Months of progress

It's been many a month since I reported my progress to this blog. But I've made noteworthy progress since then. A few months ago I finally finished the 24 lessons of the German FSI course (though I must admit I skipped the last few pages of Diplomatic cables which demonstrated a grammatical structure to which I'll revisit later.) Since then I took a little winter break and then faced my two thousand plus flashcards and tried to figure out what to do with them. The problem with a flashcard that is only designed to test you is that you quickly become tired of testing yourself. So I started making my flashcards a more complete teaching tool. Whereas previously the English side contained the english word or phrase and a mnemonic device, it now adds a sentence using the word in English. The German side, therefore, contains the German word or phrase along with the translated sentence in German. It's generally easy for me to put the translated sentences in because the FSI course has most of the dialogs and drills translated to English. All I have to do is search each German word in the two manuals (online PDFs with character recognition for search is mandatory). At the first use of the word that I find with an English translation I copy the English and German sentence and paste them into my flashcard (I just downloaded a multiple copy/paste tool PTHPasteboard for the Mac, which helps tremendously.)

I am slowly working my way through two thousand flashcards to add dual sentences to each one. Occasionally I come across a word that I didn't get from the FSI course, in which case I have to go to the Internet to find a sample sentence and possibly translate it myself (wordreference.com is a good bet for getting translated examples.) This may seem tedious, but it turns out that it's a great way to truly study my flash cards for the first time. And best of all, I'm not studying the flash cards by testing myself, which is tiresome. To enhance the sentence copying process, I today began to read the German sentence and then recite it without looking at the computer--as if I'm talking to the imaginary friend across from me. I've addressed recitation before--it seems critical for becoming familiar with the structure and pronunciation of the language.

English Side	German Side
one-and-a-half Think on the half [mnemonic device or clue] I had to stand in line an hour and c half for my ticket.	anderthalb Ich habe anderthalb Stunden für meine Karte anstehen müssen.
performance Off foolish rungs of the ladder, or ?, his climbing performance started strong Here's your program for today's performance of Tannhäuser.	die Aufführung, -en Hier ist Ihr Programm für die heutige Tannhäuser-Aufführung.

In a couple more months I will finish adding sentences to the flashcards, at which point I'll invent a new activity that gives me an excuse to go through them all. One idea that I keep flirting with is to print them all out on, gasp, paper and draw mnemonic devices on them. I haven't been using the sentence mnemonic devices as much as I hoped, so images might be more effective. I might alter the approach slightly and export the cards to a drawing program so that I can draw and paste images onto them (My flashcard app, MentalCase, already supports attaching an image and sound.) I might skip the whole flashcard printing process, though, and move on to something else.

The other German activity in which I'm currently engaged, besides watching movies and radio listening, is the Wise Guys Project. The Wise Guys Project is my effort to take a bunch of songs by the German a cappella group, the Wise Guys, and translate the German lyrics to English, in order to acquire more vocabulary and be able to sing along with the tunes when I listen to them. I love this project because it's a chance to immerse myself in the language through song, which is undoubtedly one of the most effective techniques. It also gets me used to listening to the language of modern native speakers, though a cappella is obviously artificially clear speech. There are plenty of contractions and other cheats to make the song rhythm work, which probably mirrors the spoken language to some extent.

Here's an example of a translation in process. I listen to the song part by part and practice singing it once I know what it means:

Wise Guys - Sie bricht mir das Herze

Ich habe nächtelang kein Auge zugemacht, weil ich so furchtbar aufgeregt war. Ich hab die ganze Zeit an den Moment gedacht, und jetzt ist der Moment auf einmal da... Ich hatte sie gemieden, war ihr ausgewichen und komm' doch immer wieder bei ihr angeschlichen. ich habe sie unglaublich lange nicht geseh'n, jetzt seh' ich mich hier in ihrem Zimmer steh'n.

Night after night I haven't slept a wink, because I was so terribly agitated/nervous.  I thought the whole time about the moment, and now is the moment at once since... I had you

Recite the dialog

I begin each of my FSI units by following along in the book during the Dialog for Learning. The Dialog for Learning introduces each new vocabulary word or phrase prior to saying the line of the dialog (the book and tapes both list words then the dialog line.) As the new words are listed, I create flash cards for them and mnemonic devices. I used to wait until I listened to the whole dialog to make the flashcards, and I used to wait for the drills to reintroduce the words before creating mnemonic devices, Now I do it all in "real-time" so I won't be distracted during the drills. If I forget a word during the drills I can look at my mnemonic device for reenforcement.

When I get to the dialog line I listen to the tape with little comprehension. Then I read the line in the book for comprehension and speak it. The tape repeats each line once and I do the same. The problem is that I recite the line without paying much attention to the underlying structure of the sentence. The better exercise is to actually memorize the entire line and recite it while looking straight ahead rather than down at the book. Although it's possible to memorize something without any comprehension (you remember those kids from the piano recitals,) It's a lot easier to fully comprehend what you're saying and the structure of the sentence. I am beginning to recite all the dialog lines without looking at the book, which enforces the new vocabulary and helps me build mental fluency with the grammatical structure. It's very tedious to memorize every sentence as I go through the dialog. Often the lines are twenty to thirty words, and I can only keep the whole thing in my head long enough to say it a couple times. I think the reward will be great if I persist. I am on the 22nd of 24 lessons of the entire German course. I think when I finish that I'll go back to the start of the first or second book and work my way rapidly through all the units again. I never attempted this with French oro Spanish but it seems needed given my complete lack of speeking experience with German.

