WildGinger's Deutsch log

[WildGinger10]

And almost as a follow-up to my last post, I recently finished Babylon Berlin finally (I've been trying to make sure I get some input every day if possible) and I jumped back to watch Dark again because I've never seen S3 and wow, the language in Dark is soooooo easy by comparison. I understand probably 95% of all the vocab. It's crazy. I remember struggling with it so much before, now I at least have a good understanding of everything spoken even if I can't translate it to English on the spot. It's almost like watching the show in English. Almost haha

It's making me realize actually how much I'm struggling with more complex sentence structures, because the casual speech is totally easy but occasionally a sentence will show up in Präteritum or Plusquamperfekt and suddenly my comprehension drops considerably, even though there is no specifically unknown vocabulary. That makes me feel better about how much I am still struggling to read narrative fiction in German despite having spent so much time studying, and I guess will help me better structure my program when classes are out and I'm on my own again.

I guess it's the kind of thing where I just need more comprehensible input in this area. I think once I finish Dark I will go back and rewatch it all from the beginning again, just to really get the repeat practice with the input that will (finally) be nearly 100% comprehensible. It's a bit odd to find that I'm still struggling with certain tenses specifically (especially Präteritum) because I feel like I've done so much reading in German, but hey, it is what it is.

[WildGinger10]

Well my German class is over finally, which ironically means I'll probably get back to working on it more actively soon haha. My goal is to go through my frequency dictionary and input all the missing words into Anki and learn them all. Meantime, I'm still watching German shows, whether I understand them well or not, and at night I'm actually reading a bit. Right now I'm reading a silly vacation novel and I'm surprised to find that even though I don't understand quite a bit of the vocabulary, by the end of a chapter (without stopping to look up words) I have a pretty strong idea of what happened in the chapter. Hopefully this is a bridge to a fluency where I DO know most of the words I'm reading and my comprehension gets clearer and clearer.

Considering taking a trip to Germany in late summer, COVID restrictions/lockdown notwithstanding. Would be fun to see my friends and travel again now that I'm fully vaccinated, even if there still is no work.

[WildGinger10]

Been gone for a while I guess! It was a busy year for me and it's only getting busier in 2022.

I did take my trip to Germany in the summer, which was marvelous. I'm currently in the final semester of German classes offered by my community college, which has been great, but I've still been feeling really stuck in the intermediate plateau and it doesn't seem like the feeling will be going away anytime soon.

I'll be going back out to the German cruise line for 6.5 months on board, would love to focus on learning while I'm there but it's always a busy place full of distractions. I'm trying to rethink my approach to learning as lately I've been feeling more burned out and frustrated than anything and I know that's ill-advised for language acquisition. Trying to remind myself that I am not in a hurry and it's okay to take breaks.

Started poking around with Russian but of course found that I really didn't have the time to devote to it. I'll definitely follow up with it but I think with my limited faculties I need to focus them on German for now and let other projects go. Less goals, more gains - that's the 2022 motto.