hi easy german!!!! yall dont know how big of a blessing you are to the lives of millions of german learners. cant even imagine how hard learning german would have been with your help. thank you so much for that you all do :)
Hey Easy German - You all rock!! Love your compatriots in Brazil with "Easy Portuguese" -- I watch "Easy Portuguese" all the time. Thanks for doing what you have been doing!! Thank You!! Obrigado!!
In my opinion, my solution to fix that problem is to do some active grammar study (not too much, only like 10 minutes) and consume more target language content.
Outstanding consistency as seen in the heatmap. I loved the minimalistic approach to the video. Straight to the point, good references and helpful tips.
Good video! I'm so jealous that you're the one learning the language but that you're wife is already German... my 3 year old understands quite a lot of Swedish but it's an uphill battle with me being the only one who can speak to him in Swedish (and no one else understands that either so often I have to speak English for the benefit of others).
I love this. I’ve had to grow out of beating myself up for not speaking “enough” or “soon enough.” I’ve learned that focusing on vocabulary and input (input input input) take care of a lot of what’s needed when speaking, and applying less pressure makes the whole thing more fun and ultimately sustainable.
Keeping things sustainable is probably the most important skill with language learning. It’s good you’ve been able to moderate the urge to speak if that was stressing you out. If you want to speak, great. If you want to wait, also great. Good luck!
My congratulations! Also, your German sounds really good. I think, most German speakers could still clearly tell, that you are an English speaker, but the accent isn’t something heavy, that gets in the way of understanding what you are saying. Und übrigens ist 5 Minuten Harry Podcast eine sehr gute Wahl :)
Great video. I’m glad I found it. I’ve been self studying Russian for 4 years at home. You have some great advice in here that I will try to help me reach my goals this year. I probably know 2000-3000 words comfortably and hope to be a solid conversational A2 level. 👍🏾
Just wow! Your description of your journey learning German has resonated so much with me! Of all the methods I've heard of yours seems most compatible to my own way of thinking and learning. In particular: the Rosetta Stone book, how you used Anki, and how you used baby books. I don't have any babies any more but I'll apply as much of your method as Ii can to learning German. Thanks for making this video...and best wishes for your future language learning.
I too have used anki to learn English (I'm a Portuguese speaker ) but i used full sentences instead of single words and i put audio(using a addon) in the sentence too.
Reading really is underrated when it comes to the later part of learning a langues. Develops that Sprachgefühl(langues feeling of what feels right without knowing grammar rules). Unlike shows/movies a book can't show things so it uses allot of descriptive words from common to less common but rarely used in daily lives like 'disappointed' or 'zenith', reading is really where you'll pick these up. Your video encourages me to read more.
100% - reading is such a pleasure when you get the feel for a language. I have another video going live in 2 hours about how vocab grows as you read (I took a look at Harry Potter) if you're interested
Such a great video. I like your diverse approach, and how everything comes together. The reading and listening for language acquisition and then anki to really anchor the words in your memory. I suspect a big key in your success is that you made your own cards, from words you learned somewhere else. You slowly built up the skills. Big inspiration!
Thank you so much for this authentic video man. I’m going to buy that book that became your Rosetta Stone! What a great find. The notecard anki strategy is also so simple and so genius. Thanks for sharing!
This content has so much quality and your tips are also applicable to every language, so very useful information!! You should have much more recognition to be honest. Keep up like this!!
I´m a native in german. I´m very thankfull for that, because I know that german is a difficult language. That´s why I´m always impressed when a non-native speaker is so gooda at it. Well done! Your video is really helpfull for learning my target language, thanks!
Hi! I'm just learning German and I've been doing this for 2 moths now. Your tips are amazing and I hope to learn that language too as fast as I can. Greetings from Poland :)
Awesome video!! Again, love all the data! My learning has been similar to yours -- only two differences I did not use the "Rosetta Stone" book approach and also have not used a program like Anki to focus on vocab learning. Takes me a little longer to learn vocab -- but my method is more organic -- so IMO no right or wrong answer but the Anki vocab method might be super useful when I try to go to C1. So might give it a try once I get to B2 and C1. On the Rosetta stone book method and maybe it's only that my Brazilian girlfriend had a bunch of kids comic books and kids books which she gave to me and she also bought around 10 used teen comic books (Homen-Arranha (spiderman), Demolidor (Daredevil), etc.) for me when she was in Brazil last year for like 50 cents each that I learned my initial reading and vocab in a more step-like manner. So yeah for $5 total!! I think your Rosetta stone approach is a good one -- but think if you can use children's material first (if possible) -- it won't be so much like hitting a brick wall initially. Used children's books in the target language (for some languages) in bulk (from eBay) can be extremely inexpensive -- like $30 dollars for 10-15 random kid's books and that's all you need. I also found a ton of old public domain comic books from the 1950s in Portuguese that I used as well. These were a nice stepping stone as those older free comic books were written more for 8-12 year olds, while modern comic books are more for 12+ year old readers. Modern comic books are not an easy read. 😂 Thought this dica (tip) would be useful to anyone reading this that watched the video. Very low cost kids books in bulk and free comic books in target language -- yeah -- and if you're also lucky enough to get a huge stash of kids' books like I did from a relative. Yeah, this method won't work if the language is not that common -- but for most of the common languages -- getting free and/or low-cost material is very easy.
This really is the way. Not a single piece of bad advice in your video imo. I've tried anki too and it works, I just opted for a bit of a looser system. I always use chrome for my internet browsing, so there is the safari browser that is completely free for whatever. I found a really good dictionary website for my target language, Finnish. Any time I didn't understand a word, I'd open a new tab and search it. The tabs then automatically go from oldest to newest. Card review is then as simple as opening the browser and going through my tabs, closing the ones I feel confident in. The main reason I opted for this is because this dictionary would show me all the meanings the word could have, as well as multiple example sentences in both Finnish and English. So that way I could use comprehensible input with many different contexts on the same new word. The drawback though is that my wordlist can get "clogged" so I have to stop reading for new words and start going through my words for a few days so I can free up space. I usually hover around 100 tabs open at any given time.
Yes, great video -- although I would recommend buying a lot of around 10 books in bulk in the target language from eBay. Easily pay like $15 bucks for 10 kids books in most languages. The "Rosetta Stone" idea although a decent one - is a little like hitting a low brick wall -- why not use stairs, when first starting.
I clicked on this video because I saw the Sefarim in the back in the thumbnail, which caught me so off guard. It's nice to see Yidden make videos based on their other passions! Much Hatzlacha
I am learning Telugu my mother tongue and also Hebrew and Arabic on my own Made some progress But I really appreciate you because you did everything by yourself This really inspires me motivates me
Good on you. Your approach of dissecting that book sentence by sentence, and word by word sounds incredibly painful. However, it obviously worked for you! I learnt my target language over a four year period 2019 - 2022. I felt like that I hit the B2 fluency at about the the third year mark. I'm somewhere in between B2 and C1 now. I didn't dissect books quite like you did, but I did have two books of the same story in my target language and English. And I used the English book to help decode words, sentences or phrases that were giving me trouble. I started learning Spanish in July 2023. In terms of acquiring another language it's a case of wash, rinse, and repeat. LOL
Your German is really good. You're right, you have a good pronounciation. I learned English in school and later through American TV series and now I'm learning Swedish but really slow because of a lack of disciplin and consistency. I tried Anki but after a few days I'm missing too many days in a row and than the words you have to review are too intimidating therefor I'm missing even more days and so on. 😅
Very fair. If Anki feels like too much, you can set the new word limit lower so that you stick with it. You won't learn as much in the same amount of time but you'll still get the advantages Anki has.