Translation exercises should simply be speaking exercises

Here's a big obvious point. When doing the translation exercises, read the English once and then look up and straight ahead at an imaginary person in front of you. Think about the sentence and say it in the target language. This simulates having an idea in your head that you want to say to someone, not simply staring down at an English sentence and translating it.

I'm starting to write paragraphs in German. Here's one I wrote yesterday:

In Meiner Stadt. Jedes mal gehe ich ins Café, ich fange einen neuen Tag an. Wenn ich deutsch studiere, werde ich mehr gluck. Danach muss ich den wenig reizvollen Teil des Tags bearbeiten. An wen kann man diesen Teil denken? Gewöhnlich gehe ich zu Fuss oder mit dem Fahrrad nach der Universität. Aber manchmal würde ich lieber in einen Wald oder in die Berge gehen. Da könnte ich Aufnahmen von wilden Tieren nahmen, wenn ich ruhig stehenbleiben könnte. Der Himmel würde mit weissen dunkele Wollken führen. Schade, habe ich nur eine leichte Jacke! Vielleicht werd es nicht so viel regnen. Es gibt keinen Ton. Alles ist still. Tropfen schlagen mich und ich höre Donner. Niemand ist in der Nähe. Dann höre ich einen Zug. Er kommt durch die Bäume. In dem Wagonen sind viele Leute die mich begrüssen. Der Schaffner macht den Tür auf und bittet mich höflich in den Wagon raufstiegen. Wann ich meinen platz nehme, der Zug fahrt ab. Ich offne mein Reiselektüre aber bald schlafe ich ein. Jemand setzt sich neben mir hin. Sie ist meine Geliebte. Ich fasse sie bei der Hand und wieder schlafe ein.

nichts verstehen

I don't actually comprehend any German outside my course tapes. I watched to some Deutsche Welle video clips about various German topics, and naturally I couldn't grab more than a word here and there. Then I opened the slow news reports that have audio and accompanying text. Dozens of words that I haven't learned show up, so comprehension at any speed is a lost cause. Now here's a newsflash: I'm going to Germany in ten days. I hadn't thought to announce that here since nobody reads the blog, but it's worth noting for my own recollection when I read this over in the future. It would certainly be pleasing at this point to understand a bit of German news reporting, news reports being the easiest thing to understand on TV (there's a lot of context.) I'll have to accept that I will land in Germany with a decent vocabulary and ability to get a sentence out, but I won't be able to understand anything said to me. But that's simply the way I learn. Other people pick up the comprehension quick. I learn the grammar and a couple thousand vocabulary words.

The only real mystery is whether my ten days in Germany will do anything for my speaking and comprehension abilities. I think it will help substantially, but I also expect 95% of my conversations to be in English. My travel partner and I will practice a fair amount of German, and our hosts will likely humor me a bit with it, but I'm not going to run into anyone who doesn't speak English. That's an impossible dream in Germany.

I expect to complete my FSI lessons in the next two months. I've stepped up the sentence writing a bit but I haven't invested at all in comprehension. It's time to work on it. I have my Wise Guy a cappella CDs and many of the songs seem to have German lyrics online. A combination of music listening and the slow transcribed Deutche Welle news recordings should be a good start.

One last note. I finally learned the conditional tense in German, which seems to have no distinction from the subjunctive at the moment. The conditional is the last major component of the grammar for me to learn, I think. It has already made a big difference in terms of my speaking ability. Next time you speak English, notice how often you use the conditional. It's more imperative than conditional, heh, heh.

Don't be ashamed to forget!

Every day as I tear through my German lesson I am asked to translate an English phrase to German and I forget the German verb that I need to use. Nouns and common terms don't slip my mind as easily as verbs (remember that I group my flashcards by nouns, verbs, and commons). The problem with verbs is that they are more abstract concepts than nouns. It's easier for me to remember the word information (die Auskunft) then to remember the verb explain (erklären). In fact, I never needed a mnemonic device to remember die Auskunft, but I still struggle to recall the one for erklären: "Explain to me again why I have to have an ear clearin' if I always can hear ya loud and clear." One problem is that it's hard to make a mnemonic device for a verb. Notice that the "Explain to" part of my sentence is fairly optional. I always remember the "ear clearin'" part (what I call the actual device). In fact, my mnemonic device for the noun version of the word, die Erklärung (the explanatory statement, or explanation), is easier to remember: "My previously clogged ear clear(ly) rung after his explanatory statement". Notice that here "after his explanatory statement" is more necessary to the mnemonic device being a complete thought than "Explain to". Put another way, it's easier to translate a German noun into a significant part of a mnemonic device sentence than a German verb, and that's likely the same for any language. I could probably retool the first mnemonic device to be better associated with the verb: "Ear clearin' explains why grandpa's hearing goes in and out". In this sentence explain is a fundamental part of the sentence, so I'm more likely to association "Ear clearin'" with "explain". Keep this in mind when you write mnemonic devices, especially for verbs. It's ideal that the device is a fundamental component of the sentence. You might have less of a problem if you draw pictures instead of using sentences, since it's easier to see an image holistically than a sentence.

