Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Those of you who speak more than one language
- Thread starter nickspohn
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I suggest Rosetta Stone. I am using it to learn spanish and it is really easy to use and follow along with. I find it much better than any of those free online website type instructors. Good luck.
I was born in America but now work for a German company and end up commuting between the US and German-speaking areas of Europe. I took a very basic class that was about six weeks before I went over there for the first time. Then I just slowly started picking up on the language while working there, and I was fluent in about eighteen months. I don't know if that's your style of learning, but it worked for me.
I live in America. Both my grand parents were born here, but i think a generation further back, they were born in Germany, or it might be a few back. Anyways, i'm 100% German. I want to learn German. Those of you who speak German and learned English first, is it a easy language to learn? What is the best way to learn it? In College? On the Computer?
I also want to learn how to speak Chinese eventually. I look at that and think it's possible, and then i think German would be better to learn first. Advice please
Btw, i want to learn German because i plan on going there quite often.
Same with Chinese. Close family friends own a huge corp out there, and at some point, i'll be making frequent trips there too, but not yet.
I studied German in High School. I did poorly at it because I didn't work hard enough at it. Kind of goofed off. But it's not hard. The best way is a combination. Buy an audio/book from (say) Pimsluer. It's good but you really do need a real human teacher. I'd sign up for German 101 at a local community collage. In one semester you will be speaking basic sentences and know hundreds of basic words. After this is just a mater of frequent practice.
When I went to Germany with my very poor German skills I found I could speak about as well as a German two year old. two year olds basically get what they want even with their three word ungrammatical sentences.
Without doing more study I find it hard to get the word order and word endings correct in German. When to use der,die or dos. So I jusr "murder" the grammer and use d' for everything and it sounds horrible but most gets the point across. German grammar is five times as large as English grammar, many more options and it is more complex.
It is easy to learn to read and write german because it uses almost the same alphbet as English but has almost no exceptions to memorize
My wife speaks Chinese, She learned it as her second language after Japanese. English is her third. Reading and writing Chinese is not easy. there is nothing other then long repetitive drills and endless copying. From her perspective English and Chinese use the "same" grammar and have the "same" harsh, hard to say sounds and both use strong accents on syllables. She thinks it's easier for someone who speaks English to learn Chinese then if you were coming from Japan. My opinion is that basic spoken Chinese is not harder than basic spoken German but to learn either well would require two years in a community collage and an hour or so of study per day over that two year period. After 2 years you will be able to read and write well enough for everyday use.
My entire family tree goes back to Germany within 200 year also. My last name is incredibly German. But I'm not German. I wasn't born in Germany, and neither were my parents or grandparents.
I can sound French, and can speak in French. But that doesn't make me French, just as my family history doesn't make me German.
Enough with this heritage topic though.
If you really want to learn a language I'd suggest taking a university course or a high school course. It's hard to learn a language on your own without serious dedication. With a tutor or professor you have someone pushing you along and helping you out when you need it. If you're still in high school and your school doesn't offer any German courses, check out a local community college.
Yeah, if you have to look really far back (e.g.: great great great grandparents from 200 years ago) to link yourself to a specific country, I don't even think you should bother trying to tell people your ancestry is German, Irish, etc. It would be like people claiming that they were of Roman ancestry or something. After all, Italy is as young as Canada, so it's not impossible if you go back 300 years. However, who says that?
If you go back 200 years, then concepts like German or Italian become much more fluid. Language was also extremely variable with the dozens of dialects that existed back then. My ancestors from Mecklenburg around the time of Napoleon would probably have had an easier time understanding the Danes than they would the Bavarians.
Divisions such as German, Italian, Norwegian, etc, are mostly only helpful from the mid 1800s onward. Prior to that tribalism meant more than nationality.
When my Finnish ancestors immigrated in the 1870s-80s, they held Russian passports. When my gr gr grandparents came over from Lower Saxony in 1866 , they owed their fealty to the Duke of Braunschweig, because Germany as a nation didn't exist until 1871. When the guy in my avatar came to the US in 1882, his loyalty was to Great Britain, although he had spent 40 years in Canada and Canadian Confederation took place in 1867.
Anyway, my point is, that saying you're German or Italian or Finnish is sort of pointless as they're all broad generalizations and ignore the finer points of ethnicity and even nationality that many people's ancestors reflected. I haven't even brought up how religion refined a person's ethnicity even further.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Not all Germans are blond haired blue eyed Aryans. Of course, people with Chinese ancestry aren't Chinese
There seems to be some weird implication through what you are saying that somehow by virtue of ancestry, you can pronounce German words 'correctly'. ?? This is kind of a silly thing to be arguing about. I decided to say something about it partly because, yes, that American propensity to name yourself by 'blood,' unaware of the racist politics behind it irritates me. But, not being such a stick-in-the-mud that I have to call out everyone on everything that irritates me, I thought it might also be worth pointing out that most people outside of the US find this kind of identification by ancestry to be stupid and will use it as an 'evidence' of Americans' stupidity. In fact, some Germans - those who know about it - will find it particularly offensive because of the Nazi politics of blood quanta.