I was curious about Anki and got all nostalgic for German instead. It was my foreign language of choice in my 20’s. I’m all about Japanese and Korean these days. I learned German without flash cards or rather I tried to use them and gave up. This was before Anki and I had no idea about spaced repetition. Now I’m obsessed with it but it hasn’t been this perfect tool like happened for you. I build a deck for a month or two and then burn out and start a new one or erase my progress maybe. Oh the frustration. Great video though.
I use an index card method where I read a book and do an index card or several for that book (with words in order by chapter - and I usually list the page number where I saw the word). That way I can re-read the book and use the index cards. Probably works almost as good was Anki. Anki is probably a little more efficient, but the index card method per book(s) works extremely well.
I agree with your process. I learned Lithuanian in a similar manner. Apps didn't exist back then so I had just sheets with my vocab lists on them. Lithuanian is easier so I only needed some 6-7000 words to reach fluency. A couple of comments. German grammar is fairly easy, so I would say the time you spent was about right but with a more complex grammar like Latin or Greek, reference sheets help considerably. Lithuanian grammar is on yet a higher level and you need to rewrite the grammar for fast reference. Something like Spanish requires even less time than German. My Rosetta stone was The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner. It has a lot of dialogue and a fast pace. I was hooked from the first page which took 45 minutes to read and a day to learn the vocab. Page 2 was longer but took only 30 minutes. I went a little faster than you at 250 words the first week, 150 thereafter, but studying took all my time. But I would recommend starting with a single author on a single topic like the two fiction series on your shelf as the author will reuse the same words and constructions. By two thirds through the book, I could read without looking up further words except on rare occasions. And that is a nice confidence boost. Your Rosetta stone could be a little discouraging because progress is harder to notice. But I'll try out Anki with German as my daughter probably needs to learn it and it would be easiest to just start talking to her in it. Being bilingual, she picks up new languages very easy.
One more comment. I noticed on your vocab list that you have grocery store/shop. This is a mistake as the word is too long. It is better to learn groceries and shop separately. After you know both, the combined word comes naturally. But thanks for the Anki and Excel lists. I will definitely use them.
Glück auf, I'm a German trying to learn Chinese, Came here from the language learning subreddit. Ur German is insanely good. I tried to do the Rosetta stone, and failed on the first page. But failed on the first page catastrophic. At the moment I'm visiting a curse at my university, that somewhat keeps me in the mood. But I may take your advice on the yt thing, don't know why I haven't thought of that. Das Video war sehr hilfreich, ich wünsche dir noch einen schönen Tag. (PS: meine Schwester war ein großer Fan von Smaragdgrün & Co., irgendwie lustig😂)
Wow I know Chinese and Japanese can be a different ballgame because writing and speaking/listening are like 2 different worlds even in the same language. Hopefully as you learn characters it gets easier and more doable. The course is hopefully a good start and using youtube/podcasts can help! und danke sehr. Rubinrot war nicht ganz mein Fall aber es ist ein ganz süßes Buch.
The good thing about Chinese is that once you take your time to learn the characters reading becomes really quick ^^ And it's more concise than European languages, so you can express your ideas in a shorter amount of time 😊 The tones may be tricky for first time tonal language learner, but getting enough input helps a lot🎉
Learning together with your kid is such a cool approach 💙💙💙 Not only you spend quality time with your kid and cultivate good habits in him, but also achieve your goals^^ The idea of using a book as a Rosetta Stone is cool, but I don't really think I would have enough patience to do this with a language I'm just starting😂 Though if I have some crazy motivation one day, I may try your method with some language 🥳
Something that suprised me when i started to learn german myself, is that there were a lot of german features that didn't have any translation in english, like the kein and nicht disctinction, that appear in my other language, Czech. Obviously structure and syntax-wise, knowing English helped me a lot, but for a lot of grocery store vocab, and things like doch and the gramatical case system, knowing Czech has sped the process along lol.
I struggled with Anki in the past, as it usually became frustrating -- however, on both attempts I was using bulk pre-made decks rather than creating one. I wonder if your approach works better because you already have a tangible context for each new card you make, rather than only ever seeing that word in Anki in a vacuum. Either way, this video has inspired me to try again! This time I'll just slowly build my own deck off the words I look up from my reading bookmarks (another thing I loved about your method!)
Awesome! I'd set the limit of new cards to something really manageable until you establish the habit of Anki (maybe 5 new cards a day?). Then you can start increasing once you see that it works. Good luck!
I just started my journey with German less than a month ago. I learned French in school but never got beyond A1 level due to lack of motivation. This video is very inspiring, so thank you for making it and sharing your story
Awesome video, congrats on your progress! That consistency is definitely worthy of praise, reading so much in a foreign language on top of the daily anki grind takes a lot more dedication than I'm able to give for my own TL. Best of luck for your future progression!
What a beautiful beard, and a beautiful video. Anki gives a structured way to engage in the language and memorize new words, but I wonder if there is a point when it’s overkill. Are you adding words you would have picked up fairly easily with some repetition through more reading? If you added cards once a week, maybe you could tell which vocab you’ve been seeing but haven’t acquired and only add those. Maybe an extra 30 minutes of reading/immersing would have better results
Yes, interesting question. I really think the author's method excels when you already have a large vocabulary and then want to increase it. Not so sure you need such a focused method (which required the diligence that some people don't have) when going from A1 to A2 or going to B1. Yes, there's a slight cost of creating cards -- for words you would in a sense get for free anyway. Probably super hard to quantify this.
I’ve had trouble keeping up an Anki habit because of shabbos. It might seem trivial, but getting out of my flow every week has really thrown me. Wondering if you have anything to share about how you worked it into your Anki life?
Not sure I have any special trip besides planning out my Saturday nights around the fact that I’ll do Anki cards for 30-40 minutes. I believe the new FSRS Helper has a setting where you can specify what days of the week you want to study on so you could just remove Shabbos from that list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My Rosetta stone was a Vampire Diaries ff(. I "learnt" english in school w/ little success). One day I just had enough to translate ,,I am"... etc. and read that ff. The first new word was smirk.., then I saw it again "What was it again... ááá". This is how I learnt english and this is how I plan learning German, but I have a big cheat... I'm here for a while, so I interact w/ it daily. I also "learnt" german in school... German was one of my subject in my highschool diploma exam..., but I forgot EveRyThIng!!!! 😅 Wish me endurance, please luck won't help. (My new problem, because I don't speak enough Deutsch to be understandable I mix it with English even though I don't do that intentionally, I just hope this way they can understand me a little bit more.)