What I really wanted to explain is that when I do translation exercises, I forget a lot of words that I've learned. Forgetting a word should never be embarrassing while learning. It should be a revelatory opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the word. When I can't remember a word I go to my flash cards and search for the word in English. I'll usually find one obvious match, or I just guess which one in the results my exercise is looking for. Upon seeing the English written, I tried to remember the mnemonic device before peering at it below the word. Hopefully, just a few words of the mnemonic device will remind me of the German word. Sometimes I have to parse the sentence carefully to identify the actual device (e.g. Ear clearin'). I then try to say the German word based on the device and my recollection. Finally, I look at the other side of the flash card and verify the German. I may have said it slightly wrong or gotten it dead on. The next thing I do is add the German word to a word list for that day. At the end of my session I'll make a sentence out of triplets of words (as explained in recent posts). I often forget the word's meaning by the end of the session, so the sentence gives me another re-acquaintance with it. If I suspect that I'm frequently forgetting the same word I can search my sentence flaschards (I make one flashcard for each sentence exercise) to quickly count how many times I've forgotten a word during my exercises.

How many minutes until you're muttering in German?

Now that summer has arrived, I've been frequently wondering how many minutes I have to dedicate to my studies in order to get something to stick in my head. The most important thing is the number of days a week I do it, which should be about 5 or more. The continuity is essential. Lately I have done about five days a week and also managed to spend one-and-a-half to two hours studying each morning. I find that afterward I spend the day blurting out a couple of the words I learned. It's not that this is necessarily useful to my studies, but it is a good indicator that I'm studying enough for words to stick in my head (even if I don't remember what they mean.) I'm guessing that this muttering will start occurring with as little as a half-hour of intense study, but it probably helps to do more. How many times have you done an activity all day only to go to bed at night and see yourself doing it as soon as you close your eyes. Back when I was a kid and was a life guard, I would go to sleep and have to wake myself up to tell myself that I didn't have to watch the stupid pool that I kept dreaming about. I certainly don't need visions of German when I close my eyes or dream, but there must be some critical threshold of study that allows you to penetrate your subconscious and let something permanent in. I probably should just consult some books on the subject, but for now I'll leave it to rumination. Moo.

Words that won't lock in

As I complete the 16th lesson of the FSI German books, I am intently integrating sentence writing into the process. As I said in my previous post, my hope is that the practice will commit words to my memory and reinforce my comfort with the sentence structure. Already certain advantages are emerging--I spend a great deal of time struggling with the same nouns and verbs each day that I practice the lesson. They are mostly words that are new for that chapter, and occasionally words from previous chapters that I forgot over time. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten the English meaning or German translation of the same words in the last few days.

Some verbs are:  

• eintreten - to occur, to arise;
• aufschieben - to delay, to put off
• sich etwas ansehen - to take a look at something
• sich lassen etwas entgehen - miss something, fail to do something

 Some nouns are:  

• die Einladung - invitation
• die Bescprechung - the conference
• die Bedeutung - the meaning, significance

Notice that all of the meanings of the words are fairly basic--not remedial--but basic. I believe it's important to be able commit them all to memory and summon them whenever I need them in speaking or writing. They challenge me, though, for various reasons. Some are rather long words with a few syllables but are similar to other words (e.g. Besprechung, Bedeutung). Some verbs are variations of common words but add reflection (sich etwas ansehen - literally, for oneself something at look.) The fact that ansehen is a variation of sehen - to see, tends to give me difficulties because I don't remember if it's ansehen, or aufsehen, or perhaps aussehen. The second turns out to mean stir, which I haven't yet encountered, and the third means to appear, to seem. This might all be perfectly logical if I had a better sense of what the prepositions mean. Of course, prepositions are often one of the hardest things to master in a foreign language because so many don't translate directly to and from English. Finally, there are some verb constructions, like sich lassen etwas entgehen, where I have to remember the reflection (sich), the helper verb (lassen - to let/leave), and the main verb entgehen (literally ent - away, gehen - go). So the whole clause might translate literally to on oneself let something away get, or simply, to miss, fail to do.

