What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

[gsbod]

I hit the jackpot at Oxfam books this weekend. 6 German books for £14, including Heinrich Böll, Christa Wolf and Hans Fallada. I think this makes up for the time I overlooked Assimil's Catalan sans peine and Using French Vocabulary (the German one is superior, anyway).

I haven't been logging for a while, having suffered from an extended case of "I don't know what to do". I've been watching the latest thread on learning 2 languages at once. For me, the biggest problem is finding the time and energy to make enough progress to feel satisfied in two languages at once - and when work is being difficult enough to unduly influence my free time, it can be hard enough to find the time and energy for one language! Still, on balance I'm much happier working than I would be if I had to go back to school, so it's not all bad.

At this point, now my German is more or less C1 (see the doubt creeping in there), I could reasonably quit studying it (i.e. aiming to make palpable progress) altogether. And it would be nice to try and get my French to a really decent level. Or get Italian to the level of competent tourist. Or take up Swedish or Dutch and become some kind of amateur Germanist. Or maybe even deal with my "unfinished business" in Japanese and finally get comfortable reading it (although I think this may be a project to save up for my retirement in a few decades time).

On the other hand, it would also be nice to get my German to (more or less) C2. Because I would like to know what it takes to get there, how it feels to be there, and if I am going to do it with any language it has to be German.

At the moment I am edging towards sticking with German (for the time being). But the gap from C1 to C2 is a big one. It means tackling most of the things I've been lazy about to date (i.e. not relying on my strong listening skills and ease of dealing with ambiguity to make up for genuine weaknesses elsewhere), and potentially finding new ways to broaden my vocabulary (I've discussed my issues with this earlier in this log). It also means I can't rely so much on ready made courses (although I am somewhat bored with the repetitive nature of topics covered in the textbooks anyway), and there are no classes I can attend to pull me through those times when I am too lazy to do what I need to do on my own. Plus the law of diminishing returns means that along the way, I may just reach the point where I do decide that it is no longer worth the effort. But hey, at that point I can start again with French, or whatever.

[kraemder]

I think it's amazing that you got to C1 (probably) in German in the past few years while I was plugging away at Japanese and progressing but ever so slowly. You're quite the polyglot now I think. Getting to C2 would be really impressive because most adult learners can't - even when they're living in the country. I know you wouldn't be unique and there's probably a couple others in the forums who have done it but to get to that level without attending a German university seems unreal to me. Actually getting to C1 seems pretty unreal haha. I see that you actually -do- the textbooks and I wonder if that's part of what separates you from me - I treat them as reference books, reading them very sparingly and never doing the exercises. If you ever go back to Japanese you might want to try audio books and or e-books with text to speech. I find that really helpful to get me to relax and enjoy the text without getting hung up on the kanji. I know a lot of people just love paper though.

[gsbod]

Awww this log has been neglected for a while...

I recently started a French class. I really wanted to do German, but there is nothing available that I can reasonably travel to at an appropriate level. So now I'm on a B1 French course. I don't have previous good form of sticking with French courses, however this time feels a bit different. The course level is a really good fit, the teacher is one of the best language teachers I've had (not quite as good as one of the ones at language school in Berlin, but certainly the best I've had in the UK), and also, I've noticed how German has actually changed the way my brain deals with certain aspects of the language - particularly the gender of nouns - which I am finding genuinely fascinating. In all my previous dealings with the French language, my brain treated noun gender information as superfluous, and yet having trained my brain to care about noun gender in German, it also cares in French. That's not to say I get a perfect hit rate, there are loads of gaps in my knowledge, but it sticks a lot better and when I'm not sure of the gender of a word it really bothers me. On the other hand, it also really bothers me that you don't decline adjectives for case in French - during conversation my brain keeps trying to find ways of doing that which fit with the French language - I'm sure that will just be a passing phase, however.

I'm a bit stuck with what to do with my German at the moment. My listening is just fine as it is, my conversation is getting a bit rusty (but I know I can reactivate if needed, so I'm not too concerned right now). Don't know about writing, I have nothing I really want to write in German. I think I would like to work on my reading mainly. It would be cool to read a bit more literary German, maybe get stuck into some Deutscher Buchpreis candidates/winners and some of the more established classics. A few months ago I challenged myself to memorise the poem Willkommen und Abschied by Goethe, which was quite a fun exercise and something a bit different for me. Problem is I keep getting distracted by English books - so many cool novels have been published in the last few years. I need to get in the mindset of less internet/phone time and more reading time. Wish me luck with that...