Thanks for sharing this. Very inspiring. I am learning German too and use Easy German - I enjoy their sense of humour. Thanks for pointing out Erklärs mir, als wäre ich 5. I am going to check out the aptly named Kinderfragen.
Thanks for this informative video and more so for sharing your word list! BTW, why didn't you note down the plural form of nouns in your word list? I mean how would one know their plural form without explicitly memorizing it?
Thanks for the feedback! I probably should've added plurals to my nouns, but ultimately decided against it for 2 reasons: 1) there are some general rules that apply for making plurals in German (e.g., add "n" or "en" for most feminine nouns, add an "s" if the singular ends in any vowel other than e) 2) If it would take an extra 30 seconds each time I make a new card to add a plural, i wasn't sure that was worth it since I new I would make thousands of cards (e.g., 3,000 cards * 30 sec = 25 added hours just making the cards) Not sure I made the right call but so far I've been ok!
@@OneWordataTime1 I started learning German only around a week ago. So I may be entirely wrong but I believe that it will be a challenge to write German correctly without memorizing the plural forms. I guess the rules for finding plural forms aren't likely much better than the 'rules' for finding the genders of nouns. I guess a spellchecker will solve the issue for you unless you are planning to write (physically) or to get C1/C2 certification. Anyway, thanks again for your valuable world list! -PS: It would've been wonderful if you could provide the downloadable MS Word file of the world list, as I am struggling to download your Excel file and I am more used to learning by PDF/Word files rather than Anki.- I was able to download the file. Thanks.
I've become a big fan of your channel! You mentioned that you learned 13 new words per day, does that mean you reviewed 26 new *cards* (front & back counted separately) per day? I've been doing anki for hebrew for ~2 years now and I'm also approaching 10,000 cards, but at least the way my deck is set up, that's actually only ~5000 words. 26 cards per day is a lot!
I struggle to learn with Anki. I can go a week, and never remember which words I've learned. (leech). Did you customize your Anki deck/program? If so, could you tell me how/what you did to the deck?
The default settings should hopefully be enough. On my end, no changes to the visual interface of Anki for my German vocab besides increasing the default font sizes.
I made a bet of learning German in one month till. My friends didn't believe me, so i managed to win a equipment for my monthly salary on my vacation, but itwas the worst vacation ever, because i was studying German up to 12 hours a day
@@OneWordataTime1 we'll, my main focus was on vocabulary and being able to speak and understand. My grammar is still not the best. But I literally don't start learning grammar until I'm fluent in the language. For example I first started learning English grammar in university. By that time I have already been able to express any thoughts that could pop into my mind. With German I'm taking the same approach. I understand a lot, I'm decent at speaking it, but I literally would not tell you genders of the most nouns I know. Similarly I don't really know much grammar, I just copy the phrases of native speakers, and use the patterns just changing the words for those I need. Arabic is the only language where I actually put in effort to study grammar, because I feel like I can't make any progress in this language without learning grammar first. The words just flex too much.
When you were watching your youtube videos, did you have subtitles on ? What about podcasts - did you have the transcript? I wonder how you improved ur listening skills
The trick to improve your listening skills is to start and then optimize as you see what you want to work on. Early on I would use English but then switched to German. Now I usually don't watch with subtitles. I think early on a transcript for podcasts can be helpful but I'd rather listen to 5 hours of podcasts with no transcript as I'm going about my day rather than 30 minutes of intensive listening.
Your story is so motivating, thank you! Can you please share how do you make Anki show the recall card only the next day? If I make a double sided card, Anki shows me all sides the same day. Thanks!
Go into the settings for your vocab deck and scroll down to "Burying" and make sure "Bury New Siblings" is turned on. That should help with the double sided cards, though it also means for cloze cards that you can only see one of the "hidden" components per day. Let me know if that works!
Hey man, I'm also learning german and other languages. What is the best configuration of anki to learn a language? Many people say FSRS, what are you using, since you learned 10k words, you have credibility
Sie sollen einmal ein Video auf Deutsch machen, das würde super. Selbst lerne ich Deutsch seit acht Monaten aber ich finde Karteikarten langweilig, und persönlich denke ich mich, dass es leichter ist, nur Videos anzuschauen und Büchern zu lesen. Denken Sie, dass das funktioniert könnte? Ich brauchte keinen Übersetzer, dieses Kommentar zu schreiben, aber ich hab noch ne lange Weg, fließend zu werden. Dankeschön für das Video, es war motivierend.
@@OneWordataTime1 Was denken Sie über Lernen ohne die Karteikarten? Ich weiß, dass sie sehr hilfreich sein könnten, aber es fällt mir schwierig, damit mich zu engagieren.
Do you plan to immerse yourself in German poetry and literature one day? For me, that's the real reason why someone should learn German - the indescribable joy of reading Rainer Maria Rilke or Thomas Mann ...
I just bought 6 books in english to try an broaden my knowledge base in history and western culture, but then I got into german so haven't had time or the interest to read them lol. Then I started thinking maybe I should have gotten them all in german haha. I'm trying to memorise Rammstein lyrics, I've written them down in german then the english translation. I'm terrible at remembering lyrics in english let alone german, so it's a memorisation exercise, but I've already learned a few words from doing it. A bit like memorising short stories. So, i haven't really thought about it before, but is it possible to raise a child to learn two languages at the same time? Do they get confused whilst speaking and speak in two languages at once, or are they able to distinguish between them whilst speaking? Do you have a special method for your child to learn both or is it not needed?
No special method needed, just commitment from both parents to how you want to do it. There are many resources out there for what options there are. Like I mentioned, we're taking a one-parent-one-language approach where my wife speaks only German and I speak only English. Our son isn't even 1.5 yet so it's too early to say but so far he can understand us both!
@@OneWordataTime1 Ahh ok, that's really interesting. I think learning things when you are a kid is so helpful, learning seems to come so naturally to them, learning anything as an adult is a massive time commitment and struggle haha.
Those moments were a huge part of it - curiosity is a trait that I really value. I also know that having my wife and son around kept reminders of what type of connection learning the language could enable.
such an inspiration! Thank you for sharing! Btw if anyone is looking for some advanced German content I can only recommend getting into Walter Moers works. I really enjoyed listening to his zamonia audio books ^-^
Er hat in einem anderen Video gesagt (denke ich das Harry Potter Video), dass Sie Wörter durch Karteikarten lernen können oder einfach weiter lesen können. Also denke ich, dass Karteikarten nicht notwendig sind, aber sie waren für ihn nützlich.
Not flashcards -- but I use an interesting method where I write down word on an index card I don't know for every book I read (and keep the index card(s) with the book. Super useful when I go back to re-read the book.
@@quantus5875 do you find that everytime you revisit the book you pick up more vocabulary simply from context or do you always defer to the index card?
