________
wer who
wo where
________________________________
also so, therefore
auch also

Of course, there are other ‘false friends’ (for example: Brief = letter; brief = kurz; engagiert = committed, engaged = verlobt, besetzt; Fabrik = factory, fabric = Stoff).* *However, in my twenty years of experience in Telekolleg, the twelve ‘false friends above, seem to be the most important ones. Can you put some of these words into these sentences?

1) “When I told my aunt that I had had an accident she was very…………………
and told me how sorry she was. And what a ……………………………… aunt she is: She cooked me my favourite food: fish and chips.”
2) We didn’t have any money…………………………. we couldn’t go to the cinema.
3) When George was 65 he got a good……………………………so he had no difficulty in paying the ……………………………………for his flat.
4) “Can you come to the theatre tonight?”
“Sorry, I can’t………………………………the time – I have to finish some work for Telekolleg”.
“Oh, what a shame (Schade!) you can’t come. I’ve been ………………………money for weeks to see this play. ”
5) “Can we watch a Charlie Chaplin film in the English lesson?”