Sabotai Learns German

[sabotai]

For awhile now, I have been learning German. It's been an on again, off again 'hobby' for awhile now. I would say I have learned a lot of German since I started, however since I've started and stopped with several different programs, systems, etc., my knowledge of the language is pretty much "all over the place". I can carry a simple conversation, but I still can't read a paragraph from a book or newspaper without finding words I don't know, but I see plenty that I do.

I'm starting this as an online journal of my learning (and the hope that other people who are learning a language will get something out of it, plus get any feedback from those who have already learned second languages). I have two big problems with this. 1) I sometimes forget my place. I've occasionally listened to the same audio lessons because 2) I sometimes let time get away from me. If I go 1 day without doing something, it sometimes turns into 1 week. And sometimes that 1 week turns into 1 month.

I know if I ever want to really know the language (and learn other languages), I need to spend a meaningful amount of time every day studying, and eventually using, German. But for right now, I just want to make sure that I do something every day, even if it's just highlighting a few words I don't know in the next paragraph of a story in one of my dual-language books.

I'll start off by going over some of the things I have already done.

German Grammar Books

Hammer's German Grammar and Usage: A very thorough, but very dry, book. It reads very much like a textbook. I tried reading this, but it is very hard to get through.

1001 Pitfalls in German - Despite its title, the book isn't just about the common mistakes people make when learning German. It's a pretty good grammar book that will specifically point out the "pitfalls in German", but it is in no way limited to them. It's much lighter than Hammer's. Far easier to read, but I'm also guessing that it's not as thorough as Hammer's.

I'm currently reading through 1001 Pitfalls. When I'm done with that, I'll go back to Hammer's.

Software / Audio

Rosetta Stone (Version 2) - Rosetta Stone (RS) was the first thing I started using to learn German. At first, it was pretty cool, but the lessons get boring pretty quickly. A lot of the words I learned through it have stayed with me, so I guess it works. However, I started laboring through the lessons around Unit 4 of Level 1. Right now, I am in the middle of Unit 7 of Level 1, nearly done with Level 1 (8 Units).

Native speakers reading the lines is a huge plus. German words matched with pictures means you have to think and workout on your own what the words mean, which will help the word and its meaning stick in you mind. Each lesson is focused on a subject. For instance, one lesson will teach the words for basic shapes, a lesson may focus on colors, on telling time, on types of buildings, etc.

However (and this goes for Version 2), it is too easy to "cheat". For instance, I can match a line that started with "Beides" to a picture without needing to know what the rest of the words in the line simply by knowing that the other 3 lines don't start with the word "Beides" (That means "Both" for those wondering). You may say "you're only cheating yourself!" and I am. But when I'm bored with the lesson and the program, I can't help it. So yes, while some words will stick with you when you work through them, I have no doubt that a lot of words have not stuck with me because it's too easy to match the first word or two of a line to a picture.

Also, if your goal is to learn enough of the language to get by if you plan to travel, forget it. The program does not teach that way. After several dozen lessons, you still will not be able to carry a basic conversation. This software is aimed at those looking to learn the entire language, not just enough of the language to get by on vacation. I personally don't have a problem with that, since I am aiming to learn the language, but if you want to learn conversion stuff at first, this is not for you.

In the end, I think RS is good for testing your knowledge of a language, but I can't say it's great at teaching it. There are a lot of other criticisms on the software that you can find by researching public opinion on it.

I have heard good things about Version 3, though. That may be worth looking into. As for Version 2, I'm pretty much done with it. I'll load it up every once in awhile and do several tests to move forward in the lessons (I'm hoping that it might actually get better in Level 2). But it's out of my regular routine.

The good news is if you are a library goer, there's a chance that if the library you go to has a computer lab, they might have it on their computers. I have heard several people say they have used the software, for free, at their library. So you may be able to use it for free, and if you like it and it works for you, all the better.

Pimsleur (Audio lessons) - I was able to borrow these from a friend of mine. All 3 levels but the readings part of it is missing Not sure if these have a "version", if they changed at all or much from the original recordings, so I can't comment on that.

Most people seem to say that these are the best tapes for learning a language. Lesson 1 starts off with you hearing a simple conversation. Over the next half hour, the lesson breaks it down by telling you what the words mean, and having you repeat the words (and sometimes just a part of the word) over and over again as you try to match the pronunciation. The following lessons will continue to add on and change the conversation at the start of the lesson as it introduces new words. After several lessons, you'll begin having a few "mock conversations" near the end of each lesson.

Each lesson is 30 minutes long and there are 30 lessons per level (3 levels - 45 hours total). It gives time for you to repeat in the recording, so these are perfect for listening to in the car since you don't need to constantly pause the recording. These are the tapes you want if you want to learn a language for the purpose of traveling. These start with a very simple conversation ("Excuse me, do you understand English." "No, I do not understand English." "I understand a bit of German", etc.) and then continue on with standard conversational phrases. Good day, goodbye, Where is the museum, it's on Maple Street, etc.

I am currently on lesson 15 of Level 1. These tapes are absolutely great, and if you can get a hold of them, wonderful. And just like with RS, I have heard people say that they have been able to check the Pimsleur tapes out of their library, so if you are a library goer, check to see if your library has these.

Michel Thomas (Audio lessons) - There's two reason why I stopped with Pimsleur after lesson 14. One, my iPod earbud thingies crapped out and I had to wait for new ones (no CD player in my car). Two, I discovered the Michel Thomas tapes.

Michel Thomas uses a "building block" method to teaching a language. He starts off with simple words and phrases, and then put them together. You can read about the method on other sites as I'm sure I will not do it any justice, but I feel like I am learning much faster with Michel Thomas' method than I did with either RS or Pimsleur, and I am retaining not all, but the vast majority of what I've learned (It doesn't hurt that by the time I got to these, I already knew some of the words he introduces in the first couple of lessons).

The one downside is that unlike the other two, Thomas does not use native speakers. Some people have expressed concern about this since they worry about pronunciation. The audio is of Michel Thomas with two students who do not know the language. You become the 3rd student and learn with them. Not only do you learn through your own mistakes, but through the mistakes of the other two students as well. He will also explain the grammar, something RS and Pimsleur does not do.