@@jasonjames6870 Both. I pick up vocabulary both ways. As I don't write down every word I don't know onto the index cards. I find as my vocabulary grows by re-reading a book I pick up many words that I didn't know by context -- so both index cards and context. I think the author of this video's methods are really good. But they do assume you like and are diligent with flash cards, which many people are not. Key to language learning is motivation -- so the method described in this video (worked for the author) but will not work for everyone. Some less efficient methods, will probably work better from some learners because they won't squelch your motivation. I think my index card method is less efficient than the author's method for the purposes of learning vocab -- but IMO it's more do-able by more people. It has definitely worked for me. With maybe a 4 to 4.5K vocab after one year -- IMO not too shabby. Not as good as the author's 10K words in 2 years (as vocab acquisition is nonlinear) -- but not shabby. What I may do after another year -- where I might be at maybe ~7K-ish is start using software like LingQ -- not sure.
Hi, interesting video. I was puzzled about a couple of items of your approach. 4:23 I was wondering why you chose to learn your vocabulary in both directions (German to English and then English to German) when just learning receptively only (German to English) would have been sufficient for reading and saved you 50% of the effort? It seems a waste of time to learn vocabulary productively (English to German) unless you are going to write a lot. Speaking uses only a fraction of 10,000 words. 6:47 The other thing I was surprised at is that you looked up words individually with Google Translate when you can just photograph the page (or screen shot a page from a Kindle book) and GT will translate the page in its entirety. That way the context of the translation will be superior (but maybe not perfect). Also, GT keeps a history of translations that you could paste into Anki etc. as a separate workflow. Anyway, can't fault you on your work rate and tenacity. Great stuff.
Going both directions for vocab gave me a better handle on the words and the English->German direction in particular was helpful for recall and speaking prep. From having learned Hebrew through input only, it could feel like pulling teeth trying to speak (using words that I could recognize in context immediately!) so I wanted to invest in laying the groundwork for speaking in German. In fact it worked so well in German that I'm now using Anki for 1000's of English->Hebrew cards, mostly for words I already know in context. Google Translate can be such a crutch when immersing. For me, I tried to primarily go word by word so that the "aha" moment of understanding happened in my head after stringing words together, not from reading a translation. At the beginning, I would make cards using GT as I read / watched since after a lookup I could make the card in
@@OneWordataTime1 Right, so learning words in the English to German direction is a kind of speaking practice. That makes sense although you probably won't need anything like 10,000 words to speak, at least to begin with. I've also found speaking terrifically challenging. My main problem is being able to output the words fast enough. It feels like my brain is working in slow motion at times! I'm improving now but I guess it just takes loads of practice.
@@kevingeoghegan294 that's my experience 100% as well with speed. Speaking is also the most mentally-taxing thing for me to do and given my hesitation, I want to work on this alone, which means there are fewer places & times to practice compared to just opening a book, podcast or RUclips to get more input.
One simple fix is to put English on the front and your target language on the back. If that doesn't work (aka you already have a lot of cards made), you may need to play around with the settings or create a new card type.
Ich habe eine Frage: you studied 10k words in Anki. Are those 10k words? Or are they 10k cards? The reason I ask is because you mentioned you did DE>EN and EN>DE, so that counts as one word, but two cards. Do you have 20k cards or maybe more in your Anki deck? (^_^) And congrats on your journey, it is great to see how German is part of your life now.
Very good question - it's 10,372 total words currently, with 20,744 cards in Anki for both directions. I should've made that clearer in the video! Are you learning German?
@@OneWordataTime1 Wow, ich bin beeindruckt! Heutzutage lerne ich leider kein Deutsch, aber ich verstehe es und ich kann mich verständlich machen. Das ist gut genug für mich (^_^)
I use Anki and love it for learning Mandarin, but how do you make it work so you get German to English one day and then English to German the next day?
Go into settings and turn on "Bury new siblings." That way you can't learn 2 cards from the same note (aka from the same source card) on the same day. Just be careful that doesn't mess up anything you need to learn for classes (aka 1 cloze card that you'd want to learn everything on the same day)
Thank you, thank you so much ! Soon enough, I'll reach the niveau B2. I learned german a year with french, and many others... Now my french is B1 while my german is still A1, because I'm more focused on french. The ressources that you put is really helpful for beginners, like me. I love learnin languages! Keep up the wonderful work!
@@OneWordataTime1 Tests are only tests. They are not built in a proper way. Too much grammar and non sense tasks. I would never take any test cause it would only stress me or demotivate me. To me 5k words it's B2 and 10k = C1 🙃😁
I am a native German speaker and I don't know what a Zirkelschluss should be. Also Verwerfung... come on, when do you ever need this word? What the heck did you add to your Anki decks :D
So happy that our videos were helpful on your German learning journey. 😊Keep up the great work!
hi easy german!!!! yall dont know how big of a blessing you are to the lives of millions of german learners. cant even imagine how hard learning german would have been with your help. thank you so much for that you all do :)
I love u guys
Now say it in German
Hey Easy German - You all rock!! Love your compatriots in Brazil with "Easy Portuguese" -- I watch "Easy Portuguese" all the time. Thanks for doing what you have been doing!! Thank You!! Obrigado!!
understanding all of the individual words in a sentence but not the whole sentence has got me lol
I have had that experience in Spanish.
In my opinion, my solution to fix that problem is to do some active grammar study (not too much, only like 10 minutes) and consume more target language content.
don't lie dwight, we know you fluent
@@Reforming_LL Agreed, and you have to also spend some time learning at least some of the more common idioms.
Outstanding consistency as seen in the heatmap. I loved the minimalistic approach to the video. Straight to the point, good references and helpful tips.
Good video!
I'm so jealous that you're the one learning the language but that you're wife is already German... my 3 year old understands quite a lot of Swedish but it's an uphill battle with me being the only one who can speak to him in Swedish (and no one else understands that either so often I have to speak English for the benefit of others).
We meet again
I love this. I’ve had to grow out of beating myself up for not speaking “enough” or “soon enough.” I’ve learned that focusing on vocabulary and input (input input input) take care of a lot of what’s needed when speaking, and applying less pressure makes the whole thing more fun and ultimately sustainable.
Keeping things sustainable is probably the most important skill with language learning. It’s good you’ve been able to moderate the urge to speak if that was stressing you out. If you want to speak, great. If you want to wait, also great. Good luck!
I really like the notecard bookmark idea.
Wow, deine Aussprache auf Deutsch ist wirklich sehr gut! Danke für das Video :)
Ich lerne Deutsch auch. Dein video gefaelt mir sehr und motiviert mich :) Danke schön.
Can you do an in depth video on how you use Anki for language learning (like settings etc...). Keep up the great work!!
My congratulations! Also, your German sounds really good. I think, most German speakers could still clearly tell, that you are an English speaker, but the accent isn’t something heavy, that gets in the way of understanding what you are saying. Und übrigens ist 5 Minuten Harry Podcast eine sehr gute Wahl :)
I'm learning German as well, this helps A LOT. Thank you
Awesome! Viel Glück beim Lernen!
Great video. I’m glad I found it. I’ve been self studying Russian for 4 years at home. You have some great advice in here that I will try to help me reach my goals this year. I probably know 2000-3000 words comfortably and hope to be a solid conversational A2 level. 👍🏾
i can see this channel becoming big in near future
Just wow! Your description of your journey learning German has resonated so much with me! Of all the methods I've heard of yours seems most compatible to my own way of thinking and learning. In particular: the Rosetta Stone book, how you used Anki, and how you used baby books. I don't have any babies any more but I'll apply as much of your method as Ii can to learning German. Thanks for making this video...and best wishes for your future language learning.
