TubeNet

I've done just that, translating to and from French. No trouble whatsoever! It pays however, to be redundant and paraphrase yourself so there's absolutely no room for misunderstanding.

bloke, Sie der Mann!

My son is now learning German...
..but I cannot speak a word of it.

I bumbled through four semesters of it a long time ago in college. I've forgotten it all now. But I do remember enough of it to say that Mark Twain's comments about it are absolutely correct.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html

While in the Army and stationed in Germany in the 80's they put us through a basic course. It was structured around learning how to ask for directions in case we got lost and basic communication. So... I can ask, where's the train station, left & right, straight ahead, around the corner, etc... I might add that most European countries teach their youngsters how to speak English. Even in the 80's the younger people in Germany spoke very good English. So in general they might understand more than you might think. Be careful of that too...

Regards, Tim

For your entertainment, here's what Google makes of a description from the German site -
``... this enormous silberfarbene Helikon/Sousaphon misst approx. 110 cm in the Durchmesser und has an enormous funnel diameter of approx. 43cm... Weight ca.8 kg..., it comes out however quite a clay/tone and the levers (keys) can be moved.....sieht something "schmuddelig" out more..leider no mouthpiece....seien itself you please when offering in the clear one, which is this an older, used and already longer instrument not used. ...''

Aided a little by dim 30-year-old memories of school German, I think I can untangle a little of this. Some of the translation is just unaccountably bad. "it comes out however quite a clay/tone" is "es kommt aber durchaus ein Ton heraus", which I guess just means "a sound comes out [when you blow through it]" The German is probably garbled (expected when we see "..." for routine punctuation), but I don't see "quite a clay" in there anywhere. Etc.

Fun with words - it's used (gebrauchte) but not used (benutzte.)

chiltern wrote:Why would you want to buy a man's thing in Germany?

Any port in a storm!