Because this system requires you to constantly press the pause button to work through what Thomas has just asked you to say, I don't think this would work well for those looking for something to listen to as they drive, even though I have heard people say they do listen in the car to them. I honestly don't know how they do it. I'm pausing it constantly, and sitting on my bed trying to work through what he asked me to say. I can't imagine trying to do that while driving, so I wouldn't recommend these tapes/CDs for that.

But the system is very good, and I'm having....I don't want to say "fun", but it's certainly not boring. I have just finished CD 6 (of 8) of the Beginner course, and feel like I have learned quite a bit.

[sabotai]

So what am I doing now to learn Geramn? What's my regular routine?

1) Currently, I am listening to Michel Thomas beginner's course. I just finished the 6th CD (out of 8 - if you look on Amazon and other places, it says 10 CDs, but the last 2 CDs go over what was learned in the first 8).

2) Reading 1001 Pitfalls in German (German Grammar Book)

3) I have several Dual-Language books in German (on one side, English on the other). I try to read through a paragraph of a story on the German side and highlight the words I do not understand. For now, I'm just focusing on big words. Nouns, verbs, some adjectives and adverbs. The smaller words I'm just leaving alone for now.

If you read my FTB answers, you may remember me saying that I was working on a program of my own for German vocabulary. Well, I stopped doing that when I found a program called Stackz! It's mainly for learning Japanese, so a lot of the features in it are mainly for Kana and Kanji learning, but it can easily be used for any other language. It's a pretty good flashcard program. Better than using real flashcards, IMO.

What I do is create a simple spreadsheet of the words I highlight and their meanings. I use the English side of the books to get a better understanding of how the word is used, idiomatic uses for words, etc. I then import the spreadsheet into Stackz! and then use the program the same way you would use flashcards. The program keeps track of who well you know the words.

And the short story I am currently working through is "Das Erdbeben in Chili" by Heinrich Von Kleist ("The Earthquake in Chili"). out of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Great-Ger...5262141&sr=1-1

The five stories in it are the one above, "Der Sandmann" by E.T.A. Hoffman, "Leutnant Gustl" by Arthur Schnitzler ("Lieutenant Gustl"), "Tristan" by Thomas Mann and "Das Urtail" by Franz Kafka ("The Judgement").



My goal is to try and do each of the above everyday. Listen to some of a CD, read some of the grammar book and do a paragraph or two from the dual-language book, add the unknown words into Stackz! and spend sometime going over all of the words (the newly added ones plus all of the ones I still don't know).

I think spending a half hour on each thing is realistic for most nights, but I know some days I'm going to not be able to put an hour and a half towards it. So my goal is to do all 3 of the above, but the minimum would be to do at least 1 of the above every day.

[fantastic flying froggies]

Schoen guten Tag!

Ich hoffe dass, du Viel Spass in Deutsch lernen hast.

[sabotai]

Oct 29, 2008

Michel Thomas

Listened to the first half of CD 7. One of the things he does is explain the differences between English and German word usage and grammar. On this CD, he explains how in English, "could" can mean two different things. "was/were able to" ("I couldn't do it yesterday") and "would be able to" ("I could do it tomorrow."). In German, there are two different words. "was/were able" would be "konnten", and "would be able" is "könnten". The umlaut changes the meaning and the pronunciation.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist

I already have 74 words on my list from just the first page (plus 1 paragraph) of the story. The next paragraph had 18 more words I did not know, making it a total of 92 words.

32 words are Known, 47 are Unknown and 13 are Neutral

1001 Pitfalls In German

Began Chapter 6: Pronouns. The first 5 chapters covered (1) Adjectives and Adverbs, (2) Cases, Articles, Der- and Ein- words, (3) Conjuctions, (4) Nouns, (5) Prepositions.

Read through the fist several pages. Topics were the different forms of "you", pronoun agreement (plus a few other uses of "es" and "man" - "it" and "one" as in "one should", "one must" - not used very often in English anymore) and reflexive pronouns (the use of the reflexive is far more frequent in German than in English. It can not be omitted).

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by fantastic flying froggies

Schoen guten Tag!

Ich hoffe dass, du Viel Spass in Deutsch lernen hast.

Danke froggy. Wie lange hast du Deutsch gewußt? (I hope I said that right. )

I read that in France, it's not common to learn second languages. That it's like here in the US where most people don't feel the need to learn anything other than their native language. Is that true? Or do most French people learn other European languages?

[fantastic flying froggies]

Actually, most Frenchmen do learn a second language at school (usually Spanish, at least in the South where I live). It's just that we're usually not very good at them...

As far as me learning German, I took 5 years in school but was never any good at it. I simply wasn't interested. I was already fluent in English and thought 'bah, who needs German when you already speak French and English?'

And then, much later, I went to work in Germany. The former East Germany, to be exact and I very soon realized that my French + English combo wouldn't work too well there. Now, if I'd known Russian, it would have been different .

Anyhow, stayed close to 2 years there so I picked up a lot of the language, even though I've sadly forgotten a lot by now.

(and yes, I think you said that right... )

[sabotai]

I took 4 years of German in school as well. I coasted it through it with Ds (barely passing) every year.

Yesterday, I took a 4 hour long "nap" after work and then got right to killing stuff in Fallout 3, so I didn't do much.

Oct 30, 2008

Before falling asleep, I picked up my grammar book and read about Relative Pronouns.

Important points:

1) German uses a relative pronoun in constructions where English places a present particle after a noun. Example being "the people dancing" in German "die Leute, die tanzen" (word-for-word translation "The people that dance"). "the lady singing" is "die Frau, die singt" ("the lady that sings").

2) English frequently omits the relative pronoun which is never done in German. "That's the girl (that) I saw there" -> "Das ist das Mädchen, das ich dort gesehen habe"

Oct 31, 2008

Today, I decided to get my German work done before I loaded up Fallout 3.

Michel Thomas: Listened to the second half of CD 7.

1001 Pitfalls in German:

Read about Interrogative Pronouns and Adjectives.

German makes a distinction between relative and interrogative uses of "who/whose/whom". The interrogative pronoun "who" is "wer". The relative would depend on case and gender of the noun, but is a "der" word.

