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Letting go of German | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maritimeguy Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5640 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: French, English*, German | Message 1 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Have any of you regretted learning German?I ask this question more to North Americans than anybody.Although I have a strong level of competence,I find myself wishing I had chosen Spanish instead.What are your thoughts and experiences?
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| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6367 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Of course not. Now, I don't know any other language "fluently" but I learn languages because I love them, not necessarily for practical reasons, though that certainly influences my decisions. Even if not many people you know speak German, you can use it to explore the culture more in depth, or even use it to learn other languages.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Every day. ;)
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| maritimeguy Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5640 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: French, English*, German | Message 4 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
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It just seems that most Germans speak good English anyway and since I am not moving to Germany I have no real strong motivation to keep it up.On the other hand,I seem to meet alot of Spanish speaking immigrants who can not speak English at all.I volunteer as an ESL tutor at my local libary.We have several students in our program from Spanish speaking countries and I could really have used it to help them when they needed it.The only German in our program is an English tutor not a student.Actually, she has been tutoring a japanese student for quite awhile and her student seems to be speaking English with a German accent! : )German just seems so hard to maintain at the advanced level.I can go on German newspaper sites and still see words I have never seen before even though I have been studying for 4 years and have probably memorized about 40-50,000 German words.I still have problems.That does not happen in french or Spanish.I have no problems with the verb tenses,grammar or the dreaded German declension but the vocabulary is really hell sometimes. Edited by maritimeguy on 29 June 2009 at 2:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Loopy Newbie United States Joined 5710 days ago 37 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:47am | IP Logged | ||
Have you thought about reading classics in their native tongue? There are some works of art that cannot retain its value in another language (Goethe's Faust being one of them.) While it is true that a majority of Germans know English, only 56% do. Even given those statistics, I am not for sure if they "really" know it. German is good for being outside of Germany as well. Take a look at this map. Do what you like, but I don't think I could put so much effort into a language, and then just let it die away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LtM Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5859 days ago 130 posts - 223 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 6 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't imagine letting a language go, because each one is like an old friend to me, after so much time spent with it. That said, however, you know your situation better than anyone, and perhaps it's time to put German on hold for a while (if you haven't already).
You might consider trying to learn "some" Spanish (there's no law that says you have to make a full commitment to the language, honest ;). It's okay to decide to learn just a "little bit" in order to see what you may have missed out on by choosing German instead of Spanish earlier in your life. If you do decide to explore Spanish (there's a huge amount of beginning Spanish material online), realize that your French will help you here -- its grammar is pretty similar to that of Spanish (setting aside a few rules for subjunctive usage and other odds and ends), and they both share a lot of Latin-based vocabulary. You may decide that Spanish is really interesting and you want to commit more time to it (and it's *never* too late to start learning another language). Conversely, you may realize that another language isn't going to work for you right now. Either way, it could help you to make some peace with your past choices. Best of luck, whatever you decide... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maritimeguy Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5640 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: French, English*, German | Message 7 of 22 29 June 2009 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I think you are right.thanks for your advice.I think I will explore Spanish for a couple of months and see how it goes. THANKS :) Edited by maritimeguy on 29 June 2009 at 3:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrenchLanguage Senior Member Germany Joined 5735 days ago 122 posts - 135 votes | Message 8 of 22 29 June 2009 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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"It just seems that most Germans speak good English anyway "
I think this isnt true, at all. It only applies to college students and business men/engineers(etc.) imho. Where I live (city of 100,000 and commute to a city of 500,000) its not like you can speak English with everyone. If you go to a college you probably can with most, and those people (who graduated form college and work in business/marketing/etc.) will later be able to speak English, obviously. But the rest isnt really too good at it for the most part. I have someone state before that contrary to popular belief he thought the grasp of English of Germans sucked (lol). He probably did not mingle with a college or business crowd. Germany isnt Amsterdam or Sweden, etc. where (Ive heard multiple times) most people speak pretty much fluent English. Do you seriously know 50,000 words, though? Im not sure if I know that many! Maybe if you lose interest in it, you should forget about 40,000 of those words and just keep it up at an ordinary level. I used to regret having learned french for a while (now Im glad I did ;)), but it never was a big problem, because I dont even practice to keep my level of French up (Im totally busy with college and all and my practice to keep it up during the last 2 years has probably been 30 minutes/week at best...listening to music and taking some notes in french when i feel like it). But I probably know more like 5,000 - 10,000 words...I can imagine it might be harder at 40-50 thousand lol. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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