Mastering French and German

[Eternal Foreigner]

Thankfully I think I'm past needing any explanations in English for French, but if you know of anything like that for German that would actually be really great. I already listened to the whole Language Transfer German last year.

GaryB has mentioned "The Easy German Podcast".

I'm a fan of the Easy German podcast, but don't be fooled too much by the name: it has quite natural conversations on many subjects, albeit a bit more slow and clear than natives would typically speak with each other, all in German with no English explanations.

If you want simpler language with English explanations, something like Coffee Break might be more appropriate; they have some beginner material and some slightly more advanced stuff like dialogues and stories. Or the Easy German videos on YouTube, which have English and German subtitles.

Excellent, I'll check them out, thanks!!

[tastyonions]

I'll second the rec for Easy German. The podcast is good stuff, though much better described as "Intermediate German" than "Easy."

[Eternal Foreigner]

Even despite taking a week off this month to sort some things out, I still managed to finish the book I was reading in French. I just finished the last chapter today (saved by the leap year lol).

When it comes to listening, I somehow surpassed my target of 20 hours. It was roughly 7.5h of series, and 13.5h of the Inner French podcast. Both have been immensely helpful, so I think they will be a major focus for me during the next two months.

Regarding German, as I mentioned I was playing some classic Nintendo games in German since the dialogue is pretty simple. Well, I didn't track how much I did this, but it was definitely quite a lot, and I noticed some progress. The enjoyment of playing the games really reduced the feeling of drudgery when having to do word look-ups for nearly every line of text. It's true that using video games has the caveat of sometimes involving stretches of gameplay without any text/dialogue. But this turned out to be a very nice factor, since they serve as a mental break.

The layoffs at my job have become a common topic of conversation with my coworkers. It sounds like we're in the "eye of the storm" at the moment, some more layoffs will happen in the spring. If that's not enough, my landlord just called yesterday and said he wants to raise my rent by nearly 50%!!!!! Thankfully it's nothing urgent, I can move. There are cheaper places in my area and I have enough savings I might even take the opportunity to travel for a bit. But my life is obviously getting turbulent so keeping my routine might get harder.

I'll make a post tomorrow with my goals for March and April.

[Eternal Foreigner]

My goals for March and April are:
French:

Watch at least 20 more episodes in the series I'm watching
Continue generating and reviewing anki cards from that series
Listen to at least 20 more Inner French episodes

German:

Read Olly Richard's German short stories
Continue with the games

[Eternal Foreigner]

I'll be going to a French language meetup in my area on Saturday. I'm very excited, this will be the first time I try speaking more than a few words in French, but I feel ready to converse with people on a basic level. Based on the list of names of people attending, it seems like there won't be any native speakers, but maybe that's better for me right now since non-natives are sometimes easier to understand.

This is exciting because often when I go to language meetups, they become "hang out and chat in English" meetups. But this one is strictly for those who have at least a grasp of French and it seems to be people who are serious about their French who are joining.

[jeffers]

I'll be going to a French language meetup in my area on Saturday. I'm very excited, this will be the first time I try speaking more than a few words in French, but I feel ready to converse with people on a basic level. Based on the list of names of people attending, it seems like there won't be any native speakers, but maybe that's better for me right now since non-natives are sometimes easier to understand.

This is exciting because often when I go to language meetups, they become "hang out and chat in English" meetups. But this one is strictly for those who have at least a grasp of French and it seems to be people who are serious about their French who are joining.

I used to go to a French meetup until I shifted jobs a lot further away, and I found some of the non-native speakers much more difficult to understand.

[Eternal Foreigner]

I'll be going to a French language meetup in my area on Saturday. I'm very excited, this will be the first time I try speaking more than a few words in French, but I feel ready to converse with people on a basic level. Based on the list of names of people attending, it seems like there won't be any native speakers, but maybe that's better for me right now since non-natives are sometimes easier to understand.

This is exciting because often when I go to language meetups, they become "hang out and chat in English" meetups. But this one is strictly for those who have at least a grasp of French and it seems to be people who are serious about their French who are joining.

I used to go to a French meetup until I shifted jobs a lot further away, and I found some of the non-native speakers much more difficult to understand.