[gsbod]

I managed to complete my first proper French assignment: 500 words on one of the topics we have recently covered. It was quite a challenge. I'm sure when I was in the B1 class for German I'd already hit the point where I could bash out a 500 word assignment without too much effort (although admittedly, I probably should have been taking a class at a higher level at the time). I am also not only distracted by trying to avoid literal translations from English that don't work in French, but also my brain wants to add in German syntax and literal translations of German expressions wherever it deems appropriate. Still, it's not as bad as the translation exercise I had to do for a C1 German course which had me actually screaming at the computer in frustration.

I have been having a bit more fun with some German poetry. I've managed to maintain in my memory Goethe's Willkommen und Abschied and added to that a short poem by Nietszche called Ecce homo. I was also somewhat amused by Die unmögliche Tatsache by Christian Morgenstern, although I haven't attempted to commit it to memory yet.

I am part way through Der dunkle Wald, which is the German translation of the second book in the Trisolaris trilogy by Cixin Liu. Hard science fiction is not normally my genre of choice, however I was drawn into the first book, Die drei Sonnen, because of the way it was situated in Chinese history and how that impacted the storyline. I have to say, I am finding the second book a bit harder to get into - it is structured somewhat differently and jumps frequently between a number of different strands of the story. Interestingly, the second book also has a different translator to the first. But I'll perservere for now - I suspect it may be worth it.

[gsbod]

Finally it's the Christmas holidays. Apart from keeping some family entertained for a few days, I'm free of any obligations until 2020. Also, for the sake of my mental wellbeing, I am trying really hard to disengage from politics for a couple of weeks (I'm not actively involved, just normally a bit of a news addict...) So, in theory, I should have plenty of time to catch up on some language learning.

I've decided I would like to make a bit more effort with my French - since my strategy up until now has been to turn up to class and complete the assessments and whilst I'm pretty sure I've learned something it is also clear that I could do better. I've got the Practice Makes Perfect Complete French Grammar book, which cost less than a tenner, so quite the bargain. It's not quite as "complete" as the Schaum's (also not as overwhelming), but seems to cover all of the grammar topics I'm supposed to get to grips with by the end of the course. I've decided just to start working through from the beginning and see how far I get before I have to go back to work.

The grammar book is my main priority, but I would also like to try and get a bit further with Les 500 exercices de phonétique since I find French pronunciation one of the biggest challenges. So far I've avoided making too much of an effort, because whilst I don't get too much interference in German with grammar and vocabulary, I find that if I am making an effort on French pronunciation, my German pronunciation does take a hit too. I think I just need to suck it up for a few weeks and see what happens. In the mean time, I don't have any important German engagements and I'll just have to trust that I won't suffer any permanent reduction in German ability. Loads of people can speak both French and German, after all. Why should I be any different?

[gsbod]

To misquote Bill Gates: most people overestimate what they can achieve in one holiday...

Actually, things are going pretty well now I've successfully dampened down expectations. No language learning on Christmas Day (I had more important things to be doing...) but apart from that I've fit in some French grammar study every day plus a little bit of the phonetics on some days.

On phonetics I've noticed two things: firstly, if I try doing too much too quick it just makes my mouth ache (and is therefore counterproductive). Secondly, I'm so grateful for having nailed the u/ü distinction in German. Those two sounds are still more problematic in French, since they often appear to follow each other in ways that make my mouth ache, and there seem to be far more minimal pairs involving them in French. However, I am over halfway there, just by learning a whole other language!

The Practice Makes Perfect Grammar book really does seem to fit my needs right now - as a revision book for B1 level French through the medium of English it actually works quite well. I could only recommend it as a supplement, and only for the lower intermediate level (it assumes too much prior knowledge for a beginner and B2+ students would likely be wasting their money), but as that's exactly what I wanted, it does the job nicely. I've just finished the first 6 chapters, which cover the present tense, so it's off to the sunlit uplands of the past tenses tomorrow.

