beige_alert (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beige_alert) wrote2008-10-16 07:10 pm
beige_alert) wrote2008-10-16 07:10 pm
Entry tags:
German
My German is not very good at all, but I clearly know a whole lot more than I did last year. As before, I'm delighted by how much I learned just by being in Germany for a few weeks. There is really nothing like being there.
I had some ability to understand written German last year, on a good day with favorable vocabulary and a following wind. My vocabulary is still rather hit and miss, but it's better, and while you'd not guess I know anything about German grammar from any sentences I try to produce, I'm a lot better at understanding other people's nice, grammatical sentences than I used to be. I found myself sometimes able to read newspaper and magazine articles, albeit very slowly, even without a dictionary or any other help. Depending on the subject, I'd sometimes run right into the limits of vocabulary, but other times it was a surprising success.
I found my ability to understand spoken German a good bit farther from zero than before. Quite often I could easily understand the sort of short comments and the few words here, few words there sort of conversations you sometimes hear. While actually really understanding a full-speed long comment was a very rare victory, figuring out the topic without being able to understand more was common rather than rare. When people shared stories I already knew I could typically follow along well enough to know which funny parts people were laughing at, even if I wouldn't have been able to understand had I not already known the story.
There is also nothing quite like being in Germany to learn more about pronunciation. I know I sound like an American, but when I'm visiting I always learn a bit more about the sound of the language.
One of the things I hoped to get out of the LARP was practice with German. I understood nearly nothing that was said 'in-time,' which makes for comical stories I'll be sharing later, and which was also fairly frustrating at times. I had zero role-playing experience and only a hazy introduction to the game's world, so probably I wouldn't have understood quite a bit even if it had been in English. Several people said to me, "You didn't understand a word, did you?" I always explained that in fact, I understood lots of words, just not enough words in any one sentence. We spent a good bit of time just talking and not role playing, though—sometimes in English for my sake—but in German I could often understand fragments of the conversation and in a few cases I was able to really understand what someone said. That was really delightful.
The most amazing thing, though, came a day or two later. Riding along in the minivan, one of FilkContinental CDs playing on the stereo, Computerspiele came on. If you know this song, you know it contains a great many words which go by very quickly. I'd had the song explained to me a year ago, so I have some idea what it's about, and I'd listened to that recording a number of times. It sounds nice, but I'd never understood the slightest bit of it beyond a few trivial words. Just a blur of sound. Now suddenly I found myself understanding whole lines here and there. A long way from understanding all of it, to be sure, but quite surprising progress. Now I find myself understanding all sorts of bits and pieces of the Milchstraßenstreuner songs that I'd never understood at all before. Depending on subject and vocabulary, some of the news videos on spiegel.de are partly or even nearly completely understandable to me. They were almost completely impossible before.
Parsing the stream of sounds into something intelligible is really quite a difficult task that we give no thought to in our native language. I got practice the whole time I was in Germany, but I think that weekend at the LARP, spending so much time trying very hard to understand anything I could, was very valuable. Thrust into a very confusing situation with nothing to do but try to understand as best I could, I spent a lot of time listening very intently. At least once someone saw my blank expression and asked if I was bored or tired or what, and I just replied that I was concentrating. I may not have had all that much success in understanding, but I think the practice was very valuable.
I did speak a bit of German, not very much, but much more than last year and much more comfortably. I did have a small success in communication while on a train. A person sitting across the aisle from me asked me a question. My first thought was, naturally, oh no, but I figured I'd listen and see if I understood anything and proceed from there. He was asking, being confused by the signs, whether we were in the second class or first class section of the train. I actually understood him and answered, and while it's not exactly a great communication challenge—Klasse = class—it was a success, out in the real world.
In the random thoughts category:
I had some ability to understand written German last year, on a good day with favorable vocabulary and a following wind. My vocabulary is still rather hit and miss, but it's better, and while you'd not guess I know anything about German grammar from any sentences I try to produce, I'm a lot better at understanding other people's nice, grammatical sentences than I used to be. I found myself sometimes able to read newspaper and magazine articles, albeit very slowly, even without a dictionary or any other help. Depending on the subject, I'd sometimes run right into the limits of vocabulary, but other times it was a surprising success.
