Wie soll ich weitermachen? Forging ahead with German

Normally people wait until the New Year to make resolutions, but not me. Any time is a good time for a new plan.

Since I successfully completed the Goethe Zertifikat B2, I've been essentially cruising with my German. I did a few parallel translations to help tune my ear more for movie dialogues and although I had fun with those sections of dialogue (from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2 in particular), I haven't done much focused work in this area. I've read several books since passing: Das Todeskreuz and Das Parfüm. I've watched some German movies, listened to and watched the German news, and very, very recently discovered that you can get high-quality video from ZDF TV in Germany! Haven't had much of a chance to watch this yet, but I've seen a cop show and Abernteur Forschung already and I'm really glad this is out there and available to watch from outside Germany. The last time I revealed such a source of German TV on this blog the station quickly disabled traffic from outside Germany so I'm really hoping they don't do that again this time!

And of course, I've chatted with my German-speaking friends about once a week which is as fun as ever.

This level of study was really on purpose. For starters, I passed my B2 exam just before learning that my mother had incurable lung cancer. Over the next year from that devastating news there was a lot of stress and personal stuff to deal with. My second daughter was born in that same year, just a few short months before my mother finally passed. That was almost a year ago now and, to be honest, I don't think I've even recovered from the shock of first hearing the news of the illness, let alone everything since.

For this year I initially decided to try something new - learning Chinese (but mainly as a spoken language) and Latin (but mainly as a written language). I thought that because of their different focuses I would be able to work on both just fine, but I actually found it reasonably hard to feel like I was making progress. I got halfway through both books in about 4 months which is actually quite a good effort, but I didn't keep up with making an anki deck like I had wanted to with both. It was just too time consuming, especially for Latin because I had to look up the conjugations. During this time I took on a spare-time programming project and, with 2 small children and a full-time job, this was just all too much. I hadn't planned on the programming project when I started the two languages, so who knows how the year would have turned out without this change of plans.

On the topic of Chinese, I recently borrowed a very old book from a library which shows in pictures along with descriptions the actual physical mechanics of tongue positions, breath force, etc, for every single Chinese sound. Although it may seem strange, there were a few Chinese sounds that I just wasn't able to really distinguish. I couldn't make the sounds distinct, and I couldn't hear the difference consistently. This was most clearly shown to me by the fact that pretty much every Chinese person I tried some phrases out on would look perplexed. I realise now that I was actually pronouncing a bunch of the sounds in the in-between position of English where I actually need to move my tongue to two different extremes to produce them. Since this has been a significant weakness whenever I've tried to speak Chinese, it feels good to finally be able to say something (though I've forgotten much of what I learnt!) and see that Chinese people are now able to understand me. Although I don't plan on actively taking up Chinese again at this stage, I will try to keep working on my pronunciation so that whenever I come back to it more intensively, I can at least start with being able to say the words somewhat properly!

So, with all that other stuff happening, I haven't really thought much again about the future, but recently I came to an important decision - to push on with German and to really try hard to get to a much more comfortable level. I'm currently holding steady at B2, and "advanced" starts at the next CEFR level in theory, so C1, but I've decided to just go the whole hog and aim for the C2 exam. This is to force me to over-prepare but when I get closer to the exam date (sometime in early 2015), I can decide whether I'm risking my money for nothing and choose the C1 exam. Of course, exams are all well and good, but the exam is just a goal to push me to work harder. What I would really like is that German becomes a part of my psyche and that I understand almost everything I hear of movies and the TV and, especially, that I speak German much better and much more frequently. I want to speak it comfortably.

How will I do that? Well, I'm open to suggestions! I'll go over my own ideas in future posts, but for now I want to end with a quick discussion on some possible materials to help me prepare. I would really like some help to pick good stuff because, as a solo learner, I will be relying on the materials I use to help cover those gaps of knowledge that a teacher in a class would probably focus on like crazy.

My first idea is to subscribe to the magazine "Deutsch Perfekt"(electronic version). At the moment the 12 month subscription comes with 6 1-hr audio downloads + workbooks. I have a sample of each (the magazine and the audio) and they seem pretty good. I like reading about Mitteleuropa and the articles come with glossaries which are very helpful. The audio seems reasonable too. Neither is "real" content, but they're both something which I feel helps cover the gaps in my book knowledge. They cover a lot of grammatical concepts entirely in German which is something I've been looking for (surprising though that may sound :-) ).

Speaking of which, there are lots of gaps, I'm sure! That's why I've been looking at a few books, but I'm not yet certain which to get (if any). The two main ones I'm considering are "Mit Erfolg Zum Goethe-Zertifikat C2" and "Fit Furs Goethe Zertifikat C2". I find it hard to pick between them, but I only want to choose one. If I collect too many, I'll start to feel like I'll never get through them all! If you've had any experience of either of these books (or ones in the same series) then please let us all know in the comments below! I'm also considering an extra grammar book because I feel that getting confident in this area will not only score me some easy points in any exam, but bring up my level of grammatical correctness in general conversations as I practice what I learn. That's the theory at least! I've found one call "C-Grammatik" that seems to have some positive reviews, but I'd like to know what the other options are.

Of course, I'll need to have fun too. Youtube and ZDF are great sources of German-language entertainment. I'll read the news on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung more often because it definitely requires a high level of German knowledge, as well as easier German news sites. But some of this isn't all that relaxing. Just recently I read the first Harry Potter book in English. I know, I'm a bit late to the party! I actually really enjoyed it, so I'll read some of the others too, but in order to expose myself to more German for the next year it will obviously have to be in German! So, I'll order "Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens" (the German title for the second book in the series: "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") sometime soon.

However, after picking a few of these purchases, I probably won't be buying anything else for the rest of the year. I'll have enough to focus on with these materials. And besides, I'm a cheapskate who hates spending money :-) In particular, I want to avoid getting a professional German teacher at any stage because, whether here in Australia, or online, German teachers are very expensive. I may break this rule later on next year as I near the target date and I think I could push on to C2 with just a bit of professional help, but I would want to have put in a very big effort myself first before even considering that.

The thing is, I'm entering uncharted territory here a bit. I mean, how many people living outside the country try to learn a language to C2 from B2 in their "spare" time? There's lots of information to get started in any language but I guess that once you get to B2 level you should know how to proceed from there, or you have some sort of teacher helping you. I have some ideas of how to proceed, but they are as yet untested. If you follow along for the next year or so you'll get to see the result at the other end and the process of getting there!

Lernen to Talk's Mickey Mangan blogging about German learning

Just a quick one - in a previous post I pointed out the Lernen to Talk show as a source of inspiration. Mickey from the show has started blogging about learning German and where you can find some good German media (which, for a language learner, equals input). Check it out and read his advice as he rolls it out. He's only just started and I really hope he finds the time to continue it:

http://blogs.transparent.com/german/

The Seven Keys to Language Learning

Recently I've had/made a few opportunities to use my rusty French abilities. I toyed with the idea of setting a goal to get my French up to C1 in a year (from probably a high B1 to a low B2). I like the French language, I really do, and I already have French-speaking friends. I know my weaknesses already, and getting it to a good level might give me more ammunition to say to my wife that we should move to France for a few years (a nice spot somewhere in the south would do me for a while :-) ). But for some reason which I don't fully understand, I just don't want to. I can't get motivated by the idea just now. Perhaps it's because I did a lot of study in it at Alliance Francaise (not the best use of my time or money however!) and didn't find it as enjoyable as I have with German. If I were to improve my French vocabulary I could make better use of the Assimil courses that have no English equivalent. All very sensible stuff.

Who knows. Maybe I'll get the idea into my head :-)

One of the opportunities I've made to use it recently was to answer an ad looking for a French/English exchange partner in my local area. I met up with a nice bloke called Jerome who really needs some help with his English in order to be able to improve his job chances in Australia. However, currently his English level needs a fair bit of work and so the vast bulk of the conversation, especially when it was important to be understood, was in French. Good for me though! I found that I could handle this kind of one-on-one conversation fairly easily and wasn't too tied for words, although I kept it simple. It felt really positive to be speaking it again after all this time. I really wish I had more time to meet more French speakers. Unfortunately, I am very time poor (which is why I spend time writing this blog!) so it's hard to imagine how to fit it in. I think Skype conversations would work out the best for me. We'll see.

