[Olly Richards] This is the I Will Teach You A
Language Podcast Episode 96.
[Music jingle]
[Female voice] Welcome to the I Will Teach You A
Language podcast. Weekly motivation and language learning tips to help you
become fluent in any language. Now, it's your host, Olly Richards.
[Jingle ends]
[Olly Richards] Hello, welcome back to the podcast.
Now, I've got a confession to make about a big secret to tell you. [Wheezy
giggle] Which is, I've started to learn a new language. I've started to learn
German a few weeks ago. And in this episode I wanted to talk a little bit
about, my experience it's like what's what I've could have felt what I've
discovered over the last two weeks, of learning German.
And before we get into that I'd like to thank the
sponsors of the show iTalki where I will be getting my German lessons from when
it comes time to speak and you guys get a free lesson, with the teacher of your
choice, in the language of your choice. You simply go to I Will Teach You A
Language dot com forward slash free lesson and you can sign up there.
[1:00]
So yeah, I decided to learn, to start learning German
and there's a lot of reasons behind this and I'm gonna try not make this so too
long but I did just want to put this out there cos you know like it's gonna be
interesting to lots of people. Because obviously as you know I'm learning
Cantonese, which has been my long-term project and I know that I always say,
you know, don't learn two languages at the same time.
But with German the thing is for me that it's been
years now that I've wanted to learn, and I also go to Berlin every year
throughout May for the Polyglot Gathering, and oh by the way you want to come
to the Polyglot Gathering. You absolutely sure it's in, it's in May it's in a
few weeks' time.
So if you are living near Berlin and you'd like to come and hang out
with a load of language enthusiasts and, meet me and a bunch of other people,
then you definitely should go. You just google "polyglot gathering"
and you'll find it there. So I've had this you know I've been wanting to learn
German for a long time, and
[2:00]
I've kind of felt okay, look, it's time now just to
learn a bit of the language. Also, at the same time, with my Cantonese I have
been kind of running up against a brick wall. I've kind of been, like I felt
like I've hit a bit of a plateau and often one of the best things to do when
you're struggling with a language is simply take a break. Do something
different.
And so I thought, well, why not just dedicate one
month to German. I can learn German in April and not make it this long project
which say, in April the month of April from the beginning to the end I'm going
to learn German, and then, I'm going to stop and I'm going to go back to
Cantonese.
And then, the reason I decided to do that was because
I thought it would be, I like the fact that it's defined. Because so often
people ask when do you stop learning a language. When do you move on, when do
you know it's the right time. And the truth is that it's,
[3:00]
For me it's always a gut feeling. You learn a language
for some reason in your life, and then eventually, your life changes and your
languages change. That's always been the case for me. But I do know that if I
get into German I'll take it seriously and that's gonna become a big project
and I don't want that because I want to keep focusing on Cantonese.
But at the same time, I thought like a month, one
month learning German would be cool because it would gonna satisfy that desire
that I have to learn German and also give me a bit of a mental break from
Cantonese. And also it would have a good effect when I go to Berlin in a few weeks' time and I'll be able
to use a bit of German.
So, I intentionally didn't mention this on a probable
podcast before because it's just a very kind of small project, it's not like my
aim is not to speak really good German, my aim is just to learn about the
language. Yeah, as much as I can in one month, that's it.
[4:00]
So it's very kind of low-pressure thing. And my
strategy really for this one month, was to get as, a good foundation in the
language. I'm actually not speaking. I am just using textbooks to study by
myself. And the reason I'm not speaking is simply because it's a one month
project and I don't, like, it's not my aim to speak.
My aim is simply to get to know the German language.
And so in this one month I'm aiming to kind of cover the foundation of German
and, just get a good understanding of the language. And to do that I chose two
books to help me. And I went to Foyles which is (unintelligible)
An amazing one of the best language bookstores in the
world here in London and I looked through all the German books and, you know
it's really important to find books that you like, that you want to use
yourself. That's so important and I looked through all these German books. And
I just didn't want to use any of them. I thought they were far too like, I
don't know, like the,
[5:00]
The way that the books were were not interesting to
me. Often what happens is that they just, they try to, like textbooks try to
simulate lessons. They say "Do this! Now do that and now do this
then..." Which can be cool but the problem is that often these exercises,
they're just, they're too inconsequential. I don't know. They say do this
exercise to practise the days of the week and it's like "Oh yeah that's
great." But I don't want to spend half an hour practising the days of the
week cos I'm gonna learn it naturally anyway.
And so I ended up choosing one book that I thought was
really good, and since I've started using it now, I can confirm that it's
really good and it's Colloquial German from Routledge. And yes it's called
Colloquial German: The Complete Course for Beginners. And the reason I like
this book is because, they have in every chapter, two really good long
dialogues with fairly natural language. And so that, it provides the real
[6:00]
basis for the study. So many of these other books,
they have these tiny short dialogues, and which are just, you know, nothing to
sink your teeth into.
But of all else, in the case of Assimil, which is
another popular series, long dialogues but very, with who am I supposed to use
this language, you know, very kind of literary language. You're not gonna want
to use what you're not likely to hear.
So I find the Colloquial German really, really good.
I'll put a link to this and one of the other things I mentioned in the show
notes by the way, which will be at iwillteachyoualanguage dot com forward slash
episode 96.