As you would imagine, it helps to write about these trouble words here and break apart their components. I would like a way to commit the words to memory after only forgetting them two or three times. I don't want to look something up 10 times and have to write a sentence with it 10 times because I've keep forgetting. I'm wondering if there is something sort of shortcut I could slip into the process, such as drawing a picture, that would commit it to my memory in fewer attempts. Given that I already have the sentence mnemonic devices for each word, it seems ill advised to also draw a picture that might confuse me further. I need to give this more thought, maybe in Chapter 17 :)

Sentences

I've been incorporating more writing into my German lessons now. Though I'm not quite writing free form sentences, I am writing down vocabulary words that I need to learn and making sentences out of them. To review, when I do the chapter dialogs I write down all the new vocabulary after I go though the dialog for learning. I now immediately write mnemonic devices for all of them (I used to wait until they came up in the drills.) Then I do the dialog for comprehension and fluency to reinforce the words I put to flash cards. At that point I haven't actually learned many of the words, unfortunately. When I do the variation and translation drills, if I can't remember one of the vocabulary words that show up (or one of the vocabulary words from previous lessons,) I'll look up the flash card to review it, then I'll write it down in a text file. So by the end of one study session I'll probably have 10 or so words written down. At the end of my study session I'll go through those words, splitting them into groups of three, and come up with sentences for each group.

The nice thing about writing sentences is not only do I reinforce the new vocabulary, but I also go back to my flash cards to look up other words that I want to use in the sentences. If I want to use a word that I haven't learned yet, I'll generally try to find a substitute, or look it up in the dictionary if it's a word worth learning. I then copy the groups of words and sentences to flash cards, putting the words on the "front" side of the card and the sentence on the "back" side. This way, if I look up a word I don't know in the future I'll see that I've already written it n number of times in the sentences. This satisfies my constant desire to know how many times I've looked up a word in the dictionary, which most electronic and Internet dictionaries sadly don't keep track of for you.

When I write the sentences I also get a lot of practice with grammatical constructs. I know some of my sentences are constructed incorrectly, but they are close to correct, and I know I have them recorded in my flash cards so I can go back and correct them as I better learn the language.

This process is slowly improving my ability to really learn the vocabulary and practice my writing. I'm still struggling with comprehension and fluency, but I have a couple techniques to improve that. First, I always try to listen to the German on the audio files without looking at the text first, unless it's the first time I'm hearing the dialog. I usually don't understand what they say, so I then read it in the book and possibly replay it a couple times. When I speak the variation drills I never look at the base sentence in the book, because I want to practice saying memorizing the structure of the sentence as I repeat them. Usually this isn't very hard. On the translation drills I only look at the English, of course, and make sure to construct a full sentence in German before looking at the book's translation.

So things are still evolving, which is no surprise. By the end of this second German book I think I'll have a very powerful learning technique. I hope I can share this technique in a comprehensible way with other users of the FSI book.

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.

Resuming until it hurts

This was written on 10/5/09 but somehow I never published it.

Oh poor little language learning blog! I've neglected you again as I had my German studies. It's understandable, since I started grad school in September and have lately figured out how to reincorporate the pastimes of my last life into this new crazy one.

I feel good about my German studies at the moment. I wasn't sure how to reprioritize it until I spoke to a couple different students in my program who speak German from extended stays there. Well that was enough to rally me back to the Küchentisch, that big wooden surface in my kitchen, and sit down with the book over breakfast. Somewhat startlingly, I keep returning to German after these little motivators. I seem good at recognizing a good opportunity when it hits me upside the face.

On a related note I had a party Saturday night for about 40 people and made my room the coat room. One of the students that showed up commented on my Hebrew alphabet chart, and wanted to know if I knew the language. After explaining my brief foray that was interrupted by German, he offered to teach me should I ever be interested. This was less of an opportunity than it might seem, since I don't really see the point in being taught until I get myself through all the FSI courses. Too many times I've painfully witnessed beginning language lessons. Much like teaching your girlfriend a little guitar, it typically doesn't lead anywhere. It's not that teaching a beginner is worthless, it's that the beginner needs to prove to themselves that they are really interested by putting in some solid hours alone before seeking out a teacher. I must have played guitar for four years before I sought out instruction. I went into Spanish cold turkey in university and it was quite painful for the duration. I'll never do that again, unless my company ships me off to live in Rangun for a year on short notice.

So here I am, feeling back in the language driver's seat. I'm continuing to apply the same techniques and finishing off the first FSI course in German. I've started listening to an all German music radio station (painful) and I'm going to try to learn to sing some basic songs, such as Eidelweiss and Hopp Hopp Hopp, Pferdchen Lauf Galopp, which is an old folk song that my grandfather used to sing to me on his knee (how cute is that?)

I'm not going to write anything tonight in German, but I'll do so in my next post and it will be awesome.