The book includes quite a lot of translation exercises which I am finding quite interesting. I did very little translating beyond the beginner level when I studied Japanese, and German I learned almost exclusively using materials in the German language only, so from A2-C1 I don't think I translated anything (and then had a huge headache with a translation assignment in a C1 class). It seems that whilst at the moment my main desire is to refresh my knowledge of the verbs, the most common mistakes I am making in the translations are with noun gender, and with confusing when to use de and when to use du/de la/des. Maybe with enough self corrections, this will settle down. Otherwise I guess that may be another project once I'm done with revising the verbs.

[gsbod]

2019 in Review

I thought I was over the whole New Year's syndrome of summing up and planning ahead, but since I've been able to spend some quality time on languages over my Christmas holidays it has helped me get some perspective which fits in neatly with the arbitrary changes in our calendar.

My plan for 2019 for German was mainly about reading a lot of German books. My attempt at a reading log near the start of the year fizzled out and I think I only ended up finishing three German books this year. That being said, I completely surprised myself by developing an interest in German poetry. Literature in bite sized portions is convenient for the busy professional, and since I already consider German to be one of the most beautiful languages (a personal and subjective judgement, of course), poetry seems to be a perfect fit.

I've also continued to maintain my German through listening to an extensive range of podcasts (some favourites include: Eine Stunde History, Bayern 2's radioWissen, and Sein und Streit).

A few things lined up so that I ended up starting a French course at B1 level in the autumn. My main goal for the course was not to drop out and after a bit of a shaky start I’m now starting to take it a bit more seriously.

Plans for 2020

My plan/goal for 2020 can be summed up as follows:

Improve my French whilst actively maintaining German.

French
My new found motivation to study French has undoubtedly been helped along by a nice long Christmas holiday at home, so the first challenge will be maintaining the motivation once I am back to work.

Although I’ve had a go at refreshing my French a few times since I left school, it’s still pretty consistently been stuck around the A2/B1 levels. This time, I want to make genuine and lasting progress, which means putting to work everything I’ve learned about language learning and tackling some of my biggest problems, namely:

1) Gaps in basic knowledge of grammar and vocabulary (thank you teenage me for not learning it properly first time around)
2) An incomplete model of pronunciation (thank you school system for not being able to teach it properly first time around)
3) A relative weakness in listening comprehension (no doubt linked to 1 and 2 above)

For now the plan is to tackle the above through doing the following:

1) Consistent and systematic study to improve grammar and vocabulary. For now that means continuing to work through the Practice Makes Perfect Complete French Grammar.
2) Regular pronunciation work by working through Les 500 exercices de phonétique.
3) Start to introduce some listening to native materials into my life.
4) Turning up to class and doing my homework.

And I am going to try and avoid the following:

1) Attempting to solve my problems by throwing money away on courses/materials that I don’t need and am not going to use.
2) Relying on Anki to try to memorise everything. There is nothing wrong with using Anki, but having previously been wedded to it as a learning tool I am now curious to see how far I can go without using it. This is a kind of experiment.
3) Reading books in French until I have addressed the imbalance in my listening ability.

German
The second part of my plan/goal is just as important. Up to now, I’ve been very much one language at a time. Practically speaking, I find it difficult to find enough time and, more importantly, conserve enough energy to consistently study two or more languages simultaneously.

Whilst my German is still nowhere near C2, I am pretty comfortable with the language and I am keen to maintain that level of comfort as much as possible by spending sufficient time using it.

This means putting on a better show in terms of reading this year, keeping up with podcasts and some TV, and making sure I attend some meetup groups so that I get to actually practice speaking. Basically reaping the rewards from all the work I’ve put in over the last 5 years or so.

The great thing is that I’m already finding that my German knowledge now is so secure that it’s not much of a strain to switch between studying French and using German, so I think the main challenge here will be time rather than energy.

It's going to be an interesting year.

[gsbod]

French
I've just completed the 11th Chapter of Practice Makes Perfect Complete French Grammar - which means that over the course of about a week and a half I have revised the present tense (including aller + infinitive and venir de), the passé composé, imparfait, futur simple, futur antérieur, plus-que-parfait, conditionnel présent and conditionnel passé. I thought about going on to the subjunctive for good measure, but since I'd already revised this in my class before Christmas, I feel like I've done enough verbing for the time being.

