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.