[Hades]

Probably the biggest thing that I have learned by being a language student in a school overseas is that most people don't go out and fraternize with the locals enough to realize that their (German, French, etc) sucks. They just hang out with other foreigners from school and reinforce their bad language habits. If my fellow collegiate students from years past had similar habits I'm going to question any and all future resume I see that suggests "highly fluent in X" language unless it's something they grew up learning.

What I also hate is that since most of the locals know English, I'll ask something in German and they'll reply in English because I have an accent. Now I can either pretend not to know English (it's worked before) and keep stumbling on in German so I learn, or I can go the convenient route and stick to English. Not sure how to get rid of my accent either.

You guys ever have issues with this kind of thing? How do you deal with the second scenario? First scenario is just me bitching, by the way.

[christpuncher]

What's wrong with having a bilingual conversation? If you're talking to someone in a non-english country then there's a good chance they want to practice their English just as badly as you want to practice their language. You can even correct each other. I'm guessing a bilingual real conversation with 2 experts is about the best way to learn a language fast!

[Walderschmidt]

(11-13-2012 06:28 PM)Hades Wrote:  

Probably the biggest thing that I have learned by being a language student in a school overseas is that most people don't go out and fraternize with the locals enough to realize that their (German, French, etc) sucks. They just hang out with other foreigners from school and reinforce their bad language habits. If my fellow collegiate students from years past had similar habits I'm going to question any and all future resume I see that suggests "highly fluent in X" language unless it's something they grew up learning.

What I also hate is that since most of the locals know English, I'll ask something in German and they'll reply in English because I have an accent. Now I can either pretend not to know English (it's worked before) and keep stumbling on in German so I learn, or I can go the convenient route and stick to English. Not sure how to get rid of my accent either.

You guys ever have issues with this kind of thing? How do you deal with the second scenario? First scenario is just me bitching, by the way.

The way I see it - you can either refuse to speak English (or pretend) - or travel to second or third tier cities where the locals are less likely to know any English.

The best thing you can do is speak as much as you can with locals and copy how they talk. Use the expressions they use.



For example - when I was talking with my German friends at school and I asked them a question that they didn't know the answer to, they'd reply "Keine Ahnung" which translates into "No idea" (as opposed to saying "Ich habe keine Idee" - "I have no idea").

It's okay if you stumble - your brain will eventually process the language faster. Also - I understand that foreigners will teach you the wrong things sometimes. In my situation, I had been learning German simultaneously in class, so I could see what was proper and what was slang.

In my case, I have been learning German for 6 years - I'm conversant at the moment. I noticed my biggest jumps in progress came after I spent time at length in German (two weeks in South Germany, a month in Berlin).

Also - if you want to get really good at expressing yourself in a language - try writing poetry in it. Practice using idioms that are common in the language. If you can move someone with a poem in their native language, you are doing it right.

If you want help with German - send me a PM - I am happy to help.

Wald

[Alpha Hunter Zero]

@Hades- force yourselves to converse with locals. From my experience when I was WAY younger watching the spanish kids in ESL classes who didnt know any english compared to the non-english speaking spanish kids who unfortunately werent put in the ESL class I made a surprizing discovery. The kids who didnt take the class actually learned english way faster than their counterparts because they had no crutch to lean on and were forced to learn asap in order to keep up with the rest of the english speaking class.

[michelin]

Hold on keep working on your german. At some point (later or sooner) they won' t switch to English anymore. It all depends on how much effort you put in it.

Work on your vocab, listen to the radio, read newspapers

Also read the book recommended by Roosh: " LEarn any language", by Barry FARBER

[Hades]

(11-14-2012 08:14 AM)michelin Wrote:  

Hold on keep working on your german. At some point (later or sooner) they won' t switch to English anymore. It all depends on how much effort you put in it.

Work on your vocab, listen to the radio, read newspapers

Also read the book recommended by Roosh: " LEarn any language", by Barry FARBER

Holy shit man, thanks. I found a copy of that book (wink wink) and I'm already about a hundred pages in. This is some good shit. I think I'm going to buy some notebooks tomorrow and redo all my notes.

(11-14-2012 01:31 AM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

@Hades- force yourselves to converse with locals. From my experience when I was WAY younger watching the spanish kids in ESL classes who didnt know any english compared to the non-english speaking spanish kids who unfortunately werent put in the ESL class I made a surprizing discovery. The kids who didnt take the class actually learned english way faster than their counterparts because they had no crutch to lean on and were forced to learn asap in order to keep up with the rest of the english speaking class.