The importance of word origins

I've been reading a book about building vocabulary in English, whose title I'll post here as soon as it's back in my hand. The book's primary methodology is learning word root and prefixes of Latin and Greek to help remember and parse new vocabulary. (They also mention some other techniques like using word context and mnemonic devices.) Learning word origins is similarly applicable when learning the vocabulary of a foreign language. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, translation dictionaries don't give you the origins of words when you translate them. This is even true of the online dictionaries that should have unlimited space and be able to link to the origin of each word from its true dictionary definition. I've been scouring the wonderweb with search terms like "German word origins" but nothing really comes up. I'm sure that a full German dictionary such as Das Deutsche Wörterbuch has word origins, but I can't read well enough to make any sense of it yet. Luckily for me my target language shares many common roots with English, so often I can look up the English origin of the word. For example stattfinden means to take place. I looked up statt by itself and found that it means instead of. That led me to look up stead in English, which means the place or roll that someone or something should have or fill. I only use stead when I say "in his stead" instead of "in his place," as you probably do as well to sound clever. Anyhow, I can think of stattfinden as meaning to find in the place of which leads me to to take place. I know this is pretty basic stuff but applied to more complicated words this technique is invaluable. Of course I'm taking advantage of the common Germanic root which in Old English is stede which means place. Also the Oxford dictionary says that it comes from an Indo-European root shared by the verb to stand. Neato.

I'm slowing progressing throught the first twelve units of the FSI German course. I'm now right in the middle of unit 10, which is disappointing since I've been at it for 9 months or so. But lack of discipline and life's turmoil always slows me down. I hope in time that I can learn to value an hour of language study each day as much as a shower or cup of coffee in the morning. The key to the habit is as always motivation. I need to imagine that I will soon be attending urban planning conferences in the German speaking world and this will lovely Germanic to chit chat with afterward over beer and spätzle. I start a graduate program in urban planning in two weeks. I have no idea if that will permit me any time for language study. Vielleicht.

And a season passes

I took a break from German so that I could prepare for my trip to Spain and France, practicing those languages. Italy was hopeless. Anyhow, I'm jumping back on dem wagon now and am gonna go at it again and see what happens.

Invasion of the Jews?

I tread lightly when speaking of a new German Jewish conflict, but it has occurred in my own linguistic jousting arena. As I've made evident previously, I'm attempting to learn German in an environment virtually free of German. I don't have any enthusiastic conversation partners around me, just one that likes to awkwardly make fun of my accent. Note to people with friends trying to learn a language you already know: don't make fun of or criticize their accent when they're beginners. Accents can always be corrected later and often will be when the speaker gets more comfortable with speaking and has the mental capacity to pay attention to it. I remember a relative of mine once correcting my Spanish accent every time I spoke, and I now have a respectable ability to mimic the sound and cadence of native speakers, no thanks to her. I think it's great to correct a consistent pronunciation error--my French teacher told me I was saying beau cu, which sounds identical to beau cul, nice ass, rather than my intended beaucoup (many)--but the main way to improve accent is through exposure. Anyway, getting back to the jousting, at times a language like Hebrew will attempt to annex the time slot I have dedicated to learning German. I have little immediate motivation for learning German and I might hang out with some Israelis, go to an Israeli concert, or simple sit through a temple service and suddenly feel forlorn because I can't understand the proceedings.

I think I only have room to work on one new language at a time, but I'm not positive that's true. This week I keep popping open the FSI Hebrew course to see if I can try out a lesson. Then I feel unfaithful to my German, which I've been nurturing for six months and don't want to ween until it's comfortably walking on it's own furry little circus bear paws. And yet, Hebrew isn't anything like German, except for my lack of familiarity with it. Does being a beginner at German mean my brain can't allocate more new language neurons? I don't know, but I think it's worth finding out. Why should I spend a year being monogamous when I can play the field a little and maybe find a more fitting relationship? Am I more likely to need one more than the other? Ok, enough bad reproductive analogies. Maybe Hebrew will shove out of port before I catch something permanent. Ok, seriously, stop.

ich schreibe deutsch

Heute will ich etwas deutsch schreiben. Ich glaube, ich kann jetzt etwas zehr schlicht schreiben. Ich kenne nicht die Vergangenheit so schreibe ich von der Zukunft. Ich denke oft an den Sommer. Ich will irgendwohin reisen, aber wo und wozu? Ich glaube, ich muss ein Programm finden, vielleicht etwas Sprachlich, Freiwillig, Umwelt, oder allen.

Voila, my first paragraph of German. There are numerous difficulties encountered when writing in a foreign language. The first and most evident is a lack of vocabulary, which leads me to choosing the wrong words from the dictionary. The next problem is running into grammatical constructs that I forget or haven't learned. In the last sentence for example, I can't remember what happens when you use a noun as an adjective. I thought you put it in the neuter form, but that doesn't make sense. I think that rules applies to changing an adjective to a noun. So for Sprachlich, which means the noun linguistics, I don't know what form to use when making it into the adjective linguistic. Similarly I don't know what to do with with allen, for all of them, at the end of the paragraph. I'm assuming that it should take the modifierless accusative plural adjective form, but I'm not sure. The third problem is idioms. I imagine my phrases are semantically correctly, but it's likely that a native speaker would employ idiomatic phrases in their stead or at least arrange the words differently. When I write I try to dedicate time to looking up my phrases in Google to see if the structure matches the real world. For example, "Ich glaube, ich kann etwas" matches 394 results in Google, which, given the length of the phrase, means it's probably legitimate. I'd naturally require more results of a two or three word phrase, depending on the popularity of the words. I bet looking up a lot of vocabulary and searching in Google doesn't sound like very enjoyable writing activity. But like all things related to studying foreign language, it's a little more like working on part of a puzzle, or perhaps learning a musical instrument, then the equivalent processes in your native language. The musical instrument example is especially apt because there are constant rewards along the way, whether it mumbling phrases to yourself, or understanding a bit more of what your native-speaking friends are saying. My goal of learning to learn languages is not make it fun and breezy (though it often is.) My intention is to make it an intense, stimulating, and adictive activity that keeps you coming back for more, even if it's punishing at times. That's how I master most things in life, from music to sports to writing software, and I expect the same effort in my language acquisition. Sorry for sounding weighty. It really is 90% fun and 10% discipline.