No distinction is made in gender or number with interrogative pronouns (relative pronouns do)

The "hook", or gimmick, of the book is that while going over the grammar rules, it throws our exceptions, rare usages, or things that often cause confusion to those learning German. An example of this is that despite the first I rule I stated, "wer" ("who"), IS occasionally used as a relative pronoun. It's only used when refering to somebody indefinite. In this case, it would be translated as "whoever", "who", "he who", etc. "Whoever is not for me is against me." "Wer nicht für mich ist, ist gegen mich."

Also read about Prepositional Compounds Used Pronominally

Words like wherein, whereupon, thereby. Words that you only really see in legal literature are common in German. "What should I do with it?" -> "Was soll ich damit machen?" (Literally translates to "What should I do therewith?"). "Wo" is "where" and "da" is there. They are used with inanimate objects, not people.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist: 23 words added to my wordlist from the next paragraph in the story.

[Nugget699]

Learning a new language is one of the hardest things to do imo. I'm in my second year of learning Swedish, which is almost identical to English in many ways yet it is still quite hard. Of course, the only thing worse is acutally trying to speak to natives in their native tongue!

Good luck with it all though, it's very rewarding when you can speak another language and I encourage everyone to give it a try.

[sabotai]

Nov 1, 2008

Michel Thomas - Listened to the first half of CD 8. He mostly talked about verb prefixes.

1001 Pitfall in German: Started Chapter 8: Verbs. Most of what I read was stuff I already knew, but it's a pretty long chapter. The first part just goes over the basics. Weak vs. strong verbs, how the verbs change in different tenses, etc.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Short paragraph today. Only 9 words added.

[sabotai]

Nov 2, 2008

Michel Thomas - Finished CD 8. I am done with the first set of Thomas CDs, although there are two review CDs. What I think I'm going to do is go back to Pimsleur and finish the first set of lessons. After that, I'll listen to the two review CDs and get started on the 2nd set of Thomas CDs. I'll keep going back and forth with them until I'm done.

1001 Pitfalls in German - I continued to read about verbs. I read about the Imperative Mode. Since there are three ways to say "you", there are three ways of giving commands, the familiar single, familiar plural and the formal (the same for both single and plural). I also read about verb prefixes.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - 12 more words added to the list. That brings the total to 129 words.

[sabotai]

Nov 3, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 15 of the German I (~25 minutes long).

1001 Pitfalls in German - Read about the Subjunctive and Modal Auxiliaries.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Didn't add anymore words. I have 129 and I'm still having trouble with a lot of them so I'm going to stop adding words for a few days and spend my time studying the ones I already have. I have 29 of those 129 words listed in "Level 1" and 48 in "Level 2" (Out of 5). When I I get 0 in Level 1 and say around 25 in Level 2, I'll begin adding words again.

[sabotai]

Skipped the 4th. Was paying too much attention to the election.

Nov 5, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 16.

1001 Pitfalls in German - Read about Idiomatic Uses of Modals. Modals can be used by themselves when "gehen" (to go (on foot)), "fahren" (to go (to travel, to ride a bike, to drive a car, etc.)), or "tun" (to do) are implied. "Wollen" (to want) can be used to mean "to claim to". "Können" (to be able to) is used to mean "to know" when dealing with languages.

Also read about Passive Voice and Impersonal Verbs, which are used in German more than English.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Spent more time reviewing a lot of the words I am having trouble with.

[Barkeep49]

Do you find learning another language makes your use of English better? I hear this sometimes and am wondering if it's true for you.

[Buccaneer]

The best English class I ever took was High School Spanish.

[sabotai]

I'd say my use of English has gotten better. One example is that I used to use "good" as an adverb and not care about it. In studying another language, you can't help but to pay attention to proper word usage (when I know the proper word usage, of course ). So I do catch myself and say or write "well" now. The main reason being is that I learned in German, they use "good" ("gut") as an adjective and adverb, and that "well" is used to describe how someone feels. So now I try to use the proper words mainly because it's becoming a habit.

My pronunciation is getting "better" too. I'm losing some of my South Jersey/Philly accent. I say "lot" now, instead of "laH" because you have to pronounce that "t" at the end of German words, and so that carries over to me now pronouncing my "t"s at the end of English words, which i didn't do before.

[sabotai]

Got sucked into Fallout 3 again, but got a bit done each night.

Nov 6, 2008

1001 Pitfalls - Finished the chapter on Verbs. The last few sections were about Verbs with a Dative Object, Verbs with a Genitive Object (which is increasingly considered old-fashioned).

Nov 7, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 17.

[sabotai]

Nov 8, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 18.

1001 Pitfalls - Began Chapter 8: Sentence Structure. German has three types of word order: Normal (Subject-Verb), Inverted (Verb-Subject) and Transposed (Verb comes last). Normal is used when the subject begins the sentence and after the coordinating conjunctions und (and), aber (but), sondern (but), oder (or), denn (if, because). Inverted is used for direct questions and when the sentence does not begin with the subject. Transposed is used in subordinate clauses.

I also read about Direct and Indirect Questions. For direct questions, the verb comes second, after the question word. "Wo ist der Mann?" -> "Where is the man?". "Wer hat meine Uhr gestohlen?" -> "Who stole my watch?". For indirect questions, the verb goes at the end. "Marlene Dietrich wollte wissen, wo der Mann ist." -> "Marlene Dietrich wanted to know where the man is.". "Ich möchte feststellen, wer meine Uhr gestohlen hat." -> "I'd like to ascertain who stole my watch."

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - I am still working on the 129 words. I have about half of them down, but after going a few days without looking at them, some of them I forgot. I'm about to take 25 out of the list, though, since I get them immediately, regardless of how long I've gone without looking at them. Tomorrow I'll take a closer look and start eliminating some words.

[sabotai]

Nov 9, 2008

1001 Pitfalls - Read about Extended Adjective Construction to finish the chapter on sentence construction. It's not used oftan in spoken German, but can be found in formal writing. A good example is provided by Mark Twain in his essay "The Awful German Language"

"Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet..."

Translation: "But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met..."