Yeah I have been doing this. I think it is my accent that turns off the locals. Maybe four or five times I was able to convince a German (not local) that I grew up in Germany and I was just relearning everything. My vocab is much stronger than my conversational skills though. I have been making good on my promise to learn the grammar more exactly.

(11-13-2012 08:37 PM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  

The way I see it - you can either refuse to speak English (or pretend) - or travel to second or third tier cities where the locals are less likely to know any English.

The best thing you can do is speak as much as you can with locals and copy how they talk. Use the expressions they use.



For example - when I was talking with my German friends at school and I asked them a question that they didn't know the answer to, they'd reply "Keine Ahnung" which translates into "No idea" (as opposed to saying "Ich habe keine Idee" - "I have no idea").

It's okay if you stumble - your brain will eventually process the language faster. Also - I understand that foreigners will teach you the wrong things sometimes. In my situation, I had been learning German simultaneously in class, so I could see what was proper and what was slang.

In my case, I have been learning German for 6 years - I'm conversant at the moment. I noticed my biggest jumps in progress came after I spent time at length in German (two weeks in South Germany, a month in Berlin).

Also - if you want to get really good at expressing yourself in a language - try writing poetry in it. Practice using idioms that are common in the language. If you can move someone with a poem in their native language, you are doing it right.

If you want help with German - send me a PM - I am happy to help.

Wald

I think I have all the scholastic help I need, thanks though. I have been ripping off the slang of the Saxon Germany over here - "nu" instead of "ja", sometimes "nee" instead of "no", that kind of thing. Weirdly enough I have heard more "Ich hab' kein gewusst" more so than "Keine Ahnung". Not sure if "gewusst" is a noun or not, in all seriousness.

(11-13-2012 06:57 PM)christpuncher Wrote:  

What's wrong with having a bilingual conversation? If you're talking to someone in a non-english country then there's a good chance they want to practice their English just as badly as you want to practice their language. You can even correct each other. I'm guessing a bilingual real conversation with 2 experts is about the best way to learn a language fast!

I have plenty of them every week, yeah. The problem is that the local Germans here are so fluent in English that the bilingualism is completely one sided, in their favor. Some of these folks must have grown up watching the Simpsons and MTV, judging by their jokes.

[dk902]

I used to live and study in Spain.

I had the same problem, most English speakers go to a foreign country and want to stay with their own groups and in the process learn zero foreign language.

Do you like sports?

I used to turn up at pickup soccer games by myself and join in, I made friends and joined a team...spoke only Spanish.

I lived with a Spanish guy and we became really good friends, so I spoke it all day every day.

If you have any hobbies, you can just about join a local club/class about it by yourself and open your network instantly.

Even if you make foreign friends, e.g. French, Spanish, Italian - the lingua franca is always going to be German, so anything other than speaking English the whole time is a bonus.

[Alpha Hunter Zero]

To Hades & other German speaking members: How hard is German to learn and is there another similar language one should learn before tackling on German?

[Walderschmidt]

(11-14-2012 06:47 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

To Hades & other German speaking members: How hard is German to learn and is there another similar language one should learn before tackling on German?

In my opinion, German is not hard to learn - it has a very similar structure to English, the letters are almost all the same (except ue, ae, oe, ss, and y) and there are a lot of cognates (words that are the same).

However, learning German can be difficult if (a) you've never learned a language before and (b) have a bad teacher.

(A) I learned French before I learned German. I am by no means fluent, but when switched to German, I understood why conjugations exist and why there were different genders and cases for words. That meant I could focus on the learning the language as opposed to why the language did 'x' when English did 'y'.

(B) A good teacher who allows you to pace yourself is very helpful. I started learning German in 8th grade by myself and when I got to high school, placed one level below my ability. That allowed me to master German at the lower level, and the teacher taught me whatever I requested after I had already gone ahead of the class. By 10th/11th grade I was learning the parts of German I wanted and assigning my own homework. I loved learning German (hence why I could assign my own homework) but my teachers who were flexible to accommodate me made a huge difference.

A bad teacher will go too fast or not calibrate to your level. My college German teacher for example, goes too fast and is way over people's heads. I can understand most of what he says, but the way he goes through class is unorganized and hard to follow. I learn nothing in his class - instead I learn by having two German officers (exchange students) go over my homework and talking with them in general.

Wald

[clever alias]

I had the reverse problem learning Chinese and teaching English. The natives generally have poor grammar, though this is mainly older people who have little formal schooling. The college students will openly admit to taking shortcuts in the spoken language.

[memcpy]

The best way to improve , is to go and practice day game using german. I did it for Japanese , I'm still not there yet but it's a lot better than it was 7 months ago since arriving here. Progress is measured in months when you go out an start talking, each month I feel like it's a slight improvement but it all adds up.