On a related note, I spent the last two evening deeply immersed in a Hebrew speaking environment. On Friday night I attended the Berkeley Hillel "pre" Shabbat where the musician Idan Raichel was the guest of honor and hung out with a group of 40 of us and answered questions and sang songs with us. The next night I got a ticket to his sold-out show. Both nights I was surrounded by Israelis and American Jews with solid Hebrew skills. Much of the concert was also sung in Hebrew. I can barely pick out two words of Hebrew, despite a brief affair with the language via the first Pimsleur Series a couple years ago. Intense immersion naturally makes me long to learn the language. I can probably spend some time on it while learning German. It's not like I'll confuse them. But I may be treading the line of become a language finatic if I'm trying to learn to new languages at once while maintaining a job and a reasonably well-balanced life! We'll see. I always recall that Barry Farber, who wrote How to Learn any Language (and whom I'm happy to see is still alive but sad to see is a conservative talk-radio host (what a waste,)) said that he regrets that he thought at one point he had learned enough languages and took a break, before eventually resuming and getting up to 25. But I doubt he would recommend two new languages at once.

The first dreams

I woke up in a hot sweat, unable to find meaning in the gibberish from which I had been startled from slumber. One thing was certain though, the tongue bore a striking resemblance to my hour-long study session over chicken pot pie and blueberry cobbler (I had two frozen pie crusts to enlist in dinner duty.) I spoke or perhaps heard an oneiric German, and thus I had crossed a threshold of language immersion. I wouldn't say it was warranted, but sitting down with the book and mp3s for the second time this week resonated the subconscious in a way that my previous study had not. It reminds me of my single week in France when my travel buddy was startled to hear me muttering perfect French in my sleep. He couldn't speak a word of it, so I doubt the "perfect" part of the claim.

There definitely have been other subtle breakthroughs from last night's pastry-fueled practicing. Today I found myself putting simple grammatical constructs together while I worked, namely the one "it is to/for me adjective", such as Der hempt ist mir zu auffällig (The shirt is too bright-colored for me.) I think this grammatical construct resonates with me because it's very noticable in French. As Camus' L'Étranger was fond of saying: Ça m'était égal (It was all the same to me.)

By the way, I know that bright-colored is a pretty useless word to learn, but I remembered it using a ridiculous mnemonic device, which is worth touching on. When I had to learn auffällig it made me think of falling leeks. The phrase I wrote on my flashcard was "Ow! fell leeks on my head as walked through the market during the tornado weaing my bright loud leisure suit" This is a sentence that rates ten on the memorable level but doesn't do much of a job of relating auffällig to the definition: bright, loud. The sentence is too long for me to really remember, as crazy as it is. But I could recall the idea of falling leeks and wearing a bright-colored suit in a market. I didn't remember the Ow! part, so initially I recalled fallig instead of auffällig. But now that I've written this paragraph I'm sure I'll retain the useless adjective acurately. Funny how mnemonics work.

I am finishing unit 8 of 12 in the first FSI German course. The second course goes up to a 24th lesson. I'm really looking forward to learning all the tenses and practicing the informal conjugations, none of which I've been taught yet. The tense part makes sense--there's tons of grammar and basic vocabulary to cover without worrying about tenses. I do wish they brought the informal conjugations in earlier, but that's a diplomat's course for you.

The utterance, to blurt, to catch

When I used one of the FSI courses in the past they made reference to utterances, which struck me as obfuscated 1950s linguistic jargon. But the word struck a chord with me as the fundamental piece of the language acquisition puzzle that almost every course ignores. Now, utterance is defined in Oxford as "An uninterrupted chain of spoken or written language" in the linguistic sense. That's not quite the meaning that I associate with it. To me it purveys more the idea of a nugget of strung-together words that we need to be able blurt out or comprehend in our target language. It could be an idium (he's beside himself (with anger)), common phrase (gotta get the phone), or one important word surrounded by lesser ones (do you have your car with you?) The last one happened to me in Montreal when I checked into my hotel. I was following the conversation fine until the concierge blurted that one out. It's intersting because all I needed to understand was voiture to know how to answer (bien sûr que non, elles sont pour les cons!) Obviously I know the word voiture and a few thousand other French words but when I get in a conversation it's so easy to miss whole sentences because I missed the key word.