Anyway, another opportunity I made was to read this article on Le Point, where the author opines vigorously about the outrage of a new law in France that allows French universities to offer courses in languages other than French, ostensibly to attract more foreign students. The author goes on to say that learning a new language isn't that hard and that people wanting to study in France should just get on with it and learn the language of Hugo now! Maybe I exaggerate, but the author does describe "Seven Keys to Learning". However, if your French isn't quite good enough yet, don't worry, below you'll find my (heavily abbreviated) summary of the points:

Francois Kersaudy's Seven Keys to Language Learning

Remember that the following points are taking from the article I mentioned above. I have roughly summarised them as closely as possible without interjecting my own thoughts. I add my own comments further down.

1. Mastering a language is easier than mastering Bridge or Chess because rather than relying as heavily on the intellect you get to rely on passive memory and the unconscious reflex of imitation (more on this below).
2. Motivation is THE key element to success.
3. Language learning is a personal process. It can't really be "taught" to you, you can only really be guided in how to learn it yourself. This has to be done outside the hustle and bustle of the classes themselves. Naturally, there's nothing like perfecting it in a country where it's a native language.
4. Regular, focused study for at least 20 minutes per day, every single day.
5. Repetition, repetition, repetition. But not just any old rote learning repetition - meeting the same words or phrases in different contexts within a short space of time (over a matter of a few weeks at most) will engrave those words or phrases into your memory.
6. Quoting Ferdinand de Saussaure: "You have to learn the grammar through the language, not the language through its grammar." In other words, don't start with a grammar book, start with the above techniques of listening, repeating and trying to use it yourself. Grammar books can come later when/if you really need to refine your abilities.
7. Choice of method is important. Here Kersaudy declares (perhaps unsurprisingly given the above points) that the best method is Assimil. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I largely agree with this :-)

I have to say that I largely agree with all his points, although perhaps I think it takes a little more than just passive memory and unconscious reflex to get to a really good level (especially if you have exams to pass!) but definitely what he describes are the foundations of good language learning. There are surely other methods, but the key tenets of frequent exposure, focused attention and practice are absolutely fundamental. 

The great thing about language learning is that if you are motivated (point 2 :-) ) then these fundamentals are easy to achieve. All of them can come about by practicing speaking whatever you know with new friends, or old friends in a new language.

The Lernen to Talk Show: Wie es aussieht, wenn man innerhalb eines Jahres Deutsch lernt

I seriously can't believe that I had never seen this before, but just a few days ago I learnt about the "Lernen to Talk" show. It's a Youtube video project where a young guy documents his quest to learn German in Germany within a year (plus a couple of months of preparation with an audio course in the US). The guy does a great job of explaining what he's done himself, so I'll let him do exactly that:

The Lernen to Talk show

Seriously, check it out. I've watched a few of the episodes (he's completed the year) and he's pretty good at making conversation of some description with people regardless of his level. I think this might be one of his most important skills. Also notice that he tries hard to not make mistakes, but he doesn't let the fear of mistakes inhibit him. Well, that's my opinion as an observer. His own internal experience may have been different. He doesn't talk too much about his "method", but I'll distill the basics here:

1) Studied an audio course for a few months. Got up to an A1+ or A2 sort of level I think.
2) Went to Germany.
3) 8-10 weeks (I think?) doing frequent German classes and group excursions.
4) Filmed himself once per week for a 5 minute conversation.
5) Lived with a German family for much of the rest of the time.
6) Immersed himself and got involved.

He doesn't waste time talking about his method or whatever, although perhaps an overview post will pop up in the future. He's a multi-talented guy with a bunch of interests that go beyond the usual limited "polyglot" vocabulary of talking about language-learning techniques, so it's fun to watch his videos beyond just the entertainment value of watching his struggles.

He seems to be looking for other people who want to do something similar - learning a language for a year in-country and filming it - via the website Lernen to Talk, but I'm not sure how active that project is.

The longest example of his level is from almost a year after he returned from Germany, and it makes a very interesting podcast to boot, can be found in the interview DRadio's Wissen program did with him. You can see that he still makes mistakes, but he is very comfortable speaking in German and does a very entertaining job as a guest! There's also an appearance by an expert in the field who basically says you'll always be crap at another language unless you learn it definitely before the age of 30 and possibly while you're still a small child. I basically got the sense from her that being anything other than an accent-free, native level speaker is a failure. That may not have been her intention, but she seemed quite disparaging in general, including to Mickey's own level. I wish they provided a transcript because then I might have put together a parallel translation for some sections of it, I'll probably never do any of it because I doubt I'll be transcribing it anytime soon :-) But the abbreviated version is: if you're over 30, you're over the language learning hill. Stupid me for starting German when I was already mid-30s :-)

Anyway, check out his videos and share them. I think they're very inspirational for language learners, even if you can't visit the country yourself. Watch someone else's mistakes, have a laugh, see that it's not the end of the world and that they make you better with each attempt, and then go out and make your own mistakes!

A1 level German: Passing the Goethe Zertifikat A1 quickly and cheaply!

When I did my Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam, most of the people in the room were there for the A1 exam. The next biggest group was the A2-ers. There was one girl for the B1 exam and then little old me. No higher exams that day. The reason is that many/most language learners learn it out of necessity or for the opportunities it might bring them and not just for fun. They might even downright hate learning a language. If you are the spouse or partner of someone who is moving to Germany on a work visa, then you will most likely need to pass the A1 exam to be able to join them. So, although you might not like language learning, or not particularly the German language, culture, or country, you have to learn it to join your loved one. So, it might be a pretty mixed bag in terms of motivation!

First of all, let me say that A1 is not a doddle. For me, it seems pretty easy, but I can recognise where they try to trip up beginners and I also remember what it is like to listen to a language in the early stages without the right type of practice. This will require some work. However, it is not a particularly high hurdle and I believe that if you start off in the right direction you'll be able to prepare in quite a short period of time.

Now, it is certainly possible to do it for free because the internet is an amazing resource. A great place to get started is on the BBC's website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/, which also links through to Deutsche Welle's German learning site, amongst others. In particular, the A1 level material can be found here: http://www.dw.de/learn-german/level-a1/s-13227. However, as helpful as some of this can be, I personally found many of the beginner's programs somewhat, ahhh... twee, at best.

But don't just take my word for it - have a listen to some of "Radio D"!

It's really great that this stuff's out there for free, but I think it's just too slow and contains way too much English. The pace is also treacle slow compared to what you can achieve. It seems to be mainly for school teachers. If you're a solo learner, you can do much better.

I personally don't have a lot of experience with a wide variety of packages, but I personally credit Assimil's New German with Ease with much of my success in passing the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam. I don't think it takes you all the way to the B2 level as claimed, but if you're looking to pass the A1, all the grammar and listening comprehension you need can be found in this book. Even better, you definitely won't need to do 100 lessons to cover all you need. If I were starting from scratch, I would definitely just get this book + audio and get cracking. I haven't done a scientific experiment or anything, but since the difference in difficulty between each level of the CEFR is not constant (in other words, it takes longer to progress between levels the more advanced you are), I would guess that the second half of the book takes you from low A2-ish to B1-B2. B1 in terms of vocabulary and real world listening practice, but B2 in terms of familiarity with the grammar and probably not far off the level required in terms of listening ability for actually passing the exam (with extra exam-specific practice, of course).

VERY IMPORTANT! Don't forget to SHADOW! If you don't know what shadowing is, this will change your world :-) You can skip the bit about walking briskly (I certainly never did, since I mostly did this in the car on the way to work) - just read the section entitled "Using shadowing to master your coursebook, accompanied by other techniques". I never considered that I had finished a lesson until I could "blind shadow" it without any noticeable errors (in my own opinion, of course!) which was sometimes frustrating, and definitely tiring exercise for the mouth, but important all the same. It will help you become comfortable with making the new sounds at a decent speed. The essence of shadowing is simple, really - first, know the meaning of the dialogue. This usually means you've read through the translation and notes at least once. Then just listen to the audio for that day's lesson pretty much continuously until you can repeat the audio just after the speaker has spoken for the whole dialogue. I set myself a benchmark of being error free because it's a specific and measurable goal, but I suspect that doing a 100% perfect run on the whole dialogue from start to finish is not really necessary!

