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Has anyone learnt German as an adult?

  Tags: Age | Beginner | German
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53 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7  Next >>
Elexi
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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938 posts - 1840 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 33 of 53
08 December 2011 at 9:32am | IP Logged 
Just learn Hochdeutsch - that will be the least of your worries - put it this way, if you were learning English
would you learn Geordie?

I started learning German 2 years ago and I would say the hardest things I have encountered are getting the
word order right and case changes caused by prepositions. Given that I have also found that many German
people are far more grammatically precise than English speakers and will switch to English if you make a
small number of grammatical mistakes, it is probably worth focusing on grammar early on (or it could be that I
just know lots of pedants).
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blackcherries
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4749 days ago
41 posts - 48 votes
Studies: German

 
 Message 34 of 53
11 December 2011 at 2:45pm | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
People in Austria understand Hochdeutsch; so do people who speak Swiss-German.

You won't understand Austrians well if you only speak Hochdeutsch - see LanguageSponge's Austrian Frustration. On the other hand, if you were to learn a dialect, plenty of native German speakers wouldn't understand you.


Sigh, I was really looking foward to communicating with the Viennese. Is Viennese TV in Hochdeutsch? How about Swiss?

Is there a course for learning the Viennese dialect?
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blackcherries
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4749 days ago
41 posts - 48 votes
Studies: German

 
 Message 35 of 53
11 December 2011 at 2:47pm | IP Logged 
Elexi wrote:
Just learn Hochdeutsch - that will be the least of your worries - put it this way, if you were learning English
would you learn Geordie?

I started learning German 2 years ago and I would say the hardest things I have encountered are getting the
word order right and case changes caused by prepositions. Given that I have also found that many German
people are far more grammatically precise than English speakers and will switch to English if you make a
small number of grammatical mistakes, it is probably worth focusing on grammar early on (or it could be that I
just know lots of pedants).



What books etc. did you use on your quest to conquer German grammar? German grammar does look scary.
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blackcherries
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4749 days ago
41 posts - 48 votes
Studies: German

 
 Message 36 of 53
11 December 2011 at 2:50pm | IP Logged 
vonPeterhof wrote:
It will be understood - the standard German that is taught in schools is largely the same in all German-speaking countries. Now, whether or not you will understand them is a different question - even when they aren't speaking their dialects, the accents will be quite different from the Standard German of Germany, and there may be some words that are different (e.g. "potato" - "Kartoffel" in Germany, "Erdapfel" in Austria").


I'm curious as to how different the Berlin dialect is from the Munich one? Do they sound alike?
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vonPeterhof
Tetraglot
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Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German
Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish

 
 Message 37 of 53
11 December 2011 at 3:25pm | IP Logged 
blackcherries wrote:
I'm curious as to how different the Berlin dialect is from the Munich one? Do they sound alike?
No, they don't sound alike. The dialects in Germany can be divided into two large groups, Low German and High German (that's the other meaning of "Hochdeutsch" that mjhowie1992 mentioned), and the latter group can be divided into Central German and Upper German. Low German used to be spoken in Northern Germany as a separate literary language, but by now it is facing extinction and most people in Northern Germany speak standard German. Upper German is spoken in Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and a few other areas. Central German is spoken between the Low and Upper areas (here is a map of their historical distribution - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Continent al_West_Germanic_languages.png). Standard German (the first meaning of Hochdeutsch) is based on Central German dialects from the East, with some influences from other High and Low dialects. The Berlin dialect is a Central dialect with some substrate influence of Low German, so it isn't that different from standard German, and most people in Berlin probably speak standard German all the time anyway. The Munich dialect is an Austro-Bavarian dialect, part of the Upper German group, so it is at quite a distance from standard German. You can check out the Austro-Bavarian Wikipedia (http://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseitn) to see how different it is from standard German.
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Volte
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Senior Member
Switzerland
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Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
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 Message 38 of 53
11 December 2011 at 3:28pm | IP Logged 
blackcherries wrote:
Volte wrote:
People in Austria understand Hochdeutsch; so do people who speak Swiss-German.