And I also chose a, I wanted to balance that out, with
a, the grammar book. Because German grammar is, I know it's quite tricky. So I
wanted to get a good grammar reference book. So I chose another Routledge book.
I really like Routledge books in general. This one is called Basic German: A Grammar
and Workbook. And, there you go, Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook.
[7:00]
And again, that's just it's exactly what I wanted.
It's a kind of an overview of German grammar for beginners without being too
complex. Just giving the main rules and references and anything that one should
look up at hand.
So I chose these two books to go to be complementary.
So the Colloquial German has got loads of dialogues which I can use to learn,
and then the grammar is for quick reference where I can look up rules when I
need them.
And so what I've been doing is very, very simple.
Every morning, when I wake up I sit down and do forty-five minutes of German
practice. German study, I should say. And I use the Colloquial German book for
that.
My routine is, what I do is, I simply, I go through a
dialogue. And, there is, I've released a bunch of posts recently all about my
core language time. Core language routines. How I, how exactly I use textbooks,
and how I study dialogues.
[8:00]
So I'll put a link to those in the show notes as well.
You'll definitely check those out. And that's basically what I've been doing.
So I open up a textbook. I go to the dialogue I was looking at before. I revise
that, and then I move on to the next one.
And what I'll do is I'll listen to the dialogue many
times, trying to understand as much as possible. And then I'll listen and read
at the same time. Many times. Then I'll look up any new words that I don't know
and then I'll close the book and I'll listen to the dialogue again without the
text so I can kind of test myself to see how much I've understood.
That's the foundation of it. Now in the Colloquial
German book, like in lots of textbooks, there's a lot of exercises. Well, I
tend not to do that. And the reason is, if you're gonna do it, every exercise
in the book, it really slows you down. And obviously they're useful. But what I
found with German is that
[9:00]
there is so much in common with English that you've
got a different opportunity with German. Now for me I think there's a different
opportunity, learning opportunity here, than what I've found in other
languages.
So the major thing, for me personally, is that with
the last few languages I've learnt, I haven't been able to read. Japanese,
Cantonese, Arabic. Very, very difficult to read especially at the beginning.
And so what I've found is that all of my learning has been based on oral work.
It's all listening and speaking.
Now the huge thing with German is that finally I can
read again. So I can just sit and read through these texts and understand. It's
amazing. But there's also a massive similarity with English and this is a big
opportunity. Because when I kind of looked over the one month that I'm gonna be
studying, I think about how I can make the most out of this month.
[10:00]
And like for me the big opportunity here is not to
like really understand the grammar or really learn all the difficult cases or
prepositions, all those things. I could do that, but for me the big opportunity
is the fact that German is so similar to English.
And so my aim is kind of what I'm just gonna go over
the last couple of weeks is that because it's so similar and there's so much
that's mutually intelligible, with a bit of help obviously, that the big
opportunity for me is to just read and listen to as much as possible over the
month. And by doing that, you kind of, you get exposed to all these different
parts of the language. This different core vocabulary, all the different main
grammar.
And I kind of feel that over the course of the month,
by just reading and listening to as much as possible, I'm gonna really get a
good understanding of the language and how it works and so, that's what I'm
trying to exploit most of all. And so in order to
[11:00]
do that, consciously ignoring most of the exercises in
the textbook, and instead aiming to just cover all the dialogues and the text.
And so basically my aim for April is, has become, to simple cover all of the
dialogues in the Colloquial German textbook. Now I think that's gonna give me
the biggest bang for my buck as in the biggest use of my time.
The only other thing that I would do is actually I do
read the grammar explanations because they are pretty important to raise your
awareness of the language. Like I'm not trying to learn all the grammar rules
and do all the exercises, but I find that when you read the grammar
explanations, later on then you can recognize those things in the texts, in the
dialogues when you read them. That's a very, very good way to help you notice
different parts of the language. So there we go.
[12:00]
I hope that was gonna be interesting to you. It's been
very, very interesting for me to start learning a new language from the
beginning after all these years. It's been a long time and I'm definitely gonna
talk more about this right, a bit more about this experience on the blog.
And, but yeah, if you've got any questions about that,
come over to the show notes and let me know what questions you have, I'm very
happy to come and answer and then you can get there by going to
iwillteachyoualanguage dot com forward slash episode 96.
Now, as you know, I keep hanging on about coming up to
episode one hundred of the podcast and I'd like to do something very special
which is to go come a compilation of those of you guys talking. Because you've
heard enough from me and I'm sure you're sick to death of listening to me
talking. So I would like to hear what you have learnt from the podcast. From me
or from the blog or anything like that. I would like you to tell me what it is.
[13:00]
And you can go to iwillteachyoualanguage dot com
forward slash ask, and you can leave me a quick message on there. You can give
me your name, where you're from, and then tell me one thing you've learnt from
listening to the podcast. That would be really, really cool.
And what I'm gonna do for Episode 100, if we get
enough submissions, hint hint hint, is to put everything all together in a
collage and that's gonna be really cool to listen to everybody from around the
world talking about things that they have learnt and things that have effect on
them. So I hope that was helpful and that was interesting for you, and I'll see
you in the next episode of the podcast.
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