Given all that, you probably don't need to go past lesson 50 to be able to start confidently studying directly for the exam. Even better, the first 50 lessons are a bit shorter and easier than the last 50, so you should be able to manage one per day for at least 5 days per week over a total of 10 weeks, right? If not, you might ask yourself how committed you are the passing the test, because this isn't much to ask, really! If you find yourself struggling to continue, re-check your motivation. That's actually the most fundamental part of the problem for most people.

This will fill up your listening needs for those 10 weeks. What else should you do? You'll want to start practicing speaking as soon as possible, but before doing that I would suggest getting a basic vocabulary list into an SRS based learning system right from the start. If you've read anything else on this site, you'll realise that I highly recommend Anki. Make your own word list (here is a good tip for building one up from your basic course), or download one. The biggest hurdle to passing that A1 exam after using a good quality basic course for a few months is going to be vocabulary. Anki can help a lot with this, but it's not everything. For example, I personally have found that after leaving my Anki list for a long time and then coming back to it that I'm quite rusty on that particular list of words. If you're not doing it every day, your command of your lists of words will definitely diminish.

Some possible ways to avoid this loss is through making up little stories, or using analogies (See some examples at Memrise to get an idea, and also possibly just use it :-) ), breaking long words into component parts and adding those to your Anki list, visualising actions, etc. Also, of course, if you're using and hearing/reading the words as often as possible, they will become firmly implanted in your memory.

This brings me to another point - if you don't want to spend the money on the Assimil course, you can always try Duolingo. I haven't really gone through all the course material for German but I think it might be able to get you to an A1-ish level eventually. You will need to supplement this with a good grammar book/website (after a month or so of the Duolingo course, probably) and the aforementioned vocab training.

Following the Assimil course plan, after about 10 weeks of regular (but not super-stressful) work, you should be able to get into practicing the exam format. You might easily be ready earlier than after 10 weeks, but I think you should be fairly certain before doing the practice exams because there aren't that many available. You can find the Goethe Institute's own practice exams here.

I recommend trying the first one when you think you are ready and then assessing your results. What was your weak spot? For me, the first time I did a practice exam I found that my vocabulary for the required reading was really lacking and I worked hard on improving this. I personally used Lesetraining B2 but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for A1. I suspect that's because the required vocabulary is so much smaller. I suspect that if you've done 50 lessons of Assimil then you will just need to get used to the sorts of audio content in the exams to improve your results in this area. Also, practicing speaking will be important. Find someone to chat to! The cheapest way to do this is a language exchange, so give it a go! Or even just make new friends who will be kind enough to help you with their language like I did. I found a German-speaker at my work who was willing to help, and made two very good friends through Couch Surfing. Or find a Meetup group. I've yet to go to one, but I know that the group in Sydney is quite active and regular, so I suspect they are in any major city around the world.

Phew! That's all I can think of for now, so off you go and get cracking. Report back in 3 or 4 months when you've sat and passed the A1 exam! Viel Spaß!


(NOTE: Most book links in the blog are now affiliate links with BookDepository to help me continue providing resources for language learners on this site. I chose Book Depository because they're quick and cheap, but you can also check other sites for cheap deals. For Australians, I recommend checking out booko.com.au which compares prices including delivery from a number of suppliers.)

Website experiment finished

Just a really brief post to announce the end of my brief experimemt with Google Ads. I can tell they'll never generate much revenue but they makethe site permamemtly ugly, so they're getting the chop. Been busy but more proper updates soon, I promise, including some news about my French!

To Esperanto or Not Esperanto? And a look at memory techniques for learning vocabulary

I had a funny idea recently. And I mean funny as in "komisch", not funny as in "lustig". Since I'm still quite busy in my very limited spare time developing an app, I wondered if there's anything I could do with the rest of the year to satisfy my yearning for language learning but without adding too much work to my workload.

I got an idea after I released my Anki list, as I was looking through the lists of available Anki lists. Anki is a great tool with a great community around it releasing wordlists on all kinds of topics. I personally used it extensively in passing the Goethe Zertifikat B2. I happened across a wordlist for German speakers wanting to learn Esperanto and checked it out. And while looking through the list I had a crazy idea - it seemed pretty easy to learn the words in the list I tried out, so what if I try to learn some basic level of Esperanto for the rest of the year, through German as much as possible. That way I could use my German a little and satisfy that urge to learn languages.

Sure, I'm aware of the arguments against Esperanto. Some of the most obvious ones are discussed in the Justin Rye's ageless Ranto. He actually describes lots of the posited benefits of the language too, but I'll link to one alternative point of view anyway. I'd looked at learning it before and hit some annoyances. Back in those days I wasn't used to pushing through the many weirdnesses of natural languages, so I didn't progress past a certain point. I thought I could give it a good crack this time. I found that, with my French and German knowledge, I could pick up on a lot of the basic words pretty easily.

So, I downloaded a few lists and started giving it a crack. I also read some web descriptions (including the Ranto above!) to give me an overview again of the word-building and grammar. I found that I could learn all the words from 3 lists (2 of basic vocab -1 German, 1 English - and a German based one for the book "Gerda Malaperis") and review them every day at a pace of 20 new words each. In addition, I did a list of Esperanto affixes. This was all pretty easy to do every day and didn't take too long. I didn't do any special visualisation techniques on these lists and it was still pretty easy and reliable most of the time.

How long did I last doing this?

Just a few days!

Look, I'm used to ignoring the differences between other natural languages and my own now. I've done it with German and French, but when it's a constructed language that is supposed to be an alternative to natural languages, maybe I just had a lower threshold. The end really came for me today when I started paying attention to the example sentences in one of the decks and I just despaired. I had already looked past "infanajxo" being, apparently, the "concrete manifestation of the abstract idea of infano" and therefore meaning "childhood", and the nonsense of malvarmumi meaning "to catch a cold" (seriously - "opposite-of-warm-indefinite-verb" Why semi-copy such an idiomatic expression involving being "cold" anyway?), and the idiomatic way of expressing "I like" being something like "it is pleasing to me", but when I saw yet another pointless use of the indefinite preposition "je" I decided I was truly wasting my time. Probably looking up the website of the Sydney Esperanto Association didn't help. So, that was the last straw.

It may be easier to learn than other languages (I definitely feel I know the basics reasonably well for such a short exposure), but it still requires some effort - acquiring a few thousand words, acquiring a few hundred common constructs and practicing speaking to some reasonable level of fluency. I just cannot justify the effort for a constructed language that probably has fewer fluent speakers in Australia than Swahili or even Bininj Gunwok.

So, I dropped it. Now that I have I will have a little more time for reading my current book (called "Scheisse" which teaches you how to swear in German) and a lot more headspace for one other Anki list which I downloaded at the same time and I've started working on. This one has all the words from the lessons (or exercises - can't remember which one!) in the well-known Latin textbook "Wheelock's Latin" which I also checked out. I do not own a copy of Wheelock's Latin yet - I'm hoping to find one cheap somewhere. I'm sure I'll be able to pick it up at a second-hand store sometime. While I decided earlier in the year that I didn't have the time or headspace for both Chinese and Latin, I've since been thinking that I could find time for Latin on its own somehow because it should be slightly less demanding as there will be no requirement to speak it, nor any real requirement to understand it when it's spoken. I had to finish a few books first - "Das Todeskreuz" which I've mentioned previously and an interesting new book from Jared Diamond called "The World Until Yesterday". After that I managed to get my app development back on track a bit again, and maybe now I can restart my Latin studies.

I don't have an exact plan really, but I've started by just learning some Latin words for the hell of it. The really interesting thing for me is that I've started trying to use some of those memory techniques you hear people talk about. I've never bothered to read up on them specifically, or practice them properly, so this is all just one large experiment. However, I think it's an incredibly important experiment for my future language learning. You see, I have noticed that, although my recall on my Anki lists was reasonably good while I was actively reviewing it every day, once I stop the recall drops very fast for a lot of the words. Because of that, it's hard to imagine how I can maintain multiple languages at any decent level and add new ones. Of course, I need to read, listen and speak each one as often as possible, but I find that an Anki list provides a density of time that's hard to beat just to keep my level of easily recalled words up.

