Just Study German Already!

[BigZmoak]

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd keep a log here to hold myself accountable for my German study. I studied it somewhat seriously a few years ago and got to an intermediate level. On a short stay in Berlin I was able to get by without people switching to English. Back home, German tourists to my town would compliment me on my German, particularly my accent. That was 3 or 4 years ago.

Work and other hobbies got in the way and I failed to keep up German... stupid! If only I could go back and implore my lazy self to maintain contact with the language . Anyway, that's the past. In this log you'll read about my attempts to pick it up again as a false beginner.

I'm going to go back to the basics by using Assimil German with Ease . It served me well in the past and I remember really enjoying its content. I have further resources which I will mention in the future.

I'm planning to spend 2 hours studying each day with a break on Sundays. My short-term plan is as follows:

Review the sounds of German with Fluent Forever YouTube Videos (first 3 days)
Go over the spelling rules of German, paying particular attention to writing short vs long vowels (first week)
1-2 lessons (seems conservative for now) of Assimil German with Ease a day
Reading on LingQ (20 mins a day)

As I get a feel for the language again the above outlined plan will be tweaked more or less to better use my 2 hours daily. I plan to add watching Netflix and Youtube videos into the mix sooner rather than later.

I begin tomorrow!

I welcome any comments or questions you may have. That's it for now - I'm off to read some of your logs!

BigZmoak

[jeffers]

Just one suggestion: join the Super Challenge!

[BigZmoak]

Oh my - you guys sure don’t play around!

The SUPER challenge sounds quite intimidating. What is it exactly?

[jeffers]

Oh my - you guys sure don’t play around!

The SUPER challenge sounds quite intimidating. What is it exactly?

In brief, it is to read 100 books and watch 100 films in 20 months. The challenge started at the beginning of May and ends in December 2021. A "book" is defined as 50 pages of reading, so if you read a 20 page book that counts as 40% of a book, and if you read a 120 page book that would be 2.4 books. A "film" is 90 minutes of watching, although you can count most types of listening as well, e.g. podcasts and audiobooks.

Why do it? It's a great way to keep feeding yourself material in your target language(s).

The information and discussion thread is here: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=14271
The thread with rules and registering is here: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=14270

[BigZmoak]

Having reflected a bit I've decided NOT to join the Super Challenge YET. I want to spend the next 6 months getting through some courses and adding in native content bit by bit (see below). Having a whole list of books/films to get through wouldn't help me at the moment, and would likely only be a source of stress. Also, I don't really need an extra boost of motivation at the moment. I'm just happy to be back in contact with German! That's motivation enough. Hopefully I'll be at a solid intermediate level come January 2021, in which case I'll join with a half challenge. I think you can join anytime? Anyways, I look forward to diving into German books in particular.

As an aside, the Output challenge looks very interesting and something I'll probably join in January 2021 too. Output - I've always neglected it in the past. I only really used German in the cases I mentioned before; on that one trip to Germany and with the occasional tourist at home. If you've taken part in both the SC and Output Challenge simultaneously, how did you find they complemented each other?

Everything has been going according to plan.

Pronunciation
The Fluent Forever videos were a good refresher for pronunciation. I don't have much problems with the individual sounds as such. There's just a few tricky things I need to keep focused on:

1. The vowel ɐ - distinguishing it from schwa is tough. I've read that /ɐ/ is identical to English /ʌ/ as in "but", and that the different symbols are down to different conventions being used by the languages.
2. When is R pronounced before a consonant in interior or final position, and when is it vocalised instead? I've seen conflicting information about this. I have a feeling it may differ in modern vs conservative speech.
3. Vowel combinations with ɐ as a result of R being vocalised are kind of tough to pronounce correctly 100% of the time.

So all kind of related. Any pointers or reading material on anything here would be much appreciated!

Input
In addition to Assimil (up to lesson 10) and LingQ, I've also created a new YouTube account for German content only. I switched my location to Germany and subscribed to a few channels from the trending sidebar, as well as a few channels I had saved like Kurzgesagt and MrWissen2go. The idea of the new channel is to get YouTube's algorithm to suggest German language videos only. If you have any suggestions, please do share!

[tastyonions]

The quickest shortcut to get YouTube to suggest you German videos is probably to use a VPN that lets you choose your server location and switch that to Germany. What you did will definitely help, though.

[BigZmoak]

Thanks for that. I'll keep it in mind for later when I'll also want to watch German TV, though thankfully it seems that a lot of German media isn't geoblocked anyway.

[tungemål]

Pronunciation
The Fluent Forever videos were a good refresher for pronunciation. I don't have much problems with the individual sounds as such. There's just a few tricky things I need to keep focused on:

1. The vowel ɐ - distinguishing it from schwa is tough. I've read that /ɐ/ is identical to English /ʌ/ as in "but", and that the different symbols are down to different conventions being used by the languages.
2. When is R pronounced before a consonant in interior or final position, and when is it vocalised instead? I've seen conflicting information about this. I have a feeling it may differ in modern vs conservative speech.
3. Vowel combinations with ɐ as a result of R being vocalised are kind of tough to pronounce correctly 100% of the time.