What does one do to practice saying and understanding thousands of utterances? Movies and music methinks. Getting target-language subtitles and lyrics are imperative for getting anything out of audible media. I listen to the same albums for years in my target language without understanding them, and I've watched hundreds of French movies and still don't have a clue without reading English subtitles. Imagine if I sat down with the French and wrote down the most important utterances on a flash card with the recorded audio. I could learn to use the utterance, learn to recognize it, and finally start understanding my tired out old tunes. I'm going to give this a try now with a song in French by Louise Attaque and my trusty iPhone Flash My Brain application:

Here's the first bit of Qu'est-ce qui nous tente? by Louise Attaque. I followed up to this line where I found a useful utterance:

Qu'est-ce qui nous tente ?
Qu'est-ce qui nous donne ces envies?
Qu'est-ce qui nous enchante,
qu'est-ce qui nous réveille la nuit?
Souvent souvent c'est les certitudes,
de temps en temps c'est la solitude
Très peu pour moi les habitudes
sinon J'vais passer pour un con.

"otherwise I'm going to pass for an idiot (or something more offensive)"

Seems like a good line to me. I've certainly never used this in colloquial conversation, nor would anyone but a fluent or very immersed speaker. But I should be able to summon up this line and use it when appriopriate. Obviously I don't need to imitate it completely, J'vais passer pour could be used with all kinds of things I imagine (according to google: un con, une grosse putte!, un abruti, une folle, etc., which are all pretty negative and variably offensive.)

But how do I learn to use this with a flash card? It's already evident to me what it means, so I don't need a translation. What I need is a speaking excercise where I'm somehow encouraged to use it. I think the FSI variation drills are a good model. It seems I need to record my own FSI course:

Sinon je vais passer pour un con
une grosse putte! ...............................Sinon je vais passer pour une grosse putte!
un abruti.............................................Sinon je vais passer pour un abruti.
une folle..............................................Sinon je vais passer pour une folle.
un analphabète...................................Sinon je vais passer pour un analphabète.

Awesome! I learn the utterance and reinfornce a bunch of other good vocabulary that I may or may not have known, but are obviously common since they show up at the top of the google search. So en resumé, no rather than a standard flashcard translation I need a mini FSI lesson for each phrase. I just put the phrase on the front of the card and recorded everything above (with a pause where the dots are so that I can put the phrase together when I practice.) On the back of the card I listed the left hand phrases (in case I don't understand one when I do the drill.)

Now obviously this is a lot of work, but think about all that I'm learning for my 5 minutes of effort. 1) I learned what a line of a song meant, so that I can catch it when I listen in the future. 2) I've learned the utterance and several popular variations of it. 3) I've learned the vocabulary of the variations.

Really learning a language well is not easy, but it can be a lot more fun and effective with simple techniques like that above. Now we'll see how willing I am to make more of these flash cards!

Notes on FSI

I have struggled to study German more than once a week for the last few weeks. Fortunately I was able to put in a solid 3 hours or so today. I gleaned some useful insights about studying using the FSI program. I doubt this is how students in the FSI school were instructed to use the course, but for self study I think this technique works wells.

The following sections occur sequentially in each lesson. I believe the other language courses are similar.

Dialog for Listening
Listen to the dialog to get acquainted with the new vocabulary.
Go through the dialog line by line and make flash cards for all new words and phrases. I have separated by flashcard stacks (using Flash My Brain on my iphone) into three different stacks:
1) Commons - all the basic adverbs, adjectives, prepositions etc, such as opposite (adv), small (adj), and beside (prep.) I'm omitting less essential words like green and stylish and reserving for the Nouns, etc stack
2) Verbs - all verbs. I skip obscure ones, but they never come up in my lessons anyway.
3) Nouns, etc - all useful nouns and less essential adjectives and adverbs. If a base with multiple usages has been presented, such as America and American, it makes sense to put them on the same card. I omit nouns that aren't useful or dated, e.g. the smoking table, the person-to-person call, and the phone book (I'm determined to never use a phonebook again.)

Notes on Pronunciation
I don't make much use of this section unless it teaches sounds that I believe are giving me difficulty.

Grammar
I read this carefully to ensure that I have complete comprehension. The following substitution drills are so much based on this grammar section that it behooves you to grasp everything.

Substitution Drills
Work through the substitution drills to learn the new grammar and vocabulary.
* At each drill stop the audio if any grammatical constructs don't make sense right off the bat. Figure out the grammar and restart.
* After each drill note any vocabulary that you don't know yet. Go to your flashcards, look up the word, and create a mnemonic device (words, pictures, or both.) This is a great time to create the mnemonic device because it is in the context of speaking the word. It also keeps you from making mnemonic devices for new vocabulary that you learned instantly. For instance, I learned that Teppich means carpet or rug while I was going through the dialog just because it sounds funny, thus I don't need any help remembering it.
* You may want to go through the substitution drills twice (in two different sittings) depending on the complexity of the new grammar.

Variation/Translation Drills
These drills offer sentences in English that focus on a certain grammatical theme and vary the sentences in each drill for practice. I always stop the audio after each sentence is spoken in English and then try to translate as quickly as I can. In other languages I would do this without pausing and without the book, but it's too hard for me with my current level of German. Like the last section, I write down mnemonic devices on my flash cards for new vocabulary that didn't show up in the previous section.

