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Has anyone learnt German as an adult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| blackcherries Groupie Canada Joined 4749 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Studies: German | Message 1 of 53 03 December 2011 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello. I'm new to this forum.
I am in the process of choosing my first second language to learn. I did choose German but I am rethinking the choice. The more I research about German the more I feel maybe I should choose an easier language to start. I'm afraid German will kill my thirst for learning languages. I'm interested as to how you went about learning German efficiently. Has anyone been successful in learning to speak, write and read German fluently though they only started learning in adulthood. This blog post was especially disheartening: http://nothingforungood.com/2008/05/12/dont-learn-german/ All the points made are valid from what I know already...what do you think? Is German worth it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 53 03 December 2011 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||
Learning German is worth it if you want to learn German. Spanish is worth it if you want to learn Spanish. If you don't, it's not worth the effort. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 53 03 December 2011 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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The blog post doesn't seem serious. I would take it more as tongue-in-cheek.
You could make a list like this for any language. Edited by newyorkeric on 03 December 2011 at 3:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| blackcherries Groupie Canada Joined 4749 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 53 03 December 2011 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Oops, just realized you said the "blog" was not serious not my post. Hee. Edited by blackcherries on 03 December 2011 at 4:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Humdereel Octoglot Groupie United States Joined 4979 days ago 90 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written), Turkish, Persian, Urdu Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 53 03 December 2011 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see why not. Many people learn languages without age being too much of a barrier. You're in your late twenties. Why not?
I have no experience with German, but I started learning Persian at around that age, and I'm now at a good level of proficiency. Why not German? I learned Arabic when I was in my teens, so perhaps it's not the best example, but if Arabic is possible, then I'm assuming German is as well, given that you have the motivation and drive for it. I agree with one of the earlier replies that the blog article doesn't seem to be serious, indeed rather tongue-in-cheek. And even if it wasn't, some of the reasons were invalid. Don't learn German because Germans supposedly know English well? Sorry, but one of the reasons to learn a language is to get deeper into the culture. Some Arabs know English well, but you won't enjoy Arabic culture in its full glory without having some knowledhe of Arabic. The same can be said of German and any other language. The umlauts tough to pronounce? I'm sure there are many non-natives who pronounce these well. I wouldn't be discouraged. If you're very interested in German, go ahead and tackle German. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 7 of 53 03 December 2011 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Here's one for Japanese - http://www.enemieslist.net/japanese/, although that one is even more obviously tongue-in-cheek. This one for Chinese, http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html, actually sounds like it was written in earnest, but keep in mind that the website has an agenda - promoting Chinese romanization. As for the topic, all I can say is that the idea that adults can't reach fluency in foreign languages needs to be killed with fire. I recommend reading a little from this site, particularly the articles in the "Mental Tools" section - http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-t he-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-a nd-to-fluency. Sure, this guy's method is highly controversial and a lot of the articles only have relevance to Japanese, but many of his posts are highly motivating and apply to learning any language. And think, if this guy managed to reach fluency in Japanese, a completely unrelated language with a notoriously complex writing system, in his early 20s, then doing the same with a language that's in the same branch of the Germanic family as English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages) and has a 60% lexical similarity with it (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=deu) should be anything but impossible. Edit: However, if you have zero interest in German culture, literature or media, then I would suggest reconsidering. After all, if the process of gaining understanding of German is not rewarding to you in and of itself, then all those grammatical horrors that the blog post describes will be nothing but pain and suffering. If you are learning languages for its own sake and don't have any cultural preferences, then I would suggest starting with a simpler one. Esperanto is about as simple as it gets, but if you don't like it there are other options. This list (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Di fficulty_for_English_Speakers) should give you an idea. I suspect that out of the "Category I" languages Afrikaans should be the easiest one, but there probably aren't that many resources. In that case I'd probably suggest Dutch, Swedish, Spanish or French. Edited by vonPeterhof on 03 December 2011 at 12:28pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mjhowie1992 Diglot Newbie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 53 04 December 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I am going to begin studying German at University (along side with French) in February 2012, at I am 19. I don't
know if you properly want to consider me an Adult, but I will be interested to see how much I learn. I really want to make the most of it, and go to Germany for an intensive course at LEAST once throughout Uni, so I really plan to become highly proficient in it. I am not taking anything anybody says about German's horrific grammar and pronunciation seriously, because every language will prove a challenge to everybody sooner or later. Once just needs to learn to get past those initial shocks and blocks to get into the rich, beautiful heart of the language and learn to love it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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