OMFG two newbies at the German club today.

I’m not the worst one at German lol. Feels good to be “not the worst” today.

On the other hand, the third “newbie” is an older guy who “hasn’t used German in 30 years”, and was explaining how he went through University of Hamberg. Holy crap his German is near native level (at least by my ears)…Weird for me to meet someone with such strong German skills but feels like he need more practice here at the club.

So I’ve been taking it easy recently but I still noticed weird improvements.

Today while listening to Schönen guten Morgen (https://youtu.be/32M8qRGrUE8?is=U1uLBjiEPFPDI-Oe), I noticed something I haven’t noticed in months.

My mouth/tongue was tired. Physically tired. I haven’t felt like this since… I dunno A1 or something.

My mouth was instinctively trying to keep up with the song. And I guess I tried so hard that I actually tired out my tongue/mouth muscles.

Given the speed of the song I feel like this is a true improvement. A few months ago I wouldn’t even dream of keeping up with it. But now it’s within my grasp, a bit of practice and I might actually build the talking speed to shadow a song like that.

I had a feeling but I still had to ask in case there was some other language out there that cares about ein/eine/einer/einen/einem/eines

Or as we like to say in English: a, a, a, an, a or a.

For the non-German studiers out there: you know how English has He vs Him ? Who vs whom? She vs her?

Germans decided to do that with their “the” (die der das den dem des), a/an (ein einer einen einem eine eines), no (kein, keiner keinen keinem keine keinez), and all their adjectives (alt, alter, alten, altem, alter… all means Old)

The good news you young grasshopper… It kinda gets easier by the time you’ve done this for a year… Kinda sorta.

Which language?

I’ve been feeling more lazy with studying. I don’t think I’m making up for it with immersion but I still make sure to watch and listen to German every day.

But otherwise I’m taking a mental break right now. Or at least, focusing on stuff at work. I do think that deep studying interferes with my mental state work (and vice versa).

I do expect to come back to studying ASAP, once my current sprint is complete.

A lot of children songs have cartoons or dances associated with them.

The traditional German song Himpelchen und Pimpelchen has a little finger dance that represents the two characters climbing up a mountain for example (or for us Americans, basically a more German / different version of Itsy Bitsy Spider).

I got my start in German with Tschu Tschu wa, a song for maybe pre-schoolers thats like hands out, on the shoulders (etc. etc.).

So I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t really have mnemonics per se. I have dance moves or finger movements that represent different prepositions or verbs.

I have to imagine a lot of pre-school level (3 to 5 year old) songs have these dance moves. Like Baby Shark in USA had little dance things to represent the different sharks.

I’m old enough that I’m willing to learn like a 5 year old again. It’s an effective means of memorization!!

Hmmm, German speakers here in USA seem to be mostly retired folk. I wouldn’t say lonely but they are all like +20 or +30 years older than me.

I’d be nice to have someone closer to my age but I welcome any practice.

I mean, I plan to learn everything I can.

There aren’t much German speakers here in the USA. So I can’t get that much conversation practice. But I do want to be conversational, eventually. I regularly go to a club for that.

But again, I’m A2. I’m seeking the conversational level but I’m basically a beginner in the great scheme of things.

I agree with you that conversations I’ve had seem to have a lower count of vocabulary. But all of these nuanced meanings of words used in practice are different between the textbook and real life conversations.

Ex: I’m glad I looked up the word halten (hold, also “Halt”) in a real dictionary. It really shows how flexible the word would be used in a conversation.

https://www.dwds.de/wb/halten

I agree that there are some words better for conversation, and other words better for reading. But in all cases, studying the dictionary and being aware of the variety of uses (even if it’s nearly unreadable) is useful to me.

For instance: I could make a card with sapo on one side and the dictionary definition anfibio anuro de cuerpo rechoncho y robusto, ojos saltones, extremidades cortas y piel de aspecto verrugoso on the other.

Oh no. That’s not what I mean at all.

Again, I CANT read a dictionary yet. I’m A2 lol. But it’s still useful!!

Read what you can. At A2 level you should have already mastered the words noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition (etc. etc). How many categories is the word in?

How many definitions? Is this a flexible word with 50 definitions or is it a simple word with 3 related definitions under one subheading?

What’s the frequency count of the word? Are there any synonyms or antonyms that you recognize?

Are there any “related” prepositions with the word? In German, it’s “helfen bei” (which is different than English “help with”), the native level dictionary makes it clear which preposition is closely associated to the word.

Even though I can’t read definitions, there’s still a TON of information here that I learn from.

I NEVER make the Anki card from a native dictionary.

No, I make very simple Anki cards. I then spend lots of time in the dictionary (native and bilingual) to learn more about the word. Anki remains a simple one definition per word flashcard.

Don’t use Anki for this. Instead learn meanings through reading (including reading the dictionary in the target language).

I see Anki as the bridge between ignorance and immersion. You should only study the most common meaning to get started in the language. But you must always review the word in the dictionary.

At A1 or even A2 you aren’t strong enough to read a native dictionary however. But at B1+ (well, I’m at A2+) you will suddenly notice that the native dictionary isn’t so bad anymore

At A2+ I can read the example sentences and different meanings. I don’t understand it all but I can learn from dictionaries now…

A2+ meaning I completed A2 months ago but am still very far away from B1.

Anki is just good enough for seeding your understanding. The hard work happens at the immersion step. Don’t try to make Anki do something it’s bad at.

