Someone on this forum linked to an article stressing the importance of pronunciation the other day. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for it again this morning!)Seneca wrote:...My biggest reason for wanting to use a news resource with audio is to internalize how German should sound before reading daily news quietly potentially messing up German pronunciation in my head.
Dabbling in Deutsch
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
I unfortunately have just had a very drastic change in life circumstances. I am not going to be able to be very proactive with my German for a long, long time.
Does anyone have any advice? Today was day 35 of German Without Toil. So I have made headway but am not super far. Would just reviewing only what I have done so far be a good idea? I don't think I have it in me to press forward and learn new things, but quite a bit has been covered already. Maybe I should just try to maintain what little I have and then if/when I can do more, I am not starting from scratch?
Does anyone have any advice? Today was day 35 of German Without Toil. So I have made headway but am not super far. Would just reviewing only what I have done so far be a good idea? I don't think I have it in me to press forward and learn new things, but quite a bit has been covered already. Maybe I should just try to maintain what little I have and then if/when I can do more, I am not starting from scratch?
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
I am back to German
Took a few month's hiatus from here for personal reasons, and came back recently mostly posting in threads and making topics just to "learn about learning." I had to cancel my trip to Portugal because of some finances, but alas. Here we are. It isn't wanderlust if you didn't actually stick with a new language long-term and came back to one you were interested in to start, right?
Anyway, no real update on what I am doing except to say I don't think I will be starting back up on German Without Toil. Having been over a month in, it is a bit discouraging to start from scratch, and I think there was too long of a break to pick up where I left off.
I will post once I figure out my strategy. Nice to be back to aiming to make a foreign language part of my daily life.
Took a few month's hiatus from here for personal reasons, and came back recently mostly posting in threads and making topics just to "learn about learning." I had to cancel my trip to Portugal because of some finances, but alas. Here we are. It isn't wanderlust if you didn't actually stick with a new language long-term and came back to one you were interested in to start, right?
Anyway, no real update on what I am doing except to say I don't think I will be starting back up on German Without Toil. Having been over a month in, it is a bit discouraging to start from scratch, and I think there was too long of a break to pick up where I left off.
I will post once I figure out my strategy. Nice to be back to aiming to make a foreign language part of my daily life.
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
I would suggest putting those first 30 lessons of GWT on an mp3 player and listening to them in your car, while gardening, etc. Your brain already owns that material--don't let it slip away. Revise it "without toil" and then move to the next thing.
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
Seneca wrote:Anyway, no real update on what I am doing except to say I don't think I will be starting back up on German Without Toil. Having been over a month in, it is a bit discouraging to start from scratch, and I think there was too long of a break to pick up where I left off.
I was in a similar situation: I ended up having a month-long break from German without Toil after reaching Lektion 37. When I returned to it, I simply reviewed the lessons I'd already done by listening to the audio, and checking the text for the few words I'd forgotten (surprisingly, I remembered maybe 95%). Then I carried on as normal from Lektion 38. I've also done the same with French without Toil and Russian without Toil, and had similar results after even longer breaks.
It's great that you're able to return to learning again. You seemed to be enjoying and making good progress with GwT, so it would be a shame to lose that now.
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
Since I have such a big collection of Linguaphone courses (though sadly have yet to find Afrikaans and was gipped with an incomplete Icelandic), I decided to use the 30-Lesson Linguaphone for German. Just to try it out.
Still early, but the course has potential. I will say, though, that I don't care much for the written and spoken exercises. They seem very lacking and not worth the trouble for me. One of the drills I do like is, after listening to the three sections, you listen to one subsection straight through and then it repeats with blanks for you to fill in the proper dialogue. It is a nice little test to see if you are paying attention or just going through the motions.
Google Music was being kind of a pain, but I was finally able to rip all the audio to a .flac and upload so I have one massive playlist with everything on it.
I quickly released that the pauses were long enough to be aggravating, though. So I went into audacity to do some tinkering. It is still a work in progress, but I am just making one track per lesson with reduced pauses. It makes it easier to review after going over the lesson the "by-the-book" way. I may incorporate the written and spoken exercises later on during review, but for now I feel like I am getting more out of re-listening and re-reading.
Oh, and to try to tamp down on my wanderlust, I owe a friend $250 if I don't study German a minimum of five days a week through May 31st. The parameters are pretty loose and is basically an honor system bet. But I figure I should be able to find study/native material combo I am happy with by then. If not, it will be a small price to pay to escape
Still early, but the course has potential. I will say, though, that I don't care much for the written and spoken exercises. They seem very lacking and not worth the trouble for me. One of the drills I do like is, after listening to the three sections, you listen to one subsection straight through and then it repeats with blanks for you to fill in the proper dialogue. It is a nice little test to see if you are paying attention or just going through the motions.
Google Music was being kind of a pain, but I was finally able to rip all the audio to a .flac and upload so I have one massive playlist with everything on it.
I quickly released that the pauses were long enough to be aggravating, though. So I went into audacity to do some tinkering. It is still a work in progress, but I am just making one track per lesson with reduced pauses. It makes it easier to review after going over the lesson the "by-the-book" way. I may incorporate the written and spoken exercises later on during review, but for now I feel like I am getting more out of re-listening and re-reading.
