A language learners’ forum

Week one of German, done. Doing well so far. We've already covered simple past and present perfect (perfekt). Plus tons of vocab, trying to remember words from 30-odd years ago when I was stationed in Berlin. We're gonna start conditional next week.

German geht gut, so far. Lots of vocab, and we're doing both pasts and had hints of conditional and future today. I can't wait till I have enough vocabulary to start reading HP. I'm going to use HP2 as my L-R for German. I've never read it in English, so will read it in English once I'm done with the wonderful China Mieville and his The City & the City.

IronMike wrote:Been listening to Refuse to Choose by Sher, about us scanners, thanks to forum-friend Jeff! Yep, me to a tee. Wonderful to finally know I'm normal.

Count me in the club too! Started reading it on my Paperwhite just yesterday (ironically piecemeal due to an overabundance of projects, parental duties, and mocking whims) after reading one of Jeff's posts (I also faintly recall Tommus recommending it some years back). Now it's about time to choose that "Scanner Daybook" from my big box of cool yet barely christened Moleskine notebooks that represent a generous slice of past best intentions...decisions, decisions...

IronMike wrote:Been listening to Refuse to Choose by Sher, about us scanners, thanks to forum-friend Jeff! Yep, me to a tee. Wonderful to finally know I'm normal.

Lots of Pola-retradio, not much reading. Well, not Esperanto reading. Lots of LeCarre and George Smiley. Such good writing.

Have also gotten into French music. Not sure what to call the genre. French alternative? French pop? Artists like Camp Claude, Juniore, La Femme, The Liminanas, Lescop. Love it. Someday maybe, French. Who knows.

Leaving here in 5 days. Can't wait to be home.

You mentioned the book before, so I picked it up. I am reading it now, thanks for passing on the recommendation!

So since joining these forums years ago, I'd been poo-pooing a certain supposed foreign language method. Not in writing or out loud. More so whenever I'd seen a link to it, I'd think: No thank you. That can't work.

Then today I tried it. And you know what? I love it. I'll be doing a song a day in German.

What I'm talking about is Lyricstraining.com. Since starting German I've been searching for German alternative songs to listen to and recently discovered AnnenMayKantereit. One of their best songs, one of the most listenable, is Oft Gefragt. And that song is on the LyricsTraining site.

So much fun!

I can't stop. Today I did three of their songs on Lyricstraining.com. Send help.

Is it
Lyric straining
or
Lyrics training

rdearman wrote:Is it
Lyric straining
or
Lyrics training

OK, Pimsleur, I get it. Twelve and two are different.

Enough f-ing numbers! I've got them already!

Pimsleur continues, a bit less annoying as I think the number repetition is over. Now just the occasional number. "Fünfzehn euro für eine Zeitung?!" Uh, no, dummie, she said five.

Also still doing Lyricstraining, have even branched out to some German bands other than AmmenMayKantereit. Got in quite the argument with Alexa the other day when I asked her to play songs by AMK and got Anime. Today I asked her to "play my Spotify favorites" and got "Ok, playing Disney favorites, on Amazon Music." What the hell, Alexa? How do AIs expect to take over the world if they can't understand simple requests?

Tomorrow begins week 3 of the 10-week German course. Going really well. Page one of HP2 is almost understandable now. This week besides all the usual talking and listening we do we're going to begin future tense. I think by the end of this coming week I'll try HP2 for real.

Also, keep your eyes open for something special from yours truly in the coming days!