Well, that's what I thought, anyway. But the burden of doing the lists everyday just proved too much. I should almost certainly reduce the maximum number of reviews each day (currently 100) but it would be even better if I just didn't need to review so many words at all! In particular, there are some words and expressions that I find just don't stick reliably with straight repetition.

So, now I'm experimenting with a new list of words. For each word I try to develop some small mnemonic phrase or visualise some short scene plus dialogue. They are always pretty silly, and I'm still working on it. The particular list I'm looking that only tests recall of the meaning of Latin words, not vice-versa, so it's perhaps a simpler start. I'm still learning via Anki with its implementation of Spaced-Repetition Learning and I think it's a good combination. I'm at a stage where some of my mnemonics don't work very well, or I just don't recall them at all (actually, this has been quite rare so far) so it's good for the mnemonics to be backed up by SRS.

The first day I did it it took me THE ENTIRE DAY (spread over the course of the day, of course) to come up with the memes for my 20 new words and whatever number of reviews I needed (maybe twenty). I was pretty tired at the end of the day, but also pretty satisfied with my efforts. That night was one of extremely interrupted sleep - and the start of one of the longest days of my life - when my daughter woke up at 2:30am vomitting in bed. I didn't get back to sleep myself till 4am and then I was up every 20 mins with my poor daughter retching. Terrible! So, I was kind of on edge and unable to sleep much until she slept for an hour between 6 and 7. At some stage I was lying in bed and the words I had studied were just flying through my head in a very orderly fashion. I found myself doing things like recalling all the verbs that had a final verb form ending in "latum", or trying to recall all the adjectives I had learnt. It was quite an experience - like looking up words in a dictionary! I don't remember it ever having happened before, even with German, so it was quite exciting!

Was it because I had just furnished so much attention on each word as I tried to come up with a mnemonic, or was it the mnemonics themselves? Only more experimenting could tell, which I'm doing now. I need to practice to make the production of mnemonics faster. In addition, I use the SRS and let it go through its early frequencies of "1 minute" and "10 minutes" before decideding that I remember the mnemonic well enough at which stage I decide on a repeat interval of either 1 day or 4 days. I also need to make sure the mnemonic captures enough of the meanings on one side and the forms on the other to be useful, but to make sure that the form I will be given (i.e., the Latin words) comes early in my mnemonic so it can kick off the whole recall. These are all things I need to practice. I think I've got a little faster already. I don't always remember my mnemonic, and if I don't I decide that the original wasn't good enough, come up with something new, and start again.

So far I've been impressed and hope it continues like this. Very early days though, so I'll keep you posted! I hope to learn a lot of Latin vocabulary as a semi-separate task to the grammar because I already know enough of the basic grammar to understand the forms that I'm seeing to some extent, so later I can focus on improving the grammar specifically.

To wrap-up my other news - I made contact with a couple of local people who want to practice English in exchange for German and French (one of each). The French guy got back to me so I'll meet up with him and we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping to convince one of them to become my running buddy so I can double the usefulness of my very limited time!

I've also read about half of the book "Scheisse" which I mentioned above. It's only very light reading, and I don't spend much time on it in total really. It's just for a laugh, although I must admit that I read the meaning of a couple of words in there which then appeared in "Das Todeskreuz" which was pretty cool :-) So, not totally useless after all!

My last update is site related - since I turned on Google Ads I've got approximately 2/5ths of nothing. I'm not sure I'm supposed to say it exactly, but I think Google estimates that for every 1,000 page visits I will earn a few cents. Since I get about 1,000 per month, I can't see myself continuing with it for very long. At least I've turned off the ads for "dating" sites which are a pretty tacky look on any website. If it doesn't look like it's going to be much use by the end of the year, I'll flick it off again. I got no comments about it and the traffic to the site is fairly unchanged, so I guess most of you out there have "AdBlocker" turned on :-)

Anyone want to share their experiences with using mnemonics for memorising, or even mixed with SRS, please feel free to do so in the comments below. Coming up in my next post, some advice on how to pass the Goethe Zertifikat A1 - Start Deutsch 1 exam as quickly, painlessly and cheaply as possible!

Website experiment

I've decided to do a little experiment with the website and turn on Google AdSense for a while. I don't expect it to really make much money, but it might help me buy a book here or there for my language studies. I don't plan on letting it affect what I blog about or how often I blog :-)

If people get too turned off by the ads, or I decide they're just too ugly and distracting, I'll give them the chop. Let's see how it goes, and feel free to give me any feedback on them.

My Anki list

[EDIT: A kind reader (shout out to Keita!) let me know that there's an issue with getting the reversals to show up when you first open the deck (though I'm sure I have the reversals!). Open Anki and select "Browse". The select the deck "Lesetraining B2 Wortschatz" and hit the "Cards..." button below the list of words (about halfway down). For me, that shows the front and reverse templates but from what Keita said, if the reversals are missing, there will be an option to create one here. I hope that works for everyone. Let me know in the comments below if not. Don't forget to give it a rating too!]

So, I've finally got round to sharing my Anki list. The content is mainly from the oft-mentioned Lesetraining B2 book, but also from Das Todeskreuz and numerous articles which I read, some of which ended up on this blog as parallel translations (see here and here for just a few examples). In short, it has more words than I needed to read the texts from the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam, and the reading section needs the most vocabulary, so if you're looking to pass the B2 (or earlier) or build up for the C1 or C2, this is a good place to start:

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3142086355

If you find it useful, please rate it and share it around. A good Anki list is a big investment of time (hence why, in the future, I'm thinking of just using stock Anki lists for most initial vocabulary) so I would feel happier if I knew that my effort was making other people's lives easier, just as the other pre-prepared Anki lists have made my life easier :-)

Quick comparison of TestDaF against the CEFR (Common European Framework for Reference of Languages)

Just a really quick post for anyone looking to enter a German institute of higher education and wondering what level they require and how that matches up with the system that's often quoted elsewhere of the CEFR (with levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 & C2 being the most advanced).

First of all, the TestDaF is a test like the English language tests IELTS, TOEFL, etc, in that you get a score and your entry requirement is usually some minimum score. To keep this brief, I'll skip the foreplay and get straight to it. The comparison between TestDaF results and the CEFR scale can be found here:

http://www.testdaf.de/teilnehmer/tn-info_nivea_stufen.php

with some detail about the abilities required at each level here:

http://www.testdaf.de/teilnehmer/tn-info_nivea.php

There is some overlap between the categories which can be summarised as follows:

TDN 3 = B2.1 - B2.2 (i.e., a high score on the B2 exam)
TDN 4 = B2.2 - C1.1
TDN 5 = C1.1 - C1.2

In short, if the entrance requirement for your target university (or school) in German is TDN 3, then you should ensure you're a solid B2. If it's TDN 4 or above, make sure you're a solid C1. And don't aim low! Better to overshoot and find the exam easy than to risk failing the exam. It might seem like a waste of time to do the extra preparation, but an EVEN BIGGER WASTE OF TIME is to fail the exam!

The great part of learning a language is that study can come in many forms - sure, sometimes that's reading grammars and trying to memorise words, but it's also often listening (with focus!) to something you enjoy, watching movies and trying to understand them, and, best of all, making new friends and speaking to their hearts in their own language, instead of just their heads.

iVersity's current German MOOCs

I've decided to list some of the MOOCs from iVersity here for anyone that's interested using my Ambassador links because, if you're interested and you sign up, I might get an iPad mini which would come in very handy for my current app development which is language related and will be announced here when it's released. It won't help you with your German studies, but it will be free :-)

Below are the links to all the current German language courses, with translated titles and overviews in English where necessary. I think that even if you're familiar with the topic area it could be a really good way to learn the associated vocabulary in German in a way that should stick better than just using a list. Good luck to anyone who wants to have a go!

Introduction to Probability Theory: I will be joining this course whenever it starts next.

Mathe-MOOC: Think mathematically! Mainly about Geometry and Algebra and applying them to problems, I believe. There's an example lesson here which I've yet to check out: MatheMOOC example chapter (and check out the computer at the bottom of the page - ancient history!)

