Learning German or Any Foreign Language

I took some German lessons so I'll try to answer, I'm sure somebody else can answer better and correct any mistakes I make.

German does have gender, to me it seemed harder than Spanish since you can tell the gender of most Spanish words by their ending (o or a). In German you simply have to learn if each object is masculine, feminine, or neutral. Also, articles like "the" and "a" change depending on where they are in the sentence (subject or object) in addition to the gender of the object they are applied to. There is also formal/informal cases of pronouns.

German verbs can be combined with the pronoun when telling somebody to do something but it's optional.

Making words plural is different from English in that there's no set pattern that they follow, so again you have to learn each words plural form. I'm not sure how it is in Spanish.

Conjugating verbs is similar in that most verbs follow a pattern for their different cases but there are some irregular verbs.

Overall it shouldn't be too difficult, especially if you've studied another language and already understand most of the concepts. It's just learning the grammar structure and verb forms.

 

Dirk Nowitzki apparently knows a little German.

Ask him.

Thats right I can be an idiot.

 

I have never took german but I took french in high school and college. BY FAR the best class I took for french was this one that used constant drilling and repetition of phrases. it is not exciting and it is hard but it is the best way to learn to speak without having to think before you speak. it just takes a lot of time to practice...like any foreign language.

I tried to minor in french but I simply had too much trouble with it since we don't speak french in america. I did take 1 semester of spanish before I left college and I picked up on it very quickly. also, I have a mexican gf so that helps always hearing spanish.

in my opinion, spanish is easier than french. since german isn't latin based the spanish background might not help that much.

just curious, what did find hard about the gender and plural transitions in spanish? they are pretty straight forward relative to french.

 

I know a little German. He's sitting over there:

 

I took 4 years of German, 3 in HS and 1 in college. It's pretty easy. I managed to teach my elementary kids a little bit of German. Here's the breakdown:

There is gender, he she it, and there isn't a concrete formula for gender based on ending. You'll start to get the feel for gender once you've learned a bit, but just memorize things straight up to start with. Pluralizing is pretty easy, there are some guidelines for it, a lot of them involve switching the preceeding article and adding an -e to the end of the word.

Verb conjugation is easy. There are rules for everything - all the verbs can be grouped together by some rule. Even some of the irregular verbs have rules. And there is a formal pronoun and a corresponding verb conjugation, but you won't use it unless you plan to speak to your boss or your elders, or an elderly stranger in German while in Germany. It's basically adressing someone as Sir instead of 'you'. You wouldn't just yell out "hey you! how do you want your coffee?" to your boss. You'd say "Sir, how would you like your coffee?" That's pretty much it. I only used it 2% of the time, when it was specifically called for in an assignment.

The worst thing about German for me was the transitions between the nominative, dative, and genetive cases. I hated that stuff with a passion. I was always better at vocab than grammar. If you're a grammar w****, you'll be fine. I was a vocab w**** and I had to memorize phrases for all the cases.



Overall, I had an easier time learning German than I am learning Italian, but I can't say that the same will be for you. Learning a little bit each day, speaking to yourself in the language, and doing the homework is going to make it a bunch easier to learn. In fact, I still speak to myself in German... and it's been 5 years since I stopped taking classes. (I'm a total dweeb, I know).

 

I was looking around for some data and came across some quotes by Mark Twain that pretty accurately describe the issues with German.

Here they are:

On German genders: "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."


On German compound nouns: "July 1. -- In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient -- a North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community."

In a speech given in Vienna in March 1899, Twain imparted to the audience an 95 letter word which he claimed had recently been sent to him in a telegram from Linz: "Personaleinkommensteuerschätzungskommissionsmitglieds-reisekostenrechnungsergänzungsrevisionsfund". Twain added: "If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep beneath it in peace."

On German separable verbs: "The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed.

Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:
"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."


On German sentence structure: "An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished."

 

A rebuttal: Don't make things out to be more complicated than they really are.

das Mädchen (girl) is neutral, yes, but die Frau (woman) is feminine.

Compound words are no more complicated in German than they are in English.

Seperable verbs are simple, don't let them fool you. Especially once you've learned your prepositions, it's a piece of cake. They have formulas to follow, just like most other verbs.

And - What? I can't understand most of that paragraph. Oh wait, I think I've got it now... There are rules and sentence structures to follow. Especially since there's at least two ways to say just about anything, if you don't do well with the first way, there's always another. But ultimately what I think he was trying to say is that yes, in more complicated sentences with helping verbs and other tenses, the verb will come at the end, a mere difference in language.