[sabotai]

Nov 10, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 19.

1001 Pitfalls - Began chapter 9: Punctuation. A few simple rules. Instead of a period in numbers, German uses a comma (3.14 -> 3,14). And for thousands, millions, etc., the numbers are separated with a space instead of a comma (1,452,190 -> 1 452 190).

Also went over a few rules for comma usage. For instance, all subordinate clauses are set off by a comma. In a list of items, a comma is not used before "und" (and). When dealing with dialogue, a colon is used prior to the quotation marks.

German is well known for its very large nouns. A help with this, German uses hyphens when dealing with words that have the same root. For example, "Das hat Vorteilr und Nachteile." becomes "Das hat Vor- und Nachteile." (That has advantages and disadvantages.)

Capitalization: All nouns (when used as nouns) are capitalized. Also, adjectives derived from the names of towns and cities are capitalized, however adjectives derived from the name of countries are not.

Das Erdbeben in Chili worldlist - Moved 25 words from the list. I had gone 8-0 in getting them right, so time to move them off the stack. It's safe to say I know them. The last two times were separated by a week, so they stuck with me. I'll still go back to them every few weeks to make sure they stick.

That leaves 104 words left. 13 are on the top level (level 5). 13 on the one below that. 28 are in level 3. Most of them are words I keep getting and then forgetting, but some are ones I got wrong many times before they finally started to stay with me. Level 2 has 19 and Level 1, the bottom level, has 32.

I'm going to spend some more time later tonight on those bottom 32.

[sabotai]

Nov 11, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 20.

Nov 12, 2008

1001 Pitfalls - Finished Chapter 9. Read about how to recognize, form and pronounce compound words, as well as how to write letters (all forms of "you" are capitalized in a letter, proper ways to start and end letters, how to write addresses)

[sabotai]

Nov 13, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 21

1001 Pitfalls - Read chapter 10: Numbers, Measurement and Time Expressions. zwo (two) is sometimes used instead of zwei (two - the more common word) to avoid confusion with drei (three) on telephones and in official language. Double-digit numbers are written with the singles place number first, and then the tens place. Example: 83 is dreiundachtzig (3 and 80). With hundreds, they say the hundreds place first. The only digits inverted for numbers in written form are the singles and tens place. And numbers are always written as one word, so large numbers are usually written numerically.

Measurements do not use the plural when preceded by a number. They also do not use "of" with measurements or quantities. dreizig Mark (30 Marks). drei Pfound Bananen (3 pounds (of) bananas). zwanzig Paar Shuhe (20 pairs (of) shoes).

Multiplication is usually indicated by a dot (3 · 3 = 9). Division is indicated by a colon (10 : 2 = 5).

Zeit is the German noun for "time", but the word Mal is used for multiplication and expressions. 3 · 3 = 9 would be "drei mal drei ist neun". "zum ersten Mal" = for the first time. "einmal" = "once" or "one time". "zum letzten Mal" = for the last time.

For years, "in" is only used when using the word "Jahre". "im Jahre 1914" = in the year 1914. Otherwise, you just use the year. "Der Krieg ist im Jahre 1914 ausgebrochen" = The war broke out in the year 1914. "Der Krieg ist 1914 ausgebrochen" = Word-for-word: The war is 1914 broke out. - English: The war broke out in 1914.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Spent more time going over the words in the lower few levels. Tomorrow, I'll test myself on the words in the upper levels to see if any more can be taken out.

[sabotai]

Nov 14, 2008

1001 Pitfalls - Began chapter 11: Pronunciation. I have a pretty good grasp of the pronunciation rules. For the most part, German is pronounced the same as it is written. No silent letters or anything like that. Only in words that are foreign in origin, like French words. Germans pronounce borrowed words the same way as the language they are borrowing them from. An example would be "restaurant", that is pronounced as it is in French.


Nove 15, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 22. They are starting to use more German when telling you want to do.

1001 Pitfalls - Finished the chapter on pronunciation. Went over stress, which is imilar to English. Most words are stressed on the first syllable, but like with pronunciation, words that have their origin in Latin or French will retain the stress as well.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Still working on the 104 words that are left. Moved 11 more words to the Known wordlist so that leaves 93 words.

[sabotai]

Didn't do anything on the 16th

Nov 17, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 23. 7 more to go.

1001 Pitfalls - Read chapter 12: Vocabulary Building, Confusions, Regional Variations.

The first part of the chapter gave tips and help for building your vocabulary. The first was that in German, they combine common words to form other ideas. For scientific or medical terms, they will combine simple terms. It amkes it very easy to recognize what a term means, unlike in English, which will normally use a Latin or Greek word. So if you build up a nice vocabulary of German, it's very easy to pick up the meaning of a word you don't know simply by breaking it down into its parts (and using context).

In English, we'll use a German words for basic verbs, but for compound words, we'll use the Latin. For example, the verb to hold (in German, "halten") and the verb to retain (in German, "behalten"). "brechen" is to break and "unterbrechen" is to interrupt. We take from German for one meaning, and then from Latin for another.

The second part in helping to build vocabulary talks about the most obvious, that a lot of English words come from German. Specifically, Saxon, which is an older form of German. Around 700 AD, there was a sound shift in the language in the German regions. Still, if you didn't know a word of German, you'd probably be able to figure out what "Das Wetter is kalt." means.

With the sound shift, some letters change in the words. If you revert them back, you can easily figure out what the English word is. For example, b is sometimes used in German where in English it's an f or a v. "Abend" -> "Avend" -> "Evening". "geben" -> "geven" -> "to give". "halb" -> "half". "sieben" -> "sieven" -> "seven".

ch is often gh or k. "Tochter" -> "Toghter" -> "Daughter". "Macht" -> "Maght" -> "Might". "weich" -> "weik" -> "weak".

d is often th. "Ding" -> "Thing". "Leder" -> "Lether" -> "Leather"

ff, pf and f are often p. "Affe" -> "Ape". "offen" -> "open". "Pfennig" -> "Pennig" -> "Penny"

g is often y or i. "Tag" -> "Tay" -> "Day". "Nagel" -> "Naiel" -> "Nail"

the suffix -ig usually changes to -y. "rosig" -> "rosy". "lausig" -> "lousy". "windig" -> "windy"

k can be ch or c. "Katze" -> "Catze" -> "Cat". "Kalk" -> "Chalk".

s, ss or (t)z can be a t. "Fuß" -> "Fut" -> "Foot". "essen" -> "eten" -> "to eat". "zehn" -> "tehn" -> "ten". "besser" -> "better".

sch is often s. "schwimmen" -> "swimmen" -> "to swim".

t is often d. (See eample "Tag" above). "Traum" -> "Draum" -> "Dream". "hart" -> "hard". "Gott" -> "God". "gut" -> "gud" -> "good".