Web Engineering I & Web Engineering II: From the basics to HTML5. Looking to get into Web development and improve your German? Here's your chance :-)

Algorithms & Datastructures: A "foundations of programming" style course. Whatever programming language you intend to use or start with, you should know all the stuff in this course.

Chagemaker MOOC - Social Entrepreneurship: This is an interesting one. The first sentence of the description says: "In the Changemaker MOOC you will learn how solve a social problem starting from an idea."

Foundations of Marketing

Introduction to Business Administration.

Sectio chirurgica - 'Interactive Anatomy':

International Agricultural Management

Free courses for A1 to B1 and ideas for B2+ for improvement

Just a quick note to share this link today which contains a ton of info, and some specific courses for A1 to B1 levels, as well as a decent basic grammar reference. Check it out!

http://deutsch.info/en

Also, here's an idea for intermediate to advanced German speakers - MOOCs! A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course and some are finally coming for German speakers. So, rather than study German per se, do some study in German. Kill two birds with one stone. The number of courses is currently limited, but hopefully it'll expand. I'm thinking of refreshing statistics through the medium of German and if I do I'll keep you posted. If there's no course currently which interests you, keep checking back. It's only early days for German-language MOOCs. Check it out at iVersity!

Gute Chance!

The Great Language Game

Just some quick fun today for you language tragics. Play the Great Language Game and see if you can identify which of 80 different languages you're listening to!

And just for my own tracking, I finished "Das Todeskreuz" about 3 weeks ago I think. I haven't started another German book yet - got some English-language stuff I want to read first!

Hope everyone out there is having fun with their languages :-)

Was ist los mit ihm?

As the more astute amongst you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything in quite some time. I've got a few reasons...

One big one is that I've taken on some contract work in my "spare time" which any regular readers of this blog will realise is extremely limited. In order to make any progress with this extra project I've been staying up late and so losing sleep. I can't work on it during my commute, of course, so I can still listen to language learning audio.

But I haven't...

Well, I have. I listen to German audio of course. There is just so much interesting and informative content. I've had some technical issues with my old phone (a Nokia N97) which I've since upgraded to a hand-me-down Galaxy S2. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an FM transmitter built-in and I need this to listen to the audio on my car stereo (no, it doesn't have bluetooth!). I plan on fixing this technical issue soon.

That doesn't answer the real question - what happened to my Chinese and Latin studies?

Well, firstly, let me say that I haven't definitely given either up. I did really enjoy both (problems with the highly variable Latin pronunciation aside) and I had made good progress for the time I devoted to it. One major thing is that although I still have my drive in which to do the study, which was the bulk of time I spent on it previously, I just feel like I don't have the "headspace" for it. When I have a spare moment, I'm focused on my new contract work. To study the languages the way I was requires some amount of reading too. When I've had some spare time to read when I couldn't work on my coding project, I've read about technical topics related to it to understand it better, because I am learning something new there as well. I have also made a lot of progress reading my German novel "Das Todeskreuz" (currently up to page 462 out of 515 - almost there!). I'm really enjoying it! Certainly more than the rather disappointing ending to "Der Beobachter". I understand German well enough that reading this novel and listening to German podcasts is actually relaxing, which is great because I spend a lot of my mental energy on my contract project.

But there was one thing that really depressed my enthusiasm, on top of everything else. In particular, my enthusiasm for learning Chinese.

You see, learning a spoken language necessarily involve a lot of, well, speaking. Speaking to native speakers of the language. I have plenty of them around me - far more than native German speakers. There was always one nagging problem which I figured would only affect me in the long term and which is exemplified by the following typical dialogues (in German and English respectively):

Conversation with native German speaker

Me: So, what did you do on the weekend?
German Speaker: We went bushwalking/rock-climbing/visited a museum/saw a movie/etc.

You know - they live an interesting life. They also have interesting opinions that show some deep level of thought on various topics, even if only in passing. Whereas...

Conversation with native Mandarin speaker

Me: So, what did you do on the weekend?

Mandarin Speaker: Nothing. Just some shopping. Nothing special.

Now, I've been working in my team with 2 fluent Mandarin speakers (one is a native speaker and the other was schooled in Mandarin but spoke Cantonese at home) and in the 1.5 years I've had this conversation with them, the answer is never really any different. Sometimes they go to a friend's house. Seriously. Even when they visit China you'd think they'd have a bunch of interesting things to talk about that they could do there that they don't get to do in Australia. No, not really. "What did you do on your holiday?" - "Just some shopping, visiting some friends."

So, shopping. Personally, I'm not that interested in it that I can talk about it every single time I have a conversation, but I guess it's not bad for a beginner. I know one or two topics which can get them excited - like how awesome China's communist army was in expelling the KMT or Japanese, and how great their military hardware is, and all that, but I found the one-sided, brain-washed point of view that I'm getting out of them to be quite dull, if not downright frustrating as no other point of view has any validity.

It makes for quite tedious conversations.

To be fair, I was a long way from caring about the specifics of the conversation, but I guess it just depressed my motivation to know that Chinese communist party propaganda was basically what I was in for. One of the Chinese I know in particular has definitely been "reprogrammed". This is the impression I largely get from the ones I work with - they're either brainwashed or they use a self-defensive ignorance (or just plain ignorance) to avoid discussing anything even remotely controversial.

I know, I know, I can just find more Chinese to talk to, ones that are more, well, "varied" in their ways of thinking. I'm guessing though that, in general, these will be fewer than the ones I've found so far.

I had a particularly unpleasant run in with one of them when I tried to point out the reason for simple things like why Chinese made products are cheaper than Australian products. I wasn't putting China down, just stating the facts like: lower environmental standards, lower standards of living, etc. I pointed out that the Yangtze river dolphin had gone extinct quite recently as an example of poor environmental controls. I got quite a rant in reply which was full of penis-comparing bluster about how fast China's fastest train is and how powerful their biggest supercomputer is and how great their army is. I also learnt that not many Chinese people have even heard of the Yangtze river dolphin, let alone know of its extinction.

So, yeah. I let one particular person get to me I guess.

My coding project is due to finish at the end of the year (let's see if it does) and parts of it will be ready sooner than that. It is language related, so once it's finished I'll post details here for language learners to take a look at.

What will I do on this blog in the meantime?

Well, I'm not entirely sure, though I do see that posts about the Goethe exams are still very popular, so I'll try to provide more material to help those getting ready for these exams, or just plain learning German! Hopefully my next post won't be so far after the last one!

Lesetraining B2 and other tips for getting enough vocabulary for the Goethe Zertifikat B2

Just a quick post  to let you know that rumours of my death have been greatly exagerated. I've had some downtime from new language learning of late and instead have used my time to work on a programming project in my spare time and also to read more of "Das Todeskreuz". I'm now up to page 347 and still really enjoying it, but also starting to get seriously worried about how it's going to end. The total number of pages is 516, so in about 170 odd pages the whole thing has to wrap up. I have to suspect therefore that the story's ending is going to be a little disappointing, but I hold out hope for something special :-) I've also managed to keep up with Anki for my new languages (Chinese and Latin), but not so much for German which requires a much bigger time commitment each day just because I've got a lot more words in the list.

I'll do an update on what's happening with my new languages sometime soon, but for today I'd just like to make sure I put links to the book I used to really bring my bulk of vocabulary up to an acceptable level for the B2 exam. The book is called Lesetraining B2 (link to the publisher's website) and is published in Germany by Hueber. You can also find it on here, which I've included as it might be a more stable link, and also a cheap place to buy it. The latter also seems to include the answer book which didn't come with my edition, but is absolutely VITAL, and can be found here:

http://www.hueber.de/shared/elka/Internet_Muster/Red1/978-3-19-011684-3_Muster_1.pdf

Of course, doing the practice tests available from the Goethe website, is vital:

http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/pba/bes/gb2/mat/enindex.htm

You can find examples of every test they offer there. There are also other B2 level exams from other providers and I used a few of those prior to my test to practice everything, including the speaking components which I had to self-assess, although the Goethe ones were my main ones because that was the exam I was intending to do and knowing the exam format and style of question is vital.

