Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Mental health vocabulary

One of the most common recommendations for learning vocabulary in a foreign language is to focus on words that are relevant to your daily life. Why spend time learning words you will never use?

A subject that is often viewed as taboo in social circles around the world is mental health. I have major depression and ADHD that is maintained through a regimen of medication and therapy. It can be difficult enough to talk about this in a native tongue! That's why I've culminated a vocabulary list of possible words and phrases that could prove useful when talking about such issues.

die psychische Verfassung – mental health
die Denkfähigkeit – mental capabilities; intelligence; cogitation
der Nervenzusammenbruch – nervous breakdown
die Fassungskraft – mental capacity
die Nervenklinik – mental hospital
der Geisteszustand – mental state; state of mind
das Seelenleiden – mental suffering
die Geistesstörung – mental disorder
die Gemütskrankheit – mental disorder
der Psychiater – psychiatrist
psychiatrisch – psychiatric(ally)
psychiatrischen – psychiatrically
die Psychiatrie – psychiatry
die Gruppentherapie – group therapy
der Therapeut – therapist
die Beklommenheit – anxiety; depression; trepidation
die Depression – depression; melancholy
deprimiert sein – to be in low spirits
aufpassen – to pay attention; to be attentive; to watch (out)
das Rezept – prescription; formula; recipe
der/die Individualfürsorger/in – case worker; case manager
die Fürsorge – welfare
Fürsorger – social welfare worker
die Gesundheit – health
aus gesundheitlichen Gründen – for health reasons
die Krankenversicherung – health insurance
etwas für die Erhaltung seiner Gesundheit tun – to do something for one’s health
Es ist gut/schlecht für deine Gesundheit. – It is good/bad for your health.
die Dauerhaftigkeit – stability; durability
die medizinische Behandlung – medication



Monday, November 1, 2010

Learning German has improved my English

It’s interesting how studying German on my own has forced me to learn about English grammar.

For instance, I was telling a friend earlier that if she had asked me last week what an auxiliary verb was, I wouldn’t have a clue. But in order to learn – and by learn, I mean truly understand – what an auxiliary verb in German was, I had to decipher the English auxiliary verb.

It turns out it’s a “helper” verb, one that works with a second word in a sentence. English’s most used auxiliary verbs are to be, to have and to do (I am working, he has sung, we do eat) whereas German has sein (to be) and haben (to have) but does not use tun (to do) as an auxiliary.

This is all information I could write up charts and make notes on and ponder day after day until I memorize it. But I took the easy route, which is figuring out what this all means in English and finding a way to quickly relate it to German. In the end, it was painless and beneficial. Knowing what they do and how they work helps me apply them to German grammar without second guessing myself.

I grew up with the double edged sword of easily grasping concepts of the English language. Without learning what type of word something is or what a part of a sentence structure is called, I’ve been able to create lingual works of art that have been published and won awards. Yet, roughly two months ago when I decided to take on German, I found myself looking up the definition of “pronoun.”

I can pat myself on the back for my accomplishments all I’d like but the fact is there’s a lot of basic stuff I don’t know. I’m finding myself learning all the information I somehow bypassed in elementary school. However, I’m finding myself having an easier time comprehending my German lessons once I’ve dissected the ideas presented.

Ultimately, the extra time I spend learning English grammar definitions and rules allows me to learn their German counterparts in less time and with less difficulty.

Wandrers Nachtlied

In a continuing attempt to practice my German pronunciation, I recorded a video of myself reciting Goethe's Wanderers Nachtlied. It's a very short poem that I jotted down on my oversized clipboard and performed in my back yard.


Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

I spent about 30 minutes practicing the pronunciation of the word "spürest." The combination of sounds that go into making this one word feels like chewing the same stick of gum for three hours!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Ich habe ein Video gemacht!

I posted a vlog. Auf deutsch!

It's pretty terrible and once I was done editing it, I realized some of the mistakes I had made. But by that point, I was so done and ready to upload it that I kept it as is. I'm not that concerned; the fact that I recognized the mistakes I made shows I'm making progress. In the future, I will probably at least outline what I have to say before I record!


