Finishing up my Anki Backlog today. Don’t let Anki get to 700 word backlogs, it takes a while and a lot of effort to bring the number back down!

My like 700 anki backlog is down to 300 (no new words, just trying to recover from a month of not doing Anki). Once the backlog is worked through, I’ll start new word learning again.

I happened to be listening to a newscast and a German speaker came up. I actually fully understood everything, albeit it’s just a simple sound bite of just a few sentences.

My speaking continues to be terrible, but that will likely be the case forever. Or seemingly forever anyway, everyone says speaking / writing takes the longest time to get, and I’m not in a position where I can seriously practice speaking or writing yet.

Somehow I thought you were into German… hmmm. Well, I do watch a lot of anime. But I’m not sure how useful that is for language learning (I never tried to learn Japanese).

I have been getting into German VTubers though. Between music, anime, video game topics, lets plays and such, the German VTubing community actually has a lot of interests that line up with my own. Japan is basically the origin of VTubers, so maybe you can give them a shot?

At least the German VTubers seem to have simpler and more colloquial language than “normal” German.

Lemme know if you are interested in any comedy skit. I have a bunch saved up. They talk fast but with subtitles, pauses and other effort I’m able to make progress in learning.

A car accident is hampering my studies and focus (not just at home but also at work). Uggggh. Well gotta take life and prioritize things. I’m fine (no injuries) but annoyed at all the work I need to do now to get my life back in order.

Have you done much immersion?

Just browsing YouTube in my target language (German) and looking things up but I’m another language… I don’t understand much but it’s mildly relaxing now.

When I first started doing this even immersion was stressful because I needed so much focus to be able to even do anything. But now I’m at least used to German rhythm and can relax even if it’s not all understood.

I’m beginning to feel like I “miss” my old study routine (Anki and textbooks). So I’ll probably be starting that back up this week.

Because I’ve been neglecting Anki, I have 700+ words to review to get back on track lol. Ah well, I’ll work through that and start learning new vocab too.

On the immersion front, I used the auto-subtitles (German only) + a lot of dictionary lookups today to fully understand this old German skit on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lI1C_q8QOVU?is=HiqrxwdjVtn_GN-F

I don’t know what level that puts me at, especially because short quippy remarks are easier than the whole indirect / subjunctive/ relative clause thing I SHOULD be doing at B1. But I still feel like this is something I never thought I’d be able to do just a year ago.

OMFG two newbies at the German club today.

I’m not the worst one at German lol. Feels good to be “not the worst” today.

On the other hand, the third “newbie” is an older guy who “hasn’t used German in 30 years”, and was explaining how he went through University of Hamberg. Holy crap his German is near native level (at least by my ears)…Weird for me to meet someone with such strong German skills but feels like he need more practice here at the club.

So I’ve been taking it easy recently but I still noticed weird improvements.

Today while listening to Schönen guten Morgen (https://youtu.be/32M8qRGrUE8?is=U1uLBjiEPFPDI-Oe), I noticed something I haven’t noticed in months.

My mouth/tongue was tired. Physically tired. I haven’t felt like this since… I dunno A1 or something.

My mouth was instinctively trying to keep up with the song. And I guess I tried so hard that I actually tired out my tongue/mouth muscles.

Given the speed of the song I feel like this is a true improvement. A few months ago I wouldn’t even dream of keeping up with it. But now it’s within my grasp, a bit of practice and I might actually build the talking speed to shadow a song like that.

I had a feeling but I still had to ask in case there was some other language out there that cares about ein/eine/einer/einen/einem/eines

Or as we like to say in English: a, a, a, an, a or a.

For the non-German studiers out there: you know how English has He vs Him ? Who vs whom? She vs her?

Germans decided to do that with their “the” (die der das den dem des), a/an (ein einer einen einem eine eines), no (kein, keiner keinen keinem keine keinez), and all their adjectives (alt, alter, alten, altem, alter… all means Old)

The good news you young grasshopper… It kinda gets easier by the time you’ve done this for a year… Kinda sorta.

Which language?

I’ve been feeling more lazy with studying. I don’t think I’m making up for it with immersion but I still make sure to watch and listen to German every day.

But otherwise I’m taking a mental break right now. Or at least, focusing on stuff at work. I do think that deep studying interferes with my mental state work (and vice versa).

I do expect to come back to studying ASAP, once my current sprint is complete.

A lot of children songs have cartoons or dances associated with them.

The traditional German song Himpelchen und Pimpelchen has a little finger dance that represents the two characters climbing up a mountain for example (or for us Americans, basically a more German / different version of Itsy Bitsy Spider).

I got my start in German with Tschu Tschu wa, a song for maybe pre-schoolers thats like hands out, on the shoulders (etc. etc.).

So I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t really have mnemonics per se. I have dance moves or finger movements that represent different prepositions or verbs.

I have to imagine a lot of pre-school level (3 to 5 year old) songs have these dance moves. Like Baby Shark in USA had little dance things to represent the different sharks.

I’m old enough that I’m willing to learn like a 5 year old again. It’s an effective means of memorization!!

