Well, I did a 30 day streak of learning German at least 15 minutes a day. It’s been amost a fortnight since I last did a lesson. Below are a few thoughts:
Resources
- Duolingo (it’s the gamification in Duolingo that primarily helped in maintaining the streak)
- Babbel (I paid for the subscription since I thought I will be more invested if I pay for a course)
- Youtube videos (Nicos Weg- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC6ZGLzdaTs)
- German newspapers - with the help of Google Translate of course! (Die Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Approach
- Surprisingly, the language seemed very approachable, probably because of the labourious 10+ years learning Hindi as a kid. (Therefore, concepts like gender for each noun was not foreign altgother).
- The vocabulary in Duolingo has been fairly basic and may not really be applicable in day to day life if you are looking to learn words that will be used in a business/professional context. Babbel is better in this regard.
- I do not have a crystallised objective for learning German now. It’s a good exercise for the mind; Loved the city of Munich during my trip there as a tourist. die Stadt ist schön :D
Concepts learnt so far
- While learning words, it’s important to learn the gender as well and thus the article that goes along with the gender (der Salat (m), die Pizza (f), das Sandwich (N./the), ein Sandwich (N./a))
- Verb is in the second chunk of a sentence (eg. Ich male sehr gern/ I really like to paint)
- Verbs have different endings depending on the subject (take the root verb schwimmen for eg- for (a) ich (I)- schwimme;(b) du (You)- schwimmst; (c) er/sie (he/she)- schwimmt); (d) for formal ‘you’, one uses ‘Sie’ with capital;
- Like ‘be’ verb in English, German has sein; (a) ich- bin; (b) du- bist; (c) Sie- sind; (d) er/sie- ist; similarly- (a) ich- jogge (b) du- joggst; (c) er/sie- joggt; (d) Sie/sie (they)- joggen
- In English, I sing and I am singing; In German, you just Ich singe for both;
- Pronounciation is a bi**h. (especially, the ‘r’)