German 2014

I began 2013 with several lofty goals related to language learning:

• Become conversational in Romanian
• Become conversational in German
• Switch to the Spain accent of Spanish and increase fluency¹

I think I’ve done fairly well in accomplishing the first and last goals, but there’s no doubt that I dropped the ball with regards to German. I started off the year right with an ambitious German vocabulary Anki deck, but did little practice apart from this simplistic vocabulary study. I never really took the time to study it more than passively.

As an aspiring polyglot, I’ve had German on my “to-learn list” for quite a long time. My skills have always been at this same uncomfortable level of stasis, though. 2014 is the year to change that.

Why learn a language?

I’m embarrassed that I haven’t yet posted anything about linguistics or language learning to this blog. Learning how to approach and understand foreign languages has been a central part of my life since before my high school years. I love the daunting challenge of comprehending something never before seen, and the outstanding feeling of accomplishment that comes in a first successful conversation with a native speaker.

There are more than intrinsic rewards, naturally. Speaking foreign languages with others has brought me tremendous benefit, most notably in the bonds with people that I otherwise would not have been able to form.² Language brings me closer with people more rapidly than anything else could.

After some time with each language, you reach a certain vantage point at which the culture innately tied to the words you are speaking and writing becomes visible. It’s a really beautiful moment that’s just impossible to express. This is one of the real prizes hidden behind each language: a new perspective on life, and new ideas about the self, the mind, the community, and so much more.

I could gush about any of these points and many more, but this is not the place. I’d like to focus on the more important question for the moment—

Why German?

I’ve been thinking about my next potential language for the last few months. I’ve tossed around the likes of Latin, Russian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Catalan, and German. These are all really fascinating from one linguistic standpoint or another. Catalan and Russian have wonderful phonologies,³ for example, while Norwegian and Latin are interesting to the amateur historical linguist / etymology nerd within me.

For me, German has both of these features,⁴ along with a considerably more practical advantage: all of my immediate family already speaks the language. This guarantees me a source of speaking practice, and also offers me a new way to communicate with the people I have known primarily through English my entire life.

How?

I love asking myself this question every time I take that first dive into a new language. I change my routine slightly every time. Here’s an (extremely) brief summary of the strategies I’ve used over time:

• Spanish (2006): Sit in a class with 30 other kids, expect to learn by osmosis
• French (2008): Self-teach using language course books, maximize input (music, movies, radio, etc.) to simulate immersion and minimize grammar focus after first months
• French revival (2010): Try to “unroot” French from my English with UVAM
• Romanian (2013): Self-teach using Assimil⁵ (parallel texts without explicit grammar lessons), maximize input, and prioritize interaction with native speakers

My approach to German will be a synthesis of the strategies which have proven to work well for me in the past and a few recommended techniques that I have yet to give a chance.

Assimil

I am so pleased with the results of the Assimil method. Polyglot Luca Lampariello (along with a huge majority of the European language learning community) has vocally supported Assimil as the best way to approach a language as a complete beginner. I decided to give Assimil a chance with Romanian, spending my first several months of study with Le roumain sans peine. I couldn’t imagine a better way to get such a detailed picture of the real-world use of a language. The method worked impressively well: it explicitly avoided grammar in the beginning stages of learning (as is commonly recommended but not often followed), made constant use of humor to make learning fun, and more subtly took advantage of spaced repetition techniques to make learning effective. Le roumain sans peine left me with a good foundation in Romanian that I was able to rely on as I continued to more advanced techniques.

I’d like to follow the same introductory method with German as well. German with Ease is on the to-buy list!⁶

Universal vocabulary acquisition method

The Universal Vocabulary Acquisition Method (UVAM) is a vocabulary acquisition technique I picked up from a now-extinct blog about midway into my French study. The concept is pretty simple:

• Enter vocabulary into a flashcard system (preferably backed by spaced repetition)
• The front side of each card should contain the L2 word or phrase
• The back side of each card should contain a definition and possibly synonyms of the L2 word in the L2.

Note that the learner’s L1 — English for me — is involved nowhere in this system. It’s a fascinating idea that worked pretty significant wonders for my French vocabulary, helping me to “unroot” my conception of the language from English and allow me to think and translate directly from thought-matter to French rather than having to first make a pit-stop in English.

Of course, the UVAM is only useful to learners who have already attained enough vocabulary to get the crux of a dictionary definition of a word. This isn’t too tall of an order, though — depending on the language, this might take somewhere between a week and a month at most.

All German, all the time

I somehow failed to discover All Japanese All The Time until only a few months ago. This site is packed full with novel and seemingly useful techniques for language learning, and I’d like to take advantage of one that I find particularly promising: constant audio immersion.

In the AJATT spirit, I’m going to try to surround myself with German whenever possible. This means finding lots of interesting German audio content that I can stream into my ears throughout the day. The goal is not to always actively listen — merely to sustain the experience of listening to German. Whenever it’s not mentally taxing, I can take a half-minute to try to repeat a specific difficult phrase, or mimic an interesting pattern of stress or tone.

To start, I’ll be drawing primarily from two sources:

• Deutsche Welle’s podcast Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten, or “Slowly Spoken News.” This is a broadcast designed for beginners who want to add to their German vocabulary and get a taste of spoken German without suffering from typical incomprehensible rapid news-speech.
• PodClub, a site which hosts several slowly spoken German-language podcasts (designed for beginners)

Of course, as my German improves these sources will not be as entertaining. I plan to move to TuneIn once I find some reliable stations and reach a point where I can keep up a reasonable amount of comprehension.

Learning with Texts

As I finish with Assimil and get over the hump of elementary vocabulary, Learning with Texts will become my primary place for reading practice and vocabulary acquisition. I’ll couple this practice tightly with UVAM, recording new words I encounter in German-language sources immediately into an SRS application.

Rapping and music sing-alongs

This is a silly little technique that I began using late into my Romanian studies. I’d like to continue this strategy with German, and possibly make it a more central part of the beginning learning phase. It’s a fun way to get an intimate sense of the rhythm of a language, and how its speakers play with stress and pronunciation to make their compositions work.

I have some special tricks for learning foreign-language raps which likely merit a separate post at some point. I’ll leave this for another day.

On planning rigorously

I earlier posted here that I would develop a schedule for the year, dictating which techniques should be deployed when. I now realize it’s not really possible to build a truly rigorous plan — that is, one that prescribes what the exact content of my practice will be for each day over the entire year.

I’m therefore going to spend the start of 2014 trying all sorts of techniques and seeing what sticks before thinking about any sort of general schedule. I’m not certain one is necessary in the end, but we’ll see how the learning goes.

Conclusion: staying accountable

As I wrote in my winter 2014 goals post, I’ll be providing regular public updates of my progress in German. I’ve yet to decide what is the best medium for this — I could post videos to YouTube, post audio snippets here, or maybe take advantage of SoundCloud’s timed comments and upload my speaking practice sessions there. In any case, I know that public accountabililty is the best way to keep myself honest about my progress and find motivation to keep working on German alongside my other commitments.

I’m excited to begin with this plan! Without a doubt this is the most rigorous and ambitious language learning goal I’ve ever set. We’ll see how it plays out in 2014. For now, gute nacht!