Helpful, comprehensive and concise video! Thanks for sharing 😊
Great video with lots of interesting tips! Thank you!
I too have used anki to learn English (I'm a Portuguese speaker ) but i used full sentences instead of single words and i put audio(using a addon) in the sentence too.
Reading really is underrated when it comes to the later part of learning a langues.
Develops that Sprachgefühl(langues feeling of what feels right without knowing grammar rules).
Unlike shows/movies a book can't show things so it uses allot of descriptive words from common to less common but rarely used in daily lives like 'disappointed' or 'zenith', reading is really where you'll pick these up.
Your video encourages me to read more.
100% - reading is such a pleasure when you get the feel for a language. I have another video going live in 2 hours about how vocab grows as you read (I took a look at Harry Potter) if you're interested
Agreed. I also argue that even native speakers will not get to C2 (in reading and writing) or beyond without extensive reading.
Such a great video. I like your diverse approach, and how everything comes together. The reading and listening for language acquisition and then anki to really anchor the words in your memory. I suspect a big key in your success is that you made your own cards, from words you learned somewhere else. You slowly built up the skills.
Big inspiration!
Your hard work & dedication are admirable! Thanks for sharing your journey
Thank you so much for the content. Much love from a muslim arab from egypt 🇪🇬 ☪️
much love back to you!
Thank you so much for this authentic video man. I’m going to buy that book that became your Rosetta Stone! What a great find. The notecard anki strategy is also so simple and so genius. Thanks for sharing!
This content has so much quality and your tips are also applicable to every language, so very useful information!! You should have much more recognition to be honest. Keep up like this!!
Inspiring! Congratulations on your accomplishment!
Amazing amazing video
no foamy, fancy tips&tricks or seeking view type of bait. 💯 it is very motivating. thanks for sharing your story!
I´m a native in german. I´m very thankfull for that, because I know that german is a difficult language. That´s why I´m always impressed when a non-native speaker is so gooda at it. Well done! Your video is really helpfull for learning my target language, thanks!
Hi! I'm just learning German and I've been doing this for 2 moths now. Your tips are amazing and I hope to learn that language too as fast as I can. Greetings from Poland :)
Awesome video!! Again, love all the data! My learning has been similar to yours -- only two differences I did not use the "Rosetta Stone" book approach and also have not used a program like Anki to focus on vocab learning. Takes me a little longer to learn vocab -- but my method is more organic -- so IMO no right or wrong answer but the Anki vocab method might be super useful when I try to go to C1. So might give it a try once I get to B2 and C1.
On the Rosetta stone book method and maybe it's only that my Brazilian girlfriend had a bunch of kids comic books and kids books which she gave to me and she also bought around 10 used teen comic books (Homen-Arranha (spiderman), Demolidor (Daredevil), etc.) for me when she was in Brazil last year for like 50 cents each that I learned my initial reading and vocab in a more step-like manner. So yeah for $5 total!! I think your Rosetta stone approach is a good one -- but think if you can use children's material first (if possible) -- it won't be so much like hitting a brick wall initially. Used children's books in the target language (for some languages) in bulk (from eBay) can be extremely inexpensive -- like $30 dollars for 10-15 random kid's books and that's all you need.
I also found a ton of old public domain comic books from the 1950s in Portuguese that I used as well. These were a nice stepping stone as those older free comic books were written more for 8-12 year olds, while modern comic books are more for 12+ year old readers. Modern comic books are not an easy read. 😂
Thought this dica (tip) would be useful to anyone reading this that watched the video. Very low cost kids books in bulk and free comic books in target language -- yeah -- and if you're also lucky enough to get a huge stash of kids' books like I did from a relative. Yeah, this method won't work if the language is not that common -- but for most of the common languages -- getting free and/or low-cost material is very easy.
that anki deck is godsent, tks
No problemo - just remember to customize it as needed to you. A solid number of pictures are cultural references that may not help you remember 😅
This really is the way. Not a single piece of bad advice in your video imo. I've tried anki too and it works, I just opted for a bit of a looser system. I always use chrome for my internet browsing, so there is the safari browser that is completely free for whatever. I found a really good dictionary website for my target language, Finnish. Any time I didn't understand a word, I'd open a new tab and search it. The tabs then automatically go from oldest to newest. Card review is then as simple as opening the browser and going through my tabs, closing the ones I feel confident in.
The main reason I opted for this is because this dictionary would show me all the meanings the word could have, as well as multiple example sentences in both Finnish and English. So that way I could use comprehensible input with many different contexts on the same new word.
The drawback though is that my wordlist can get "clogged" so I have to stop reading for new words and start going through my words for a few days so I can free up space. I usually hover around 100 tabs open at any given time.
Could you share what resources you use while learning Finnish? It's on my list of languages to learn, but the resources are a bit tricky ^^
Yes, great video -- although I would recommend buying a lot of around 10 books in bulk in the target language from eBay. Easily pay like $15 bucks for 10 kids books in most languages. The "Rosetta Stone" idea although a decent one - is a little like hitting a low brick wall -- why not use stairs, when first starting.
I clicked on this video because I saw the Sefarim in the back in the thumbnail, which caught me so off guard. It's nice to see Yidden make videos based on their other passions!
Much Hatzlacha
😉
I am learning Telugu my mother tongue and also Hebrew and Arabic on my own
Made some progress
But I really appreciate you because you did everything by yourself
This really inspires me motivates me
what dialect of arabic
Good on you. Your approach of dissecting that book sentence by sentence, and word by word sounds incredibly painful. However, it obviously worked for you!
I learnt my target language over a four year period 2019 - 2022. I felt like that I hit the B2 fluency at about the the third year mark. I'm somewhere in between B2 and C1 now. I didn't dissect books quite like you did, but I did have two books of the same story in my target language and English. And I used the English book to help decode words, sentences or phrases that were giving me trouble.
I started learning Spanish in July 2023. In terms of acquiring another language it's a case of wash, rinse, and repeat. LOL
Your German is really good. You're right, you have a good pronounciation. I learned English in school and later through American TV series and now I'm learning Swedish but really slow because of a lack of disciplin and consistency. I tried Anki but after a few days I'm missing too many days in a row and than the words you have to review are too intimidating therefor I'm missing even more days and so on. 😅
Very fair. If Anki feels like too much, you can set the new word limit lower so that you stick with it. You won't learn as much in the same amount of time but you'll still get the advantages Anki has.
Klasse Leistung! Gratulation!
I was curious about Anki and got all nostalgic for German instead. It was my foreign language of choice in my 20’s. I’m all about Japanese and Korean these days. I learned German without flash cards or rather I tried to use them and gave up. This was before Anki and I had no idea about spaced repetition. Now I’m obsessed with it but it hasn’t been this perfect tool like happened for you. I build a deck for a month or two and then burn out and start a new one or erase my progress maybe. Oh the frustration. Great video though.