Another tidbit the book stated was "Use a new word twice and it's yours" (which is a phrase I've heard before). For the words I am having trouble with in the wordlist, I'm going to start doing this. I'll write out some sentences with them and see if that helps make them stick.

The book also gave a large list (about 25 pages) of words that are often confused. I didn't read through them all, but I may add them to my Stackz list at some point soon.

The chapter (and the book) ended by going over the various different regional dialects while constantly reminding the reader to stick with learning standard German.

So I finished 1001 Pitfalls In German. I'll take tomorrow off with regards to reading as I work on my wordlist more, and then I'll start reading Hammer's book.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Briefly looked over the words tonight. Tomorrow, I'm going to write out a bunch of (simple) sentences to see if that helps.

[sabotai]

Didn't do anything on the 18th.

Nov 19, 2008

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Well, I tried to write out some sentences with the words I'm having trouble with. They were terrible (and short) sentences. Another thing I tried to do was the write the word out and it's meaning several times. Back in college, this was something I did when studying for tests that were mostly just memorizing facts.

I also went back and reread the first two pages of the story several times. I'd say I have about half of the words I highlighted completely memorized with most of the other half taking me a second or two them figure it out.

I think my big mistake was going forward and adding words to a growing list of vocabulary words. It's probably better to stick with trying to learn and memorize a dozen or so words at a time and then moving on rather than letting the list get up to over 100 words. I feel like I may have overloaded my brain with words. I have 18 words in the last level, and I spent about 30 minutes going over their meanings, writing them and their meanings and trying to use them in sentences and I feel like I have most of them now. Of course, I'll find out if that's true in the next few days.

So I'll wait until I have all of the words in my current list memorized before going forward in the story at all. When I have all of the words down, I'll get my 10 or so words from the next paragraph and stop and wait until I have them all before going forward again.

[sabotai]

Nov 20, 2008

Pimsleu - Listened to Unit 24.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - 12 more words moved to the Known list. Down to 83.

[sabotai]

Skipped the 21st.

Nov 22, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 25.

Hammer's German Grammar and Usage - Started reading this. The first chapter is on nouns. The first section dealt with how to identify the gender of a noun. You can tell the gender a lot of the time based on the ending of the noun, but there are a ton of exceptions and it is generally best to learn the gender of the noun when learning the noun. When I have nouns in my word lists and flash cards, I usually will add the gender to it. (example: the noun for animosity is "die Erbitterung(en)". I learn the gender and plural form when I learn the noun).

Nov 23, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 26.

Hammer's - The next section dealt with plurals. Again, most nouns follow certain rules for forming the plural, but just like with gender, there are a lot of exceptions and it's a good idea to learn the plural form of the noun with the noun. Most nouns form a plural by adding -e, -en, -er or one of them with an umlaut (masculine and neuter mostly use -e or -e with an umlaut. Feminine mostly use -en or -n, but again, lots of exceptions). -s is used for loan-words from English or French, abbreviations and a few German words.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Went through the list again. A lot of words I spent a lot of time covering a few days ago stayed with me, a few did not. I plan to do the same for the bottom 15 or so words tomorrow (most of which are not the ones I covered a few days ago).

[Buccaneer]

-s is used for loan-words from English or French

Like what?

[Barkeep49]

As a follow up to Buc, is it easy to know words that are loaned from another language? Seems like that is the main variance for a lot of grammar.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Like what?

Some examples in the book are Park, Chef, Hotel, Labor, Team, Waggon, Tunnel, Baby, Party.

Also, they don't change a y to ie when adding the s. So in German, the plural is Babys, not Babies. Also, if the loan-word ends in -er, they don't add the -s in the plural, like with Computer, and treat them like regular German nouns.

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

As a follow up to Buc, is it easy to know words that are loaned from another language?

Sometimes. Loan words are usually spelled the way they are in the language they are taken from, so sometimes it's easy to spot a loan word since it'll be spelled in a "non-German" way. From the above, "labor" just doesn't look German. I don't think native German words use the -or ending for an -er sound like in English. Also, "team". My vocab is still pretty limited, but I don't recall seeing the vowel combination "ea" in any words. If it were spelled in a German way, it would probably be "teem".

[Buccaneer]

I'll ask a follow up as well. Why would the German language use those loan words? Looking up Baby, it appears it is a Middle English word originating from 1350-1400. I can understand adopting that word since then but what about before? What did they call a Baby? So I guess my general question is why did they adopt those words into their language?

[sabotai]

The German word for baby is Kleinkind, which literally translates to "small kid". I would imagine Middle English had a similar generic term for babies until creating a specific word for it. As for why German took "baby" instead of making their own unique word or continuing to use Kleinkind, I don't know. And I don't know why they take other words.

We took some of their words as well. Angst, kindergarden, poltergeist, blitz, rucksack, doppleganger are all German words that we use quite a lot. Not sure how they ended up in common usage in our language (well, a reason for "blitz" comes to mind), but I'm sure it's for similar reasons as for why our words end up in other languages.

[sabotai]

Nov 24, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 26.

Hammer's - The last section on German nouns dealt with declension. Masculine and neuter nouns add -s or -es in the genitive singular. -n is added in the dative plural if possible. A small group of "weak" masculine nouns, usually when refering to people or animals, use an -en ending for all cases except for the nominative singular.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Spent a good half hour going over the 21 words in the bottom level. Some are ones I already gave time to, others found their way down.

[Buccaneer]

sab, I understand. The question then is what word do Germans use in everyday conversations: kleinkind or baby?

