Its simple actually. When ever one must converse in German just reply to any statement “Das ist der Hammer”.
2 Likes
It’s often repeated idea, but the stress here is on active listening. My mind is happy catching some words and building some ideas, not really having time to register the grammar points.
I don’t remember where, but I discovered an excellent idea how to build up your language skills by listening. Watch a few minutes material, then try to write (in German) all what you can about it, what has happened, what was being said, etc. Then watch again and try to improve your report. This activates your conscious attention and memory to process the information, which is essential for learning.
1 Like
When I was learning English, everyone would listen to movies, TV shows, games, etc. and that really helps to catch how people talk and have ready formed structures in your mind to be used often.
My impression comparing myself to friends that appeared to be less fluent or at least less confident, was that me spending a significant amount of time on forums and online chats during those years, really allowed me to use the language and try to convey messages, and that practice was invaluable.
Now with German, I see that my comprehension is getting somewhat better, especially given the little effort I put into them, but when I try to use them I butcher stuff all the time, and in writing I always revert to translation tools to help me. You really need to use it and take the feedback to get better at it.
That AI back and forth seemed quite useful, what are you using? ChatGPT, Gemini, something else?
That sounds like a method that would work, because you’re engaging more actively.
That was Gemini.
eben or genau works also
Actually there are gender and plural rules, most of them suffix based, which clarify about eighty percent, so you would just need to learn twenty percent by heart 
I can send you a PDF if you want 
Er fährt mit seinem neuen Auto zum Bahnhof.
I’m sorry to tell you that there is the rule that modal complement (in what manner) comes before the local complement.
This is the TeKaMoLo rule: temporal, kausal, modal, lokal. These complements come in this order. Any other order sounds weird in a German ear.
1 Like
Ah yes, this rule was mentioned, but I forgot about it.
English also has an ordering rule for adjectives:
- Opinion (nice, beautiful, ugly)
- Size (big, small, tiny)
- Age (old, young, new)
- Shape (round, square, flat)
- Color (red, blue, green)
- Origin (Italian, German, Chinese)
- Material (wooden, silk, leather)
- Purpose/Qualifier (sleeping [bag], racing [car], wedding [dress])
e.g.
- a lovely small old round green French wooden music box
- an ugly huge new square brown American steel office building
You can say “a green big apple” but it sounds strange instead of “a big green apple”.
3 Likes
So you only learnt Swiss German then?
s’Auto would do here in Switzerland.
That is quiet impressive actually, I’m pleasantly surprised. It even includes praising the student to keep them eager 
Seriously, this program is well done and as a student one doesn’t have to worry about impatience if a mistake is repeated “too” often.
Were you using chatgpt?
The point is not to actively listen (of course that is important too). Have your radio/tv/what ever run in the back ground in German. You will get used to the sound, you will perk up at certain words after a while, you will start understanding it … not understanding how the hell you did 
Err no, did I say that? I even did German at school from 13-16yo, but the fact that they tried to get us to recite all the definite articles/endings before even explaining to us what a ‘case’ was (up until that year all students would have done two years of Latin by then, the German curriculum had not been modified to reflect the change) had really badly affected my ability or desire to learn them properly.
The point was that I had avoided even trying to speak in German, knowing that I would get it wrong so much, but seeing it written down that way made me realise that it really did not matter at all. Gave me confidence to try.
Similarly with pronunciation, not really a problem area for me, but for others, it doesn’t really matter how badly you mispronounce it, there’s bound to be at least one village somewhere in Switzerland where that’s the ‘correct’ way to say it.
1 Like
That’s another thing, training your ears to a variety of accents and grammar.
I’m yet on the beginners level where I have to concentrate on listening German, otherwise I don’t catch any sense nor grammar due to the peculiar word order. I hope one day it’ll became natural so my brain would be able to follow the information subconsciously.
Reminds me of a day I told an English friend ‘German is dead easy, every letter is pronounced exactly as it is’ and he looked at me and said ‘no they aren’t’. All a matter of perspective, innit.
What I meant to say is at the beginning you should forget this bit
when running any German program in the back ground. The point is exactly NOT to stress yourself, just let it drizzle into your ear - and your subconscious - while you do something completely different.
With a new language I always find the hardest part is breaking people’s speech into individual words that I understand.
At first it is just a continous stream
1 Like
That sounds exactly like many German nouns:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
5 Likes
you should have linked it to make your point very clear.
And that indeed is very German, not just the word also it’s meaning/the attitude behind it.
edit: I just noticed, the abbreviation they use for it - RkReÜAÜG - is even better. Go on, break your tongue on it.
1 Like
I’m not that lost 
beef-labeling-supervision-task-übertragung-law
As an aside, there’s a quite significant link between language and culture, as I came across, which I believe to be tightly inked to word order. Try it out, if you’ve never come across it before.
In German-speaking culture it is considered very rude to interrupt. I came across this 20=odd years ago, in business meetings, all of which were conducted in English, with all attendees used to working in English >95% of the time. We, Brits and Yanks, are so used to interrupting that we do it all the time, when we know exactly what the rest of the sentence is going to be, we can predict it with a high level of accuracy, hence you can break in and make the next point, whether in agreement or not, whenever it’s clear what’s being said.
The Germans though, no. If you interrupted them, would just wait for you to finish your interruption, then carry on with what they were saying as if you had not made it.
OK, so there are varying degrees of acceptability in different cultures, with Brits and Americans doing it quite a lot even in formal contexts, but it became evident to me that the German attitude to it was almost certainly related to their word order, with long sentences being unclear in their meaning often until the final verb, and/or a positive or negative sense. So an interruption in German is not only rude, it’s also not allowing the previous speaker to fully make their point. And conversely they’re used to having to wait for someone to finish before they can formulate their response.
2 Likes
what about the Übertragung?
So much shorter in English, one could think they got such a law as well:
Beef Labeling Monitoring Task Transfer Act
1 Like
I had to look for the meaning of übertragung online. But, at least I saw the individual words
1 Like