German help.

[takethistoyourgrave]

Lol, a few of the replies in this thread made me chuckle a bit. Knowing English grammar well does nothing to help someone learn another language. Saying that alone shows how little someone knows about language learning.

Also, just moving somewhere will not make you fluent in a few years. I fucking hate the word fluent. You will not become fluent unless you study your ass off and apply what you learned. Coming from another person who lives in Japan, I know many foreigners who have been here ten years plus and their Japanese sucks ass hole. Sure, they say they "speak Japanese", but it is bullshit and embarrassing any time they flaunt this "fluent" Japanese. I studied abroad in Japan for a year in the past, my wife is Japanese, I live and work here, and I still work my ass off to learn the language to an advanced degree. There is no way you will learn this stuff in a few years just by being here.

Having said that, immersion IS by far the best thing you can do. If you want to learn German, go to Germany. Just don't expect to party the whole time you are there and come home speaking advanced German.

[Ezek]

Lol, a few of the replies in this thread made me chuckle a bit. Knowing English grammar well does nothing to help someone learn another language. Saying that alone shows how little someone knows about language learning.

Also, just moving somewhere will not make you fluent in a few years. I fucking hate the word fluent. You will not become fluent unless you study your ass off and apply what you learned. Coming from another person who lives in Japan, I know many foreigners who have been here ten years plus and their Japanese sucks ass hole. Sure, they say they "speak Japanese", but it is bullshit and embarrassing any time they flaunt this "fluent" Japanese. I studied abroad in Japan for a year in the past, my wife is Japanese, I live and work here, and I still work my ass off to learn the language to an advanced degree. There is no way you will learn this stuff in a few years just by being here.

Having said that, immersion IS by far the best thing you can do. If you want to learn German, go to Germany. Just don't expect to party the whole time you are there and come home speaking advanced German.

Pretty much this. I mean, my parents who have lived in the US for well over two decades still have a piss poor command of writing, speaking, and reading in English. The problem with "I'm going to move to xxxx country and I'll automatically learn their language via immersion" is that many people that do that end up doing the exact opposite; they'll go to said country, experience culture shock, then end up straying to places that are populated by English speaking foreigners. This is especially true in Japan. Just like how there are China and Korea towns in the States, there are "America towns" (unsure about Germany but that shit is everywhere in Tokyo and Okinawa).

Also, Rosetta Stone was pretty fucking terrible for learning Japanese (I had the misfortune of finding out first hand 4-5 years ago) so I've always been pretty critical of their programs whenever they're mentioned.

[Darus Grey]

You will become highly conversant in a few years with true immersion, language learning is ultimately a survival mechanism; as Ezek points out, the problem is most people move to say Germany, find other English speakers, still read English news, watch English tv, and then speak English in their homes.

If they put in the small effort to do all that in German, they'd be highly conversant, I guarantee it.

Though I also hate the term fluent, fluent to a linguist means 10yrs+ of immersion, high school kids with 2 yrs of spanish call themselves "fluent". Though in fairness, it's because the technical terms for the inbetween steps(Elementary, lightly conversant, highly conversant, immersed, fluent, L2 "native") aren't taught to people, so I feel bad that they don't know any better more than upset at them.

[Tagus]

I actually agree with the former posters. The whole, "move there and you'll learn it" advice is pretty cliche and awful. For one thing, unless the whole reason you're learning the language is because you're moving there, it's pretty unrealistic for the majority of people to just up and move countries. Secondly, and this applies much more to Germany than other countries perhaps, but the majority of people over there speak much better English than we do with German. Their country is moderately obsessed with ours on a cultural level, and their educational system begins teaching foreign languages much earlier in life when it is easier for a person to learn them. Those two things are largely responsible for it almost being unnecessary to learn the language if you are going there, beyond simple words like "bathroom" and such.

For example, when I was in Germany, I saw that they sell American mailboxes for upwards of $100 a piece, yet they don't use mailboxes in Germany. For why, you ask? For decoration of their home, because they love us that much. It seemed wierdly obsessive, like a stalker girlfriend or something. God I love that country, but you almost have to try to use their language while you're there, because as soon as they see you as American they go straight into English, like they're proud to be able to speak it. Which they most likely are, because they're awesome at it.

Everything is mildly competitive with the Germans. It's like even the waitresses have this mentality of, you come here and butcher my language? Screw you, cause I know yours better. And then they do that to several different tables while you're sitting there watching, all from different countries, because they speak four languages.