Use a dictionary. Seriously. If you aren’t strong enough for a native dictionary use a bi-lingual dictionary instead.

The Kontrollverlust (150 songs) download from their website was a huge boost to my music collection, but most of the songs ended up being English covers. I still got dozens of German songs out of it though.

The Disney songs in German are far more approachable today than before. I know I’ve improved even if I’m not fully understanding the nuance.

I might be ready to try watching a Disney movie or other kid-friendly simpler German movie. Or maybe not, hard to tell. I probably should focus more on my textbook though …

I’ve actually learned a lot from books, exercises, and raw memorization.

I’m pretty bad at raw memorization compared to my peers (it always took me more time than my classmates or other people I knew). But it’s a good crowbar, a way to convert raw effort into plausible results.

No, raw / rote memorization will never lead to ultimate learning. But I use it as a stepping stone before the real learning happens. With more stuff in my rote memory banks, I’m able to more quickly look up or get a rough idea of what a paragraph or page says when reading.

I do think my overall speaking skills are weak for my level, but I’ve also been told that I’m learning at a rate faster than many others and to be kinder to my self-expectations.

Obviously it’s not the way of learning for everyone. I played a lot of fighting games like this. I sat down and memorized all the frame data and then played games with the frame data memorized. Then I could use my memory of frame data to learn which moves had priority (and how) over other moves.

Did anyone else learn like this? Yeah, one or two. But most just learn from the video game directly. And that’s also fine. We all learn differently and knowing that we are all different is part of the process.

In any case, I am a book learner. So that’s how I’ll stay learning.

While my studies in my textbook progress slowly, I’ve actually been listening to a lot more German music… as I’m “feeling a level up”.

I’m suddenly understanding a lot of songs I didn’t think I could understand. “Völlig losgelöst” has been seemingly outside of my level for a while, but today my brain is beginning to understand it. So that’s been inspiring me to listen to a lot of music and Youtube videos to try to understand.

Another example: this Plankton short-video was mostly understood by me: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-1SU2j6ggyg

I’ve been listening to a lot of Plankton videos because I find him funny but “above my level”. Today, suddenly I’m watching “with understanding”. It took a few rewinds and one or two pause + look up words on Wiktionary… but I actually fully understand this German pun + get the humor.

I was hoping to do ~3 full sections a month, but I’ll be lucky to get 2 sections done in July. Ah well. Slower through this B1 book than I expected but maybe I’ll pick things up / go a bit faster moving forward. 6 months to finish B1 is just a number I threw down. If it takes me longer, no biggie. But I’ll still kinda-sorta aim at this as my goal.

Everyone liked the hyper-realistic heavy Spartan Armor from 300. Amiright?

They seemed to all be cool with the sword-armed troll in 300.

From what I’ve seen in German C1 and C2 topics, the grammar and vocabulary merge at the highest levels.

In English for example, the word ‘have’ has an incredible number of structures. C1 and C2 really goes into very nuanced usage and no longer surface level.

In German, natural sounding sentences seemingly break B1 or B2 level rules in these special vocabulary forms (ie relearning that haben has a new grammar), and then learning these special grammars.

Or in other words: Natives don’t follow the rules as written at B1 or B2. Learning the special exceptions to all kinds of words is C1+ level. So it’s both vocabulary (knowing that words have new meanings), but ALSO grammar because it is complex enough to change the sentence structure.

I’ve been complaining about the word list 1950 words long for a B1 level course book. I did some reading (in German) and apparently only 750-ish of those words (the ones in bold) are actually part of the B1 test.

As such, I’ve decided that while I’ll translate all words… I’ll only put the B1 test words inside of Anki. This should give me a good compromise between vocab drills and course book progress.

Last week was way too much vocabulary not enough course progress.

B1 book has absolutely a ton of vocabulary. I’m only 4 exercises in but over 150 new Anki cards (over 75 new words).

I’m estimating about 1950 new vocab words for this textbook. I’ll only be able to do this if vocabulary gets easier than it has been… But I think that is going on.

A substantial number of words are compound words or otherwise related to words I already know.

Clearly I need to accelerate my words per day by significant levels. I’ll trust in the process and the book but it’s scary.

I’ll also need to spend less time per card. The cards are somewhat less important than the reading, listening and writing exercises after all. So my Anki cards are dropping their already relatively spartan style to even more basic.

IE: do more vocabulary but maybe less effort put in. Cover more words but less deeply, and hope it works out?

Language club and Community college class continue to be helpful at speaking practice. This really is my weakest skill so anything I do helps.

I’m stronger than basically everyone in the community college class. But I’m the weakest one at the language club table. Certainly a weird feeling to go back and forth between them…

My current plan is to focus mostly on getting ahead in my vocabulary. Get all these words into Anki, start drilling them so I’m familiar with the words before doing exercises. Then I do the exercises.

If I’m always studying words from ‘future’ sections (a few pages ahead of where I am in the textbook), then that gives me time to Anki drill as a startup.

Then I do the Kursbuch exercises a few days later. (Lecture problems / exercises)

Then I do the Ubungsbuch exercises about a week after that. (Practice problems).

That gets me multiple times of review and practice for every word and concept. I’ll be aiming at 6 months to clear this book… though frankly I’m already behind schedule.

They say that B2 is roughly Youth Literature level, in that you should be reasonably comfortable with reading Momo or “Die Unendliche Geschichte”.

Also the books are apparently approachable even at A2 but you know, a lot more lookups needed. B1 is a weird slog for sure.