I’ve done my first two classes last week, and I think my speaking has grossly improved. My German teacher immediately pointed out my weaknesses in ie, ei, r, Z, ö. I knew “r” was hard, but I “didn’t even know” I was messing up ei, ie, or Z. (ö is one I “felt” like I was doing wrong, but wasn’t as hard as r sounds). So that’s nice, there’s nothing like a proper teacher who can help you with this pronunciation. However, there’s a curse for Anki: now I’m much slower in Anki as I’m trying to “re-practice” all the words but now with correct pronunciation (I’m marking many words as “wrong” when I notice I mispronounce them, meaning Anki reviews are taking up way more time this past week).
That’s the nature of it however: learning that your practice was wrong leads to new practice to “rewire” and fix your old habits. Its like any other skill, the more you learn the more you have to repractice.
I’ve grossly expanded my collection of Spotify songs. I’m listening to German Rap, meme-songs, more children songs and translated anime-songs (into German). Its probably too soon for me to write up a new topic, but maybe I’ll share with everyone the songs I’m listening to every couple of weeks.
A German tongue-twister + rap about Barbara’s Rhubarb Bar and the Barbarians and their Barber visiting. Its a whole bunch of nonsense, but its all “simple German words + cognates”, so I’d expect beginners (A1 and A2) to be able to follow it. After all, Barbara, Rhabarb, Barbar (Barbarian), Bert (Beard), Bar all have “obvious” German cognates and that’s most of the joke right there. The hard part is the speed (the performer is very well practiced with these tongue-twisters). But you can .75x speed it and slow it down on Youtube, or even 0.5x speed if you need it even slower.
A lot of the rhyming words are A1 or A2 level: aber (but), fern (far), fahren (to drive), gar (at all). SAGen (said), paar (pair), Jahr (year)… so yeah, don’t aim for complete understanding but you’ll can get substantial understanding if you can keep up with the speed.
I went to a physical bookstore today (quaint, I know), and flipped through the German books they had. They had a “beginner short story book” that I picked up, flipped through and realized I had 80%+ of the words understood. This is sufficient for learning, albeit with a lot of effort from a dictionary (Wikitionary) to help me through. Lo-and-behold, I’m reading through its forward now and it claims to be an A2-B1 level book (!!!).
I wouldn’t say I’m “officially” A1+ yet, as I don’t plan on taking any test. But this is a good sign that my effort is paying off. If A2-B1 material is useful to me, then yeah… I’m definitely in a much stronger place than I was even just a few weeks ago. My reading skills are clearly approaching A2-ish material.
EDIT: This short-story book says that you should NOT expect to be able to understand all the words. Instead, keep a notebook with a list of the words not-understood, and look them up after reading the story once. Then, look up the definitions, then reread the story with improved understanding. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ll aim for it. Hopefully the list of “not known words” is small enough to be workable, lol… its about 3 pages per story here.
While I was flipping through German books, I found a German Phrasebook. I was reading through it mostly amusingly (look at what “tourists” have to do to keep up with my power!!!). But… in all honesty, its kind of useful for learning. Instead of having a strict vocabulary, this is translating phrases in English into phrases in German. No, its NOT perfectly accurate (!!!), but that’s… fine?
At $10 and maybe 300+ pages of dense phrases, I can highly recommend for learners. In all honesty, it feels like it reaches into B1-level vocabulary. All the phrases are extremely simple (and not even necessarily complete sentences), but… that’s fine for learning? We learners have to memorize all kinds of stuff, and it feels like memorizing all of the “common phrases a tourist might need” is still learning.
I’ve done my first two classes last week, and I think my speaking has grossly improved. My German teacher immediately pointed out my weaknesses in ie, ei, r, Z, ö. I knew “r” was hard, but I “didn’t even know” I was messing up ei, ie, or Z. (ö is one I “felt” like I was doing wrong, but wasn’t as hard as r sounds). So that’s nice, there’s nothing like a proper teacher who can help you with this pronunciation. However, there’s a curse for Anki: now I’m much slower in Anki as I’m trying to “re-practice” all the words but now with correct pronunciation (I’m marking many words as “wrong” when I notice I mispronounce them, meaning Anki reviews are taking up way more time this past week).
That’s the nature of it however: learning that your practice was wrong leads to new practice to “rewire” and fix your old habits. Its like any other skill, the more you learn the more you have to repractice.
I’ve grossly expanded my collection of Spotify songs. I’m listening to German Rap, meme-songs, more children songs and translated anime-songs (into German). Its probably too soon for me to write up a new topic, but maybe I’ll share with everyone the songs I’m listening to every couple of weeks.
Hmmm, one video to share for sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYkBf0dbs5I
A German tongue-twister + rap about Barbara’s Rhubarb Bar and the Barbarians and their Barber visiting. Its a whole bunch of nonsense, but its all “simple German words + cognates”, so I’d expect beginners (A1 and A2) to be able to follow it. After all, Barbara, Rhabarb, Barbar (Barbarian), Bert (Beard), Bar all have “obvious” German cognates and that’s most of the joke right there. The hard part is the speed (the performer is very well practiced with these tongue-twisters). But you can .75x speed it and slow it down on Youtube, or even 0.5x speed if you need it even slower.
A lot of the rhyming words are A1 or A2 level: aber (but), fern (far), fahren (to drive), gar (at all). SAGen (said), paar (pair), Jahr (year)… so yeah, don’t aim for complete understanding but you’ll can get substantial understanding if you can keep up with the speed.
I went to a physical bookstore today (quaint, I know), and flipped through the German books they had. They had a “beginner short story book” that I picked up, flipped through and realized I had 80%+ of the words understood. This is sufficient for learning, albeit with a lot of effort from a dictionary (Wikitionary) to help me through. Lo-and-behold, I’m reading through its forward now and it claims to be an A2-B1 level book (!!!).
I wouldn’t say I’m “officially” A1+ yet, as I don’t plan on taking any test. But this is a good sign that my effort is paying off. If A2-B1 material is useful to me, then yeah… I’m definitely in a much stronger place than I was even just a few weeks ago. My reading skills are clearly approaching A2-ish material.
EDIT: This short-story book says that you should NOT expect to be able to understand all the words. Instead, keep a notebook with a list of the words not-understood, and look them up after reading the story once. Then, look up the definitions, then reread the story with improved understanding. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ll aim for it. Hopefully the list of “not known words” is small enough to be workable, lol… its about 3 pages per story here.
While I was flipping through German books, I found a German Phrasebook. I was reading through it mostly amusingly (look at what “tourists” have to do to keep up with my power!!!). But… in all honesty, its kind of useful for learning. Instead of having a strict vocabulary, this is translating phrases in English into phrases in German. No, its NOT perfectly accurate (!!!), but that’s… fine?
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/272707/the-penguin-german-phrasebook-by-jill-norman-ute-hitchin-renata-henkes/
At $10 and maybe 300+ pages of dense phrases, I can highly recommend for learners. In all honesty, it feels like it reaches into B1-level vocabulary. All the phrases are extremely simple (and not even necessarily complete sentences), but… that’s fine for learning? We learners have to memorize all kinds of stuff, and it feels like memorizing all of the “common phrases a tourist might need” is still learning.