[Linliel]

Also, "moving there and learning it" only works so far. I moved to (Francophone) Belgium and was learning French there for a year - I got quite good at understanding French but had no confidence in speaking because I didn't feel like I could construct the sentences very well, not having learned any proper grammar. You reach a sort of plateau that you need some solid grammatical lessons to get beyond. I can now go and watch French films sans subtitles, but all I can do myself is order food and do other day-to-day set phrase sorts of things.

[Darus Grey]

You didn't not learn, you didn't practice; there's a difference. Humans require no formal training to understand the syntax and morphology of other languages easy.
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing...however, are four entirely different skills.
What you said could be broken down into "I listened to a lot of French and got better, but I never practiced speaking so I didn't get better", which...you know...is obvious as to what the problem is.

There is no plateau to immersion.

[Byrthnoth]

If you don't understand what a past participle is, you aren't going to understand when someone tries to teach you a "german past participle." Not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground grammar-wise is a huge impediment when going to formally learn any kind of language. Can you communicate your point by getting the right vocabulary words in generally the right order? Sure. You're always going to sound as retarded in German as you do in English though. Check this out:

So I already read the Japanese Rosetta Stone thread two weeks ago. I didn`t want to bump the thread even though my question is kinda similar.

Anyways I started Rosetta Stone two three days ago, it is a really good program for learning nouns and pronunciations of the language. But I can already tell from this early on that the grammar lessons are not that great. RS doesn`t explain why you conjugate this word that way or which word is feminine of masculine. So could anyone recommend any books or programs on beginning German grammar?

Any help is appreciated :

Even if you assume he learns how to speak German as well as he speaks English, I wouldn't really count it a success. Heck, look at what he's complaining about (if you can understand it) and then look at my first sentence. That's the fucking problem I'm describing.

[Darus Grey]

If you don't understand what a past participle is, you aren't going to understand when someone tries to teach you a "german past participle."

Trust me, you'll figure it out, if you don't you're mentally handicapped past a certain point.

You realize we've been speaking for tens of thousands of years, learning new languages, interacting, etc... and we didn't have a fucking clue what we were doing right? No one knew wtf grammar was, what particles were, etc.

Shockingly...they listened, they learned, they spoke. It was the best method then, and despite our best efforts, it's the best method now.

People seem to forget that language learning is a social activity, it is not, and as a matter of practicality, can not be done, in isolation. We learn by the reactions of our peers.

[Yugl]

Lol, a few of the replies in this thread made me chuckle a bit. Knowing English grammar well does nothing to help someone learn another language.

If you understand it from a linguistic perspective and not just "A before constants and An before vowels", knowing syntax helps a lot.

[Darus Grey]

If you understand it from a linguistic perspective and not just "A before constants and An before vowels", knowing syntax helps a lot.

99% of people aren't talking about it from that perspective though, they're talking about the other type of bullshit grammar. Though yes, Syntax in particular helps with L2+ learning, though most people have a very innate understanding of syntax to begin with(and I'm not saying that the actual understanding *is* innate).

[Xno Kappa]

I miss Germany.

Like others have said, you're never going to be fluent in learning a language unless you completely live in the culture with little to no support from your first language for a long time. Lived in Germany for years, studied the language while I was there, and did my very best to converse with the locals in Duetsche. It still sucked by comparison because once I got home from work it was all English/Spanish where Deutsche wasn't necessary.

[Byrthnoth]

Trust me, you'll figure it out, if you don't you're mentally handicapped past a certain point.

You realize we've been speaking for tens of thousands of years, learning new languages, interacting, etc... and we didn't have a fucking clue what we were doing right? No one knew wtf grammar was, what particles were, etc.

Shockingly...they listened, they learned, they spoke. It was the best method then, and despite our best efforts, it's the best method now.

People seem to forget that language learning is a social activity, it is not, and as a matter of practicality, can not be done, in isolation. We learn by the reactions of our peers.

So your response to the OP's "I don't get the grammar they're trying to teach me, does anyone have any books on German grammar?" question is, "Don't worry bro, just move there and you'll learn it without books because Chomsky says it's all good." That's even less helpful than the general, "Look up books on English grammar first" response.

[Darus Grey]

So your response to the OP's "I don't get the grammar they're trying to teach me, does anyone have any books on German grammar?" question is, "Don't worry bro, just move there and you'll learn it without books because Chomsky says it's all good." That's even less helpful than the general, "Look up books on English grammar first" response.