 

I have to disagree, in English you can't simply combine any nouns together to make new words. Whereas in German any nouns next to each other in a sentence become one big word, while learning the language that can get confusing since you have to understand all parts of it to know what it means.

This was a strange concept for me but after hearing it enough you kind of get used to it. This is mainly one of those grammar things you just have to learn to deal with.

 

Spanish uses all articles "the" in English differently as plural or singular and depending on the gender. It could be either "el", "la", "los", "las", or "lo". For example: "the clutchfans" when referring to a plural ClutchFan is "los clutchfans". When femenine, it would be "las clutchfans". Singular clutchfan dude will be "el clutchfan", and singular dudette clutchfan would be "la clutchfan." Most nouns, as DrLudicrous said, can be fem or masc depending on the ending. Most. Take "árbol" (tree) for example it's masculine but it has no O ending... same as "el agua" (masculine but ends in A).

Conjugating in Spanish is easy. We have rules and you must follow them, unless it is an irregular verb or a stem-changing verb. For example, the most difficult verb is "to be", which you just have to learn as "estar" or "ser". Another great example would be the verb "to go", which can be "fui" as past tense in first person, "voy" as present first person, or "vamos" as present first plural. (whew!)

English pronounciation, though, is difficult for anyone with Spanish as First Language. To say "feet" and "fit" is so difficult for us Spanish speakers, since we only have the A, E, I, O, U, sounds in one entonation. We stress when there is EMPHASIS with a rule (if word ends in a vowel or "s" or "n", it's the second to the last, else it's in the last syllable, or it needs an accent or uses one). As an example, "papel" is pronounced pah-PEHL, while "arbol" cannot be pronounced as ahr-BOL, so it needs an accent on the a: árbol and is pronounced AR-bol. meggoleggo would be pronounced meggoLEGgo, and DrLudicrous would be pronounced drluDIcrous (not drLUdicrous).

I always found it silly that you can say "two" but not too-oh.

The best way to speak another language and to learn it fast is to emerge yourself in either the culture, or around people who speak it as well. I know most Spanish teachers in high school just made you do the work, but didn't emphasize on how to pronounce it.

Maybe I need to revive my LEARNING SPANISH WITH SWOLY-D thread again.

 

Chinese is easy, I can assure you that.

Far fewer rules on grammar than English.

No irregular plural forms for nouns. Simple and universal rule (if you even bother to call it a rule) to interchange between singular and plural nouns.

No rules for subject-verb agreement. No clause rules.

No tense and all other different forms for verbs. No passive/active voice. No subjunctive mood. No gender specific rules. No nothing.

Far fewer words than English. Only several hundred characters you would encounter in every day life and most reading.

Ever wonder why Colin Pine had such a good time as Yao Ming's personal translator? Because Chinese is easy.

PS: The thread title is a bit misleading. Apparently the OP is MAINLY interested in learning German. Apologize on my part for derailing.

 

I picked up speaking Mandarin, much faster than I could write it. The calligraphy took me quite some time to figure out.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the way to start out learning any language... Alphabet first, pronunciation, and then build up from there. Start with pronouns, and simple verbs... want, need, go, eat, drink, etc... It also helps a lot if you group everything together by theme (family members/society members, entertainment, sports).

Check used bookstores to see if they have any german workbooks. Komm Mit and Deutsch Zusammen are the two titles I used when I was learning. If you can get those, you're golden.

 

Oh man, you are out your brain, dude. Out of all the languages I've studied (Italian, German, Greek, French, Mandarin), I had by the far the most difficulty with Mandarin, for several reasons:

1) Everything you said above is correct, but an absolutely paradigm shift for a germanic or romantic language speaker. We rely on conventions such as tense (conjugation) to decipher context. Chinese gives no such clues.

2) Additionally, its a tonal language: so not only is it a foreign system of context and writing, but a shift in the way you think about phonetics.

3) Generally, we rely on spelling or phonetic cues or context to decipher the meaning of words we don't know. Its a different set of forensics for chinese.

Thats not to say Mandarin is impossible to learn. But it sure as hell ain't easy.

 

Lil Pun, wenn Du das verstehen kannst, dann bist Du schon ganz gut!

 

Actually I understand that completely, but I don't think anybody would say that I understand German.

I watch German TV news and can't follow a word they are saying.

Mit freundlichen Grußen aus Houston,

Ottomaton