Learning a new language questions

Your brain starts to pick up on words and phrases, sentence constructions, intonations....all of that stuff. Words are used in context as well, which makes them more accessible for using in speech/writing as you start picking them up, rather than memorizing where you have no real context.

My dad taught himself English when he moved from Paris to New York for a few years...he bought his first TV and watched American shows all the time.

 

Rosetta Stone is wonderful software for this purpose...

 

Well I had a rather humorous experience moving to Japan. The only other language I knew at the time was German and, not having any Japanese speakers around to guide me, I tried to learn a few phrases in romanji (romanized Japanese) but I pronounced everything like it was German. Needless to say, no one had a freaking clue what I was trying to communicate when I arrived... This was before I had internet and I did not have tapes available to guide me, so I did my best!

Watching movies/TV is a good way to learn, but it has to be appropriate. With German, I tried learning from Fassbinder films and was completely defeated. However, once I got RTL on TV I learned a lot from watching Cheers! reruns in German and German Oprah equivalents.

I would not recommend trying to read if you do not have a grasp of the basics, especially with German and all its cases and separable verbs and whatnot.

 

Ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch.

I bet that's wrong ;D I've so failed that GCSE

 

Reading non-simplified books and watching "original" TV shows and movies won't help you at the beginneng. But once you're able to understand the majority of what's going on, it really works wonders.

Yes, that's completely correct

 

OP from my experience in learning a language, go to the country and be around native speakers, you will pick it up easily

If you can't do that Rosetta Stone is a very good piece of software, and if you watch films and tv shows in German and learn to associate the words with what is happening you could learn in no time

Writing and Reading is different though IDK what to suggest.

 

In context, it was "I speak a bit of German"

 

^I read it as Little not bit IDK school eh

 

In German, there are "natural" genders for things were the gender is natural (Persons, animals...) and for the rest of the words you just have to learn the gender. There is no inherent gender for them.

 

Learning a language is much easier if you can combine learning with immersion. Being in the culture or watching media in that language provides real context to the basic vocabulary and grammar you are studying. Also use multi-modal learning in terms of audio, visual, and kinetic. Have fun and be patient. If you find yourself getting frustrated then take a break.

 

Calling different genders "male", "female" or "neutrum" is a bit arbitrary in German. A girl in German is called "das Mädchen" (neutrum), even when all primary and secondary indications contradict. In older times, it was similar with women; they were "die Frau" (feminine) until, but "das Weib" (neutrum) after marriage.

When it comes to inanimate things, the issue of gender becomes practically arbitrary. The classical example is sun and moon, which is female (die Sonne) and male (der Mond) in German, but opposite in Romanic languages, e.g. "le soleil" / "la lune" in French. So you have to learn the gender for each noun in German to know how to declinate it correctly, and there are not really any rules for that.

Take river names as an example. A river is called "der Fluss" (male) in German, but river names may have either male or female form, e.g. "die Elbe", "die Donau","die Themse", but "der Rhein", "der Neckar", "der Missisippi". So when you plan to drown yourself as a German, you have to figure out first if you want to end up on "seinem Grund" or "ihrem Grund" (Dativ!), which is different if you are jumping off the bridge in Hamburg or Cologne.

No wonder that most Germans prefer to kill themselves on the Autobahn.