amarina's log

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amarina
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Languages: Russian (N) English (F) German (B1) French (A1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 03#p187703
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amarina's log

Postby amarina » Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:17 pm

Hi!

I'm studying German and French. As my German has been around B1 - B1/B2 for far too long, I decided to brush it up on Duolingo, but now by studying French through it. Additionally, I'm using some French anki cards for German speakers. I encounter a lot of new words, which is to be expected, as I've always found grammar to be easier to study than vocabulary. Often the french word or phrase explains the meaning of its german translation to me, not the other way around. It makes me doubt that English belongs in the Germanic family.

I also listen to podcasts and youtube videos. I should probably do more reading, but I think it will wait until my vocabulary is a bit more substantial, as my latest attempt at reading Harry Potter in German required me to look up too many words to understand what's going on. I remember at some point around B2 level in English I was able to deduce words' meanings from context - not the other way around :D
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Output Challenge 2021
: 582 / 15000 ~ write 15 000 words in German;
: 0 / 300 ~ record 300 minutes of audio in German;
: 0 / 5000 ~ write 5 000 words in French;

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amarina
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Languages: Russian (N) English (F) German (B1) French (A1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 03#p187703
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Re: amarina's log

Postby amarina » Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:21 am

Following this https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 19&t=16803

This calculator suggests that it should take me 6-9 months to reach fluency in German and 1 year to reach competence in French. I predict that it will be about a year, if my current level of motivation is sustained. Normally, I would laugh at thinking that any level of motivation can be sustained by me, but somehow now it's different. Over 60 days in, and I'm still not sure where this fire came from. I am also not entirely sure why FSI treats French as that much easier than German for English speakers, is French that much simpler?

My issue with French is that it's extremely idiomatic. Everything seems to be phrasal, and phrasal verbs in English and German are extremely hard to study.

I'm trying to do more shadowing and echoing to improve my pronunciation and aid memorisation. Does anyone have words that are very familiar, but you can never remember what they mean, no matter how many times you go over them on Anki or look them up in a dictionary? 'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst (seeing a theme here huh) and 'deshalb' are at least 50% of my anki study sessions sometimes. And i have known that about them for years
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Output Challenge 2021
: 582 / 15000 ~ write 15 000 words in German;
: 0 / 300 ~ record 300 minutes of audio in German;
: 0 / 5000 ~ write 5 000 words in French;

Cavesa
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Re: amarina's log

Postby Cavesa » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:36 pm

Hey, welcome to the forum! I wish you all the best in your learning!

How have you learnt German, if I may ask? I am a bit of a desperate German learner, so I try to get inspiration from successful learners :-)

My issue with French is that it's extremely idiomatic. Everything seems to be phrasal, and phrasal verbs in English and German are extremely hard to study.


I don't think it is too idiomatic, don't panic. It is much more regular than English, the grammar is consistent, there are significantly fewer exceptions.

The main reasons, for which many people get the same first impression as you, are bad teachers, bad resources, and the too common today's trend to not explain grammar but instead throw the learner into some communicative A1 situations right away. In French, the typical first unit conversation includes tons of grammar, which is very logical, but almost never explained right away. Back when we had a much more grammar driven coursebook, we didn't feel the same confusion about French. Unfortunately, Duolingo has been trying to get closer and closer to the "communication" cefr driven coursebooks, and has been combining their problems with the Duo ones.

So, don't despair. French is actually very logical, it just doesn't look so at first sight. A lot of the things you are typically served by a teacher like "just memorise and parrot these common phrases" are in reality logical structures, which follow rules. If you add a more structured and logic oriented resource to your French learning, I'm pretty sure you'll see what I mean and feel much less intimidated. :-)

Does anyone have words that are very familiar, but you can never remember what they mean, no matter how many times you go over them on Anki or look them up in a dictionary?


