After the one course at Goethe in October, I've been learning German on my own for the last 6 months - until today that is. I decided to take classes again (since my firm offered to pay for it).
I consider myself proficient in German these days - I understand people, can read and can communicate (read and write). My German is, for example, way better than my Hindi. I couldn't read a book or write an email in Hindi. But today's lesson made me think about how long it takes to be "fluent" in a language (especially one like German).
I think what is so difficult with German is the Grammar. Learning the vocabulary is in comparison so easy! For instance, in English to say that something holds true for all of a country, it is either "for all of India" and, sometimes, "for all of THE US or UK". So there are at the most two variations.
German has several variations depending on the country. So there is:
- für ganz Deutschland,
- für DIE ganzE Schweiz,
- für DIE ganzEN USA,
- für DEN ganzEN Iran and so on.
I keep thinking that there should be some way to learn the language quickly. But accreting this sort of information is so slow and painful. There is a certain logic to these changes, but one has to apply so many different rules simultaneously to get this correct. It is probably going to take years of being in the country before I can consider myself fluent.
Don´t worry, you will be alright. learning by doing is the only way to way to learn them.
ReplyDeleteIt´s the same for us Germans with english prepositions. It´s always different to our german prepositions.