Picking up bad habits is a good thing, it's easier to go back and correct once you've got a feel for it. Always be willing to improve.

[Hades]

(11-14-2012 06:47 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

To Hades & other German speaking members: How hard is German to learn and is there another similar language one should learn before tackling on German?

German is pretty easy to learn I think. Probably easier than Spanish. From what I recall the biggest problem that English speakers had (these being Americans who spoke no other language) was twofold :

1. English has "the". German has three articles (masculine, feminine, and neuter). So there's a lot more declension and whatnot.

2. German word order is a little confusing at times. Not sure if Walderschmidt has the same issue but 90% of the Americans I talk with (including myself) speak German with a slightly anglicized word order, which gets worse as you learn new tenses.

I think there is no similar language you should tackle. If I had to elect one it would probably be English due to the very large number of cognates.

If you want to succeed at German you must learn every vocab word including the article. What I generally do to do this is imagine every word or concept with tits or a beard. It works pretty good. The language book Michelin wrote in earlier has similar visualization tips. Other than that just learn the grammar as anal-retentively as possible.

I used to think of German as a flowing language where you could easily and effortlessly manipulate words into complex sentences but I see now that it's a lot more rigid than I previously supposed.

[lush1]

I find German is reasonably easy to learn, or at least understand because a lot of the words are quite similar to English. Once you get your head around the whole yoda speech pattern its actually quite enjoyable.

Pointless using it to learn to game girls unless in Germany though cos German girls seem to seldom venture outside of Germany. German accent on girls though is no. 1 in my book.

Edit - although I've had some success lately approaching English girls lately and speaking in German, saying "oh what I thought you were German" etc. Actually stumbled upon this by accident!

[Walderschmidt]

(11-15-2012 08:04 AM)Hades Wrote:  

2. German word order is a little confusing at times. Not sure if Walderschmidt has the same issue but 90% of the Americans I talk with (including myself) speak German with a slightly anglicized word order, which gets worse as you learn new tenses.

I'm told often that I "speak German like an American". For instance, I translated "at the end of the day" as "Am Ende des Tages" when really I should have used "Schliesslich".

A lot of times, concepts don't translate directly.

Wald

[Pacesetter20]

(11-14-2012 06:47 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

To Hades & other German speaking members: How hard is German to learn and is there another similar language one should learn before tackling on German?

The only language that I can see helping you with it is French (but only for some vocabulary).

I disagree that German is completely useless. I find German moderately useful in Central Europe. I've found it useful in central/western Europe if someone didn't know English a lot of the times they'd know a bit of German.

Additionally Dutch is similar to German and I can usually get the gist of a what a Dutch person is saying if they go slow or reading. This also goes (to a lesser extent) for Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.

Granted not exactly poosy paradises.

[Walderschmidt]

(11-21-2012 02:17 AM)Pacesetter20 Wrote:  

(11-14-2012 06:47 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

To Hades & other German speaking members: How hard is German to learn and is there another similar language one should learn before tackling on German?

The only language that I can see helping you with it is French (but only for some vocabulary).

I disagree that German is completely useless. I find German moderately useful in Central Europe. I've found it useful in central/western Europe if someone didn't know English a lot of the times they'd know a bit of German.

Additionally Dutch is similar to German and I can usually get the gist of a what a Dutch person is saying if they go slow or reading. This also goes (to a lesser extent) for Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.

Granted not exactly poosy paradises.

Who said German is completely useless?

I learn German because I love the language, but I think it will be useful because you can get around with German many places in Europe. Also - Germany's Economy is the biggest in Europe and will dominate the the Eurozone, until the Euro collapses.

Wald

[freshcream]

I ignore german because of their women. Might be a stupid choice one day.

For now I'll stick with spanish.

[DVY]

Immersion is the best method. I spent a week in cancun 2 years ago. Ditched my lame-ass friends sitting on the boring ass all-inclusive food/drink beach and went wandering around inner Cancun.

Ended up making friends w/a bunch of random people, getting lost, buying a 1/4 ounce of green for 8 buxs, and boosting my spanish by 50%.

Granted, had studied spanish in HS, but i felt like i learned nothing. You need about 150 words to survive, but anything past that you will pick up rapidly.

Words you need to know relate to food (learn chicken, beef, pork, rice, bread, water), transport( bus, taxi, right, left, how far), greetings, and money/trade. Everything else youll pick up. At worst, you can just point to random things and say what is that. People will laugh and make friends.

PS- Have done this in Asia as well.