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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 169 of 333 15 August 2012 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I had my first proper session with a German tutor today. I think it was money well spent. It is so much more helpful having a live model for pronunciation, plus the tutor was very helpful in making corrections. I think my biggest issue at the moment is learning to differentiate between ü and u, which is probably quite normal for English speakers. But I guess the う in Japanese and u in French are probably quite similar to the ü, so by now I should have no trouble...it just shows how lazy I've been in my other languages, I guess.
I've also started to come to terms with the fact that going back to studying a language with genders is going to be something of a pain too. I'm still not sure the best way to handle memorising them. I certainly never got the hang of it when I studied French at school. But hey, at least I'm back in the land of the Latin alphabet! I'm starting to put in more hours into German in general now I'm back from holiday and into more of a normal routine again. I think I am enjoying the wonderful sense of progress you get with the very beginner stage of a language. I'm also getting rather fond of German already, I'm really glad I decided to give it a go. It's very different coming back to the language as an adult with an open mind than my rather negative experiences with the language when I was at school. I'm also appreciating how much my experiences of studying both French and Japanese are actually assisting me with getting my feet off the ground in German. I think the mental somersaults I've had to do with Japanese grammar have left my brain feeling much more relaxed about coping with word orders that differ from SVO. I'm also generally much more accepting about the fact that some ideas and concepts cannot be translated exactly. I've also been very interested to note that as well as plenty of shared vocabulary between German and English, there is also quite a bit of shared vocabulary between German and French, which certainly helps with comprehension (some is so obvious I'm kind of surprised I never noticed it before) and also helps as a memory aid. Finally, I went through my DVD collection the other night to see how many TV shows I could find that we own with a German dub on the disc, because it's all good listening practice. There seems to be no consistency in offerings and the overall total is a bit disappointing, however I am left with seasons 1, 3 and 4 of South Park and seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Sex and the City. So far I have watched one episode of each and with prior knowledge of the stories I can pick up a few bits and pieces, although so far in both cases this constitutes more colourful aspects of the language which I shall probably not need for a very long time (if ever!) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4839 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 170 of 333 15 August 2012 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Good luck with your German! I'm surprised about the amount of shared vocabulary between
German and French. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 171 of 333 15 August 2012 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Why didn't you sleep? 30 minutes sleep is beneficial. That's why Spanish people do it, by the way. (20 to 45 minutes depending on the person, to be more exact. It revives the physical state of the person.)
Haha! I also picked up "jetzt" easily back in primary school.
When I first tried to listen to a native English material, I couldn't understand it, so I just watched it with subs. Probably it didn't help that it was Elfen Lied, if I remember correctly. ._. Well, I find listening to native music good for bettering one's listening comprehension. Songs are probably messed up grammatically, but they surely help for the listening capability. (Of course Death Metal doesn't really help.) It should be difficult to find artists singing in a non-English language in Europe, so I shall recommend Annett Louisan, Rammstein and Silbermond. I found some English translations of the song lyrics of Rammstein some years ago, although I imagine the other ones might have translations, too. In my experience, if one understands the lyrics of a dozen songs and can generally understand subtitles then native TV material can be started to be absorbed. The first, say, five or ten episodes should be more difficult like because things are always more difficult when just starting out.
I hope you can soon pick up genuine Germanic words like bring->bring sonne->sun, son->sohn, vater->father, buch->book, hund->hound verdamme->damn and what not (verbs were given in their imperative forms).
Then you should certainly learn from South Park. Maybe you should watch one episode with German subtitles then watch it with German dub?
What's sucking more? Being almost unable to learn more or having much to learn? All levels have their benefits and malefits.
Do you know that most of the words ending in -er have the gender "der"? What about other endings like -heit, -keit, -tät, -schein and what not? I hope you notice the noun suffixes making the gender of the words.
I think it's more for getting used to how the German pronunciation sounds?
So that's why you think being a beginner sucks. You could always get your pronunciation or listening skills better, so you do have some choices, too. You could use Lang-8, too. Or FLR. What I mean is that it might seem that there are only textbooks, but it's not true. Also, I walked through Pimsleur Spanish I, II and III last summer, watched some anime episodes with Spanish subs (probably 10?) watched some Spanish dubbed anime (mainly Death Note) and attended the Spanish high intermediate course in the university from September onward. My mark was 4 out of 5 by the end of the semester. So I didn't use textbooks in the beginning. Of course I don't mean that you should do the same as me or anything. I just tell you so you have more choices. Also, I found it greatly beneficial to chat in Spanish. It was quite surprising for me to realize that German is considered a difficult language. It's probably because of the adjective declensions. I went about genders as simplifying der and das into one category (somewhat like what Dutch did), because der and das are the same in some of the very frequently used adjective declensions, so I can almost effortlessly hide if I know that the word is der or das. I don't mean that German is not more difficult that Spanish, I don't know, really, but I think if Spanish seemed easy for me, as a not native English speaker, then German should probably be similar in difficulty for a native English.