I use an index card method where I read a book and do an index card or several for that book (with words in order by chapter - and I usually list the page number where I saw the word). That way I can re-read the book and use the index cards. Probably works almost as good was Anki. Anki is probably a little more efficient, but the index card method per book(s) works extremely well.
The index card as a bookmark is legitimately genius
Useful video, thx for sharing your experiences!
I agree with your process. I learned Lithuanian in a similar manner. Apps didn't exist back then so I had just sheets with my vocab lists on them. Lithuanian is easier so I only needed some 6-7000 words to reach fluency.
A couple of comments. German grammar is fairly easy, so I would say the time you spent was about right but with a more complex grammar like Latin or Greek, reference sheets help considerably. Lithuanian grammar is on yet a higher level and you need to rewrite the grammar for fast reference. Something like Spanish requires even less time than German.
My Rosetta stone was The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner. It has a lot of dialogue and a fast pace. I was hooked from the first page which took 45 minutes to read and a day to learn the vocab. Page 2 was longer but took only 30 minutes. I went a little faster than you at 250 words the first week, 150 thereafter, but studying took all my time. But I would recommend starting with a single author on a single topic like the two fiction series on your shelf as the author will reuse the same words and constructions. By two thirds through the book, I could read without looking up further words except on rare occasions. And that is a nice confidence boost. Your Rosetta stone could be a little discouraging because progress is harder to notice.
But I'll try out Anki with German as my daughter probably needs to learn it and it would be easiest to just start talking to her in it. Being bilingual, she picks up new languages very easy.
One more comment. I noticed on your vocab list that you have grocery store/shop. This is a mistake as the word is too long. It is better to learn groceries and shop separately. After you know both, the combined word comes naturally. But thanks for the Anki and Excel lists. I will definitely use them.
the 'explain it to me like i'm 5' book is a genius idea
Glück auf,
I'm a German trying to learn Chinese,
Came here from the language learning subreddit.
Ur German is insanely good.
I tried to do the Rosetta stone, and failed on the first page. But failed on the first page catastrophic.
At the moment I'm visiting a curse at my university, that somewhat keeps me in the mood.
But I may take your advice on the yt thing, don't know why I haven't thought of that.
Das Video war sehr hilfreich, ich wünsche dir noch einen schönen Tag.
(PS: meine Schwester war ein großer Fan von Smaragdgrün & Co., irgendwie lustig😂)
Wow I know Chinese and Japanese can be a different ballgame because writing and speaking/listening are like 2 different worlds even in the same language. Hopefully as you learn characters it gets easier and more doable. The course is hopefully a good start and using youtube/podcasts can help!
und danke sehr. Rubinrot war nicht ganz mein Fall aber es ist ein ganz süßes Buch.
The good thing about Chinese is that once you take your time to learn the characters reading becomes really quick ^^ And it's more concise than European languages, so you can express your ideas in a shorter amount of time 😊 The tones may be tricky for first time tonal language learner, but getting enough input helps a lot🎉
Superb video.
great video man! huge inspiration
Learning together with your kid is such a cool approach 💙💙💙 Not only you spend quality time with your kid and cultivate good habits in him, but also achieve your goals^^ The idea of using a book as a Rosetta Stone is cool, but I don't really think I would have enough patience to do this with a language I'm just starting😂 Though if I have some crazy motivation one day, I may try your method with some language 🥳
Epic video bro!
Something that suprised me when i started to learn german myself, is that there were a lot of german features that didn't have any translation in english, like the kein and nicht disctinction, that appear in my other language, Czech. Obviously structure and syntax-wise, knowing English helped me a lot, but for a lot of grocery store vocab, and things like doch and the gramatical case system, knowing Czech has sped the process along lol.
Such an underrated language learning RUclipsr, subscribed.
Wow, thanks!
@@OneWordataTime1 Np, I really like enjoy your videos.
I struggled with Anki in the past, as it usually became frustrating -- however, on both attempts I was using bulk pre-made decks rather than creating one. I wonder if your approach works better because you already have a tangible context for each new card you make, rather than only ever seeing that word in Anki in a vacuum. Either way, this video has inspired me to try again! This time I'll just slowly build my own deck off the words I look up from my reading bookmarks (another thing I loved about your method!)
Awesome! I'd set the limit of new cards to something really manageable until you establish the habit of Anki (maybe 5 new cards a day?). Then you can start increasing once you see that it works. Good luck!
@@OneWordataTime1 Yeah, that's a good idea too; one of the problems last time was the reps getting beyond me. Thanks again!
I just started my journey with German less than a month ago. I learned French in school but never got beyond A1 level due to lack of motivation. This video is very inspiring, so thank you for making it and sharing your story
I'm on my way to learning my third language, I think that Deutsch is a wonderful and riveting language to give an attempt
I want to do a 10.000 word challenge for 4 languages (2500 words) this helped me a lot.
I wish I had watched this sooner. I've been studying German for less than 2 years now.
Great video! You make it very interesting and fun to watch. I hope you keep documenting your German learning journey!
Thank you! Will do!
So great!
Awesome video, congrats on your progress! That consistency is definitely worthy of praise, reading so much in a foreign language on top of the daily anki grind takes a lot more dedication than I'm able to give for my own TL. Best of luck for your future progression!
I have an aunt that is from Germany, eventually I plan to learn it to impress her but I'm on Spanish for now.
Amazing video, und sehr motivierend :) Ich lerne auch Deutsch and I'm stumbling upon a methodology similar to yours by just experimenting
I'll try following your path. Let's see what happens.
Good stuff!
Thanks!
What a beautiful beard, and a beautiful video. Anki gives a structured way to engage in the language and memorize new words, but I wonder if there is a point when it’s overkill. Are you adding words you would have picked up fairly easily with some repetition through more reading? If you added cards once a week, maybe you could tell which vocab you’ve been seeing but haven’t acquired and only add those. Maybe an extra 30 minutes of reading/immersing would have better results
Yes, interesting question. I really think the author's method excels when you already have a large vocabulary and then want to increase it. Not so sure you need such a focused method (which required the diligence that some people don't have) when going from A1 to A2 or going to B1. Yes, there's a slight cost of creating cards -- for words you would in a sense get for free anyway. Probably super hard to quantify this.
I’ve had trouble keeping up an Anki habit because of shabbos. It might seem trivial, but getting out of my flow every week has really thrown me. Wondering if you have anything to share about how you worked it into your Anki life?
Not sure I have any special trip besides planning out my Saturday nights around the fact that I’ll do Anki cards for 30-40 minutes. I believe the new FSRS Helper has a setting where you can specify what days of the week you want to study on so you could just remove Shabbos from that list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My Rosetta stone was a Vampire Diaries ff(. I "learnt" english in school w/ little success). One day I just had enough to translate ,,I am"... etc. and read that ff. The first new word was smirk.., then I saw it again "What was it again... ááá". This is how I learnt english and this is how I plan learning German, but I have a big cheat... I'm here for a while, so I interact w/ it daily. I also "learnt" german in school... German was one of my subject in my highschool diploma exam..., but I forgot EveRyThIng!!!! 😅 Wish me endurance, please luck won't help. (My new problem, because I don't speak enough Deutsch to be understandable I mix it with English even though I don't do that intentionally, I just hope this way they can understand me a little bit more.)
