Slow Learning: French and Hindi

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Komma
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Location: Germany
Languages: German (N); learning actively: Japanese (beginner); learning passively: English (probably C1/2), French (false beginner); on halt: Spanish (beginner)
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/vi ... =15&t=1067
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby Komma » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:37 am

Hey Jeffers,
yay on learning German ;)

Although I am no real learner, but native speaker of German, I might have at least some suggestions.
If you like the fantasy genre, maybe the Tintenherz-Trilogy is something you want to try. There also is (or was) a reading group here in this forum which reads the books. On Audible you can get the uncut audiobook (probably it is also available elsewhere.. I once got CDs with it..). Actually it's a children's book, but actually Harry Potter is so as well and still adults like it the same :D

EDIT: just a few other books that just came to my mind: Book by Michael Ende. E.g. Die unendliche Geschichte (neverending story), Momo

I am not sure whether that might be a hook like le petit prince, but I thought I'd share my thoughts anyway.

Good luck ;)
1 x
: 38 / 113 Assimil French - passive
: 5 / 40 Language Transfer
: 20 / 81 Le petit Prince
: 0 / 52 Grammaire progressive - intermédiaire
: 0 / 28 Vocabulaire progressf - débutant

jeffers
Blue Belt
Posts: 848
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 4:12 pm
Location: UK
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Hindi (A2-B1)

Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19785
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby jeffers » Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:15 am

Komma wrote:Hey Jeffers,
yay on learning German ;)

Although I am no real learner, but native speaker of German, I might have at least some suggestions.
If you like the fantasy genre, maybe the Tintenherz-Trilogy is something you want to try. There also is (or was) a reading group here in this forum which reads the books. On Audible you can get the uncut audiobook (probably it is also available elsewhere.. I once got CDs with it..). Actually it's a children's book, but actually Harry Potter is so as well and still adults like it the same :D

EDIT: just a few other books that just came to my mind: Book by Michael Ende. E.g. Die unendliche Geschichte (neverending story), Momo

I am not sure whether that might be a hook like le petit prince, but I thought I'd share my thoughts anyway.

Good luck ;)


Thank you Komma. Input from a native speaker is very welcome because one of my criteria is that it should be something well-known among native speakers. I've had my eye on the Tintenherz trilogy because of mentions in the forums, and I've discovered that if I have the book on Kindle and the audiobook on Audible they can synchronise so that the text will be highlighted as the audio progresses. I'll also have a look at the books of Michael Ende. Momo was a book that popped up on my radar when I last studied German (5-6 years ago).

By the way, the French book that helped me was Le Petit Nicolas not Le petit prince. If you are somewhere between A2 and B1 in French, then there are a whole series of Petit Nicolas books for you to discover if you haven't already.

EDIT: could you comment on the Rico und Oskar series at all? They look good, and again they are available on both Kindle and Audible here in the UK.
Last edited by jeffers on Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
0 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

jeffers
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Languages: Speaks: English (N), Hindi (A2-B1)

Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19785
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby jeffers » Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:32 am

Gemuse wrote:Namaste Jeffers, good to hear from you again. I'm glad you had a blast in India.

I have unfortunately lost a lot of my Hindi, and I want to regain what was lost.

Here is a resource link that was posted by someone here:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/mideast/hindi/stories.html
(My current level is somewhere between intermediate and advanced.)

There are also some Indrajal comics scans here:
http://indrajal-online.blogspot.de/
Some in Hindi (look under Hindi IJC)


Thank you for those suggestions. I've used the beginner and intermediate stories from the NYU site, but I'll have to have a closer look at the Indrajal comic site. I ignored those comics when I was a kid in India, but they are cultural icons and worth exploring.

As an old hand at learning German, do you have any book + audio suggestions for me? Anything you found really helpful, interesting or fun would be great!
0 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

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Peluche
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby Peluche » Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:48 pm

jeffers wrote:Thank you for those suggestions. I've used the beginner and intermediate stories from the NYU site, but I'll have to have a closer look at the Indrajal comic site. I ignored those comics when I was a kid in India, but they are cultural icons and worth exploring.

As an old hand at learning German, do you have any book + audio suggestions for me? Anything you found really helpful, interesting or fun would be great!


For German, I (and several others) found Assimil+Hugo German to be a great combo.
Assimil: for audio and feel for the language.
Hugo German in 3 months: for a more formal language study. You can choose to just get the book, it is quite inexpensive.