I found my ability to understand spoken German a good bit farther from zero than before. Quite often I could easily understand the sort of short comments and the few words here, few words there sort of conversations you sometimes hear. While actually really understanding a full-speed long comment was a very rare victory, figuring out the topic without being able to understand more was common rather than rare. When people shared stories I already knew I could typically follow along well enough to know which funny parts people were laughing at, even if I wouldn't have been able to understand had I not already known the story.
There is also nothing quite like being in Germany to learn more about pronunciation. I know I sound like an American, but when I'm visiting I always learn a bit more about the sound of the language.
One of the things I hoped to get out of the LARP was practice with German. I understood nearly nothing that was said 'in-time,' which makes for comical stories I'll be sharing later, and which was also fairly frustrating at times. I had zero role-playing experience and only a hazy introduction to the game's world, so probably I wouldn't have understood quite a bit even if it had been in English. Several people said to me, "You didn't understand a word, did you?" I always explained that in fact, I understood lots of words, just not enough words in any one sentence. We spent a good bit of time just talking and not role playing, though—sometimes in English for my sake—but in German I could often understand fragments of the conversation and in a few cases I was able to really understand what someone said. That was really delightful.
The most amazing thing, though, came a day or two later. Riding along in the minivan, one of FilkContinental CDs playing on the stereo, Computerspiele came on. If you know this song, you know it contains a great many words which go by very quickly. I'd had the song explained to me a year ago, so I have some idea what it's about, and I'd listened to that recording a number of times. It sounds nice, but I'd never understood the slightest bit of it beyond a few trivial words. Just a blur of sound. Now suddenly I found myself understanding whole lines here and there. A long way from understanding all of it, to be sure, but quite surprising progress. Now I find myself understanding all sorts of bits and pieces of the Milchstraßenstreuner songs that I'd never understood at all before. Depending on subject and vocabulary, some of the news videos on spiegel.de are partly or even nearly completely understandable to me. They were almost completely impossible before.
Parsing the stream of sounds into something intelligible is really quite a difficult task that we give no thought to in our native language. I got practice the whole time I was in Germany, but I think that weekend at the LARP, spending so much time trying very hard to understand anything I could, was very valuable. Thrust into a very confusing situation with nothing to do but try to understand as best I could, I spent a lot of time listening very intently. At least once someone saw my blank expression and asked if I was bored or tired or what, and I just replied that I was concentrating. I may not have had all that much success in understanding, but I think the practice was very valuable.
I did speak a bit of German, not very much, but much more than last year and much more comfortably. I did have a small success in communication while on a train. A person sitting across the aisle from me asked me a question. My first thought was, naturally, oh no, but I figured I'd listen and see if I understood anything and proceed from there. He was asking, being confused by the signs, whether we were in the second class or first class section of the train. I actually understood him and answered, and while it's not exactly a great communication challenge—Klasse = class—it was a success, out in the real world.
In the random thoughts category:
- Singing carefully rehearsed songs in German doesn't really have all that much to do with actually speaking the language, but in any case I found I was completely comfortable singing in German in a room full of native speakers. That was terrifying last year.
- I heard
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tarkrai conversing in a mixture of German and English, and that was lots of fun because I can understand him! - Understanding songs is very, very difficult. I got tiny bits of some. I got just enough to think I know what the joke is about from another. One I expected to be able to understand because I'd seen the text and understood it easily I just couldn't hear well enough to make anything out of. lisande's lullaby I did understand. Lullabies are the very best songs when your skill with the language is minimal!
- The auction at the con was fun. It's conducted partly in English, partly in German. In theory, I knew the numbers in German, but I certainly wasn't very quick with them. Listening to the auction is really good practice with numbers!
- Announcements on a train, given the noise and the generally poor sound quality, are sometimes impossible for me to understand here at home. Nonetheless, on occasion I managed to understand some relevant information. While waiting for aryana_filker's train an announcement was made that I understood easily, and when she and lisande said they thought the person had a strange accent I could only agree that any accent I could understand was a very unusual one indeed to hear announcing trains.
- I watched Shrek 2 and 3 with lisande and her husband. We had the English sound track on with the German subtitles. The movies are hilarious, and they enjoyed watching them with someone to whom all the jokes were new, but I really did like having the German subtitles on. Part of the time I was listening to the English, part of the time reading the German, and sometimes getting the two so mixed together that I couldn't really say which I was following. Fun!