The difference is what I said is correct, even if not helpful. What you said, and continue to say, is just idiotic.

[Byrthnoth]

The difference is what I said is correct, even if not helpful. What you said, and continue to say, is just idiotic.

<_< Okay, sure. Highlights of the OP:

Anyways I started Rosetta Stone two three days ago, it is a really good program for learning nouns and pronunciations of the language. But I can already tell from this early on that the grammar lessons are not that great. RS doesn`t explain why you conjugate this word that way or which word is feminine of masculine. So could anyone recommend any books or programs on beginning German grammar?

You conjugate certain words certain ways because they're fulfilling certain grammatical roles in a sentence. He doesn't understand what's going on because he doesn't know the English grammar they're trying to use to teach him. Your response doesn't address his question, or my "It'll be hard to learn the grammar of another language if you don't understand English grammar" response. He's obviously struggling to understand when conjugations are used, and he obviously has poor control over English grammar. It's a pretty good bet that RS is trying to teach him German grammar using English grammar terms and concepts that he doesn't understand, which makes the multiple "l2grammar" responses correct.

Sorry that you didn't read the OP or couldn't understand it/him. Good luck intuitively learning the grammar of another country after about age 10. Grammatically, you'll always sound like a second grader. If you try really hard you can be a second grader with an impressive vocabulary, but that can bite you in the ass because you use uncommon words too freely. You don't believe me? Talk to any FOB Asian at your college.

[Xno Kappa]

I thought my post proved pretty simple for the whole matter. Ya just cock measuring at this point.

[Linliel]

You didn't not learn, you didn't practice; there's a difference. Humans require no formal training to understand the syntax and morphology of other languages easy.
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing...however, are four entirely different skills.
What you said could be broken down into "I listened to a lot of French and got better, but I never practiced speaking so I didn't get better", which...you know...is obvious as to what the problem is.

There is no plateau to immersion.

This is a load of bullshit. There's a lot more to it than "requiring no formal training" - if you're a 2 year old and learning to speak then there are significant differences between that and being an adult and expected to speak well straight off the bat. Also, children learn languages significantly easier than adults do.

Unless you get some fairly specific training you'll never learn more than the very basics you require to get on with your day-to-day life. I practiced every day I lived in Belgium, it was just that the conversations I needed to have were never more than basic pleasantries or shopping-related. Oh, and dealing with the town hall. Anything more than that and I was getting really quite deep into complicated grammar that needed some specific teaching. It wasn't something that was going to be picked up through immersion. I actually did a lot of self-study to get to the basics required for even those sorts of day-to-day things.

I speak German, so that helped - I learned it to a reasonably high level through school and was very thankful that I knew *how* to learn a language, because without basic knowledge of how grammar works etc. I would have been screwed.

Anyway, tl;dr I call bullshit, immersion works best if you're a kid, but if you're an adult it requires a shitload of work or you get stuck at a certain level

[Hyan]

I miss Germany.

Like others have said, you're never going to be fluent in learning a language unless you completely live in the culture with little to no support from your first language for a long time.

That's not how I learnt English.

[Ashmada]

Lol, a few of the replies in this thread made me chuckle a bit. Knowing English grammar well does nothing to help someone learn another language. Saying that alone shows how little someone knows about language learning.

Bullshit.
If you don't have the cognitive capacity to distinguish between very different words/locutions because they're homonyms in your native language (confusing "your" and "you're"; their/they're/there; bear/bare; story/storey and so on), you're going to make the same mistakes in other languages, but with other words.

Additionally, there's a pretty good chance you'll still confuse those words in the target language, where they're probably not be homonyms; leading to miscomprehension on the listener's part.

Like others have said, you're never going to be fluent in learning a language unless you completely live in the culture with little to no support from your first language for a long time.

Also BS.
My english's pretty good (scored "fluent" in language tests required for work), yet I've never been in immersion. Immersion has benefits, but it's far from required.

Then again, english's one of the easiest languages to learn, so maybe that proves nothing.


Linliel: what area?
Cause if you emulate the french of an area with a particularly thick accent (like Liège), they'll laugh at you in Paris .

[Byrthnoth]

Linliel: what area?
Cause if you emulate the french of an area with a particularly thick accent (like Liège), they'll laugh at you in Paris .

Asians with a southern accent are the funniest thing in the world.