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Doviende’s German log (TAC2010 - Team J) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6268 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 33 of 52 06 December 2009 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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You could also start listening to a German audiobook version of something you already read as a book. Then you should know most of the words and the happenings, and the focus is on whether you can recall things quickly enough to go with the speaker's reading speed.
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| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6650 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 34 of 52 06 December 2009 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck!
I can see the 1 million words challenge become our next hit on the forum ;) How many books does it translate to roughly? Having a number that goes up is more important than many would like to admit. I love it with Heisig. ---- nvm I found the answer in another thread Edited by Kubelek on 06 December 2009 at 10:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5784 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 35 of 52 10 December 2009 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Hmm, let's see. If a book is about 300 pages, and each page has maybe 300 - 350 words on it, then that's around 100000 words per novel. so 1 million words is about 10 novels. Of course, if you read bigger books then it's fewer books overall. For each of my books, I do a separate estimate of the words-per-page count so that I can be a little bit more accurate.
In other news, I had a big milestone today. I went to my first "German Meetup", where a bunch of German speakers were meeting at a local bar. When I got there, I first noticed that the music was turned waaaaaaay up, but once I sat down at the table I found that I could actually hear and understand what people were saying around me. This has been a big goal for me for a long time, because the last time I was in Germany, I went to a bar with a bunch of German friends and I understood absolutely nothing of what was said the entire night. This time it was great, though. We talked about all sorts of topics. I even talked about some science topics, since someone mentioned the movie "2012" and expressed concerns about the world ending in 2012, so I had to explain to him (in German) how that was all nonsense and the world would continue on just fine. It was a big confidence booster overall, because I sort of had this idea that I would crash and burn when confronted with real German speakers, but it turned out to be even easier than understanding all the audiobooks and TV that I've been watching. My speaking definitely still needs some work, but I actually had one guy compliment me on my German grammar, which was actually my biggest fear. I was amazed that it was easier for some of them to have a conversation with me in German than in English, because they were uncertain of their English speaking abilities, but my German listening abilities were quite sufficient. I managed to make myself understood in all situations, although i stumbled a lot. I feel much better now, since this means that I'll be just fine once I get to Berlin in May. With 5+ more months to study, I'll have lots of time to improve until then. It also means that I can pour more effort into Swedish and Esperanto without worrying too much about German. If I just keep watching TV and reading books in German, then I'll be fine. I'll definitely be going to more German meetups too. with a little more practice, I might even consider changing my status to "speaks German" soon. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| draoicht Groupie Ireland Joined 6111 days ago 89 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 36 of 52 10 December 2009 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Doviende As regards wordcounts for your novels, I found a way to estimate the amount of words using the length of it’s audiobook. I have some novels in word and pdf so I was able to do a wordcount on them and then I worked out an average of the words per hour spoken in the audiobook. It worked out at an average of 8400 words per hour, so a 10 hour audiobook would have approximately 84000 words, 20 hours would have 168,000 words and so on. This was for Spanish novels and while it will not give you an exact wordcount it’s not far off. I only have one audiobook in German, Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen, the book has 81412 words and the audiobook is 10 hours 17 minutes long which works out at 7916 words per hour. Its not far off the Spanish number so maybe the same number works for German? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5784 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 37 of 52 10 December 2009 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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So far I've only recorded the number of words I've actually read on a page with my eyes. For audiobooks, I count the time spent as "listening" time. If I read the paper book while listening, then I count both listening and words read.
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| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5784 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 38 of 52 22 December 2009 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm almost finished Der kleine Hobbit, and I'll probably switch back to Harry Potter again soon. I've only watched a little bit of TV lately. It seems like I haven't really been able to get many hours of studying in, because I've been busy with other things...although I've also wasted a good amount of time surfing the web lately too. I really enjoyed watching the 11th season of South Park in German, so I hope to get some more of that soon.
I'm also looking forward to going through Der kleine Hobbit again, as I follow along with the Swedish version. The German version contained plenty of words that I didn't know, and I didn't spend that much time looking things up, so I'd like to go back through it just to gather some of that vocabulary. I've really neglected my Anki work lately, and I think it's hindered my vocabulary development. Another thing on my list is some pronunciation practice with Chorusing. Perhaps I'll grab a few sentences out of my Harry Potter audiobooks and try to match my pronunciation to those. hours of tv+listening: 412.5 total words read: 932700 Edited by doviende on 22 December 2009 at 1:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lisa. Newbie Germany Joined 5246 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: German | Message 39 of 52 25 December 2009 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Doviende,
I like reading ur blogs and decided to also use an excel spreadsheet to chart my progress. I received a book called "Der die was?" by David Bergmann as a gift. You might like it- about an American who moved to Germany and his experiences with learning the language. He wrote it all in German. Cheers! Lisa 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5784 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 40 of 52 27 May 2010 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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After a long hiatus, I'm back working on German. Lately I've taken a break from languages a bit to pursue two of my other passions more: cycling and birding. I just got back from a 16 day bike tour through southern British Columbia, near the west coast of Canada.
Next week I leave for Germany. I'll be arriving in Frankfurt on June 1, and then I'll spend two weeks riding around and exploring while I try to make my way to München. Eventually I'll be riding through Austria to Slovakia, and then back up through Germany to Denmark and Sweden. By October I should be back in Germany and I plan to stay somewhere (probably Berlin) for about 8 months. I currently have a 1-year visa, so I'll be in Germany until May 2011 probably. To get back into German mode, I've been listening to quite a few hours of audiobooks. This has really helped, and I'm quite excited to arrive in Germany next week. I find that if I listen to more than 2 hours of audio each day, then I spend the rest of the day with random German phrases popping into my head, so everything starts to feel a bit more natural. I'll post more info here soon, once I arrive and start travelling. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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