I added EVERY SINGLE WORD which I didn't know from Lesetraining B2 into an Anki list which has since been my one and only list I bother to study on a regular basis. I added words from all sources into it - newspaper reports, articles, etc, as well. It now has almost 3000 cards which is really 1500 double-side cards. However, since I put more than one word on each side of each card, this represents a lot more than 1500 words and phrases. Probably not far off 3000 actually. Using Anki properly was important to my success - I describe my own particular method in detail here.

For other tips, please also see my post-mortem of how I prepared for the Goethe-Zertifikat B2, as well as an earlier article I wrote with more advice specifically for improving listening skills, which helps you ensure you can hear the words you already know :-)

Post your own tips in the comments below!

Chinese with Ease volume 1 FINISHED!

Finally! I've finally made it past the first volume of Chinese with Ease! This is the first 49 lessons out 105 in total. So, what can I do with what I've learnt? Well, probably not a lot. I can understand some of what I hear and have very small fragments of conversation. My experience with the German with Ease course was that at the end of the whole course (100 lessons) plus having lived  in Germany for 6 months (without making much of an effort, to be honest) and done some extra material here and there, I was probably around B1 on the CEFRL, so, if Assimil has been my main source so far and I'm only halfway through, I shouldn't expect too much yet because I've hardly put in an effort like Baron Jon :-)  Anyway, I'm happy enough so far. The material I'm going through seems to be getting absorbed which is a good start!

I am trying to have little conversations here and there, but I don't know much. I seem to be at the stage of just picking up random, but highly useful, sentences, like this:

我没有睡够觉。

Which means "I didn't have enough sleep". The word gou4 够 can be replaced by nothing (="I didn't sleep") or hao3 好 (="I didn't sleep well"). The structure of this sentence surprised me compared to what I've learnt so far which didn't happen with German. I feel like by about halfway through the course the sentence structures themselves were not totally surprising anymore, but then again, I was not really looking at anything more than my Assimil course at that stage.

Just a quick wrapup again:

Mandarin: Up to lesson 50.
Latin: Up to lesson 47. I'll try to bring this up to the same as Mandarin before I proceed with that again. I'm trying to focus on the lessons a bit more and go over them to make sure I understand them well before I move on. This is important for the Assimil method to work I feel, but sometimes I've let my understanding be vague when I move on because my French isn't too top notch. I've decided to start adding the French translations along with then English in my Anki lists to perhaps improve my vocab there as well. Speaking of French, I replied to my Chinese friend in French the other day when I wasn't sure what to say. Funny.
German: Up to page 229 in Das Todeskreuz. Apart from that, I've just been trying to catch up on correspondence with my German speaking friends.

I have actually kept up reasonably well with Anki lately which hasn't really happened ever since Anki became completely gay on my phone's browser (with the latest version). I can't study Chinese because my phone's browser doesn't support the required fonts, but I can do the others at least.

Bis später!
在见！
Valeo!

Update: 09/04/2013

Been a bit short on time lately, trying to work on some home projects, some of which may also have a linguistic bent, so I'll just jump in with my updates for now:

Mandarin: Just finished lesson 47 today. I also write a few phrases to a Chinese friend I used to work with.
Latin: Working on lesson 45.
German: Up to page 218 in Das Todeskreuz. Same old story - I spent more time on this recently and my Mandarin and Latin stalled as a result. My Stammtisch at work has been called off for 2 weeks, but I'll try to make up for this by using the time to write to my friends and keep up to date with them better.

And for anyone who's interested in the aboriginal language I mentioned earlier, the Bininj Gunwok website has a new post - a transcription exercise. Enjoy!

That's all for today: short and sweet. Keep up the hard work everyone!

zunehmen, abnehmen und... annehmen?

Man, oh man... I believe it was only last week that I posted an update about how relaxed, confident and comfortable I had felt in my regular weekly Stammtisch. I also predicted that that could easily be completely different next week. And it was. I felt quite awkward in my Stammtisch yesterday. I straight away couldn't think of the words I wanted to use, nor an alternative way of expressing myself, and it knocked my confidence right at the start. I never really recovered. Sometimes you're up, and sometimes you're down. What had changed? I'm not sure, but when I think back I realise that I haven't listened to German much in the last week, especially not to my two current snippets of German movies that I know fairly well (click these links to find my parallel translations and a link to the videos for short scenes from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2), but I also haven't written much in German in the past week, whereas I had corresponded with a few of my German-speaking friends in the week before. A whole week with no other practice is just too long. I'm guessing that at a very high, advanced level of ability those sorts of gaps won't make too much noticeable difference because a small loss from a very high level is still very high. With my extended period of minimal focus on German, and being only an intermediate level, the cracks start to appear very quickly. I've been a naughty boy!

There are a bunch of reasons, probably primarily that I'm trying to learn two new languages to a basic fluency level this year! I've been thinking that I need to make sure I speak German more often each week, but to be honest it'll probably be good enough to just make sure I keep up my correspondence with my German-speaking friends. This probably fits in with my available time the best, because although I'd like to find more chances to actually speak German, I definitely need to find time to practice speaking Chinese.

All this brings me in a roundabout way to the title of this post: zunehmen, abnehmen und... annehmen. I have in the past often find myself stumbling over the various meanings of these sorts of similar sounding words. There was a time when I never seemed to be able to choose the correct word out of "anmelden" (register) and "abmelden" (cancel a registration), although I think I mostly get it right now. One day, a few months back, I ran into my Austrian friend at work who had been exercising more and eating better and had therefore lost a fair bit of weight. I wanted to let her know that her efforts were working and I said that she looked really different because "du hast so viel angenommen!" which I intended to mean "you've lost so much weight!". However, rather than seeming pleased she looked at me askance. I immediately thought that maybe she felt it was inappropriate to make such a comment, but that's just how I am. I make the same sorts of comments to my male friends as well, so I was just treating her equally. I decided to just move on and not to dwell on it and we had a little chat, but as I walked away and then for several days afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about it because I decided that, on the model of "anmelden" vs "abmelden" I had, in fact, told her that she had put on a lot of weight! MY GOD! I don't normally say that to anyone, but especially not a woman! I felt terrible and wasn't sure if I should apologise or just hope that she would assume I meant to say the opposite.

It took me about two weeks of mulling this over in my mind before I realised that what I had said to her didn't really mean much at all, because the opposite of "abnehmen" isn't "annehmen" it's "zunehmen".

What an idiot I am!

I said, pretty much out of the blue (no supporting context): "You have assumed so much!" or perhaps "you've taken so much". Nice work!

Oh well... Hopefully it will all stick in my head better now that I've mulled it over so much :-)

So here are our contrasting pairs for the day:

abnehmen vs zunehmen
abmelden vs anmelden.

Don't say I never tell you anything useful!

To end up, here's my progress update:
Mandarin: Currently shadowing lesson 45 which I do until I can follow the whole main dialogue at full speed without tripping up to within my own reasonable approximation of correct pronunciation. I also watched part of an episode of "Real Chinese" on TV. Being in Australia I can't watch the full episodes online. Although there's a lot of speaking in English on these shows, I think they're actually quite good for a beginner stage just to give some phrases and pronunciation practice, with an understanding of Chinese culture. Also, they have longer, unsubtitled monologues for more advanced speakers. The episode I was was, unfortunately, the last one, so I won't end up seeing them all until they get repeated. 真糟糕!
Latin: Currently still working on lesson 44.
German: I'm up to page 207 in "Das Todeskreuz". I really don't spend much time at all reading this, as you can tell. I should though because it's a good read.

Mandarin Chinese Resources

Just like I did for Latin a short while ago, I'd like to give an overview of what resources I've been using so far for my very early stages of Mandarin. However, I need to expand the list with some decent content which I have yet to find. My goal is mainly spoken Mandarin, so learning the characters will have to take a back seat. The disadvantage is that I'll need to convert everything to pinyin which isn't always reliable because sometimes the exact same character is pronounced in different ways and with different meanings (of course!). However, this is just something I'll have to deal with.