Yeah I guess it depends. If someone is using strange phrasing or really bad pronunciation, then obviously that's the hardest to understand. The InnerFrench episodes though where Hugo interviews another native speaker I found very difficult to follow without reading the transcript. Recently I listened to an interview between two non-native French speakers and they spoke well, but slower than a native would, so it was quite easy to follow.

[Eternal Foreigner]

The language exchange was fun. As I mentioned, it was my first time speaking more than a few words in French, and wow I sounded awful. There were actually quite a few native speakers there helping everyone out, and they were really nice and told me that my French sounded good, but I know that it was pretty far from good lol. It wasn't just my awful pronunciation, I found myself searching for words a lot, words that I know that I'm familiar with, but couldn't produce actively without thinking a lot first.

I wasn't expecting to be speaking super well obviously, and it completely makes sense that my knowledge of French is mostly passive since I've only practiced reading and listening. I had an easy time understanding everyone when they spoke slowly, but later on I sat with a group of mostly native speakers and I could barely follow their conversation. They were nice though, and now I know some French people who live in my city.

One of the other French learners there (a Portuguese guy) had been part of the conversation, and later on we spoke in Portuguese. It took me a good minute to shift from French to Portuguese, that felt like a real mental exercise I wasn't expecting lol. But he ended up really genuinely surprised at how good my Portuguese sounds (probably in comparison to my awful French haha). I could also tell that my Portuguese sounded so much more natural and flowed far more easily. But it makes sense, since I have a lot of speaking practice with it. So that gives me some encouragement, I know I'm capable if I just do the same thing with French.

One final thing I'll note about the experience, it felt very comfortable when I was able to understand the conversation, even if it was difficult at times to contribute to it. When I joined the conversation with more native speakers, that comfort was kind of taken away as I started to lose the conversation. Because of this and despite my weak active skills, I still want to focus on improving my passive skills as much as I can so that next time I can follow everything that's going on without getting lost. That's my primary mission for probably the next two years, just comprehension.

[Eternal Foreigner]

It seems like I've really turned a corner with French.
For the last two episodes of the series I watched, the AI tool Whisper that I've been using to generate subtitles failed. So I decided to just watch them without the subs. There were a handful of lines that I couldn't understand even after relistening to them, but for the most part it seemed pretty easy. It seems like I don't have to concentrate as much as before.
I'm very excited about this, because the main thing slowing me down has been the task of creating new audio anki cards whenever I don't understand a line. If I can reach the point where I only need to generate a card or two per episode, then my progress is really gonna take off.

I've built up a pretty big collection of anime dubbed in French. I have become the francophone anime weeb. But I was afraid I was going through episodes so slowly that it would literally take a year before I even got to the next series. Now I'm feeling more confident I can start picking up the pace and eventually start binge watching all these series. This is really exciting for me, because the last language I tried to do this in was Portuguese but sadly the selection of content in (EU) Portuguese is just microscopic in comparison.
It feels almost like I caught up to where I left off with Portuguese, but now the path ahead is just wide-open.

[Eternal Foreigner]

I haven't posted any update on my German for a while, and I guess that's because there's not really much to say. I'm still at the stage where I'm looking up a lot of words, and occasionally I encounter a sentence that takes me some time to figure out.

One of my goals for this two month period was to finish the beginner-level Olly Richards short stories. I got halfway through them, but lately I've been finding it hard to motivate myself to continue. The stories are all the same as the French one which I read last year, and while I thought the stories were alright, I'm really not excited to read them again.

I've been thinking lately about the idea of "return on energy invested", and how important it is to choose wisely where to invest your energy. There have been times where I've invested heaps of effort and time into something, only to find out later that there was an easier and faster approach that I could've taken. With language learning, we know there really isn't much we can do to improve efficiency. But I think there are often steps that can be taken to reduce the mental drain.
I've found that forcing myself to start a task that I'm not excited to do takes a lot of mental energy, even if the task itself only takes a short time. But if it's a task I don't feel any resistance to starting, then it really doesn't affect me as much and can more easily become a habit.

When it comes to reading these short stories, it honestly seems to me like I'm getting the same benefit from playing video games in German without the mental drain of forcing myself. The only benefit a book like this has over games is that it's much easier to track reading. I haven't tracked my time playing games in German at all. But even without doing that, I'm certain I've read FAR more German text in games than I have anywhere else. So yeah, I won't be finishing the short stories.