Got the test link.

I emailed the Goethe people Friday afternoon (after business hours Germany time), and when I woke up, there was a link to the Einstufungstest in my inbox. So I think I'll spend some more time today studying and take it tomorrow, though the last Einstufungstest I took was without any preparation and I landed in the C1 class anyway.

I need to learn the Funktionsverben (eine Entscheidung fällen, Abschied nehmen, etc) and review the verbs with set prepositions (achten auf, denken an, sorgen für, etc), plus the set expressions like Abschied nehmen von, Kritik üben an, etc. And that's only the first third of the book. (Though my copy is from 1996 or so.)

Close but false friends

There are a lot of similarities between German and English, enough that it can lull you into a false sense of security. It leads to things like Berlin finally becoming a world-class airport (bekommen=receive) and ich bin sensibel (sensibel=sensitive).

There's a list of false cognates here, if you're curious.

I'm studying/reviewing for a language test right now, and one of the things I know always screws me up is verbs with fixed prepositions, so I'm spending some time with that. (There's a helpful list in Dreyer & Schmitt.)

So, German prepositions aren't always 1-to-1 translateable for English ones. I'd say most are, but not all. Über, for example, means over or above, but also about, as in talking about something. Nach means after, but also toward (ich reise nach Athen) or in accordance with (gebraut nach dem Reinheitsgebot).

Which means you get set phrases like

jdn. danken für
jdn. ärgern mit
herrschen über

which are easy to remember because they're just like the English thank someone for, anger someone with, rule over.

But then you get

fragen nach

which means literally ask after, which is technically sensical English, but it's not the first thing I choose (ask about). It may be more common in British English, I'm not sure.

Then there's the ones that are like English in that they use a different preposition depending on context:

kämpfen mit den Freunden
kämpfen gegen die Feinde
kämpfen für den Freund
kämpfen um die Freiheit

English collapses the last two into "fight for," and German may have the same ambiguity of fighting with (ie alongside vs against) (native speakers, help me out).

And I'm only on p 100 out of 300. -_-