Sup all?

Writing a blog is like writing a diary except it is public (duh!) and there is a very effective search function.

Every know and then, I use the search function, and this demonstrates conclusively to me that I go around in circles when it comes to learning languages.

Admittedly, neither language learning nor Surface Languages is my day job (both are hobbies conducted on a sporadic basis), but it is still galling to be reminded of this so forcefully.

And so it is that I reached lesson 34 of  Assimil German and then started doing other things. The difficulty, as ever, is finding time to learn a new skill, in between everything else that I either do or have to do, both willingly and unwillingly.

And so, I have been experimenting with Slow language learning, and I am trying this with Assimil German. Instead of using Assimil as recommended (far too intense for me), I’m learning more or less all of it as I go along, but in chunks of ten words (or sentences) per day. No more. No less.

I work through each dialog, revision exercise and so on in the same way. Here is a (strange) example from the lesson I am on:

Vorsicht, das sind die Krabben. Careful, they are crabs.

I would break this down into:

Vorsicht careful

die Krabbe the crab

die Krabben the crabs

I add each word into the spaced repition app I am using, and over the day learn them. I haven’t added  sind (they are), as it has featured previously.

The above (including the entire sentence) would count as four entries. The process is slow, but I am making progress and am now on Lesson 14.

Happy days.

Pax,

MF