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

sab, I understand. The question then is what word do Germans use in everyday conversations: kleinkind or baby?

Kleinkind can also mean toddler or infant. German also has the words Säugling and Kindlein that mean "baby" as well. For everyday use, I don't know. They many use them all interchangeably the same way we use infant, toddler or baby.

I get results after doing a search on amazon.de for each of the four words (Baby, Kleinkind, Kindlein, Säugling). Searching spiegel.de and bild.de (news websites) for each word also gives results. So I'm guessing they use them all.

[sabotai]

Nov 25, 2008

Hammer's - Began Chapter 2: Case. I read about the nominative, accusative, genitive and the dative. Nominative is the default case, it mainly marks the subject of the finite verb. It's also use for the predicate compliment of copula verbs. The accusative is mainly use for the direct object of a transitive verb, but it has a lot of other uses that are explained fully in other sections of the book (in fact, this whole chapter seems to be filled with "see section X.X.X for full details"). The genitive case is mainly used to link nouns and noun phrases, but it is rarely used now. In colloquial speech, it's hardly, if ever, used. Using "von" (of) is prefered. There are a lot of cases where the genitive isn't possible even in writing. The dative is used for the indirect object of a transitive verb, among other situations. Again, most of the details are given in other sections of the book.

Das Erdbeben in Chili wordlist - Briefly went over the wordlist again.

[sabotai]

Been a few days since I updated. Here's a quick rundown of what I've done, plus i am changing up how I do wordlists (the trial-and-error for me continues)

Hammer's - Finished Cahpter 2 and read through Chapter 3: Personal Pronouns.

Pimsleur - Listened to Units 27 and 28.


Wordlists
I am scratching the old system and starting over with vocabulary wordlists.

I have several sources for vocabulary words. Some books (Mastering German Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach, Berlitz German Vocabulary Handbook, Berlitz German Verb Handbook, Barron's 501 German Verbs), the dual-language books which will be put aside for now, and the German news websites (spiegel.de, bild.de, etc.).

For now on, I am going to create a list of 35 words each week. That's about 5 words a day to learn, which is not many. I'm going to take them from all of the above sources. At the end of the week, I'll runthrough all 35 words several times in the Stackz program, then I'll put those 35 words aside, regardless of how many I learned or have not learned, and create a new list of 35 words. Sorta like in high school. Every week, we'd get a list of vocab words in English class, take a quiz at the end of the week and then get more words. If you got the words wrong on the quiz, they didn't carry over to the next week, you just moved on.

If I get stuck on words, I'll put them aside and move on. The idea for this is to build up vocabulary as quickly as possible. I'm putting the short stories aside for now because they are all old, some of the words my be outdated, some of the grammar may be archaic, and I think sticking with more modern sources for vocab and reading would be better. I don't want to pick up bad habits because I learned from outdated or archaic material. So I'll hold off on those short stories for awhile.

For the words I put aside, after awhile, I'll start randomly putting them into the new wordlists. Only a few at a time so I don't hamper my progress.

To start off, I plan to take 10 words from each Vocabulary books, 5 verbs from the 501 German Verbs book, and 10 words from articles on German websites (I'll mainly stick to Spiegel Online). The Berlitz Verb hanbook has a ton of verbs, but most of them are prefix verbs. The 501 German Verbs book has mostly verbs without prefixes, so I'll start with them.

[sabotai]

The 35 Words for this week

Mastering German Vocabulary (from chapter Personal Information)
ledig - single, unmarried
alleinstehend - single
verheiratet - married
getrennt - separated
gescheiden - divorced
verwitwet - widowed
der Witwer, Witre - widower, widow
das Geschlecht - sex, gender
der Ehemann - husband
die Ehefrau - wife

Berlitz German Vocabulary Handbook (Functional Words - Indefinite Pronouns)
irgendeiner - anybody
so einer - one like that
niemand - no one
kein einziger - not a single one
manches - quite a lot
weniges - not much
jemand - someone
jeder/e/es - everyone, each one - (jeder, jedere, jederes depending on gender)
etwas anderes - something else
einieges - some things

501 German Verbs (randomly picked)
legen - to lay, put, place, deposit
berichten - to report
trüben - to darken, to sadden, to make muddy
schaden - to damage, hurt
merken - to notice, to note, to perceive

I have a couple of Der Spiegel magazines from earlier in the year. I'll start with articles from them.

Der Spiegel - March 31st, 2008 issue ("Gewalt ohne Folgen")
die Gewalt - power, force, violence
folgen - to follow
die Folge - sequel, sequence, effect, sequitur
Gewalttäter - Google translates to "Perpetrators of violence", so I guess this is a word for "gangs" since that's what it seems this short article is about considering there is a picture of 3 teenagers with weapons and their faces covered.
davon - therefrom, thereof
straffrei - exempt from punishment, unpunished.
vertraulich - confidential
der Bericht - report, account
bundesweit - nationwide, national
die Sicherheit - safety, security, immunity

[Buccaneer]

Weinie. Be different and learn High German.

[sabotai]

(insert random "Buc is old" joke, including a mention of High German, here.)

Dec 1, 2008

Pimsleur - Listened to Unit 29.

Hammer's - Started Chapter 4: Articles. In spoken German, the definite and indefinite articles are unstressed and usually shortened. For instance, only pronouncing the 's' when saying "das". This is never used in writing except to demonstrate spoken German or for dialogue or poetry. Articles are often contracted with prepositions. "von" + "dem" = "vom". "zu" + "der" = "zur". Some are used in both spoken and written German (the two examples I gave are used in both). Some are used in spoken German and but only in certain situations in written German. And then there are some that are only used in Spoken German but never written German except in set phrases.

Vocabulary Wordlist: The five words I studied today were: folgen, niemand, weniges, schaden and die Gewalt.

[sabotai]

NHL 09 + Second Season = not doing anything for a few days. I also bought four German movies that I plan to watch soon (and then watch - or listen to as I am on my computer - over and over again so that I am constantly being exposed to the German language, both when I am studying and as background noise). The four moves are Das Boot (the director's cut, over 200 minutes long), Run Lola Run, The Lives of Others, and Downfall, which many have seen at least one scene from (it's about the last days of Hitler. The scene with him freaking out has been used to make funny videos many times). I have not seen any of these, so I may post about them in the "Last Movie" thread when I do watch them.

