The downhill slope

Sometime last month in the midst of grad school finals I came to the glorious end of the FSI German Level 1 course, having churned diligently through 12 units of Phefferkucken-thick lessons (that's gingerbread, apparently--pepper cake.) The duration of the feat was lengthy; I started the lessons in November 2008 and even went through the first couple several years prior. It's safe to say though that the small amount of flexibility offered by my grad school schedule allowed me to dedicate many a morning to the lessons over coffee and a cinnamon-chip muffin (Zimtmuffin? Yes! Verified by Google: http://www.chefkoch.de/rs/s0/zimtmuffin/Rezepte.html)

When I finished the book I quickly ordered up FSI German Level 2 and then sat back and reviewed the first. There was actually quite a bit of material that I missed the first pass through, and I chose to go over some of it. My main error of omission was a nifty extra reading at the end of the later chapters that introduced a pile of new vocabulary. I read these over and excitedly added the new words to my flashcards. More minor were the conversation and writing exercises, which I passed over with little regret. I think writing and speaking are extremely important, but I can delegate those activities to more modern activities, such as writing in German in this blog.

I've taken to libraries lately and checked out a couple German-related books. The first is the history of the German language. I read a chapter and realized it would be more appropriate when I've thoroughly studied the language, which may be never. What I was really looking for was a fun book about German, such as Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue written about English. I suppose I'll need to look for such a book in the German language. The other book is a collection of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. I'm a few pages into Hänsel und Grethel, and I do mean a few pages. I takes me about an hour to read the tiniest of pages. I probably look up about 20 to 30 words a page. This is well above my 10 word maximum, but it's so delightful to read this familiar story in its original language. I can anticipate each line, and there's nothing like learning words of place. Forest words are especially enthralling, from woodsman to shining pebble (not really a forest word), the story lights up. I miss some of the more complex structure and idioms, but the simplicity of the story makes for a great opportunity.

I have just over 900 flash cards now, and I don't want to give the impression that I have a 1000 word vocabulary. Many of these cards are a struggle to recall. But I work on them frequently and need to dedicate more time to really studying flash card composition and learning techniques. I've finished the first lesson of the level 2 book and the vocabulary is mounting, not to mention that from Hänsel und Grethel.