German

This week's focus language was German!

(super Terminator-ish language)

Guten Tag.
Ich bin Deutscher, und ich verstehe ein bisschen Englisch.
Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch, aber ich verstehe nicht sehr gut.
Danke, auf Wiedersehen.

This Week's GOALs:

GOAL: Be conversational in German. 

PROCESS: I mastered 5 new critical German phrases daily for 7 days, 30 minutes per day. (used a language Audiobook). 

GOAL: Learn 100 most frequently used German words.

PROCESS: I learned 15 new common German words daily for 7 days, 15 minutes per day.

http://german.about.com/library/blwfreq_t50.htm

GOAL: Understand the German grammatical system (15 minutes total)

PROCESS: I had Google translate the following 13 critical English sentences that contain the most important grammatical structures in all languages:

The Apple is red

It is John's apple

I give John the apple

We give him the apple

He gives it to John

She gives it to him

Is the apple red?

The apples are red

I must give it to him

I want to give it to her

I’m going to know tomorrow

I can’t eat the apple

I have eaten the apple

Der Apfel ist rot

Es ist Johns Apfel

Ich gebe John den Apfel

Wir geben ihm den Apfel

Er gibt es John

Sie gibt es ihm

Ist der Apfel rot?

Die Äpfel sind rot

Ich muss es ihm zu geben

Ich will es ihr zu geben

Ich werde morgen wissen

Ich kann nicht essen den Apfel

Ich habe den Apfel gegessen

(sentences acquired from Tim Ferriss)

I analyzed all 13 of these German sentences in 15 minutes. 

   Realizations:

1. Pronunciation – German pronunciation was hard to get at first. But once I started pretending that I was Arnold Swertzanegar (although he’s Austrian), speaking German was much more fluid and I felt like a pretty cool German dude.

2. Grammar - If you speak English, you NEED to learn German. Why? Because it’s quite simply the easiest-to-learn language that I have ever encountered. The grammar is nearly the same, and most words are similar to those of English. 
For example, if I told you “Benjy ist nicht hier,” I would bet that you could understand even though you never studied German.  (can you guess what it means?) , I noticed that the back of the throat is very tightly closed (like saying the [ong] in "song"). If you keep your throat slightly closed, you're pretty certain to have good pronunciation. 

3. Conjugations – Let me tell you something you already know… Verb conjugations are a PAIN IN THE BUTT. It took me a while to figure out a way to beat the conjugation system without memorizing hours and hours of never-ending columns, lists, and verbs (you know what mean). I started with the question, “Why is learning verb conjugations so damn hard? There’s gotta be a way to beat the system…” The approach that I’ve discovered has made language learning faster AND more fun for me. But it’s not going to make university language professors happy... Are you ready? Here’s the pinnacle... – Forget all about conjugations. What? Here’s the thing, we shouldn’t be trying to memorize columns and lists of verb conjugations, because the reality is, there are too many and we’ll forget about them anyway. What we DO need to do is this: take minimal time to memorize “blocks” of words. Let me explain. In your native language (English for example), you would never think to yourself, “alright, which verb conjugation should I use in this situation?” In other words, your mental lexicon instinctively knows that “She goes to school” is correct, and “She go school” is caveman talk. My technique for learning verb conjugations is this: repeat out loud to myself the conjugations for the verbs ["do, eat, and go"] for the pronouns ["I" "you" "we" "he/she"] fifty times each. (using hand gestures when doing this helps a lot). After doing that, you should feel comfortable with speaking them fluently. You shouldn’t have much problem with conjugating any given verb after doing this. THEN, meet one new person in the target language, and you'll naturally pick up conjugations with no problem. Let me reemphasize: fluency in a language is NOT possible unless the focus language is used in conversation. To put it a different way, try learning to read music sheets fluently without ever touching the piano.

Total time spent learning German: 5 hours & 30 minutes

Benjy Uyama

September 2, 2013 (Home, NC)