It has been so long since the last time I wrote here. One of things that changed in my life since the last time wrote here is my mailing address. Only those who have lived in the US may understand what I mean by mailing address in context of mailing address vs permanent address. Not that I have a permanent address any way… But I almost need to invent a new English word that signifies the city where one is residing at the moment, opposed to what is signified by hometown or home-city. It should imply temporary-ness, but the temporary address is not right either. It is something in between temporary and permanent. Well. Let’s say I am living in Berlin at the moment, to make it simple.

Now I can elaborate on another issue, which is the fact that I am learning German. The former paragraph is important to lay the grounds of why I have embarked on this journey of acquiring another language. Having a new address that is somewhere between temporary and permanent should explain my urgency of learning the language of this city.

Today in my German class, we learned about Konjunktiv II and the verb würde. The teacher wrote on the board the three situations when the Konjunktiv II form würde would be used as such: 1) when asking something politely 2) making a suggestion 3) when talking about an unrealistic wishes.

On the side of my note I wrote würde = “would like to” and “wish one could.” Then I thought how strange the same word would be used in two seemingly unrelated situations. Then another English speaker in the class asked the teacher, “Can I use würde when talking about realistic wishes, such as in ‘I wish you can join me at the dinner tonight’?” Then the teacher said no. In that case you would not use würde because it would imply that you know the person you are talking to is not joining you for dinner. The student who asked the question looked baffled, and so did I. For the rest of the class I could not stop thinking about how I have been using the the word “would” in English. So I decided to make some examples with “would” to understand how it is used in sentences.

(These sentences are just examples, nothing too serious… )

• I would be so happy if I can make this project work.
• Wouldn’t it be nice to work as an artist and be able to support myself and my family?
• Would I have chosen to be artist had I known that discouragement was something I have to live with daily?
• What would I do if I was an already successful artist?
• Would you help me to have just bit more time for me to focus on making this thing work?

Now I put these sentences in DeepL translator to translate to German.

• Ich wäre so glücklich, wenn ich dieses Projekt verwirklichen könnte.
• Wäre es nicht schön, als Künstlerin zu arbeiten und mich und meine Familie ernähren zu können?
• Hätte ich mich für den Beruf des Künstlers entschieden, wenn ich gewusst hätte, dass ich täglich mit Entmutigung leben muss?
• Was würde ich tun, wenn ich bereits ein erfolgreicher Künstler wäre?
• Würden Sie mir helfen, ein bisschen mehr Zeit zu haben, damit ich mich darauf konzentrieren kann, diese Sache zum Laufen zu bringen?

Übersetzt mit http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (kostenlose Version)