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.
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.
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