Mazel Tov! 🙏🏻
pretty good channel tbh
Hi! I’m subscriber number 160 🙋🏾♀️😜.
Thanks for sharing this. Very inspiring. I am learning German too and use Easy German - I enjoy their sense of humour. Thanks for pointing out Erklärs mir, als wäre ich 5. I am going to check out the aptly named Kinderfragen.
awesome! I have a link to the Kindle version of the Kinderfragen and regular versions (unless you're in Germany and can go to the bookstore!)
Thanks for this informative video and more so for sharing your word list! BTW, why didn't you note down the plural form of nouns in your word list? I mean how would one know their plural form without explicitly memorizing it?
Thanks for the feedback! I probably should've added plurals to my nouns, but ultimately decided against it for 2 reasons:
1) there are some general rules that apply for making plurals in German (e.g., add "n" or "en" for most feminine nouns, add an "s" if the singular ends in any vowel other than e)
2) If it would take an extra 30 seconds each time I make a new card to add a plural, i wasn't sure that was worth it since I new I would make thousands of cards (e.g., 3,000 cards * 30 sec = 25 added hours just making the cards)
Not sure I made the right call but so far I've been ok!
@@OneWordataTime1 I started learning German only around a week ago. So I may be entirely wrong but I believe that it will be a challenge to write German correctly without memorizing the plural forms. I guess the rules for finding plural forms aren't likely much better than the 'rules' for finding the genders of nouns. I guess a spellchecker will solve the issue for you unless you are planning to write (physically) or to get C1/C2 certification. Anyway, thanks again for your valuable world list!
-PS: It would've been wonderful if you could provide the downloadable MS Word file of the world list, as I am struggling to download your Excel file and I am more used to learning by PDF/Word files rather than Anki.- I was able to download the file. Thanks.
I've become a big fan of your channel! You mentioned that you learned 13 new words per day, does that mean you reviewed 26 new *cards* (front & back counted separately) per day? I've been doing anki for hebrew for ~2 years now and I'm also approaching 10,000 cards, but at least the way my deck is set up, that's actually only ~5000 words. 26 cards per day is a lot!
I struggle to learn with Anki. I can go a week, and never remember which words I've learned. (leech). Did you customize your Anki deck/program? If so, could you tell me how/what you did to the deck?
The default settings should hopefully be enough. On my end, no changes to the visual interface of Anki for my German vocab besides increasing the default font sizes.
Bro looks like dekinai Dogen
I made a bet of learning German in one month till. My friends didn't believe me, so i managed to win a equipment for my monthly salary on my vacation, but itwas the worst vacation ever, because i was studying German up to 12 hours a day
12 hours a day with Nominativ/Akkusativ/Dativ/Genitiv sounds like quite the vacation 🤣
@@OneWordataTime1 we'll, my main focus was on vocabulary and being able to speak and understand. My grammar is still not the best. But I literally don't start learning grammar until I'm fluent in the language. For example I first started learning English grammar in university. By that time I have already been able to express any thoughts that could pop into my mind. With German I'm taking the same approach. I understand a lot, I'm decent at speaking it, but I literally would not tell you genders of the most nouns I know. Similarly I don't really know much grammar, I just copy the phrases of native speakers, and use the patterns just changing the words for those I need. Arabic is the only language where I actually put in effort to study grammar, because I feel like I can't make any progress in this language without learning grammar first. The words just flex too much.
When you were watching your youtube videos, did you have subtitles on ? What about podcasts - did you have the transcript?
I wonder how you improved ur listening skills
The trick to improve your listening skills is to start and then optimize as you see what you want to work on.
Early on I would use English but then switched to German. Now I usually don't watch with subtitles. I think early on a transcript for podcasts can be helpful but I'd rather listen to 5 hours of podcasts with no transcript as I'm going about my day rather than 30 minutes of intensive listening.
@@OneWordataTime1 you should make a video about this. It would be awesome
Thanks enjoyed your video, I’ll try and find a book explain for a 5 year old
If you're learning German, I included a link to the book on Amazon in the description of this video (there's a kindle version on the US Amazon site)
Your story is so motivating, thank you!
Can you please share how do you make Anki show the recall card only the next day? If I make a double sided card, Anki shows me all sides the same day.
Thanks!
Go into the settings for your vocab deck and scroll down to "Burying" and make sure "Bury New Siblings" is turned on. That should help with the double sided cards, though it also means for cloze cards that you can only see one of the "hidden" components per day. Let me know if that works!
@@OneWordataTime1 Thank you very much, it works perfectly! 😊
Hey man, I'm also learning german and other languages. What is the best configuration of anki to learn a language? Many people say FSRS, what are you using, since you learned 10k words, you have credibility
Sie sollen einmal ein Video auf Deutsch machen, das würde super. Selbst lerne ich Deutsch seit acht Monaten aber ich finde Karteikarten langweilig, und persönlich denke ich mich, dass es leichter ist, nur Videos anzuschauen und Büchern zu lesen. Denken Sie, dass das funktioniert könnte? Ich brauchte keinen Übersetzer, dieses Kommentar zu schreiben, aber ich hab noch ne lange Weg, fließend zu werden. Dankeschön für das Video, es war motivierend.
Das werde ich machen :P
@@OneWordataTime1 Was denken Sie über Lernen ohne die Karteikarten? Ich weiß, dass sie sehr hilfreich sein könnten, aber es fällt mir schwierig, damit mich zu engagieren.
Question: You would put the words on Google sheets then transfer the words to Anki (with photos)?
Nope I would just input it directly into Anki (from Google Translate, after checking that the definition made sense)
Do you plan to immerse yourself in German poetry and literature one day? For me, that's the real reason why someone should learn German - the indescribable joy of reading Rainer Maria Rilke or Thomas Mann ...
I want to reach a B2 but in English this year :')
I just bought 6 books in english to try an broaden my knowledge base in history and western culture, but then I got into german so haven't had time or the interest to read them lol. Then I started thinking maybe I should have gotten them all in german haha. I'm trying to memorise Rammstein lyrics, I've written them down in german then the english translation. I'm terrible at remembering lyrics in english let alone german, so it's a memorisation exercise, but I've already learned a few words from doing it. A bit like memorising short stories. So, i haven't really thought about it before, but is it possible to raise a child to learn two languages at the same time? Do they get confused whilst speaking and speak in two languages at once, or are they able to distinguish between them whilst speaking? Do you have a special method for your child to learn both or is it not needed?
No special method needed, just commitment from both parents to how you want to do it. There are many resources out there for what options there are. Like I mentioned, we're taking a one-parent-one-language approach where my wife speaks only German and I speak only English. Our son isn't even 1.5 yet so it's too early to say but so far he can understand us both!
@@OneWordataTime1 Ahh ok, that's really interesting. I think learning things when you are a kid is so helpful, learning seems to come so naturally to them, learning anything as an adult is a massive time commitment and struggle haha.
