Trying to learn German makes me empathise with English-as-Second-Language learners.
@digital_carver You might have heard of this:
It's a free online course that focuses on teaching someone "how to #learn."
I took it a while ago. Would I say it was helpful? Sort of. The "exercise helps learning" and "the brain has a *diffuse* thinking mode and a *focused* thinking mode" were the two things I remember best from it.
#Learning, to me, is kind of like a magic black box. I learn the things that I learn and I don't know why. There are things I find incredibly tedious and uninteresting that are a lot harder to learn.
The course explains various scientific studies about learning and provides strategies for overcoming common obstacles.
It's a long course and you need to sign up for Coursera to do it.
Name:
"Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects"
URL:
www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
@bespectacled239
That course has been on my back burner for so long, I really need to give myself a kick in the ass and do it. I've been subscribed to their newsletter, and it's one of the few that consistently has good quality content.
I can related to the magic black box thing. Even within things I find interesting, I realized recently, the exact mode of learning makes a big difference. I was trying to learn #JuliaLang better through a video course, and finding it so unappealing I started to doubt my learning ability. Then started a course on cryptocurrency, and that was pleasant and appealing. I realized my brain just doesn't want to learn programming languages this way - it wants to start up an editor and look up documentation and actually start *doing* stuff.
If you're interested in stuff related to #learning , I'd also recommend Scott Young's blog https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/the-best-articles-on-learning/ in case you haven't come across it.
@digital_carver
Ha ... I actually found English pretty easy to learn, at least to the point where you can start saying meaningful things.
The grammar is simpler than in any other language I know about, most word forms are the same. The complexity comes later, with weird expressions and the huuge vocabulay. But having German as native and Latin as (kinda) second language, the words weren't too hard, and pop culture helps with pronounciation. Only spelling makes no sense, but
@digital_carver
... I still learned it, thanks to Terry Pratchett, and Tolkien, and Frank Herbert, ....and the internet, of course.
Learning German, I guess it's more difficult on some of those levels. One helpful thing: after learning the different word forms, even more complicated sentences become easier to disentangle because it's usually clear what's the subject and what's the object, just from the article and ending.
Oh, and Dutch is a piece of cake afterwards :)
I look at all the prepositions and idioms that make no sense and think “how the frick does anybody learn all that”. And then I look at English through those eyes and realize it’s even more weird and difficult over here, I was just lucky enough to imbibe it when I still had the “language super-absorption” ability of childhood.