THE BIG ONE: Assimil's Chinese with Ease (vol. 1 & 2)

I'm using the edition from 2005 which is the latest I believe - check it out at Assimil's site. You might find them cheaper to order from here and here if you decide to get them. Although the book says it was printed in 2005, it feels a little dated, as though the content had just been revised and brought up to date rather than being completely rewritten in 2005. I could be wrong about that, of course. In any case, although from just looking at the book one might get the impression that the book is somehow of a lower quality, that would be wrong. I've enjoyed the lessons so far, the audio quality is excellent and consistent (unlike the Latin edition!) and I feel like the pace is quite good. I can imagine being able to get through it at a pace of one lesson per day if I had just a little more time and focus. I see no reason why it was split into 2 volumes, except to either make more money or keep the book size more manageable like they used to. I got a good deal on them both when I bought them about 3 years ago, so I can't complain. I do appreciate the older style books precisely because they are smaller I can pop them into my pocket more easily and they have the built-in red cloth bookmark which I think is great. Of course, once I start doing the active phase (if I do it the way you're supposed to) it means I'll need to carry around both books with me all the time anyway!

There are some negatives with the audio, some of which were shared with Le Latin actually - no one seems to have bothered to tell the producer or the voice actors who is supposed to say what lines so if someone in a dialogue gets two numbered lines in a row, things can go haywire. I just did lesson 44 in this book which is a dialogue between a butcher and a shopper. It's all going smoothly until the butcher is supposed to say 2 numbered sentences in a row but the voice actors inexplicably swap on the second line and for the rest of the dialogue the shopper becomes the butcher and vice versa. Bizarre! I believe there's some of this somewhere in Le Latin, although it's hard to tell because sometimes it feels as though no matter what all of the voice actors are crammed into every dialogue. It's great to have a variety of speakers (well, four in both cases), but all in every dialogue? It overloads my primitive foreign language speech recognition circuitry!

Another comment that applies to both is that they are lacking in humour. However, the "humour" that was in New German with Ease was often so wide of the mark as to be utterly perplexing and certainly not funny, so I can live without out it in these books and don't count it as a criticism.

As for the text of the book, it doesn't aim to teach you the characters but it does show them with pinyin underneath throughout the whole book which has been allowing me to learn a few without trying too hard, which is great as learning the characters is currently not a goal for me. One review I read did comment that the Chinese text contains a lot of exclamation marks for no apparent reason, which I hadn't noticed so much before but now I can't help but notice. It's not really a big deal, though it'd be good to remove from a future edition. The typesetting and editing are both very good. I've only noticed the occasional error on a tone mark, etc. This is in stark contrast to New German with Ease which was riddled with type-setting errors and the inclusion of random bits of the original French version of the text splattered throughout the English version. Lucky the course itself was so good!

I'm almost halfway through the two books now, and although I haven't made the big effort I should be to talk (although I have had a few short chats), I feel like it is starting to sink in a bit, at least to recognise words that I know, which is an important attribute!

Verdict (based on only being half done and not having done any official test): RECOMMENDED!

Web Dictionaries

I haven't checked out heaps, but http://www.nciku.com has been good so far and has a nice interface. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: Call in the next 20 seconds and you get a free set of steak-knives! No, wait, that's not true, but if you are looking at a Chinese character somewhere away from your computer (let's call it "the real world") and you want to know the meaning, you can scrawl an approximation of the character into the box on Nciku's homepage and it will show you a list of possible characters that match your scrawl. It's been really good whenever I've needed to use it (which hasn't been very often so far) and my drawings were terrible, so it's very robust! I've also used ChineseTools.eu for measure words, although Nciku gives you these too. There are usually a few and I don't know enough to pick the best ones always so this is still a confusing aspect for me, but I try not to worry about it too much for now.

Understanding Radicals

Until a few days ago I still had my anki list for mandarin set to "recognise" as well as produce. This really, really slowed down my anki reviews. Since learning to recognise the characters is not part of my initial plan, I have dropped this for now. However, while I was trying to do this I decided that I needed to breakdown the characters into their components to improve my chances of remembering them. To do this, I used the excellent tool at Hanzicraft. See an example here. You can enter the component parts separately and see if that helps you make sense of the characters any better. There are some books on this topic and other resources which I'll look into in more detail whenever (if ever?) I get round to focusing more on the characters.

Online Radio and Podcasts

I don't have anything here yet. Something the equivalent quality of, and with equally interesting material, as DRadio, SWR2 or even DeutscheWelle, would be greatly appreciated if anyone wants to let me know in the comments below! I'm still in the early stages so I'll worry more about this later.

Past and Present Workmates

Mandarin speakers are really out and about in the world these days, and especially so in Sydney. In fact, as I've mentioned before, especially so in my current team which has two native Mandarin speakers out of five people (including me!) and one of the others understands it a little (he's a native Cantonese speaker). I also made good friends with a Mandarin speaker while I worked in Germany and I plan on practising on him a bit. I just recently sent him a short email which had 2 simple sentences in Mandarin. Sure, one of them was based heavily on the dialogue from Chinese with Ease which I had been reading most recently, but what better way to practise what you know! My two Mandarin workmates are most helpful - teaching me new words, correcting my tones, providing me with Chinese movies with English subtitles and not laughing at me too much. I tried out my first "original" sentence just two days ago on one of them, via instant message:

请来吧

I thought it just said "please come", which it does, but he laughed at me and said "I suppose you mean you want me to come and help you". Nice :-) He suggested instead:

有空来一下吗?

which means something like "have you got a moment?". It's literally more like "are [you] free to come a little?". When I told my other Mandarin colleague this story, she said that what I said originally makes sense and that she thought the second would be too long to remember. So, she's just being nice I guess.

I think as I learn more and more words and phrases, conversations with my colleagues will start to form more and more part of how I learn. They're very keen to teach their language and share their culture, which is awesome.

That's all for now. I'll post more (useful) resources as I find them. I'll also try to come up with a more testable goal than just finishing the Assimil course, but I haven't figured out for now just what that will be. Any suggestions will be welcome. My next post will probably be on a topic in German, just to mix things up.

Update: 25/03/2013

Hey readers!

There are a few things I've been looking to post recently but time has conspired against me getting any of them out yet. However, I don't want to go too long without a progress update so here it is.

Mandarin

I finished lesson 42 in Chinese with Ease a few days ago. I haven't done more since because I wanted to bring my latin studies up to par with my Chinese ones and also because I don't do as much on the weekends normally because I don't spend as much time in the car, and when I do, it's with my family, so listening intently is right out. I find some lessons much much harder than others. I think this is a combination of just certain features causing me problems and the way I approach particular lessons. My "ideal" day in the early stages of German when using "German with Ease" was to listen several times to my new lesson in the morning while making breakfast, then reading the dialogue a couple of times so that I had some idea of all the new words and to then spend the rest of the day re-listening and trying to shadow, and reading more where necessary. However, these days I make my breakfast the night before work to speed up my departure in the morning and eat it at my desk at work, which takes away that opportunity. I try to do as much reading as I can before leaving for work and the rest I do while stuck in traffic, but still, it's not as "ideal".

Anyway, I managed to get the last few words from the first 14 lessons into my Anki list (this process is a long way behind for both Latin and Chinese because it is SOOOO slow) and have reviewed them a bit. In general, since it's become harder to do Anki reviews on my phone thanks to the new version not working well on my phone's browser anymore.

As for conversations, I've started trying to say a few sentences in the morning to one of my co-workers. We had a short one recently where I learnt how to say that I hadn't slept enough, or that I had slept well, or at all. Pretty useful! Obviously, I need to work on tones and vocab to make these conversations stretch out 

somehow beyond a few seconds!

By the way, I still don't have any good sources for chinese podcasts for either various levels of stuff or the news, so any suggestions here would be greatly appreciated!

Latin

I just today finished lesson 42 of Assimil's "Le Latin". Lesson 41 was actually a reasonably close quote from a work by Cicero. Pretty exciting day! It's going OK, although I don't have all the tenses clear in my head. The forms as well as the actual usages. I need to work on this more. I am at least getting to know the noun declensions a little "by assimilation", so that's a good start. Although I've only done 42 lessons in each language, I just worked out that today is the 84th day of the year which means that I've managed to average one lesson per day across the two languages which is an effort I'm pretty pleased with. I'm starting to give them both better focus when I do them which is helping. The year started out pretty horribly for me in other ways, so I like to think that at least I'm making some progress in some sort of goal this year. I also listened to a recent news podcast from Radio Bremen. I didn't really understand any of it except for the name of the previous pope, so it was a bit of a waste of time, but I enjoyed it anyway.