You won't understand Austrians well if you only speak Hochdeutsch - see LanguageSponge's Austrian Frustration. On the other hand, if you were to learn a dialect, plenty of native German speakers wouldn't understand you.


Sigh, I was really looking foward to communicating with the Viennese. Is Viennese TV in Hochdeutsch? How about Swiss?

Is there a course for learning the Viennese dialect?


I haven't watched Austrian TV, so can't tell you off the top of my head. Learn Hochdeutsch. Swiss TV has a whole range; people always have Swiss accents, but how close they are to speaking Hochdeutsch (or an extreme variant of a dialect, on the other hand) varies.

When I said "you won't understand Austrians", I should have been more clear: you won't easily understand groups of Austrians talking to each other, even once you can easily do so in groups of people speaking Hochdeutsch (but a bit of exposure to Austrian German will clear this up for you - it'll be a lot easier to learn to understand than learning a whole new language). If the situation there is anything like in Switzerland, many of them will be able to individually accommodate you by speaking something more similar to Hochdeutsch when they realize it's the only way you'll understand them - and as long as they speak slowly and clearly, it won't be too bad, though the occasional regional word will still confuse you.

If you want to learn a dialect, unless you're living where it's spoken, it's easiest to learn Hochdeutsch first. Most materials I've seen for Swiss German are in Hochdeutsch.

Here's a bit of an analogy: understanding people speaking German dialects on the street with each other will be like trying to understand Geordie for you - it's an accent found in the UK, and the Englishman talking to the Geordie speaker can't understand him. People speaking Hochdeutsch with a Viennese or Swiss accent will be more like the baffled Englishman in that video is to you: you should understand them quite clearly quite quickly, once you understand German.

Trying to pick up a heavy regional accent would be a little odd (imagine someone studying English in, say, Japan, who decided he really wanted to sound like a South African or a New Zealander). Trying to pick up a dialect instead of Hochdeutsch to begin with, though, is a recipe for failure: there are tons of them, minimal learning materials, and one won't help you much with ones spoken a couple hundred kilometers away, while it would leave you cut off from speaking with people from other regions.


Edited by Volte on 11 December 2011 at 3:40pm
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floydak
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Slovakia
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 Message 39 of 53
11 December 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged 
nevertheless, "average" German spoken in Wien is by far closer to Hochdeutsch than German
spoken in Switzerland.
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blackcherries
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4749 days ago
41 posts - 48 votes
Studies: German

 
 Message 40 of 53
11 December 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged 
vonPeterhof wrote:
blackcherries wrote:
I'm curious as to how different the Berlin dialect is from the Munich one? Do they sound alike?
No, they don't sound alike. The dialects in Germany can be divided into two large groups, Low German and High German (that's the other meaning of "Hochdeutsch" that mjhowie1992 mentioned), and the latter group can be divided into Central German and Upper German. Low German used to be spoken in Northern Germany as a separate literary language, but by now it is facing extinction and most people in Northern Germany speak standard German. Upper German is spoken in Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and a few other areas. Central German is spoken between the Low and Upper areas (here is a map of their historical distribution - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Continent al_West_Germanic_languages.png). Standard German (the first meaning of Hochdeutsch) is based on Central German dialects from the East, with some influences from other High and Low dialects. The Berlin dialect is a Central dialect with some substrate influence of Low German, so it isn't that different from standard German, and most people in Berlin probably speak standard German all the time anyway. The Munich dialect is an Austro-Bavarian dialect, part of the Upper German group, so it is at quite a distance from standard German. You can check out the Austro-Bavarian Wikipedia (http://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseitn) to see how different it is from standard German.


Darn. The course I'm using uses a native from Munich. That means I'm actually learning the "Austro-Bav." dialect! Ahhhh...I want the Hochdeutsch accent.


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