Oh, and to try to tamp down on my wanderlust, I owe a friend $250 if I don't study German a minimum of five days a week through May 31st. The parameters are pretty loose and is basically an honor system bet. But I figure I should be able to find study/native material combo I am happy with by then. If not, it will be a small price to pay to escape
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
I have yet to miss a day of study this go-round with German!
I am honestly unsure of the utility of clozemaster, but I like it if for no other reason than it is easy to hop on and do a few sets of new words or review old words so as to destroy any thoughts of procrastination and "I will study German later today."
Anyone else use it?
I am honestly unsure of the utility of clozemaster, but I like it if for no other reason than it is easy to hop on and do a few sets of new words or review old words so as to destroy any thoughts of procrastination and "I will study German later today."
Anyone else use it?
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
I just had a heck of a trip to Germany. Part of coming back to German after my break over Spanish was an impending trip there, and I just finished 5 days there.
A few takeaways:
1) Germans seemed supportive of my actual speaking of simple sentences. Not acting as if I spoke them too incorrectly.
2) There was a mixture of "clap real loud and pat the kid on the head giving him an attaboy" along with some responding immediately in near accent-less English.
3) The overwhelming response was to ask why I was learning German. I wonder if this is a common occurrence. It was not in a positive, "is it for the movies/literature/whatever" sort of way. But more like "why are you wasting your time?" kind of way. I even met up with a few couch surfers who, while really fun to hang out with, have separately left me minutes long voice clips on WhatsApp about how I am wasting my time learning German since anyone from a place I am likely to visit who would be open to chatting already speaks English, there are fantastic translations of any "classics" of German lit that I can read in English, and every great German film or TV show is quickly subtitled in English. It is a veritable whirlwind of rejection
I actually am returning to Germany again next week, and will be there for 7 days this time. I have less work going on and a few days set aside just for travel, so.....hopefully it is not too much more of the same, ha.
A few takeaways:
1) Germans seemed supportive of my actual speaking of simple sentences. Not acting as if I spoke them too incorrectly.
2) There was a mixture of "clap real loud and pat the kid on the head giving him an attaboy" along with some responding immediately in near accent-less English.
3) The overwhelming response was to ask why I was learning German. I wonder if this is a common occurrence. It was not in a positive, "is it for the movies/literature/whatever" sort of way. But more like "why are you wasting your time?" kind of way. I even met up with a few couch surfers who, while really fun to hang out with, have separately left me minutes long voice clips on WhatsApp about how I am wasting my time learning German since anyone from a place I am likely to visit who would be open to chatting already speaks English, there are fantastic translations of any "classics" of German lit that I can read in English, and every great German film or TV show is quickly subtitled in English. It is a veritable whirlwind of rejection
I actually am returning to Germany again next week, and will be there for 7 days this time. I have less work going on and a few days set aside just for travel, so.....hopefully it is not too much more of the same, ha.
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
Seneca wrote:I just had a heck of a trip to Germany. Part of coming back to German after my break over Spanish was an impending trip there, and I just finished 5 days there.
A few takeaways:
1) Germans seemed supportive of my actual speaking of simple sentences. Not acting as if I spoke them too incorrectly.
2) There was a mixture of "clap real loud and pat the kid on the head giving him an attaboy" along with some responding immediately in near accent-less English.
3) The overwhelming response was to ask why I was learning German. I wonder if this is a common occurrence. It was not in a positive, "is it for the movies/literature/whatever" sort of way. But more like "why are you wasting your time?" kind of way. I even met up with a few couch surfers who, while really fun to hang out with, have separately left me minutes long voice clips on WhatsApp about how I am wasting my time learning German since anyone from a place I am likely to visit who would be open to chatting already speaks English, there are fantastic translations of any "classics" of German lit that I can read in English, and every great German film or TV show is quickly subtitled in English. It is a veritable whirlwind of rejection
I actually am returning to Germany again next week, and will be there for 7 days this time. I have less work going on and a few days set aside just for travel, so.....hopefully it is not too much more of the same, ha.
It may have something to do with you being a native speaker of English. I can hardly imagine someone from other linguistic background getting this kind of responses to their study effort. It may also have something to do with the background of the people you encountered - for example a person who has studied foreign language and literature at a university would be extremely unlikely to claim you only need English in order to enjoy literature. What is somehow surprising is the sense of cultural inferiority emerging form the reactions you got. Would be more typical of Eastern/Central Europeans, I guess.
BTW, I've been living in Germany since late 2015 and no one has ever tried to switch to English while speaking with me despite the fact that my German is clearly not at a native like level. Perhaps coach surfers are somehow different, perhaps it is due to the size of my town (which, on the other hand, is very international with monolingual English speakers being not unusual).
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Re: Dabbling in Deutsch
"Why are you speaking German? We all speak English. This isn't France, you don't have to try." x5
Damned Germans and their great knowledge of English.
Damned Germans and their great knowledge of English.
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