Reading Your Stories 2 – Die Pilzjagd

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to the second episode of the new series

Reading Your Stories

In each episode, we’ll take a look at a short story that you have sent me and I’ll read it, and I’ll correct all the mistakes and add commentary what needs to be changed and why.
And I’ll add a translation.
AND today, you can also guess what the mistake is so you essentially get to practice

 listening, reading, vocabulary, grammar AND style

Wow, so cool :).

The story of today comes from Ruth and she’s telling us about a somewhat unusual weekend trip of hers.
It’s pretty well written overall and has a good mix of long and short sentences. But there are some basic mistakes in it that many of you will be able to spot.

Like last time, I’ll give you the audio and then the corrected version first, along with a (rather close) translation.
And after that, we’ll go through the original text section by section.

And this time, I WON’T mark the mistakes right away, I’ll just tell you how many there are in a given segment, so you can see if you can spot them :).

So are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s go…

 

Oh, of course you can also start with the correction section right away. Here’s the quick link if you want to do that:

The corrections

Correct Version with Translations

In this section, you can read my corrected version of the story, together with a (close) English translation.

And here’s the audio:

 

Click here to download the mp3

***


“Wilde Pilzjagd” (by Ruth)


An einem schönen Frühlingswochenende im Mai waren ich, meine kleine Tochter, und meine Schwägerin in die Berge gefahren, um zu campen und Pilze zu jagen. Wir waren mit meinen Klassenkameraden aus einer Pilzklasse unterwegs.

On a beautiful spring weekend in may, me, my little daughter and my sister in law had gone to the mountains to go camping and hunt mushrooms. We were travelling with my classmates from a mushroom course.

Der Wald erwachte gerade aus der Winterkälte. Zwischen den immergrünen Bäumen füllten sich die Laubbäume mit neuen hellgrünen Blättern. Wie immer war die Luft unglaublich frisch. Es war alles so wunderbar.
Etwa 65 Kilometer entfernt konnten wir den spektakulären Gipfel des Mount St. Helens sehen. Er war stark mit Schnee bedeckt.

The forest was just waking from the winter cold. Amid the evergreen trees, the deciduous trees were filling with new light green leaves. As always, the air was so clear/fresh. Everything was so wonderful. At a distance of about 65 kilometers, we could see the spectacular peak of Mount Helens. It was heavily covered in snow. 

Am Sonntag, dem letzten Morgen, als wir gerade dabei waren, unsere Ausrüstung zu packen, haben wir Donner gehört. Er klang seltsam.
Es fing auch an zu regnen. Aber auch dieser Regen war etwas merkwürdig. Er sah ein bisschen trocken aus.

On Sunday, the last morning, as we were just packing our gear, we heard thunder. It sounded strange. It also started raining. But the rain, too, was odd. It looked a bit dry.

Ein Mann kam zu uns gelaufen, und hat geschrien: “Der Berg explodiert!”
Wir sind ins Auto reingesprungen, und zur Autobahn gefahren. Die Asche fiel dick wie ein Schneesturm. Es gab Donner und Schwefel. Wir haben horizontale Blitze gesehen. Es war sehr gruselig.

A man came to us and shouted “The mountain is exploding.”
We jumped into the car and drive to the highway. The ash fell thick like in a snowstorm. There was thunder and sulfur. We saw horizontal lightning. It was very creepy.

Wir sind drei Nächte auf der Passhöhe geblieben, bis wir aus dem Pass fahren konnten. Der Motor unseres Autos war nie wieder derselbe.

We stayed three nights at the top of the pass before we could drive out of the pass. The engine of our car was never the same again.

***

Original and corrections

In this part, we’ll go through the original text bit by bit.
Before each section, I’ll give an indication of how many mistakes there are, and how many things that are worth noting/changing but that aren’t really mistakes.
So if you want, you can take some guesses before you look at my commentary :)
Viel Spaß!!

 

