I'm learning German!

I love learning languages--spoken, programmatic, music, you name it. I like to think of it as a bad habit, only because I often use it as a form of procrastination. Notably, I decide to learn a new language when I should be doing more important things, like applying to graduate school.

Now, half of the polyglot's fascination is based upon the opportunity to use the language. The other half that attracts me equally is how to learn a language. That's what this blog is about. I want to document how I'm learning German.

I'll skimp on too many background notes. Briefly, I grew up with one language, English. I learned French over four years in high school. I took up Spanish in university, then studied it in Central America for a couple months. In the last few years I took up French again, taking small group classes and studying in Montreal. I now speak both languages well, but not at all fluently. My French vocabulary is a bit better and my Spanish speech is perhaps a bit smoother. I started learning Hebrew last year using Pimsleur. I dropped it after a few weeks, but I plan to get back to it some day.

I got interested in studying languages in 2002 when I moved back to the Bay Area and couldn't figure out what to do with myself. I began going to a Spanish group advertised on Craigslist, and it transformed my life. I found a way to socialize with people about any subject, our unifying interest being learning Spanish. If you've ever participated in any type of social group, you know that there is one essential ingredient for success--you need one commonality that's going to make a personality or intellectual match more likely. The beautiful thing about foreign language is that it gives you this common purpose, but otherwise doesn't limit you from talking about anything. Only your mastery of the language limits you. I've tried other types of social groups, like hiking groups and sports teams, but in the case of the former it's too general to match me up with like-minded people, and in the latter case it's so specific that I spend too much time talking about the sport or the last game.

My other big foreign language motivator, besides conversation groups, is, not surprisingly, traveling. I can travel for vacation, education, volunteerism, or business and make extensive use of a foreign language. I've been to Central America four times, twice with a decent knowledge of Spanish, and I'm lived in Montreal on two short occasions.

Anyway, enough with background and motivation. I'm here to talk about learning, and specifically German. Here's what I've done so far with German:

- Three years ago I studied for about 3 weeks using the Foreign Service Institute's German course, which I'll hereafter refer to as FSI. After 3 weeks I dropped German because I realized I needed to get back into French first, which I've done successfully for the last 3 years. The FSI courses are about 50 years old now, but they are amazing learning tools. They are ridiculously thorough and use all kinds of mind-numbing drills to force you to learn vocabulary and sentence structure. They have extensive grammatical lessons as well. I think they have to be the best language courses that exist in the English-speaking world if you can tolerate their style of teaching. Beware of outdated male chauvinism, gleeful references to smoking, and vocabulary based on being a diplomat visiting a fighter jet squadron :)

Note: The FSI courses are owned by the government, which means they are freely available. You can download a lot of them now, in their original poor reel-to-reel tape quality along with a PDF of the text at: http://www.freelanguagecourses.com/direct-downloads/. If you want better quality there are several publishers, namely Barron, who have remastered them and modernized them minimally. Some of the more advanced courses, like Spanish 3 & 4, are harder to get but can be purchased, at least on nasty cassette tapes.

- Last week I restarted studying German. I did a couple lessons with the Pimsleur course, which I used successfully to learn Hebrew. I realized though that the FSI course is so much denser that I prefer to use it instead as long as I am sitting at a computer. I think if I only have audio available to me that the Pimsleur method is a little easier to use, although I've certainly used FSI with audio alone for advanced Spanish and French.

- A few days ago I download my first music in German, Wise Guys, a great a Capella group that was recommended by a site for learning German. I did this because I've had a little bit of trouble finding motivation to learn German. I know it's a very valuable language to know, but sometimes if I'm not in the target-language country or not planning a trip there, it can be hard to motivate myself. This is my problem with Hebrew as well. Although I have a few friends that speak it, and I have a Jewish family, it's hard learn a language that's just used by one little country. German is at least used as a primary language of three countries, and when I travel I hear it frequently from foreign travelers (I hear Dutch more than anything else; I'm positive that the Netherlands is empty because their entire population is traveling.) Here in the Bay Area, I hear a fair amount of German (and Hebrew when I can recognize it) on the street. Anyhow, cool music is great motivation to learn a language.

- Flashcards: I've begun a flashcard stack on my iPhone using the program Flash Your Brain, which, though a little buggy, is a pretty good program for studying. It allows you to draw pictures, record audio, and of course type words. You can also transfer card stacks to your computer or their web site for access and modification. Flashcards are incredibly important, but more important is finding a learning method that suits you. Simply writing English on one side and the target language on the other is fine for starters, especially when you're just learning a language and need to memorize some basic words. A better technique though, is to use mnemonic devices. This well-documented technique requires that you come up with an image or memorable phrase to remember the word. For example, when I had to learn the Spanish word, resbaladizo, which means slippery, I drew a picture of someone pointing to some meat that was slipping off a table who was cautioning about how valuable it is. Whoa, why? Res in Spanish means beef. Bala sounds like vale which means value, and dizo sounds like dijo, which means "I say". So I'm using a combination of Spanish words that sound close to the syllables of the word to draw something rather idiotic. Idiotic is the key because it forces my brain to make a new memory. If my drawing was something normal, like a man slipping on a wet floor, I probably wouldn't remember it, unless I made the drawing unusually funny. And my choice of Spanish words was for convenience. If English or even perhaps French words matched better, I'd use them instead. When I don't want to or can't come up with an image I sometimes try rap. I put the word in a funny phrase that rhymes and recite it like a rap. This is easiest when learning English vocabulary because it's easier for me to make rhymes, but if I know enough of the target language I can make a funny rhyme. This technique is based on the principle of learning by singing. Rap works best on flash cards because you don't have to come up with much melody. A great example of using rap to learn is Flocabulary, started by two teachers who use rap to teach high school kids vocabulary. For German so far I'm just putting down very fundamental words, mostly adverbs like first, therefore, and indeed. I won't use drawings unless I can't seem to remember a certain word. I try to pull out my iPhone and study whenever I think of it, which equates to a couple times a day ideally.

- Other important data: I have one very good friend who speaks German fluently, and I just found out that one of my roommates speaks it and would be happy to practice (I don't know her level yet.)

So that is where I am up to today. I'm churning through the FSI course, trying to do two hours a day 6 days a week. I don't usually have this much time available, but my schedule right now is very flexible. When I do the FSI course I do a lot of overlapping because there is so much to learn. For example, I went through the vocabulary for lesson 3 Friday and I plan to go through that again today, Sunday, and then continue on with the drills for that vocabulary and the accompanying grammer lesson. By the way, the FSI course is designed to be used for 4 to 6 hours a day with an instructor (although it says that it can be used without one as well.)

I'm going to continue to report my progress, and soon I'll start doing writings here in German to demonstrate my learning rate. I expect to be able to carry on basic conversations after I finish the first FSI course of 12 lessons. At that point I'll start reading German online, perhaps buy a childrens' book, and start listening to music with the English and German lyrics in front of me. One has to choose carefully when they are going to start reading and writing. You want to have enough vocabulary under your belt so that you are looking up a tolerable amount of vocabulary.