Does anyone know how to go about fixing this permanently? Telling people to use a certain browser and set their text encoding to a particular setting isn’t exactly a “fix” in my book.

A snippet from their about page:

Welcome to Grimm Grammar, an irreverent revival and shameless exploitation of 19th-century Grimm Fairy Tales for honorable pedagogical purposes.  Fortunately for you, Dear Reader, thirty-six characters from these fairy tales have returned to 21st century Germany (their precise location cannot be revealed for privacy reasons) to model all things grammatical … anything the most eager language learner may wish to know about the German language.

…

This online grammar reference was created for lower-division language courses at the University of Texas, but any beginning or intermediate learner of German may use it completely free of charge, as long as he or she is willing to take a trip to the imaginary world of Grimm Grammar … the characters of which are grumpy and gorgeous, scary and smarmy, witty and wicked!

If you’re getting started in German, check it out; you could probably skip the introductory German grammar book, and instead just wait until you need a copy Hammer’s.

The Dutch with Ease course, unlike the other courses, actually has very detailed instructions:

1. Listen to the text with the book closed. It does not matter if you do not understand what is said. You will gain a general impression of the sounds, hearing the pronunciation without being influenced by the spelling.

2. Listen to the recording a second time while looking at the English translation.

3. Read the Dutch text aloud (with the aid of the phonetic transcription if necessary). Be sure you understand the meaning of each sentence, comparing it with the translation as required.

4. Now read the Dutch text again, but this time without looking at the translation.

5. Listen to the recording twice, once while looking at the English translation, and once while looking at the Dutch text.

6. Listen to the recording again with the book closed. At this point you should understand what is being said.

7. Listen to the recording once more. Stop the machine after each sentence, and try to repeat it aloud.

8. Carefully read the comments several times. Examine the Dutch sentences being explained. These notes are very important.

9. Read the exercises. Repeat each sentence several times. The exercises review material from the current lesson and from preceding lessons. If you have forgotten certain words, consult the English translation.

10. Examine the examples of sentence structure. They show how words and phrases are combined in Dutch, which is not always the same as in English.

Of course, the Assimil courses can be used in many ways – adding the sentences and translations to a flashcard program, shadowing, writing out the lessons, etc. – but it’s nice to see detailed instructions as to how Assimil thinks their courses should be used.

When I first made Language Geek, it was supposed to be part language learning journal, part language learning tips. But the journal part never really materialized, partially because I wasn’t sure if people had any great desire to read about my daily “stuff” – a lot of it is fairly mundane. I love reading about others’ language learning exploits, even if it’s about them learning a dozen new words, but perhaps I’m a little strange.

To avoid driving off what readers I have here, I made Language Diary (because Language Journal was, alas, taken at wordpress.com). It will, barring any catastrophes, keep the same format it has right now: one post per day, outlining what I did, along with some remarks about things that I found of particular interest.

What do you all think of merging the two? Totally against it? Think it would be fine? If they were merged, I would be able to provide separate feeds (i.e., a feed with and without the daily diary thing). I’ve made a poll here, but feel free to leave comments about the idea as well.

Fluent in 12 weeks!

I underestimated, by far, the amount of time and effort required to learn a language. The first language course I ever bought was Teach Yourself Gaelic, when I was (I believe) 16. I remember calling up my nephew and asking him excitedly if he wanted to learn Gaelic with me. His response was more or less, “Um, what? No thanks…”

Anyway, I naively thought that with such a course, why, I would be fluent in 3 or 4 months. At the time, if I remember correctly, I thought that all one had to do was learn the equivalent words, and then you were golden. Word order, grammar intricacies, different ways of expressing the same thing… none of these were an issue in my young, ignorant mind. Oh, how quickly this fantasy was torn down. (As an aside, being wholly ignorant of how to approach a foreign language, Gaelic bested me rather quickly. I still have the book for “later”, though.)

Listening? Later.

When I first started tackling German, I went months without really listening to anything in the language. I had the curious notion that if I simply became competent with the written language through reading and writing, I would be able to magically start listening and understanding anything that came my way. This was obviously a very bad idea. Because of doing that, I’ve struggled for a long time to get my listening skills caught up with my reading ability. Knowing the words and being able to process them quickly are quite different things.

Whenever I start a new language now, I more or less require that I find some sort of audio with transcripts, whether it’s online news, in a course, or an audiobook.

No native content yet

For a long time, I had the mindset that before I could approach any native materials, I had to have done so much formal learning. I had to be ready, in other words, before really diving in. I had to prepare by finishing this course, and that course, and studying this grammar book and doing these exercises.

I’ve come to see that this is just throwing up fake barriers for oneself, barriers which, if you were to stick to them, you would never touch native materials, because you’re never really ready. Courses are great, as are grammars, and I use both a lot. But at some point, you have to take off the training wheels, at least some of the time (and eventually all the time). I, at least, found it very easy to slip into a pattern of just sticking to the courses – Assimil, grammar exercises, vocabulary books – and never making use of other things. This was a very bad mistake. It was also rather disheartening because, when I did turn to native materials, I quickly saw that I had simply chipped a bit off the top of the iceberg. Better to recognize that fact earlier and continue chipping away, rather than staying on your bubble and thinking you know more than you really do.

What are some blunders you have made?

I’m certainly not arguing against listening to your target language, but I’m not overly confident that one learns a great deal when listening in this fashion. That is to say, sure, hearing something I already know reinforces it. But all of the words and structures I don’t know tend to just fly by me, lost. If it’s something new, whether a word or a grammatical structure, hearing it a dozen times isn’t going to teach me the meaning of it; on listen #12, it’s going to be a big question mark for me, just as it was on listen #1. I suppose one could argue that you could write down unknown things, but that’s going to involve a lot of rewinding, and considering that there’s practically infinite written material for the major languages, it makes more sense to just learn new words from reading.

Obviously, having a transcript of what you’re listening to alleviates this problem; listen to the item in question, then read the transcript and look up unknown words (or vice versa). Then proceed to listening to it until you’re bored of it.

I stopped using it because it simply wasn’t much fun to review. I’m coming around to Khatzmuto’s idea of only entering sentences into your SRS program. I’ve said before that I don’t think you need context for many words, usually nouns, and I still believe this. But I also know that, efficient or not, going through two or three hundred repetitions of mostly single word cards (das Haus – house, die Blume – flower) can become dreadfully boring. So, I’ve started a new German deck in which I’m going to only enter sentences. Any sentences that were in the old deck are (slowly) being moved over.

I’m also going to follow Steve Kaufman’s advice to just let the words overflow. I mentioned before that I’m pretty bad about feeling compelled to “catch” every single unknown word I come across, and I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s just not feasible. The words I really need to know, I’ll run into over and over. With that in mind, I’m giving myself “permission” to run across an unknown word, look it up to understand what I’m reading, and forget it.