Yes! :-D
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AroAro
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Re: amarina's log

Postby AroAro » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:48 pm

amarina wrote:Does anyone have words that are very familiar, but you can never remember what they mean, no matter how many times you go over them on Anki or look them up in a dictionary? 'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst (seeing a theme here huh) and 'deshalb' are at least 50% of my anki study sessions sometimes. And i have known that about them for years


Oh yes, I know what you're talking about. I had hard time memorizing some German words, especially verbs that can take different prefixes (e.g. geben, ergeben, angeben, eingeben and so on). I wrote down 2-3 German sentences that were centered around one of these verbs, translated them into my native language, highlighted the verb and tried to understand its meaning in context. I reviewed these sentences regularly in the following weeks. The method is not perfect of course but that's what worked for me to some extent.
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rdearman
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Re: amarina's log

Postby rdearman » Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:19 pm

amarina wrote: I am also not entirely sure why FSI treats French as that much easier than German for English speakers, is French that much simpler?

This is because for the most part French is just mispronounced English. :)

There is about a 60% overlap between French/Latin & English words. The overlap with German/Germanic languages isn't as much.

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Kraut
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Re: amarina's log

Postby Kraut » Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:25 pm

amarina wrote: anyone have words that are very familiar, but you can never remember what they mean, no matter how many times you go over them on Anki or look them up in a dictionary? 'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst (seeing a theme here huh) and 'deshalb' are at least 50% of my anki study sessions sometimes. And i have known that about them for years


Recently I had these new verbs in a short passage:" ...asustadas, agobiadas ....araNadas.... al agarrarnos ". I learn my mini-stories by heart after translating them, I could remember all of them but "agobiadas", I knew that the word meant "completely stressed out". If this happens I try mnemotics, these helping words can be silly and unmotivated, I chose the word Gobi, it was the only word/element similar to "agobiado" that i knew, and it worked.
'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst" are a difficult category, connectors. I would not contrast them, but find them individually in strong contexts and do bidirectional translations.
Or mnemotics, something like "Nicht der Vater leitet die Firma, SONDERN DER SOHN ... (a reversed sondern).
Last edited by Kraut on Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sonjaconjota
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 24#p192024
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Re: amarina's log

Postby Sonjaconjota » Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:31 pm

amarina wrote: Does anyone have words that are very familiar, but you can never remember what they mean, no matter how many times you go over them on Anki or look them up in a dictionary? 'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst (seeing a theme here huh) and 'deshalb' are at least 50% of my anki study sessions sometimes. And i have known that about them for years


I second the suggestion by AroAro of learning them in the context of a sentence. I often go to both forvo.com and reverso.net to see if they have any interesting example sentences that I can read and listen to. You could also have a notebook at hand and write down any interesting sentences that you can across in films, books, songs. For practice, you could copy them by hand from time to time (Scriptorium technique). And it would be ideal if you could find one specific sentence for every difficult word, one interesting sentence, like a line from song lyrics, that you can try to recall every time you are struggling with this word.
When I've got the time and motivation, I sit down with a couple of those words that just don't want to get into my head and spend some time with them. And then I just try to be creative and use different kinds of mnemonic tricks to attach the word to anything else in my brain.
I write down the word several times, I ask myself if it sounds similar to any word in any language that I know, or maybe to a name. I remember that "ülke" means "country" in Turkish, because it sounds similar to the German name "Elke", and I made the connection thinking about an Elke that I once new.
Sometimes the length of the word helps. Sometimes it rhymes with something. Sometimes I can think of a picture. When I tried to remember the difference between "yapmak" = "to do" and "yazmak" = "to write" in Turkish, I printed out a picture of El Zorro with a z on his chest and painted a big pencil in his hand. So I connected the z with "writing". For "yedi", the Turkish word for "seven", I think of a seven year old Anakin Skywalker from Starwars, etc.
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amarina
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Languages: Russian (N) English (F) German (B1) French (A1)
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Re: amarina's log

Postby amarina » Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:03 am

rdearman wrote:
amarina wrote: I am also not entirely sure why FSI treats French as that much easier than German for English speakers, is French that much simpler?