Hmmm, German speakers here in USA seem to be mostly retired folk. I wouldn’t say lonely but they are all like +20 or +30 years older than me.

I’d be nice to have someone closer to my age but I welcome any practice.

I mean, I plan to learn everything I can.

There aren’t much German speakers here in the USA. So I can’t get that much conversation practice. But I do want to be conversational, eventually. I regularly go to a club for that.

But again, I’m A2. I’m seeking the conversational level but I’m basically a beginner in the great scheme of things.

I agree with you that conversations I’ve had seem to have a lower count of vocabulary. But all of these nuanced meanings of words used in practice are different between the textbook and real life conversations.

Ex: I’m glad I looked up the word halten (hold, also “Halt”) in a real dictionary. It really shows how flexible the word would be used in a conversation.

https://www.dwds.de/wb/halten

I agree that there are some words better for conversation, and other words better for reading. But in all cases, studying the dictionary and being aware of the variety of uses (even if it’s nearly unreadable) is useful to me.

For instance: I could make a card with sapo on one side and the dictionary definition anfibio anuro de cuerpo rechoncho y robusto, ojos saltones, extremidades cortas y piel de aspecto verrugoso on the other.

Oh no. That’s not what I mean at all.

Again, I CANT read a dictionary yet. I’m A2 lol. But it’s still useful!!

Read what you can. At A2 level you should have already mastered the words noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition (etc. etc). How many categories is the word in?

How many definitions? Is this a flexible word with 50 definitions or is it a simple word with 3 related definitions under one subheading?

What’s the frequency count of the word? Are there any synonyms or antonyms that you recognize?

Are there any “related” prepositions with the word? In German, it’s “helfen bei” (which is different than English “help with”), the native level dictionary makes it clear which preposition is closely associated to the word.

Even though I can’t read definitions, there’s still a TON of information here that I learn from.

I NEVER make the Anki card from a native dictionary.

No, I make very simple Anki cards. I then spend lots of time in the dictionary (native and bilingual) to learn more about the word. Anki remains a simple one definition per word flashcard.

Don’t use Anki for this. Instead learn meanings through reading (including reading the dictionary in the target language).

I see Anki as the bridge between ignorance and immersion. You should only study the most common meaning to get started in the language. But you must always review the word in the dictionary.

At A1 or even A2 you aren’t strong enough to read a native dictionary however. But at B1+ (well, I’m at A2+) you will suddenly notice that the native dictionary isn’t so bad anymore

At A2+ I can read the example sentences and different meanings. I don’t understand it all but I can learn from dictionaries now…

A2+ meaning I completed A2 months ago but am still very far away from B1.

Anki is just good enough for seeding your understanding. The hard work happens at the immersion step. Don’t try to make Anki do something it’s bad at.

Use a dictionary. Seriously. If you aren’t strong enough for a native dictionary use a bi-lingual dictionary instead.

The Kontrollverlust (150 songs) download from their website was a huge boost to my music collection, but most of the songs ended up being English covers. I still got dozens of German songs out of it though.

The Disney songs in German are far more approachable today than before. I know I’ve improved even if I’m not fully understanding the nuance.

I might be ready to try watching a Disney movie or other kid-friendly simpler German movie. Or maybe not, hard to tell. I probably should focus more on my textbook though …

I’ve actually learned a lot from books, exercises, and raw memorization.

I’m pretty bad at raw memorization compared to my peers (it always took me more time than my classmates or other people I knew). But it’s a good crowbar, a way to convert raw effort into plausible results.

No, raw / rote memorization will never lead to ultimate learning. But I use it as a stepping stone before the real learning happens. With more stuff in my rote memory banks, I’m able to more quickly look up or get a rough idea of what a paragraph or page says when reading.

I do think my overall speaking skills are weak for my level, but I’ve also been told that I’m learning at a rate faster than many others and to be kinder to my self-expectations.

Obviously it’s not the way of learning for everyone. I played a lot of fighting games like this. I sat down and memorized all the frame data and then played games with the frame data memorized. Then I could use my memory of frame data to learn which moves had priority (and how) over other moves.

Did anyone else learn like this? Yeah, one or two. But most just learn from the video game directly. And that’s also fine. We all learn differently and knowing that we are all different is part of the process.

In any case, I am a book learner. So that’s how I’ll stay learning.

While my studies in my textbook progress slowly, I’ve actually been listening to a lot more German music… as I’m “feeling a level up”.

I’m suddenly understanding a lot of songs I didn’t think I could understand. “Völlig losgelöst” has been seemingly outside of my level for a while, but today my brain is beginning to understand it. So that’s been inspiring me to listen to a lot of music and Youtube videos to try to understand.

Another example: this Plankton short-video was mostly understood by me: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-1SU2j6ggyg

I’ve been listening to a lot of Plankton videos because I find him funny but “above my level”. Today, suddenly I’m watching “with understanding”. It took a few rewinds and one or two pause + look up words on Wiktionary… but I actually fully understand this German pun + get the humor.