All in all, I'm pleased with it as my first vlog. Once I get over the awkwardness of talking to myself in front of my computer, my speech will likely be faster and more fluid. Practice, practice, practice!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Achtung! It's Deutsch time!

I've taken it upon myself to study German at home. I've had years of exposure through public school and in college but I'm five years out of practice and looking to pick it back up. It's been rewarding so far and I've accomplished a lot but I often feel stymied because I don't have a curriculum to follow and jump around from topic to topic as needed. This has been mostly beneficial because if I find something I don't understand or want to learn more about, I just breeze through to that section in whatever various books I'm reading and go from there. However, it also means I have absolutely no structure and I have the predisposition of becoming easily overwhelmed.

I would describe myself as a high end beginner in reading, writing and speaking German. I know enough that I could survive being stranded alone on the streets of Germany but it wouldn't be pretty. My vocabulary has suffered from such a long hiatus but I've been pleasantly surprised how much is coming back to me. My biggest issue is grammar. Word order is a pain. Gender and cases are a pain. English idioms that don't translate into German are a pain.

I like tackling all of these at once but I know that taking on many projects simultaneously only means I won't finish any of them. I'm also hoping that if I specify what I'm looking to accomplish, it will help me keep track of what I've done so I can decide what to move on to next.

- Gender: I'm going to back track and work on the nouns I already know. But this time I'm going to separate them into der, die and das so I can be certain I know their correct genders. I'm going to make lists for each gender and fill up a sheet of paper for each with words to practice. And then I will write out flash cards that are color coded depending on which gender the word takes. And I will make sure to include what suffix each noun takes when it is plural. Once I'm confident I know a group of words, I'll move on to others. I think I'll work with learning 30 flash cards at a time so I'm not overwhelmed. And of course, I can always go back to review the words I've already learned.

- Cases: Accusative, Dative, Genitive and Nominative. The fact that I remembered the four cases without having to look is an accomplishment in itself. This is a big deal and I'll just have to sit down and memorize the rules. There aren't many tricks to easily recall how these work or when to use what. It's a matter of memorization, just like the gender deal. And while it's excusable for foreign speakers to make mistakes, it's been suggested that repeatedly using the wrong case when speaking or writing just comes across as unintelligent. The sooner I get these down successfully, the easier it will be to remedy my terrible grammar.

- Conjugations: I run, you run, he runs, she runs, we run, they run. Yeah, in German it's a different suffix depending on who is doing the running. Some verbs have a standard system to figure out their conjugations. Others don't. I have a great book that has 200 or so verbs broken down into their respective conjugations in all tenses and it's extremely helpful. But it's a lot to digest. And as this webpage on German verb conjugation states: "It is not too difficult at all, and it is extremely important if you don't want to sound like a retard when speaking German!" Because nothing warns one against saying the wrong thing in another language like... saying the wrong thing in another language.

There is a plethora of things I want to learn besides these but first thing's first. I have to get the basics out of the way before I can really master bigger things. I figure having the technique down will only make successfully learning German easier for me in the long run. And by sticking to these basics, I'll help myself organize what I'm learning so I can take on more things. Once I feel confident with the gender flash cards and have a routine going, I'll throw in other words (I'm excited for adjectives and prepositions). But since I don't have a syllabus to follow and my mind can wander farther than Lisa Nowak in a diaper, it's good to take baby steps.

Wie geht's?

Nothing says a fresh start like a fresh blog. It's the digital equivalent of a brand new notepad that is begging to be filled with ink doodles.

I'm teaching myself German. I've had exposure to the language throughout my public school years and I spent a little time studying it in college courses. But now I'm reacquainting myself with Deutsch on my own terms.

Which essentially means I have no idea what my next steps will be or where they may lead.

However, I feel that monitoring my progress will not only help me measure how much I've learned but could also prove to be a resource to others looking to become more familiar with the language.