This is because for the most part French is just mispronounced English. :)

There is about a 60% overlap between French/Latin & English words. The overlap with German/Germanic languages isn't as much.

Image



Huh, I expected English to be closer to German... Though then there is some overlap between German and Latin, so 8-)
0 x
Output Challenge 2021
: 582 / 15000 ~ write 15 000 words in German;
: 0 / 300 ~ record 300 minutes of audio in German;
: 0 / 5000 ~ write 5 000 words in French;

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amarina
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Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 1:22 pm
Languages: Russian (N) English (F) German (B1) French (A1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 03#p187703
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Re: amarina's log

Postby amarina » Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:04 am

Kraut wrote:Recently I had these new verbs in a short passage:" ...asustadas, agobiadas ....araNadas.... al agarrarnos ". I learn my mini-stories by heart after translating them, I could remember all of them but "agobiadas", I knew that the word meant "completely stressed out". If this happens I try mnemotics, these helping words can be silly and unmotivated, I chose the word Gobi, it was the only word/element similar to "agobiado" that i knew, and it worked.
'Sogar', 'sondern', 'sonst" are a difficult category, connectors. I would not contrast them, but find them individually in strong contexts and do bidirectional translations.
Or mnemotics, something like "Nicht der Vater leitet die Firma, SONDERN DER SOHN ... (a reversed sondern).


Oooh I did not think about mnemonics! I will need to do some digging for these connectors, because they've been messing with my head for years now

AroAro wrote:Oh yes, I know what you're talking about. I had hard time memorizing some German words, especially verbs that can take different prefixes (e.g. geben, ergeben, angeben, eingeben and so on). I wrote down 2-3 German sentences that were centered around one of these verbs, translated them into my native language, highlighted the verb and tried to understand its meaning in context. I reviewed these sentences regularly in the following weeks. The method is not perfect of course but that's what worked for me to some extent.


I'm going through a huge Anki deck with German verbs + prepositions... Endless supply of frustration, all those prefix + root + preposition combinations. I'm glad English doesn't have them, but my native Russian does, so I shouldn't be too angry with Germans

Sonjaconjota wrote:I second the suggestion by AroAro of learning them in the context of a sentence. I often go to both forvo.com and reverso.net to see if they have any interesting example sentences that I can read and listen to. You could also have a notebook at hand and write down any interesting sentences that you can across in films, books, songs. For practice, you could copy them by hand from time to time (Scriptorium technique). And it would be ideal if you could find one specific sentence for every difficult word, one interesting sentence, like a line from song lyrics, that you can try to recall every time you are struggling with this word.


As a terminal stationary addict, I've filled up a thick A4 notebook with interesting phrases and sentences in the past 60 days (thanks duolingo for keeping track of that for me). It's definitely the most helpful 'isolated' technique that I've found for myself, and it's probably the absolute best for individual sentences and phrases. The only more helpful techniques are Anki and [urgently needing assistance while abroad and your phone having only 1% charge so words and phrases absolutely get seared into your head]-technique

Cavesa wrote:Hey, welcome to the forum! I wish you all the best in your learning!

How have you learnt German, if I may ask? I am a bit of a desperate German learner, so I try to get inspiration from successful learners :-)


Thanks!

I have been taking German classes since primary school, took some uni classes, have been self studying, did italki, and did a summer course... [Duolingo, Hueber grammar ubungsbucher, and getting into fights on twitter are the best tho]. Though I've been fluctuating between A2 and B2 for awhile... Never reaching B2, which I consider sufficient for until you actually live and work in the country.
0 x
Output Challenge 2021
: 582 / 15000 ~ write 15 000 words in German;
: 0 / 300 ~ record 300 minutes of audio in German;
: 0 / 5000 ~ write 5 000 words in French;

golyplot
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Re: amarina's log

Postby golyplot » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:58 pm

I'm not sure what your goals are with German, but personally I wouldn't worry so much about the preposition verbs. I'd recommend less drilling and more immersion (i.e. watching German TV or the like). If they come up, you'll understand them from context, and if they don't, what's the problem?
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