Neither of them had any ideas about gelingt.Īnyway, they started to play, with 19 Stones (damn it), attempting to beset each others Houses and arguing about the way you could move – auch seitwarts oder rückwärts they knew that seitwärts is sideways but what on earth is rückwärts?: forwards is vorwärts and you couldn’t want to move backwards, so they decided it must be the way a knight moves in chess, but this didn’t help because they couldn’t remember quite how this was. Their translation of the next sentence was The Players now try so quickly as possible with their Stones to beset the House of the Against-man and he is the self-same Winner who the first gelingt. This seemed to be pretty straightforward: At this Game 2 or 4 Persons can betake themselves and each of them wears a Colour and damn it, when 2 Persons play, a big house with 19 stones, when 4 Persons play, he besets a little House with 13 stones. The first paragraph of the rules was: An diesem Spiel können sich 2 bis 4 Personen beteiligen, von denen jede eine farbe wählt, und damit, wenn 2 Personen spielen, einen großen Hof mit 19 steinen, wenn 4 personen spielen kleinen Hof mit 13 steinen besezt. The late columnist Paul Jennings (inventor of the brilliant cod philosophy Resistentialism) once bought a second-hand set which had the rules in German, and with the help of a friend who didn’t know any more German than he did decided to work out how to play and then try to have a game. No-one seems to play the board game Halma any more, and if you look at the rules of the game and its variations you can see why. Here is a classic account of a noble struggle with German: I have noted elsewhere some examples of translations from French, Spanish and Italian. The truth is, learning German is tough, so you might as well enjoy yourself along the way.My main aim is for all the stuff on here to be Terrific For Your German.Įmail also write a birding blog. but also challenges, problems, homework, silly stuff, books, films, lots of music, learning strategies, games,puzzles, ideas. There will be standard stuff about grammar, wordplay, speaking, listening. and this blog is aimed at others learning it too. Harblow, however, insisted that damit means "with that" or " therewith", so I allowed this, to pacify him although it didn't seem to make any more sense. Of course, you can play with with 2 Persons, but damn it, it's a pretty poor show. I took "Damn it" to be an idomatic way of saying that the real way to play this game is with 4 Persons. It conjured up a pleasant picture of these Persons wearing their colours and heraldically besetting each other's houses like something in a book of hours. It was clear enough to me ( says Jennings). " At this game 4 persons can betake themselves and each of these wears a colour and damn it, when 2 persons play, a big house with 19 stones, when 4 persons play, he besets a little house with 13 stones. " The only difficult words here seemed to be beteiligen and w ählt ( I just happened to know that Farbe is"colour" ). "An diesem Spiel k önnen sich bis 4 Personen beteiligen, von denen jede eine Farbe w ählt, und damit,, wenn 2 Personen spielen, einen gro ßen Hof mit 19 Steinen, wenn 4 Personen spielen einen kleinen Hof mit 13 Steinen besetzt."Īs Jennings says. They are determined to sort out the German instructions and actually play a game of Halma. Well, I think we know what he's talking about there ! Let's see how they get on shall we. I desist from actually learning these few more words because I know that in fact this would be a dreary process extending over several years while I found out about things like Schicksal and Empfindsamkeit and because I also know that during the first half of this period the pleasant sense of comprehension which I feel now would diminish rather than increase." I knew just enough for me to bumble along in a half-understanding daze, feeling comfortably that by knowing just a few more words I could speak it like a native. I am not what you would call fluent in German. "I bought it, because the instructions looked so fascinating. The second paragraph has a lot of relevance for us humble travellers on the learning German path, or LGP as we call it round our way. Halma, by the way, is what we call Chinese Chequers. There's one brilliant little story in there about the author and his friend "Harblow" finding an ancient Halma set in an antique shop and buying it mainly because they were intrigued by the German instructions about how to play the game. Last time I introduced you to " The Jenguin Pennings" and mentioned that there was quite a bit of German-related stuff in it.
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