So all kind of related. Any pointers or reading material on anything here would be much appreciated!

Thanks for the tip, I just watched the video. Very good overview. My pronunciation is not that good that I've got all the sounds nailed down. For instance I find the R hard. But my goal is not really perfect pronunciation.

1 - I didn't know that the /ɐ/ (the -er ending as in Lehrer) is identical to English /ʌ/ as in "but". I figured out that the sound is not the schwa /ə/ so I thought it was merely the German "a" sound. I think you could look at it like this:
/ə/ - unstressed "e"
/ɐ/ - unstressed "a"

2 - this might depend on dialect. If you look up a word on wiktionary they often give both possibilities (e.g. "Arbeit": [ˈaʁbaɪ̯t] or [ˈaɐ̯baɪ̯t] )

[BigZmoak]

1 - I didn't know that the /ɐ/ (the -er ending as in Lehrer) is identical to English /ʌ/ as in "but". I figured out that the sound is not the schwa /ə/ so I thought it was merely the German "a" sound. I think you could look at it like this:
/ə/ - unstressed "e"
/ɐ/ - unstressed "a"

2 - this might depend on dialect. If you look up a word on wiktionary they often give both possibilities (e.g. "Arbeit": [ˈaʁbaɪ̯t] or [ˈaɐ̯baɪ̯t]

I'm still trying to get my head around this myself so please don't take my ramblings here as gospel! I found this info on YouTube (can't remember which video) and just checked wikipedia's article on ɐ. I quote:

"In English this vowel is most typically transcribed with the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩, i.e. as if it were open-mid back. That pronunciation is still found in some dialects, but most speakers use a central vowel like [ɐ]."

So I take it from this that nowadays, some English accents pronounce ʌ as ɐ. It would be too much of a hassle to reflect this change in pronunciation in dictionaries and such, so it's left alone due to convention. Now, I don't think this is true of MY accent, but at least it gives me a reference point. See the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_central_vowel for more info. And of course, anyone PLEASE correct me if I'm incorrect!

Oh, I must admit I've had a wiktionary tab open on my computer pretty much constantly all this week for that very reason! It seems the best source available for German IPA. It's cool that they show variant forms too.

WHAT'S MY ROUTINE LOOK LIKE SO FAR?
Still changing things around:

Assimil in the morning for an hour. I've been doing three dialogues a day. I'll keep this up for now. I went through the course before so I remember its main riffs. I'm using the audio to work on my pronunciation. I listen 4 - 5 times, than repeat each utterance on the next listen. The next time through I open the book and read along, all the while trying to sharpen my pronunciation.

20 mins of reading on LingQ. I've begun with some beginner stories. I don't worry about making cards for individual words but rather phrases e.g. examples of prepositions + accusative or dative. I haven't reviewed these yet but I will do so twice or three times a week. This reading is a pleasant way to finish my morning session.

Since I'm a false beginner, I thought introducing Living Language Ultimate German to the mix would be a good way to review grammar more efficiently. It's more explicit than Assimil in terms of grammar. These two courses should complement each other nicely I think. Now I've only just begun today with chapter 1 because I had to source a tape player. I plan on doing a lesson each evening, plus the odd YouTube video for a total of an hour or so.

Have a good weekend, folks!

[Haselnuss]

Pronunciation
The Fluent Forever videos were a good refresher for pronunciation. I don't have much problems with the individual sounds as such. There's just a few tricky things I need to keep focused on:

1. The vowel ɐ - distinguishing it from schwa is tough. I've read that /ɐ/ is identical to English /ʌ/ as in "but", and that the different symbols are down to different conventions being used by the languages.
2. When is R pronounced before a consonant in interior or final position, and when is it vocalised instead? I've seen conflicting information about this. I have a feeling it may differ in modern vs conservative speech.
3. Vowel combinations with ɐ as a result of R being vocalised are kind of tough to pronounce correctly 100% of the time.

So all kind of related. Any pointers or reading material on anything here would be much appreciated!

I'm also a native English speaker learning German, and I agree learning to pronounce the German R sounds can be tricky. It's a well known stumbling block for anglophone learners of German. In fact, that was the main thing I wanted to work on when I went on the prowl for German pronunciation resources.

A great resource here is a book that I mentioned in the recent discussion thread on German prosody: Modern German pronunciation: An introduction for speakers of English, second edition by Christopher Hall. The companion audio files for the book are available for free at the publisher's website.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719066894/

The book makes full use of IPA and has detailed explanations and exercises for each of the consonant and vowel sounds of German including /ɐ/ and /ə/. What I found particularly helpful is the pronunciation exercise that specifically helps the learner to practice distinguishing /ɐ/ and /ə/. There are diagrams telling you what you have to do with your tongue and lips to make each of the individual sounds.

Learning to distinguish these sounds is not just an academic exercise. If you mix up /ɐ/ and /ə/, then a German listener will, in some circumstances, think you are actually pronouncing a different word (taken from chapter 7 exercise 16.3 of the book):

/ə/ /ɐ/
bitte bitter
schöne schöner
Wette Wetter
meine meiner
Mitte Mütter
Größe größer
fette Vetter
Hüte Hüter

This book is the best pronunciation resource I've found so far.