I don't know what your tutor does but you probably want to build on active knowledge due to her/him. I'm really interested what you do with the tutor.
A stupid American told me that English is very useful for that I can travel to foreign countries. It turned out that he has never been to out of the Americas. -_- But then if not even German people speak English that well, then it seems I was right that just English is not enough. :D
That's what I call genuine knowledge!
You should have good fun with your languages so they be considered as having good fun instead of seeming like a job. At least I can't really imagine people saying something like "I don't feel like watching today's serie" (if one likes that serie, of course).
Haha! Real HP fan we got there! P.S.: German genders can probably be ignored as much as English pronunciation. Sometimes (Sometimes means that they certainly exist. It also means that they can be ignored almost always) it makes the meaning different. People should generally be capable of getting meaning from the context. P.S.2: Good fun with your German! Edited by Takato on 15 August 2012 at 7:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 172 of 333 15 August 2012 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What are you talking about? Kanji reading is nonexistent. If you know the pronunciation then you just have to learn like start=open+begin. kaishi=開+始 (where you already know that 開=open and 始=begin, since you started by learning the writing system, like when you learn the cyrillic alphabet when starting to learn Russian) You wrote "pronunciation(s)." Can a word ever be pronounced on different ways? Do you mean that people from different areas pronounce the word "desu" differently? That's three (pronunciation/meaning/kanji), just like in English (pronunciation/meaning/writing). Edited by Takato on 15 August 2012 at 7:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4539 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 173 of 333 15 August 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Takato Yes, words can have multiple pronunciations. Take 一日. Can be said ついたち, いちにち, or ひとひ among others,
depending on context. There's no one-to-one kanji to meaning to pronunciation in Japanese like there is in Mandarin, even. 開 might be かい in a compound, but can be あ(く) or ひら(く) if you see 開く. Both can mean "to open" but it depends on what you're opening which one you use, and may also mean things like "to hold" or "to be empty" instead of "to open" depending on context. To me, learning a word in a language like English just means knowing how it's said and what the meaning is, and typically from that I can extrapolate how to write it down if I know it from hearing it or how to say it if I am first introduced to it in text (English is weirder since there are spelling exceptions everywhere, but many other languages are more regular in spelling and makes that a non-issue). Whereas learning a word in Japanese means I need to know how it is said, how it is written (and occasionally it can even be written in different ways, like 町 versus 街 which both are まち and mean "town" but indicate different types of town-structures) so I can read it, how it is written so I can write it, and what it means, because I can't always guess what the pronunciation is from looking at it or how to write it from hearing it (unless I simply use hiragana, of course). Edited by rewire on 15 August 2012 at 10:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 174 of 333 16 August 2012 at 9:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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rewire: I see. So a word is a written one in your interpretation. I think thinking of a word as a
pronounced one is easier to link tke kanji to. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 175 of 333 16 August 2012 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I need to figure out how to get emails on my watched forums again =/. Missed a lot of posts here. I'm a bit
surprised that the menu had Japanese instead of English lol. I guess that was a Japanese restaurant? Very interesting that your Japanese helped you order in German heh. I was curious if you're having trouble understanding the difference between ue and u or pronouncing it. I can't type the umlaut on this keyboad atm sorry. The ue is almost the same (maybe the same) as the French u which it sounds like you can handle already. I personally chose not to try to learn to say it right in high school because I thought it sounded feminine or something. Stupid kid that I was. I bet I would have learned to pronounce it right a lot easier when I was younger but oh well. I can hear the difference fine, but saying it I think I sound a bit odd. I'm glad you enjoyed your trip so much. I loved visiting Germany even in the winter so I figured you would. In the summer it's simply georgous. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 176 of 333 16 August 2012 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Yes it was a Japanese restaurant. And even though the staff were Japanese, and my Japanese is way better than my German, I still ended up trying to order in German. I have no problem using Japanese in contexts where it is expected, but going into a restaurant in Europe it just feels weird trying to use Japanese, so I feel more comfortable picking the hardest option simply because it's assumed I'll speak German. I think I just feel paranoid I won't be understood because the staff are expecting to hear German from me.
I am having trouble with ü and u both with pronunciation and hearing the difference. I too never bothered learning a proper French u at school. I think I started to get a better approximation of the vowel quality after listening to and repeating a lot of Japanese but it's still not great. Of course, in French and Japanese you only have one u type vowel to worry about, but in German there are two so it's much more important to get them both right. In the session I had with a tutor, I received a lot more corrections on the German u, particularly when it's long e.g. in words like "die Kuh", than I did on the ü. I'm happy to trust that these kinds of corrections will help me get it right over time and hopefully this will also help me to distinguish better when I hear them. At present, when I am using my Assimil I really make the effort to try and hear the difference when I listen to the audio with the text, but it's difficult for now. And yes, I can't wait to go back to Germany. I'm already thinking about booking another trip this autumn, just need to look at my budget first! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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