Great video, you are really so consistent, 2 years too much time , you did keep continue to do it becasue of feeling this describe here right? 7:36
Those moments were a huge part of it - curiosity is a trait that I really value. I also know that having my wife and son around kept reminders of what type of connection learning the language could enable.
thanks, i think we keep doing things because of our feelings @@OneWordataTime1
such an inspiration! Thank you for sharing! Btw if anyone is looking for some advanced German content I can only recommend getting into Walter Moers works. I really enjoyed listening to his zamonia audio books ^-^
I found flashcards to be almost useless. Literally the only way I managed to learn German was simply by input without translation.
Er hat in einem anderen Video gesagt (denke ich das Harry Potter Video), dass Sie Wörter durch Karteikarten lernen können oder einfach weiter lesen können. Also denke ich, dass Karteikarten nicht notwendig sind, aber sie waren für ihn nützlich.
Not flashcards -- but I use an interesting method where I write down word on an index card I don't know for every book I read (and keep the index card(s) with the book. Super useful when I go back to re-read the book.
@@quantus5875 do you find that everytime you revisit the book you pick up more vocabulary simply from context or do you always defer to the index card?
@@jasonjames6870 Both. I pick up vocabulary both ways. As I don't write down every word I don't know onto the index cards. I find as my vocabulary grows by re-reading a book I pick up many words that I didn't know by context -- so both index cards and context.
I think the author of this video's methods are really good. But they do assume you like and are diligent with flash cards, which many people are not. Key to language learning is motivation -- so the method described in this video (worked for the author) but will not work for everyone. Some less efficient methods, will probably work better from some learners because they won't squelch your motivation.
I think my index card method is less efficient than the author's method for the purposes of learning vocab -- but IMO it's more do-able by more people. It has definitely worked for me. With maybe a 4 to 4.5K vocab after one year -- IMO not too shabby. Not as good as the author's 10K words in 2 years (as vocab acquisition is nonlinear) -- but not shabby. What I may do after another year -- where I might be at maybe ~7K-ish is start using software like LingQ -- not sure.
@@quantus5875 I agree, language acquisition is a life long endeavour so whatever method people use it needs to be one they will actually do.
When you read those books did you do it in your mind or out loud?
98% just in my head, though I would sometimes read out loud to my wife for fun.
@@OneWordataTime1 Excelente, muchas gracias, señor. Seguiré su ejemplo.
What about the grammar part, how did you learn grammar?
Now that you know over 10K+ root words, how many new words on average do you come across per page when reading a novel now?
would you be willing to share your Anki vocabulary list with us?
Definitely: ankiweb.net/shared/info/1421625316
Hi, interesting video. I was puzzled about a couple of items of your approach.
4:23 I was wondering why you chose to learn your vocabulary in both directions (German to English and then English to German) when just learning receptively only (German to English) would have been sufficient for reading and saved you 50% of the effort? It seems a waste of time to learn vocabulary productively (English to German) unless you are going to write a lot. Speaking uses only a fraction of 10,000 words.
6:47 The other thing I was surprised at is that you looked up words individually with Google Translate when you can just photograph the page (or screen shot a page from a Kindle book) and GT will translate the page in its entirety. That way the context of the translation will be superior (but maybe not perfect). Also, GT keeps a history of translations that you could paste into Anki etc. as a separate workflow.
Anyway, can't fault you on your work rate and tenacity. Great stuff.
Going both directions for vocab gave me a better handle on the words and the English->German direction in particular was helpful for recall and speaking prep. From having learned Hebrew through input only, it could feel like pulling teeth trying to speak (using words that I could recognize in context immediately!) so I wanted to invest in laying the groundwork for speaking in German. In fact it worked so well in German that I'm now using Anki for 1000's of English->Hebrew cards, mostly for words I already know in context.
Google Translate can be such a crutch when immersing. For me, I tried to primarily go word by word so that the "aha" moment of understanding happened in my head after stringing words together, not from reading a translation. At the beginning, I would make cards using GT as I read / watched since after a lookup I could make the card in
@@OneWordataTime1 Right, so learning words in the English to German direction is a kind of speaking practice. That makes sense although you probably won't need anything like 10,000 words to speak, at least to begin with. I've also found speaking terrifically challenging. My main problem is being able to output the words fast enough. It feels like my brain is working in slow motion at times! I'm improving now but I guess it just takes loads of practice.
@@kevingeoghegan294 that's my experience 100% as well with speed. Speaking is also the most mentally-taxing thing for me to do and given my hesitation, I want to work on this alone, which means there are fewer places & times to practice compared to just opening a book, podcast or RUclips to get more input.
How do you get Anki to display the response first? E.g. show the English first.
One simple fix is to put English on the front and your target language on the back. If that doesn't work (aka you already have a lot of cards made), you may need to play around with the settings or create a new card type.
Ich habe eine Frage: you studied 10k words in Anki. Are those 10k words? Or are they 10k cards? The reason I ask is because you mentioned you did DE>EN and EN>DE, so that counts as one word, but two cards. Do you have 20k cards or maybe more in your Anki deck? (^_^) And congrats on your journey, it is great to see how German is part of your life now.
Very good question - it's 10,372 total words currently, with 20,744 cards in Anki for both directions. I should've made that clearer in the video!
Are you learning German?
@@OneWordataTime1 Wow, ich bin beeindruckt! Heutzutage lerne ich leider kein Deutsch, aber ich verstehe es und ich kann mich verständlich machen. Das ist gut genug für mich (^_^)
I use Anki and love it for learning Mandarin, but how do you make it work so you get German to English one day and then English to German the next day?
Go into settings and turn on "Bury new siblings." That way you can't learn 2 cards from the same note (aka from the same source card) on the same day. Just be careful that doesn't mess up anything you need to learn for classes (aka 1 cloze card that you'd want to learn everything on the same day)
Thank you, thank you so much !
Soon enough, I'll reach the niveau B2. I learned german a year with french, and many others... Now my french is B1 while my german is still A1, because I'm more focused on french. The ressources that you put is really helpful for beginners, like me.
I love learnin languages! Keep up the wonderful work!
Awesome video! You have motivated me to learn even more! (mandarin in this case) btw you have C1 level for sure. Not B2 😊
Awesome! And since I haven't taken the Goethe test yet for C1 I just wanted to be conservative with my self assessment
@@OneWordataTime1 Tests are only tests. They are not built in a proper way. Too much grammar and non sense tasks. I would never take any test cause it would only stress me or demotivate me. To me 5k words it's B2 and 10k = C1 🙃😁
Yes, maybe C1 if your grammar is good. Your vocab and reading are probably definitely C1.
I am a native German speaker and I don't know what a Zirkelschluss should be. Also Verwerfung... come on, when do you ever need this word? What the heck did you add to your Anki decks :D
Sooooo Beautiful......
Let’s resolve to put an end to the scourge of RUclipsrs holding their mic on camera in 2024.
Can u send me your anki list please
Definitely: ankiweb.net/shared/info/1421625316
You forgot option 3: get an android
Is that the Talmud behind you? Wonderful video!