Comment by csa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csa | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I've been studying German daily (15-30 mins) for the past 1.5 months, hoping to be near fluent by the time we arrive, so hopefully I can minimize the language barrier.

Assuming that you are an American with little or no prior language learning experience, you may want to adjust your expectations.

It seems like you will have ~75 hours (5 months at 0.5 hours per day) of study by the time you leave. That should get you to a basic beginner level (CEFR A1) -- maybe A2 is you are really good. 5 months of full time study might get you to a minimal level of professional competence (CEFR B2).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...

Of course, if you speak a language that is linguistically closer to German and/or if you have learned foreign languages before, then the expected time to reach a level can be shortened.

Regardless, I encourage you to keep your expectations reasonable.

If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer. This is an area in which I have quite a bit of theoretical and practical knowledge.

Yeah, definitely had the rose color glasses on for that one. CEFR seems like a really good benchmark, I've been using a combination of the Assimil method (books/ tapes) and Duolingo just for the benchmarking / competing with my girlfriend while we learn together.

The CEFR seems like a great reference point though that I wasn't aware of so that could be a great more objective measure.

We're hoping to add a few shows/ podcasts to our regime this summer to get our ears more accustomed.

n=1, but I don't think conversational German is so bad for a native English speaker. There are many cognate words, and words sound exactly like they are spelled. The hardest part for me while learning was remembering genders and especially the grammar system after getting past simple example sentences. The hardest part while in Berlin was that young people tend to speak near-native English. If you slip up or sound like an American, they'll switch to English and you won't get to practice your German.

> We're hoping to add a few shows/ podcasts to our regime this summer to get our ears more accustomed.

Try to focus on shows/podcasts that target children and/or teens -- the language will be more at your level. There may be more slang, but that will be relatively simple to navigate via various language forums.

Once your ear gets tuned to listening to native-speed German, then you can move on to more adult-oriented topics (start with simple, fun stuff and then move on to material that covers "real" topics).

I'd suggest listening to audiobooks of simple children books instead of shows/podcasts that might be too complex for you now. Also get a German-German dictionary and use it to read simple news websites (reading the definition of a word you don't know in German will help more than translating all the time), listen to radio news as normally the hosts will speak with a more clear intonation and you can pick up words instead of a stream of sounds.

That's at least what is helping me with Swedish.

Realistically if you want to get to at least a B2 level you are going to need much more than 15-30 min daily, even more because you aren't immersed in the culture and German is, frankly speaking, a quite hard language to learn. Sentence structure looks quite foreign if you only know English, grammar is complex, you have 3 different genders, etc.

Not trying to discourage you, much the opposite, go harder and you can do it but be realistic about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com