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American learning German via Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4505 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 4 24 July 2012 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||
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It's fair to say my command of Spanish now is better than my German had ever been. That is the difference between one year of college-level Spanish versus two years of high school German. Not incidentally, it has been twenty years since I studied German.
My plan, therefore, is to delve back into German by way of Spanish. I will bring my German back up to a conversational level and, at the same time, review and expand upon my Spanish. All of my flash cards will have a Spanish word or sentence on one side, and the German upon the other. I estimate my Spanish vocabulary at something around 1200-1800 words, but (as with any university course) they are often grouped by subject matter rather than by utility, and place an emphasis on acquiring verb infinitives rather than learning verb tenses. I know how to say Wednesday in Spanish (miércoles) although it is the 3,431st most common word, though we barely covered the verb haber (#11, essential for verbs that are the equivalent of English have done, had done, will have done, etc). When I create my Anki flash cards, I will emphasize the most common Spanish words in the hope that these will roughly correspond with common German words, or at least with useful German concepts. My tools at present: Anki, several Spanish dictionaries (including a Spanish frequency dictionary), several German dictionaries, first-year college Spanish textbook. Tools to acquire: A German frequency dictionary (to catch any common words missed by my method), Spanish music and film, German music and film. Listening will come after I have reacquired German vocabulary and grammar. First goal: Analyze Spanish word frequency; put together Anki cards that utilize the 100 most-common Spanish words in various sentences. Second goal: Expand the deck (or create a second deck) that moves into the 250 most-common words. Third goal: The 500 most-common words. Fourth goal: The 1000 most-common words. In Spanish, the most-common 1000 words should cover between 75%-80% of spoken and written language, which is the stuff I'll need to emphasize most. After I hit the 1,000 mark, I'll set other goals (watching films, listening to the news, reading the newspaper, and so on, for both languages). Since I enjoy numbers as much as I appreciate language, I'll post my analysis here in the hopes that somebody might find it interesting. The chart below suggests I should begin my deck by emphasizing the grammatical glue — articles, pronouns and prepositions — and load up on nouns in later expansions. It also suggests that verbs and adjectives should appear with some regularity; they comprise about 1-in-4 and 1-in-6 of the first 1200 words, respectively.
Finally, if anybody else is interested in tackling this with me, I can share the Spanish-German decks as I make them. Edited by Hertz on 25 July 2012 at 10:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4519 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 2 of 4 24 July 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck! I like your systematic approach to learning German. I hope you succeed in your goals ^_^
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4820 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3 of 4 25 July 2012 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
I appreciate your numerical analysis. Some years ago, for an exercise, I analysed the German feminine nouns to see what proportion of them ended in "e". (I downloaded a text dictionary from, I think, the University of Chemnitz, which you could do at that time). It was mainly an exercise in using regular expressions, on a Unix system. I can't remember the results now, and don't have them on this computer, but it certainly was a very high proportion. Although I have studied Spanish, and continue to try to improve my German, the latter is far ahead of my Spanish (which is "on hold" for the foreseeable future), so I wouldn't be learning Spanish through German. Just possibly the other way around I suppose, although I'm not sure if I'm ambitious enough to learn via other than my native language. As a matter of interest, when I bought my Sharp electronic English-German/German- English dictionary, it also happened to come with Spanish-German/German-Spanish. I guess something like that might be useful if you could find one. I bought it in Germany though, and when I looked later, it didn't look all that easy to buy it (or something similar) online. (This one is a PW-E430 with a Langenscheidt dictionary installed. At that time, you could get the same hardware with a different dictionary option - I now forget which). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4505 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 4 25 July 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I have seen a few advertisements for Español-Alemán (and Deutsch-Spanisch) dictionaries on Amazon, montmorency, but these have been electronic versions. I'm going to wait for a paperback, if I can find one for not too much money. Either a Spanish or a German edition would do.
I am still working on creating my flash cards. So far I have created about 20 sample sentences in Spanish using 77 unique words. I have 7 verbs in 24 conjugations: present indicative, present continuous, gerunds, infinitives, and participles, attached to multiple pronouns (including vosotros). Later I will include preterit, imperfect, and future tense in this deck. Even though I have yet to do the German translation, the exercise is serving one purpose: I am flexing my Spanish, practicing phrases and learning to create good sentences. I knew I wouldn't be able to create a deck of nothing but the 100 most-common words; most of those words are grammatical glue. I'm choosing useful words from among the top 250 or so, intending to fill in others as I go. Unlike my university course, I don't intend to neglect the common words, or skimp on the tenses! But ... whew, it is a lot of work coming up with all of this. I suppose it counts as "Spanish study," so that's a plus. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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