Vocabulary Drills
These are like the previous section but they are themed around a vocabulary word or construct, usually a verb or verb phrase. Approach them as described for the previous section.

I'll probably edit this post as I come up with new ideas for learning words

The First Slip

German and I were getting along quite well for the first several weeks, but then something treacherous happened. The holidays snuck into town. Thanksgiving was no problem; I had two twelve hour train trips and a lot of down time to sit around and practice. Now though, with the year winding down, I'm starting to wind down too, or wind apart perhaps. I have the added bonus of needing to finish most of my graduate school applications, which is not an inspiring process after having finished my statement of purpose essays (the creative part.) To sum it up, I've got a case of the holiday blues, deadline anxiety, and general boredom with routine. That's a bad recipe for language learning, which takes a lot of discipline even when you do have enough time and motivation. So I'm trying to shift my learning style a little bit, borrowing against my past success with the hopes of a brighter outlook--the economy of self-improvement. I spend more time than I used to looking over my flash cards and adding mnemonic devices on cards missing them. I figure since I don't have the energy for a two hour learning session the least I can do is try to keep the words that I've learned fresh in my head.

This is also a good time for me to do low-intensitiy activities, like check out the free German video course called Fokus Deutch. Language-learning can be done without too much effort at times when you need a break. Movies and books (depending on your level) are a nice alternative to the mind numbing (and mind hurting) drills I usually do in my FSI course.

3 Weeks or Bust

All right. I'm ten days into my Germanic language joy and things are humming right along. Despite Thanksgiving traveling I've managed to make it through the first four units of the FSI course. (Twelve-hour train rides are great for studying.) Being half-way through three weeks of learning reminds me of my three week rule, which is that you have to keep doing a new activity for three weeks in order to stick with it. This has no scientific backing, it's based on personal experience. I'd love to find a study that supports me though.

So what does it mean to be through four intense lessons of German? According to each lesson's Finder List, which I normally call glossary, I've been exposed to about 350 words. I admit that I don't recognize all of them and I certainly couldn't summon many to mind if I were forced to. It's fair to say that I recognize about 80% of the words and could probably come up with around 50% if translating from English. Take that Rosetta Stone! I've also been exposed to 50 or so pages of relevant grammatical information. I now know the subject, object, and possessive pronouns, which is no small feat with the variations of three genders (plus the plural) and the four cases. Additionally I've picked up the variations of this, dieser and which, whelcher. I've been thoroughly exposed as well to most of the common prepositions--an, aus, von, zu, etc. though I'm having a bugger of a time remember which means what since they frequently don't correspond well to English prepositions. To give you an idea of the sentence complexity that I'm practicing, I'll copy a couple examples from the tranlation drills:

I'd like most to have a glass of beer.
Ich möchte am liebsten ein Glas Bier trinken.
-Here I'm practicing the am liebsten adverbial phrase and a two-verb phrase.

She offers him a glass of beer.
Sie bietet ihm ein Glas Bier an.
-Accusative pronoun and a split verb. anbieten -> bietet + an (prepositions like an are commonly attached to verbs. I don't know if bieten can stand alone or not as an infinitive.)

(Yes there are lot of references to alcohol and tobacco--better than the civilian uprisings in the Spanish course!)

Is that your hotel or ours?
Ist das Ihr Hotel oder unseres?
-Tricky possessive pronoun rules. Ihr is a basic stem with no ending whereas unseres is unser + es since possessive pronouns add endings when they don't normally have one and aren't accompanied by their noun (the gender and case here are neuter and subject, which applies this rule.) Switching pronouns around means changing which one gets an ending:
Is that our hotel or yours?
Ist das unser Hotel oder Ihres?

He can't get used to the climate.
Er kann sich nicht an das Klima gewöhnen.
-Litterally: He can (himself) not to the climage get used to. sich is apparently reflexive, thought the text hasn't talked about it yet (I don't like unexplained phenomena.) Sometimes the examples add in a few extra adverbs, like today (heute) or actually (eigentlich) so that translating from English to German means figuring out which one comes first and where they go relative to the object pronouns.

Other notes of progress:

Flashcards
I have a flashcard list of about 30 words, mostly fundamental adverbs like already (schon) and still (noch) and a few key adjectives like excellent (ausgezeichnet.) These are among the hardest and most important words to learn, because they are often short words and abstract concepts, so it's hard to create a mnenomic device. I haven't done a good job of practicing these, so I'm going to take some time to try to make mnemonic devices and learn them thoroughly.

Speaking
I speak plenty during my lessons, but it's time to start putting together simple sentences with my German-speaking peeps. I wish the course would teach me the informal pronouns!

Comprehension and writing
I'm avoiding comprehension outside of my course for now, because I'm not at all acclimatized to the rhythm of the language. That's changing quickly though, and I'll probably turn on a childrens' radio program soon. I'm not writing at all yet either. I should start that soon but I'm pondering fun activities for the activity.

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.