***

(1 note)
“Wild Gewordene Pilzjagd”
I think this is meant as a translation for “Mushroom hunt gone wild.” However, in German “wild geworden” means that whatever comes after it has gone crazy in the sense of losing control. Think of a cat going bananas. That doesn’t exactly fit a mushroom hunt. “verrückte Pilzjagd” is probably the closest translation, though it’s not as poetic or creative. So maybe “wilde Pilzjagd” is a good compromise.
(1 note)
An einem schönen Frühlingswochenende im Mai waren ich, meine kleine Tochter, und meine Schwägerin in die Berge gefahren, um zu campen und Pilze zu jagen.
“sammeln” is much more idiomatic with “Pilze”. And there’s also the phrase “in die Pilze gehen” for the act of going somewhere and collecting them.
(1 mistake, 1 note)
Wir waren mit meinen Klassenkameraden aus einer Pilzklasse gereisen. 
“gereist” and not “gereisen”. Also “unterwegs” is the more idiomatic term here. Germans do not use “reisen” that much.
“Klassenkameraden” sounds a bit like school and I assume it’s about some sort of mushroom course, but I can’t think of a better word either.
(2 mistake, 1 note)
Der Wald erwachte gerade aus der Winterkälte. Zwischen den Immergrünen Bäumen füllten sich die Laubbäume mit neuen hellgrünen Blättern. Wie immer, die Luft war so frisch.
“immergrünen” is an adjective, so it’s not capitalized.
“wie immer” starts the sentence, so it’s position one. The verb has to come after that. Also, “so” sounds a bit weird here, as I am kind of expecting a comparison or a metaphor to come after. I would prefer “unglaublich” to properly capture the English “so”. So it would be: “Wie immer war die Luft unglaublich frisch.”
(no issues)
Es war alles so wunderbar. Etwa 65 Kilometer entfernt konnten wir den spektakulären Gipfel des Mount St. Helens sehen. Er war stark mit Schnee bedeckt.
(2 mistakes, 1 note)
Am Sonntag, der letzte Morgen, als wir unsere Ausrüstung packen haben, haben wir etwas Donner gehört.
1. “Am Sonntag, dem letzten morgen” instead of “der” – the case of “am” refers to the entire phrase2. “… packen haben” is wrong. I think the author was trying to say “as/when we were packing our stuff”. The two best options for this are:
– als wir gerade unsere Ausrüstung packten
– als wir gerade dabei waren, unsere Ausrüstung zu packen
I prefer the second one, the first one sounds VERY bookish. I put the “gerade” in both of them to really capture this idea of you them something and then something happens that has an effect.3. “haben wir etwas Donner gehört” – I think this is supposed to be “we heard some thunder.” But “etwas” here feels more like “a little bit”. It’s better to just say “Donner” without any qualifier.
(1 mistake)
Er hat seltsam geklangt.
“hat geklungen” or even better “klang”. “klingen” is one of those verbs where the real past is idiomatic even in spoken German
(1 mistake, 2 notes)
Es fing auch zu regnen an. Aber dieser Regen war etwas seltsam. Es sah ein bisschen trocken aus.
1. “Es fing auch an zu regnen.” is also okay, and I think I would prefer that, but that’s personal choice.
2. “Aber AUCH dieser Regen war  merkwürdig.” I would add an “auch” there to acknowledge that we already had one weird thing. I put it in the beginning to make a nice connection to the sentence before it. Also, I would use “merkwürdig” because we already had “seltsam” in the sentence before.
So it would be “Aber auch dieser Regen war etwas merkwürdig.”
3. “Er sah ein bisschen…” instead of “es” because it is “der Regen”
(1 mistake)Ein Mann hat zu uns gelaufen, und hat geschrien, *Der Berg explodiert!* 
It should be “Ein Mann ist zu uns gelaufen” because “laufen” is a movement. The better pick here would be “Ein Mann KAM zu uns gelaufen” or  just “kam zu uns” because “laufen” alone sounds a bit too focused on the act of walking and it would likely be “came” in the original, anyway.
(1 mistake, 1 note)
Wir sind ins Auto reingesprungen, und zur Autobahn gefuhren. Die Asche fiel dick wie ein Schneesturm.
“gefahren” not “gefuhren”. And the comma before “und” can go.
(1 mistake)
Es gab Donner und Schwefel. Wir haben horizontaler Blitz gesehen. Es war sehr gruselig.
It should be “Wir haben horizontale Blitze gesehen.” Which means more than one. In German, “Blitz” is countable unlike the English “lightning”, which is vague.
(3 mistakes)
Wir haben drei Nächte auf der Passhöhe bleiben, bis wir aus dem Pass fahren könnten.
“bleiben” goes with “sein” for past tense and the ge-form is “geblieben. Also, it should be “konnten” not “könnten” because this is just past tense of “können”.
So it should be “Wir sind [ … ] geblieben, bis wir aus dem Pass fahren konnten.”
(2 mistakes)
Der Motor unseres Autos war nie wieder deselbe.
“Autos” because it’s Genitive.
And it should be “derselbe”, but I think that was just a typo :)

***

And that’s it for today.
Let me know in the comments, if you enjoyed this and if you like the format with the indication of mistakes.
And of course if you have any questions about any of it just leave a comment as well and I’ll do my best to clear it up.
I really hope you enjoyed this, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

 

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