Right lads so I'm interested in learning a new language (German) I currently speak 2 but it's been years since I've studied a new language, any tips on how to make the learning process easier/effective
>>57109572
Well, motivation is key. A general interest in the country whose language you wanna learn is always a boon. And the internet provides enough media to try to read or hear in a foreign language. Newspapers, books, songs, TV shows, films etc are easily accessable. Do you plan to take a course offered by professionals?
Better learn turk or arabic then
>>57112876
I don't have the money for that at the moment
>>57109572
Read german philosphers. You might need to consult dictionaries now and then, but it'll do you good. I recommend Kant.
>>57112876
I read /deutsch/ to practice but I don't want to get bullied to I just lurk ;_;
>>57109572
French is also a language I'd like to learn
>>57112931
>>57112958
These aren't good sources to learn German. /deutsch/ practices delieberately wrong words and grammar styles as a milieu speak, and philosophers, especially the ones from the era of Kant-Hegel, practice overly complicated sentence structures that simply aren't accessible to a newbie.
For a begginner news programs and cartoons are best because of the clear pronunciation. For reading newspapers and children's books.
>>57113107
Question, is skipping the pronoun a thing in informal spoken german? Or is it a 4chin meme. Things 'Habe ... ..., bin ..'
Ive been told in class how serious the german take the verb position in the phrase so this kind of nullifies it
>>57113246
You mean skipping personal pronouns? That can be a thing in informal conversations, especially in the Army where brevity of transmitted information has always been an ideal. But it's not as common as in English.
>>57109572
I've been learning german for a long time now (2nd foreign language in Poland that is taught at school) but I have doubts if this was the right choice, because this country has no future (and I'm serious)
I think maybe asian languages or spanish/portuguese may have a future
Watch all you Movies and TV Series with German subtitles.
>>57109572
>Zeig mir deine Ware
>>57115511
Spanish is my first language but I speak English better
>>57109572
For some reason german is easy to pronounce to me.
I twist my tongue when I speak english and sound like a fucking retard.
>>57112928
Then you'll need to devise a plan for learning the grammar properly. For an english speaker the vocabulary comes more or less naturally with practice since so many words have strong similarities in English and German. But the grammatical structure is the foundation on which the other parts rely.
>>57117115
Any common mistakes people tend to make and are there any super specific grammar rules?
>>57109572
I'm learning German too, I can recommend you DW's videos. They get kinda annoying once you start watching a shitload of them but they're good to learn voc and get a good German accent imo
>>57117478
Cheers France, hope to learn French some day as well
>>57117714
That won't be easy, but with motivation you can do it
>>57117242
Well, for an English speaker getting the gender of words right seems to be difficult. For understandable reasons: they have no system so they all have to be learned by heart and the English language has done away with this nonsense a long time ago. Same goes for prepositions, although that's the same in English: they just have to be learned. There are countless clever strategies out there for when one just needs to memorize stuff. So pick whichever you like.
As for the structure of sentences itself, that may actually be fairly easy, as German tends to be very logical in this department. It's just a different system to learn. Also the comma rules are IMO more logical in German than in English and help structuring sentences, as does the capitalization of nouns. If you feel depressed when learning German you can always read Mark Twain's wonderfully humorous essay "The Awful German Language" to cheer you up. He wrote that after 3 months of learning German iirc, so some things have to be taken with a grain of salt. He also doesn't just ridicule German or ventilates his frustration but also points out advantages of German like spelling words according to what they sound.
It's also very interesting to read his perception of German, which is so different to ours today (angry/harsh) because our perception got shaped by seeing speeches of Hitler ranting rabidly. Twain's perception of the German language got shaped at a time when Germany was seen as both the cradle and center of Romanticism. Hence his judgement goes like: "I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless."