For quick access to grammar and verb tables and general reference, I found the following book to be very useful:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Compl ... 0008141789
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This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

jeffers
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Languages: Speaks: English (N), Hindi (A2-B1)

Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19785
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby jeffers » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:01 pm

Gemuse wrote:For German, I (and several others) found Assimil+Hugo German to be a great combo.
Assimil: for audio and feel for the language.
Hugo German in 3 months: for a more formal language study. You can choose to just get the book, it is quite inexpensive.

For quick access to grammar and verb tables and general reference, I found the following book to be very useful:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Compl ... 0008141789


Sorry, I meant literature, not courses. I have plenty of course material available (Michel Thomas Foundation + Advanced, Teach Yourself Beginner's German and Regular, Warum Nicht, Assimil) but I'm planning to spend more time listening to and reading literature than working on courses.
0 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

Komma
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Posts: 146
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:00 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: German (N); learning actively: Japanese (beginner); learning passively: English (probably C1/2), French (false beginner); on halt: Spanish (beginner)
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/vi ... =15&t=1067
x 155

Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby Komma » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:37 pm

jeffers wrote:By the way, the French book that helped me was Le Petit Nicolas not Le petit prince. If you are somewhere between A2 and B1 in French, then there are a whole series of Petit Nicolas books for you to discover if you haven't already.

Oops. I just remembered "Le petit" and in my head I made "le petit prince" from that :oops:

jeffers wrote:EDIT: could you comment on the Rico und Oskar series at all? They look good, and again they are available on both Kindle and Audible here in the UK.

I personally had to google that series, but to me it looks very nice as well. I only noticed a film about that series last time I was at the cinema. And it has been awarded the "Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis" (prize for youth/ young adult literature), so I guess it's widely known. At the time as it came out I just was more interested in fantasy, so that's probably why I haven't noticed that at all. But if it looks good to you then go for it.
2 x
: 38 / 113 Assimil French - passive
: 5 / 40 Language Transfer
: 20 / 81 Le petit Prince
: 0 / 52 Grammaire progressive - intermédiaire
: 0 / 28 Vocabulaire progressf - débutant

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Elenia
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby Elenia » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:20 pm

Komma wrote:Hey Jeffers,
yay on learning German ;)

Although I am no real learner, but native speaker of German, I might have at least some suggestions.
If you like the fantasy genre, maybe the Tintenherz-Trilogy is something you want to try. There also is (or was) a reading group here in this forum which reads the books. On Audible you can get the uncut audiobook (probably it is also available elsewhere.. I once got CDs with it..). Actually it's a children's book, but actually Harry Potter is so as well and still adults like it the same :D

EDIT: just a few other books that just came to my mind: Book by Michael Ende. E.g. Die unendliche Geschichte (neverending story), Momo

I am not sure whether that might be a hook like le petit prince, but I thought I'd share my thoughts anyway.

Good luck ;)


I haven't tried to read Momo, although I do have it on my bookshelf. However, I found Die unendliche Geschichte to be quite a considerable step up in difficulty from Tintenherz. I would definitely suggest working your way through Tintenherz first, maybe even the whole trilogy, before going on to Michael Ende. Another problem with Die unendliche Geschichte is that there is no audio book, just a radio play.

The Tintenherz read-along is still going on. We should be starting chapter 21 next week, but many of us (including me, the organiser) are behind. If you do decide to read it, and find yourself blasting through the chapters, feel free to join us. I try to keep the first post updated with what chapter we are on, but you can also message me.

This thread started by Expugnator might also give you a few ideas, although the books might be a bit more advanced. As I mentioned there, however, Cornelia Funke does have a few eligible middle-grade books.
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jeffers
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Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby jeffers » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:58 pm

Thanks Elenia, helpful ideas! I have actually looked over your Tintenherz thread with a bit of longing, but I am very much a false beginner in German, so if I do start on Tintenherz it will most likely be towards the end of the Super Challenge. For the time being I'm starting with some easy readers and then I want to start on some native literature which is a bit shorter than Tintenherz, but not really children's books. I'm leaning towards the Rico and Oskar books as my first books after readers.
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:49 am

jeffers wrote:My main focus right now is German, partly because I had neglected it for so long and partly because I have an upcoming trip to Germany. I still listen to French music almost every day, and I poke around on Hindi news or blog sites on an irregular basis. But until the 4th of July I intend to keep 90% of my language study on German.