German

No real formal study, but I have found a tiny bit more time to read "Das Todeskreuz" and am now up to page 195. Also, without really trying, I managed to pretty much memorise Hitler's rant from that famous scene in Der Untergang. I think it might come in handy as a party trick some day. I did feel a lot more relaxed and flowing in my last Stammtisch which might have been a result of listening to the above rant and the spilt coffee scene from Mädchen Mädchen 2. Or I might have just felt relaxed that day and tomorrow I'll go backwards again. Who knows! If anyone else has an experience of using the above mentioned parallel translations, let us know in the comments.

Bininj Kunwok

No, I haven't officially added this one to my learning list for the year, but it keeps calling me all the same. I'm talking to the guy running the site for learning it that I mentioned before and hoping that I can help out in some way because I really believe in it, and I actually hope that I can help spread the word and make it used beyond its original target audience of people working in the areas of the northern territory where the language groups are spoken. WHY AREN'T AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLKIDS LEARNING SOME ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE? I just don't get it. I love european languages and I'm learning Mandarin myself, but we could really do with learning some more about our homeland's cultural heritage and making its original inhabitants feel that what they have is valued more widely. But like I said, I haven't added this language for now. I did however learn their word for goodbye: bobo. It's often been pointed out that Australians have at least a very basic knowledge of a variety of european languages but can't even say hello or goodbye in a single Aboriginal one. Let's change that now, hey?

bobo.

Mädchen Mädchen 2 - Spilt coffee scene: a parallel translation

[UPDATE: I noticed a couple of small errors in the transcription which I've now fixed. Both of them came from the original subtitle file I used.]

Today I have another parallel translation of a short scene from a well-known German movie. This is a pretty big change in genre - from high-brow history drama to Mädchen Mädchen 2 (title for English release: "Girls on Top 2"), a fairly low brow comedy about three young female university students trying to find an apartment they can afford in Munich. Despite the location, it seems like largely standard German, though also reasonably colloquial. And instead of being a fairly clearly spoken monologue, this is a quickfire dialogue. Although some of the sounds are run together/lost in such fast speech (see below), it is simple language discussing a simple topic so you can focus on just getting used to German at top speed :-)

Here's the scene - let's hope the link still works!

My advice is to save the audio from the scene so that after you've watched it a couple of times you can then listen to it to your heart's content to get used to the sounds and speed more. As I mentioned in a previous post you can use the free version of RealPlayer to do this. If you hover your mouse over a video in YouTube it will provide you with the option to download it. If this doesn't work for you (it's stopped working for me recently for some reason) then you can open RealPlayer, click File->Open and paste the URL (the text from your browser's address bar) in there. RealPlayer will open the video and definitely give you the option to download it. After you've downloaded it, the Download Manager will have an option to convert to MP3. Click this and you're done :-)

OK, enough foreplay, here's the parallel translation of the scene:

Mädchen Mädchen 2 - Spilt coffee scene: a parallel translation

I've tried to keep my notes and in-line commentary to a bare minimum - there's a lot more I could have said! I started with a subtitle file I found on the internet but, just as with Der Untergang, there were several discrepancies. I don't know how these arise. Either the subtitles are based on the script and the actors change that a little here and there, or the people doing the transcription just don't have enough time to spend on it (if you look at how much they get paid, you'll see why!). In any case, it gives me some initial work to do before I can do the translation. Where I clearly disagreed with the subtitles, I have just changed the text above. Where I also wasn't sure, I kept the original text from the subtitles. I also tried to stay more phonetically faithful to the original, trying to keep all the nervous stammering at the start, etc. In addition, I try to keep my translations as close to the German as possible to help maintain the mental links better.

I'm still getting used to this very high-speed and more colloquial German myself, so I would really appreciate any comments or suggestions for improvement from you guys. Especially for the line that starts ""Ja, ich hab' nur gehört". I think I can just detect a faint trace of an "er" after "dass" and a "wird" squeezed in between "angegraben" and "die gerade", but that might be my imagination because I want to hear it to make the sentence nice and grammatical. It's altogether possible that this is just a standard kind of error in fast, everyday German. The more I do this sort of work, the more I should be able to explain here on the blog :-)

Finally, my "checkpoint" stuff: Chinese with Ease: currently trying to shadow the audio for lesson 38. The rest of it is done, but the audio seems hard at the moment and it contains a lot of new words. I'm sure it will come together soon if I give it proper attention. In Le Latin I've finished lesson 35 and I'm up to page 168 in "Das Todeskreuz", by which you can tell that I don't read it very often. There's a lot to cram in to a day - I got up at 6 this morning so I could enjoy the beautiful warm water at Bondi Beach before heading to work, but I did manage to read a few pages of "Das Todeskreuz" whilst stuck at traffic lights!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this scene and get some use out of the translation I've provided. Please leave any feedback in the comments below.

Jung in Europa

I just found something on Australian TV which might be of help to locals learning German, depending on their level. It's a short series called "Jung in Europa". I was obviously targeted at high school students of German, but I don't see why anyone couldn't get use out of it :-) It's obviously not an Australian production, but I haven't been able to find the episodes out there on the general "intarwebs". If anyone knows where it can be found online other than through the Australian ABC then let us know in the comments.

Anyway, here's a link for those interested:

http://www.abc.net.au/schoolstv/series/JUNGINEUROPA.htm

Look it up on ABC's iView to see past episodes.

Also, for French, Chinese or Italian learners, the ABC's "Schools TV" has some other similar programs for other languages so check them out if you're interested!

Tips to improve German listening skills (Hörverstehen)

How to improve on your listening skills is obviously going to depend on where you started. So far I can only really give solid tips on how to get to B2, although I am fairly confident that the same sort of idea can help push you beyond B2. I'm currently testing that hypothesis I guess, and you'll see a few more parallel translations posted on the blog as a result.

I've previously posted a bunch of parallel translations during my studies in German so far, the Hitler rant from Downfall being just being the latest in a long line :-) I actually started producing basic translations of the news with much help from Google Translate right back in the early days, so apart from using the material I have already provided, you can make some of your own for whatever material you enjoy. Just get the audio and transcript and match up your translation roughly on a line-by-line basis.

One important thing to do is to find a regular language partner. For the B2 exam, obviously doing all the preparatory listening exercises from an appropriate level of sample exam. Visit the Goethe website, select your appropriate level and look at the "Übungs- und Infomaterial" link. Doing progressively harder exercises until you can handle your target exam's hörverstehen, is a vital exercise. I have some tips on this spread throughout my blog - see here and here, for example.

Here are some pointers from my blog (in addition to this post's content, of course!):
Great website for German learners!
DW Slowly Spoken News 1-Dec-2010
Entenvolk!
DW News 15-01-2011
Desertec - Strom aus der Wüste
Mit Antigeld gegen die Bankenkrise

For some of the above you will need to find the audio on the relevant website. The audio links are usually contained in the parallel translation pdf itself. I don't know how far back the archives for DW's slowly-spoken news go, but hopefully they're all still available.

Don't get discouraged! When I first listened to the "slow" news I was totally shocked and couldn't imagine ever understanding it, let alone the full-speed news, but now I find the slow version just way too slow. It won't take long of this sort of parallel text work to pay off and have you understanding more and more of what you're listening to.

Also, if your language partners would let you, you could probably record your conversations and pick a sample which is mainly of them speaking. You would then write up a transcript (perhaps with their help) and work out a translation however you can. This might be useful, depending on circumstances. However, personally, I'm going to focus on snippets from movies for now :-)

My checkpoint update is: Chinese with Ease: just finished lesson 37, Le Latin: about to start lesson 34 and "Das Todeskreuz": page 164. I tried to sort of start a conversation in Mandarin with a work colleague today but it didn't work. She understood what I said and then just said that it was very good because she could understand it. Not quite the desired result!

Anyone with their own tips, feel free to post them in the comments.