Thoughts on grad school

[John the Theologian]

From my limited experience with speakers of the various European languages, I can concur that the regional variations seem to shift much more quickly than here in the US. My sister-in-law's parents emigrated from the Netherlands, from near Rotterdam and her mother commented that she found it very difficult to understand the Groningen dialect that my Dutch speaking grandparents spoke. Someone recently commented on the Dutch spoken in Maastricht where the Adams factory is as a very unusual accent. By American standards these distances are quite small.

I've studied some German, French, and a bit of Swedish and while there are many cognate words between the Germanic languages, the accents and syntax make them sound quite different. I once knew a Norwegian speaker who rather condescendingly described Danish as Norwegian spoken with a diseased throat. I actually find French syntax the easiest to read, but get totally lost when trying to speak or understand the spoken language.

The Low German speaking immigrants to north central Iowa that I'm familiar with often called Dutch speaking ministers to their churches in past generations because they could understand them better than High German speaking preachers.

All of this is to concur with what Gary and others have implied. Studying with someone overseas who is proficient in English might be the easiest option.

[AmyBliss]

Hi Bilucas,
I went to England to study euphonium for grad school. There were a few things that I learned that may help you out. First, see if any of the schools have repertoire lists posted. That will give you a good idea of what you can audition with. Also, make sure to check out when auditions are. Many schools in Europe are on a very different audition schedule than the US. This next part is a bit outside of my experience since I studied in an English-speaking country, but I would suggest going to the school that you feel you'll learn best. I think you'd be surprised at how fast you learn language and how much other people speak English. Good luck!