I'm acting like a beginner even though I've studied German before, because right now I'm just trying to ramp things up from a state of neglect. I'm doing 2-3 lessons of Duolingo most days, listening to a lesson of Warum Nicht? twice each day, and when I walk the dog I've been listening to 2 lessons from Radio D Teil 2. In my previous German studies I did almost no reading, although I had always intended to, so I've been reading the German Easy Reader by Brian Smith, which is built around the 500 most frequent words. The stories are, as you might imagine, awfully dull, but it's pretty easy to read at a good pace and it only takes about 10 minutes to read a chapter. In addition I've been listening a lot to the music of Von Brücken and Jupiter Jones.

Radio D and Warum Nicht? are two Deutsche Welle radio courses by the same author. Warum Nicht? is more like a traditional course, building grammar and vocabulary at a steady pace, but Radio D feels a bit more random in this respect; one lesson we have the perfect tense explained, the next lesson the dative case. I think Warum Nicht? will be more useful to a beginner because it is more systematic, but Radio D is an excellent course for other reasons. Although it is narrated in English, it reminds me of French in Action in the sense that it immerses the listener in German conversations clearly above their level and so gets you used to learning to listen for clues to meaning, context, etc, in order to get the gist of a conversation rather than word for word meaning. In addition, as it follows the reporters around the country they introduce you to different regional accents and cultural practices. It is also more recent than Warum Nicht? and has a more interesting story and higher production values. If I had to choose one it would be Radio D because it's more interesting, but as they are both free, I'm happy to use both.

Once the 1st of May rolls around, I intend to switch the balance from German courses to Super Challenge activities of reading and watching. I'll probably start the Easy Reader from the beginning, and then go on to the same author's Pre-Intermediate Reader (based on the 1000 most common words). For listening I'll start with the audio from the Easy Reader, and then see what else I can find.

Here's a question for other learners of German. When I studied French, my greatest discovery was the book and audiobook of Le Petit Nicolas. Although both were well above my level at the time, the stories were so engaging, and the audiobook was read so well that I found myself laughing out loud often. This really "broke the seal" for both listening and reading in French which soon became my main study activities. Can you suggest something similar in German? The most important criteria are that there should be a book and audiobook available, and the stories should be accessible even if they aren't particularly easy. If they are really funny and also well-known cultural icons, so much the better!


Hey Jeffers,

Thanks for the overview of Deutsche Welle's Warum Nicht? as well as the comparison with Radio D and Wieso Nicht?. I own Wieso Nicht as well, and assumed it was an easier course (lower on the difficulty scale as per CEFRL). Guess I was wrong there. Like most of my courses I currently am on a mission to get through everything I own (one day including all my German courses too), but at that rate i'm going, that's never going to happen unless my rate changes or I let go of my overly ambitious project. Either way I think I will still some of the DW material out some day in the future, so it's nice to get some insight from a learner of German.

Speaking of courses that remind you somewhat of French in Action I also own a rather comprehensive German course by the name of Fokus Deutsch. As with Destinos and French in Action, Fokus Deutsch was an "Annenburg/CPB Project" - what this means exactly I'm not sure. I suspect funding for these three courses in the USA was made available via the same avenues so that the video series could be filmed. Like the other two courses WGBH Boston was involved also, but unlike them (of course), the Goethe-Institut was also involved. We may have discussed this German course at some point (I don't remember- I know i've mentioned it here and there but where exactly on the forum in what context I don't recall exactly). The video series of Fokus Deutsch contains 36 episodes, each 15 minutes in length. They can be watched online for free (Youtube, prob elsewhere as well). The series doesn't appear to be as well known as FIA or Destinos, nor does it get as much attention on Amazon (ratings are hit and miss, but the poor rating i've seen are due to minor things such as not receiving the right product - delivery issue- which I personally feel is unfair for any books/products to be judged as per Amazon's/postal service issues). Transcripts can be found for free as well. Okay enough ranting about course, which you've already stated you're not too keen on doing too many... (typical me)
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Komma
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Posts: 146
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:00 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: German (N); learning actively: Japanese (beginner); learning passively: English (probably C1/2), French (false beginner); on halt: Spanish (beginner)
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/vi ... =15&t=1067
x 155

Re: Slow Learning: French, Hindi, German, Koine and Sanskrit log

Postby Komma » Sat Apr 30, 2016 9:51 am

Elenia wrote:Another problem with Die unendliche Geschichte is that there is no audio book, just a radio play.


I have to correct Elenia. At least on audible.de they also have an unabridged version.
2 x
: 38 / 113 Assimil French - passive
: 5 / 40 Language Transfer
: 20 / 81 Le petit Prince
: 0 / 52 Grammaire progressive - intermédiaire
: 0 / 28 Vocabulaire progressf - débutant


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