The good news is that the present tense and passé composé I am mostly pretty secure on, since I probably first learned both of these when I was around 12/13 years old - although this security is limited somewhat by the extent of my vocabulary. The rest is still a bit of a mess - I can generally do it if I have time to think about it but it needs time to become more automatic. It helps if I keep reminding myself that the only irregular stem in imparfait is ét- for être and I spent a bit of time yesterday systematising the stems for a number of irregular verbs for the future tense which has also helped. It's a bit of a shock really as I'd thought I'd learned the verbs better when I was at school, but clearly I should have done more homework back then to save me time now!

Moving on I have in my possession three resources that I want to make use of: 500 exercices de phonétique I've already mentioned several times, Grammaire Progressive du Français Niveau Intermédiaire, and Le nouvel édito B1. Not sure how I'll juggle all three, especially once I'm back to work, however I can see how they will all be very useful in different ways. I think I'll just try to muddle through over the next couple of weeks and see how things settle.

I'm also spending some time dipping into some TV shows available on TV5 Monde to see if I can find something worth making a regular habit out of for listening practice. I'm generally not a fan of soap operas, but for now I'm giving Un si grand soleil a go. If nothing else, it is set in one of my favourite corners of France. I've already ruled out Plus belle la vie because it's harder to follow (more regional accents) and the serial killer plot line is just too ridiculous to make up for how splendid Marseille looks.

German
I was right to perservere with Der dunkle Wald. I'm now nearly halfway through (it's such a long book) and all the threads of the story are now coming together so it's much easier to follow.

Last night I watched a documentary using the Das Erste app about the Yellowstone National Park. Wild animals, winter and volcanoes. Stunning.

[gsbod]

German
When it comes to reading books, it seems I always get through the second half of a book in the fraction of the time it takes to get through the first half. It's not that my reading speed increases (well, it might slightly) but rather I think I hit a point where the story hooks me and I just have to keep reading. So it was that I stayed up until far too late reading on Friday night. I'm sure it's doing good things for my German but, overall, it can't be healthy...and I've still got another 200 pages to read before I get to the end of just this volume...

French
So far so good in terms of splitting my time between pronunciation, grammar, and the general textbook. Despite the general tiredness from going back to work (and staying up too late reading...) I've done a bit of Grammaire Progressive every day, and something from Le Nouvel Édito and 500 Exercices de Phonétique on most days.

Now I've reached my first real challenge in terms of how to study without relying on Anki/flashcards - the first vocabulary section in Nouvel Édito. It's just a list of words! With a few exercises! So Anki-able! Currently dealing with it by procrastinating the whole lot. Should be simple really. Review the list, make sure I understand all of the words, do the exercises, make some notes, move on...

[gsbod]

German
I finished reading Der dunkle Wald. Without giving away any spoilers, the book can generally be described as follows: first 100 pages or so it's hard work as the narrative seems to jump between different groups of characters every couple of pages, next 300 pages or so it drags a bit in places although you wonder where it's all heading, the rest of the book is just full of suspense, as each time the plot seems like it's starting to flag suddenly something else gets thrown it to ramp up the tension. Also it gets really dark, and I found a large part of the suspense was me asking myself "how bad is this going to get, really?" Some spoilers may have helped me put it down and get some sleep. Or maybe not. In any case I've got to go on and read the final book in the trilogy next. Which is nearly 1,000 pages long.

Having just totalled up the pages of all the German books I've read over the last year and added them to my running total since I started reading real books in German, I was genuinely surprised to discover I've hit my original target of 10,000 pages. That's a whole traditional Super Challenge of reading - just took me four years instead of 20 months

Maybe it's time to up the target to 20,000 pages...

French
With all the German reading I've been doing, it's put my French into a strange place. My class started again earlier this week and I found spontaneous conversation to be a real challenge as my brain kept fishing for all the easily available German expressions and vocabulary activated by how much I'd been reading. On the other hand, my decision to focus on verbs over the Christmas holidays seems to have paid off, because the one thing I did have on hand fairly automatically was a number of common verbs in all the tenses (except passé simple but as this was conversation it doesn't count!)