As always, let’s take some time to reflect on and share progress. Any wins lately? Hit any setbacks?
I’m just starting on German. I’m primarily using Goethe Institute’s A1-Deutsch app but I’d like an English resource covering grammar too.
I’m not sure whether studying via sentence completion and conversational examples is the most efficient way for my learning style. I think explicitly studying grammar would simultaneously assist in building vocabulary and proper usage. Any suggestions for a grammar primer?
I have an Anki deck but feel as if my lack of a grammatical foundation puts me at a disadvantage with it. I need to learn a bit more about the back-end/theoretical basis for how it works; perhaps that poor understanding is getting in the way as well.
Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook by H. Schenke.
It’s short. Too short. Too few exercises and only covers material up to A2+ or so. But at only 200 pages, it’s so ridiculously short!!! One of the fastest reads you can do on this subject.
As long as you use this book as an auxiliary, it’s great. It’s not a primary lesson material, it’s to help explain other books / other lessons.
There are 1000+ page comprehensive grammar books. But beginners shouldn’t use those. Instead, using a purposefully short book that covers wide all the basics is best for a beginner IMO.
Got pretty busy this week so I slowed down a bit but I’m still keeping pace on my flashcards, which is the important thing.
The reading in this chapter of Tobira was about Japanese-style paper and was far more interesting than I expected. I’m also starting to feel more comfortable parsing intermediate grammar and Japanese sentence structure in general. I swear it’s like learning how to read backwards.
I’ve been doing 5 minute Spanish lesson during lunch for a while now. Like, 2+ years, probably more. Didn’t feel like I was making any progress, but it’s something to do on my phone other than doom scroll. Last week I was at an actual Mexican burrito place, and the guy behind me ordered in Spanish. And I understood it.
Whoa!
Copying others is the easiest language exercise you can possibly do. Just listen then parrot them.
So don’t just listen. ALSO repeat, either in your minds eye or even out loud if you don’t find it embarrassing.
I’ll have my first Korean exam this weekend. It is a very basic one done in the academy I’m enrolled, but I’m nervous nonetheless.
I’m technically not studying Spanish now so this is not strictly language learning. Recently I found the Chilean show El Reemplazante which some kind person has uploaded on YouTube. It almost feels like a different language. It took a season to be able to understand “most” of what is being said but I think I’m slowly getting there. It’s fun to try writing down some harder dialogs. If you’ve never heard casual Chilean Spanish here’s a nice sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfD1lxwvDQc&t=1766s (at 29:26)
For all the back and forth in French about Québécois vs traditional French, it’s nothing compared to Spanish lmao. Every damn country has its own accent, grammar, and vocabulary. I’m a native speaker (Costa Rican) and struggle to understand Puerto Ricans and Spaniards more than anyone else.
Puerto Rican Spanish doesn’t pronounce the letter S. Spaniards pronounce Z/C like th and use a different 2nd person if I’m not mistaken. My native dialect only really uses “usted”
We have difficulties even between regions in the same country. There is a TV series called The day of the Jackal where the British main character is married to a woman from Cadiz and they live there and interact with her family.
I couldn’t understand the woman and her family, I had to use the English captions to follow the story.
That second person is a pain. Costa Rica has one of the more reasonable grammars. And then you get places like Chile and Uruguay where it seems any combination of voseo, tuteo and that special -ai thing is valid even in the same sentence.
Currently trying to collect the yearly “education voucher” that my city offers for a languge course. This is a PSA for others to check if your town / union / workplace offers something like this. I didn’t know about mine until someone told me.
10 new words were added to my vocabulary (needed to use those words for a conversation I was preparing for)!
Haven’t started, but soon, I’ll be giving Latin a go.
Received the results for the JLPT exam I took last december ! I passed, (99/180 so pretty short as you need 90 to pass) but still quite proud of it.
I need to restart my learning :)
Nice, good work! What level?
It was N4, as per the results it corresponds to A2
Although I don’t understand every word… the A2 level “Kurz und leicht” section of Deutsche Welle is surprisingly readable to me now (!!!). At least, today’s story is working out quite well.
I still need to look up around 30% of the words in the article. But notice: the page has definitions (albeit definitions in German). I can understand some of the definitions (and for the definitions I don’t understand, I think its a good learning opportunity to learn more vocabulary).
My Anki Deck is seriously too full and getting very difficult for me to push through as it is however. So I won’t “study” this new vocabulary from this source. Instead I’ll take it as a more “passive” kind of learning. I’ll probably forget all these words by tomorrow, but I’m almost stressed out from the amount of Anki flashcards I have to do already… so I really don’t want to do anything to add to my current workload.
Once I’m done my classes, maybe I’ll add these words to Anki and study them seriously. But while I have classes and “normal” vocabulary words to get through, it really doesn’t make sense to increase my work (or homework) load.
