A language learners’ forum

SGP wrote:I did realize once again that there are people who can learn German more easily (like you, I'd say) than others.

Danke! I feel like I struggle with it a lot, so I appreciate that

SGP wrote:As for what you wrote, I am able to comprehend it without even doing any additional thinking.

That's the goal!

SGP wrote:And if I would be able to make some sentences like yours in some of my pre-A1 languages, I would be a much more advanced learner of them than I am right now.

Haha, well remember that this isn't a pre-A1 language for me. I've been actively studying German for a full year now so this is the result of quite a lot of work.

SGP wrote:As for your final sentence, well, it belonged to the third category. But I nevertheless understood it without even pausing for a few moments to grasp its meaning.

Ich verstehe.

Been a bit lax lately on the German, had a lot of life and career stuff come up this week - but yesterday I downloaded Bird Box (the book that the Netflix movie is adapted from) in German, both audiobook and eBook. I think what I'll do, since a lot of the language is still unknown to me (but not by much), is to read a chapter using Kindle for translations of new words or sentences that don't make sense to me, and then after each chapter, go back and listen to the audiobook with the text I've worked with. It's pretty much what I'm doing with my graded readers already, except it's a real book. Pretty excited to read the book so it should be a good first "real" book. Still working through the readers as well.

I've been trying to import the book into my LingQ so it can keep track of my vocabulary as I build it but I'm having a ton of trouble. Cross-platform media conversion is the worst (I'm a PC user with a iPad).

If you are interested, and I don't mean to pressure you into taking on more than you can or want to do right now, the forum's book club is reading Metro 2033. Maiwenn and I are reading it in German.

I purchased the Kindle version on Amazon.com (US), which is currently on sale. If you go to buy the Kindle version, it will ask you if you want to buy the audiobook as well--it's the Amazon deal where you get the Kindle ebook free if you buy the audiobook version. If you bought Bird Box on Amazon you probably got a similar deal, and if you are using the Amazon Kindle reader for PC or iPad, you probably already know there's a feature that lets you play the audiobook as you read the ebook--it's actually pretty nice (especially since you don't need to sign up with Audible for this).

I just wanted to float that by you in case that interests you. If you read it with the book club, you can also get help from the rest of us, if you need it, or just have to read on your own after you're done with Bird Box.

Unfortunately, I can't help you with your technical issue since I know nothing about LingQ. But regardless, glückliches Lernen!

Cèid Donn wrote:If you are interested, and I don't mean to pressure you into taking on more than you can or want to do right now, the forum's book club is reading Metro 2033. Maiwenn and I are reading it in German.

One of us! One of us!

But, seriously, your plan for Bird Box looks great! It's exciting to make the leap from readers to 'real' books. :)

Cèid Donn wrote:If you are interested, and I don't mean to pressure you into taking on more than you can or want to do right now, the forum's book club is reading Metro 2033. Maiwenn and I are reading it in German.

This might be interesting! Will this be something you, for example, start on Feb 1st and have a set number of chapters to read every day, and then we discuss? I've never actually participated in a book club but with a little accountability and community it might be a good way to ensure a certain amount of German work every day

WildGinger10 wrote:This might be interesting! Will this be something you, for example, start on Feb 1st and have a set number of chapters to read every day, and then we discuss? I've never actually participated in a book club but with a little accountability and community it might be a good way to ensure a certain amount of German work every day

I think it's suppose to be like that. This will be the first book I've read with the group so I'm not sure. But Maiwenn was suggesting in one of the threads a timeline for the chapters. I believe the first day for starting our discussion is February 3rd, which is a Sunday.

Cèid Donn wrote:

WildGinger10 wrote:This might be interesting! Will this be something you, for example, start on Feb 1st and have a set number of chapters to read every day, and then we discuss? I've never actually participated in a book club but with a little accountability and community it might be a good way to ensure a certain amount of German work every day

I think it's suppose to be like that. This will be the first book I've read with the group so I'm not sure. :D But Maiwenn was suggesting in one of the threads a timeline for the chapters. I believe the first day for starting our discussion is February 3rd, which is a Sunday.

They did a timeline for one of the past readings and it worked well for preventing attrition. I'll post my planned timeline in the book club thread in case anyone wants to join me.

(@WildGinger): Are there any particular grammar concepts that are currently a bit difficult to grasp?

SGP wrote:(@WildGinger): Are there any particular grammar concepts that are currently a bit difficult to grasp?

I'm not studying grammar at the moment, just trying to do lots of reading and internalizing, but I'm sure there's a huge number of grammatical concepts I'm having trouble with. Some things I see don't make sense to me necessarily, like I've seen schließ deine Augen as well as schließe deine Augen and I'm not sure why both of those can be correct. I'm trying not to worry too much about this kind of stuff for now though, until I start really speaking or writing.

WildGinger10 wrote:

SGP wrote:(@WildGinger): Are there any particular grammar concepts that are currently a bit difficult to grasp?

I'm not studying grammar at the moment, just trying to do lots of reading and internalizing, but I'm sure there's a huge number of grammatical concepts I'm having trouble with. Some things I see don't make sense to me necessarily, like I've seen schließ deine Augen as well as schließe deine Augen and I'm not sure why both of those can be correct. I'm trying not to worry too much about this kind of stuff for now though, until I start really speaking or writing.

If there is something grammar-esque that you would understand even better later, you might want to consider mentioning it in your log as well. Because otherwise, the natives of German in this forum maybe would never know it.

And about that imperative example: this is something rather minor . "Schließe" sounds a bit more like written or especially eloquent speech. And "schließ" is a bit more of an everyday casual word. But they really don't differ too much from each other.

Sometimes you also could find written verbs (no matter if imperative or not) that end with an apostrophe, because the ending -e simply is being dropped.

E.g. "... dass ich nicht lache!" --> "dass ich nich nicht lach' !"

Also, it isn't entirely unusual to drop an ending -e of some nouns as well, especially in poetry and similar speech.