Dec 4, 2008

Pimsleur - Finished Unit 30, and am now finished with Part 1 (of 3) of Pimsleur's course. Overall,m pretty good, especially when it comes to pronunciation. I still feel like I learn more about the language with Michel Thomas' course in less time, but all of these audio courses have their pros and cons, and nothing really matches Pimsleur when it comes to pronunciation and listening to native speakers have short, natural speed conversations (actually, the conversations are a bit on the rapid side, which is good I guess since if you learn from listening to fast talkers, it'll make it all the easier when listening to slower paced talkers).

Hammer's - Finished Chapter 4.

Vocabulary Wordlist - Since I missed a few days, I spent time going over the 10 words from Mastering German Vocabulary. Tomorrow I'll go over the ten from Berlitz, and Sat. will be from the Spiegel article. Sunday I'll go over the verbs early in the day, and then that night test myself on all of the words and create a new wordlist.

[sabotai]

Dec 5-7, 2008

Michel Thomas Advanced - Listened to most of the first part (of 4 - 5th CD is a review CD). A lot of it was spent, aside from the usual introduction of new words, on forming the past tense. In most verbs, you add a "ge" to the beginning of the verb. However, verbs like reparieren and organizaieren, whihc are borrowed from other languages, do not. Also, verbs with inseparable prefixes also do not get the "ge" added. For verbs with separable prefixes, the "ge" goes between the prefix and the verb.

Hammer's - Started Chapter 5: Other Determiners and Pronouns. Read about demonstratives, how they are declined and used.

Vocabulary Wordlist - Got all of the words correct despite dropping the ball on studying them. Most of them were pretty easy to learn and figure out, though

Here is this week's list of words

Mastering German Vocabulary (from chapter Personal Information)
die Geburtstag - birthday
geboren - born (adj)
wohnen - to live, to reside, to dwell
leben - to live, to be alive
die Haimat - home country
fremd - strange, foreign
der Beruf - profession
minderjährig - minor, underage
volljährig - of age
der Geburtsort - place of birth

Berlitz German Vocabulary Handbook (Functional Words - Logical Relations)
sowie - as well as
both...and - sowohl...als/wie
either...or - entweder...oder
neither...nor - weder...noch
not only...but also - nicht (nur)...sondern (auch)
obgleich - although
nachdem - after
bevor - before
zumal - especially as
trotzdem - even though

501 German Verbs (randomly picked)
füllen - to fill
weisen - to point out, to show
rücken - to move, to bring nearer
meiden - to avoid, to schun
besitzen - to possess, to own

Der Spiegel - March 31st, 2008 issue ("Gewalt ohne Folgen")
hervorgehen - to emerge, to arise
schwinden - to fade, to dwindle
gering - little, small, low
der Anteil - share, stake, quota, allotment
der Schläger - slugger, scrapper, tennis racket
der Räuber - robber, predator, bandit
die Haft - arrest, detainment
die Strafe - punishment, penalty
die Bewährung - probation
verurteilen - to condemn, to convict, to sentence

[sabotai]

Dec 8-11, 2008

Michel Thomas - Finished Part 1 of Advanced German with Michel Thomas and am half-way through Part 2 (or 4).

Hammer's - Finished chapter 5. It covered possessives, Interrogatives, relative pronouns and a large section on indefinites, quantifiers and other determiners and pronouns.

Vocab list - Studied the 501 Verbs and Berlitz words.

[sabotai]

Dec 12, 2008

Hammer's - Skimmed through several chapters on adjectives, adverbs and numbers. I feel that I have a pretty good handle on these so I just gave them a quick read through.

Dec 13, 2008

Hammer's - Began Chapter 10: Modal Particles. In this chapter, it goes through 36 words that are used as either modal or focus particles, and explains their use.

For example: aber - used in statements to express surprise. Der Film war aber gut! - The movie was good! It can also be used in a clause to express a contradiction. sie muss uns aber gesehen haben - "but she must have seen us". When used with oder ("or"), it translates to "on the other hand". Used in an exclamation, it emphasizes the tone of the speaker. Hast du was dagegen? - Aber nein!. "Have you any objections?" "Of course not!". Aber, aber! Was soll diese Aufregung? "Oh now! What's all this excitement about?"

Wordlist - Studied the wordlist from the article in Der Spiegel.

And I plan on listening to more of Michel Thomas' lessons later tonight.

[MIJB#19]

Until about 15 minutes ago I never noticed this thread, nevertheless, good luck at that, Sab. As close as German is to Dutch, I never liked or were really good at learning German. Especially the whole die/das/der stuff threw me off. I got lucky and was allowed to drop German classes at the end of high school, there was no way I was going to pass that exam. So for you, going from English and just "the" to German and it's different articles (actually, I had to look that word up in the dictionary), ignoring the more complicated part when der/dem/den join the club), I wonder how hard it is to learn to use those?

[sabotai]

Thanks MILB

It's not really all that difficult to learn the der/die/das for nouns since most of the nouns, when I learn them, I learn them with the article. For the majority of nouns, it's easy to know which article to use based on what it means and/or how it's spelled. For example, any word that ends in -chen is neuter, so it uses das. A noun ending it -a or -ung is feminie, a noun ending in -ig or -ling is masculine (and there's a lot of different endings that give you the gender of the noun). It takes time and practice, but after awhile you start to pick up on all of the tells that let you know what the gender of the noun is.

Recognizing the other cases and remember which to use (dem, des, den, etc) takes a much longer time.

But when I took German in high school, remembering the articles was very difficult. Maybe I'm just better at recognizing patterns in my older age. When I took German in high school, I barely passed. I was also a terrible student and a huge slacker, so that might have been part of it.

[sabotai]

Dec 13-14, 2008

Hammer's - Spent more time reading about Modal Particles. Most of the words have several uses, like in the previous example, so I'm reading through it slowly, and I'll probably read it a few times, to make sure I have it down.

Michel Thomas German Advanced - Listened to more of Part 2. Almost finished with it.

