German Two-Way Prepositions

'Researching' Youtube I came across my all-time favourite teaching video:






Those two American teachers have done a lot of work trying to explain, when certain prepositions take the dative and when the accustaive - and they've done a brilliant job!

Japanese???

I have just done supply at a Primary School where last year I did a German singing workshop. When the children arrived I asked them if they remembered my name. Nobody did, but one girl put up her hand: "Youre the lady who taught us all those Japanese songs!"

Oh dear!

Have I lived too long in England?

Four Saturdays a term I teach a group of primary school age children at http://www.dssfrome.co.uk/ and the other day we counted in 5s from 0 to 100. That should have been no problem and everything went well up to 50. We counted null, fünf, zehn.....fünfzig, fünfundfünfzig - and this is where the trouble started. I carried on, sechsundfünfig (56), siebenundfünfzig (57), achtundfünfzig (58) ... until one of the children spotted the mistake!

Oh dear, I made the classic mistake many English people make, forgetting to say the units first, then the tens. Of course it should have been sechzig (60), fünfundsechzig (65), siebzig (70), fünfundsiebzig (75), achtzig (80), fünfundachzig (85), neunzig (90), fünfundneunzig (95), hundert (100).