Vocab List - Got all but 3 of them. The three I missed were "die Haimat" (home country), "der Beruf" (profession), and "der Anteil" (share, stake, quota, allotment). Since there's only 3 of them, I'll just include them in this week's list.

Movies - I watched Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run). It was a really good movie and I'd recommend it to anyone. A really cool look at cause and effect. There are already several write ups for in the Last Movie Watched thread, so I won't write about it there, mainly because I was so focused on listening to the dialogue and trying to recognize words while reading the subtitles that I sorta "missed" the movie, if you get what I mean. It's a fast paced movie, so there was a lot of yelling and talking fast, so there were parts that just went way too fast for me to recognize any words. There were also a few scenes with whispering. However, when the people were talking at a more normal pace and a regular speaking volume, I did catch a lot of what they said. I'll watch the movie a few more times with the subtitles, and then switch to watching it without the subtitles to see how well I follow it.

And here is this week's vocab list

Mastering German Vocabulary (from chapter Personal Information)
die Haimat - home country
der Beruf - profession
der Ausweis - ID card
der Reisepaß - passport
gültig - valid
die Unterschrift - signature
unterschreiben - to sign
das Visum - visa
der Führerschein - driver's license
angeben - to state (to say)

Berlitz German Vocabulary Handbook (Position and Movement)
ungefähr - about, approximately, roughly
irgendwo - anywhere, somewhere (nirgendwo - nowhere)
jenseits - beyond, across
die Richtung - direction, trend, line
die Entfernung - distance
fern - distant, far
der Rand - edge, margin, border
die Bewegung - movement
die Nachbarschaft - neighborhood
die Spitze - top

501 German Verbs (randomly picked)
frieren - to freeze, to feel cold
stellen - to put, to place
schauen - to look, to see, to gaze
lohnen - to reward, to recompense
fluchen - to curse, to swear

Der Spiegel - March 31st, 2008 issue ("Gewalt ohne Folgen")
der Anteil - share, stake, quota, allotment
gelten - to be valid (gelten als - to pass for, the rate as)
das Delikte - offense
die Körperverletzung - physical injury
der Totschlag - homicide, manslaughter
der Laut - sound
vorstellen - to conceive, to suggest (sich vorstellen - to imagine, to visualize)
das Verfahren - procedure, method, proceedings (law)
gegen - against
einstellen - to adjust, to cease, to discontinue

[sabotai]

Dec. 15-19, 2008

Slacked off a lot. For the last few days, I've spent just about all of my free time reading (The Count of Monte Cristo, I read the last 500 pages (of about 1250) over the last few days). That is one long fucking book, not only in the number of pages, but the Penguin Classics version I have really packs the words in on each page.

So I haven't spent much time on this.

Michel Thomas Advanced German - I finished Part 2. So far, both parts have focused primarily on verb conjugation, which is one of the harder things to learn about German.

Hammer's - Still taking my time going through the modal particles.

Vocab List - I barely spent any time on this. I might have to give myself a break and push the vocab list to next week. I'll try to get in a lot of study time on them tomorrow.

[sabotai]

Dec 20-22, 2008

Hammer's - Still slowly working my way through the modal particles.

Michel Thomas - Listened to most of part 3 (of 4). He's introducing a lot of new verbs now.

Vocab - Missed 6 out of 38 (the 35 plus the 3 extra - nirgendwo, gelten als and sich vorstellen). I did bad this week, mainly because, as I said before, I spent most of the week reading Count of Monte Cristo. Oh well, time to press forward.

New Vocab List

Mastering German Vocabulary (from chapter Personal Information)
der Antrag - application
die Geburtsurkunde - birth certificate
ausstellen - to issue
ablaufen - to expire
verlängern - to renew
der Bescheid - notification
die Arbeitserlaubnis - work permit
beantragen - to apply for
benötigen - to require
die Aufenthaltserlaubnis - residence permit

Berlitz German Vocabulary Handbook (Directions)
der Ostern - east
an der Ecke - on the corner
die Etage - floor
die Breite - latitude
die Länge - longitude
die Karte - map
der Norden - north
der Süden - south
der Westen - west
an der Krauzung - at the junction

501 German Verbs (randomly picked)
haschen - to snatch, to seize
kriechen - to creep, to crawl
retten - to save, to rescue
schmollen - to sulk, to pout
üben - to practice, to exercise

Der Spiegel - March 31st, 2008 issue ("Gewalt ohne Folgen")
verdächtigen - to suspect
erfahren - to adept, to find out, (adj) seasoned
überhaupt - (adv) generally, at all, anyway
erfolgen - to take place, to happen
aussetzen - to abandon, to suspend
verbüßen - to serve a sentence
die Freiheitsstrafe - terms of imprisonment
insbesondere - in particular
das Opfer - victim
empfinden - to sense, to experience

I'm almost done with the article. Probably will be done with it after next week.

[sabotai]

Update

Time to get back to updating this daily.

Here is where I am at

Hammer's - Finished the chapter on Modal Particles. I am about to read through it again.

Michel Thomas - Finished listening to part 3 of 4.

Vocab - Did pretty good with the vocab again. I'm am going to change up how I do this again. How it played out is that I would skip going over the vocab for the first couple of days and then study 10 of the words a day. So, since I apparently am fine with doing 10 words a day, that's what I'm going to do. Everyday, I'm going to make a new list of 10 words to study.

12/30/08 Vocab
From Mastering German Vocabulary (Chapter 2: The Human Body - Parts of the Body and Organs)
der Körper - body
die Haut - skin
der Knochen - bone
das Gesicht - face
das Ohr - ear
die Nase - nose
der Mund - mouth
der Zahn - tooth
der Hals - throat
der Rücken - back

[sabotai]

Coming out of my Mount and Blade obsession to update this for today. 2 days straight of nothing but playing that game...

1/1/2009 Vocab
From Mastering German Vocabulary (Chapter 2: The Human Body - Parts of the Body and Organs)
das Herz - heart
der Kreislauf - circulation
der Bauch - stomach
das Bein - leg
die Zehe - toe
das Gehirn - brain
die Stirn - forehead
die Wange - cheek
die Zunge - tongue
die Verdauung - digestion