Nine days ago I began studying German. As I engage in Johannine scholarship I have become very aware of the breadth of study that has taken place in German (and to a lesser extent in French, perhaps). Since my thesis centres around John’s Gospel, I think it worthwhile to be able to engage with the German and French works alongside the English language works on John. This has provided the immediate push to study German but I’ve desired to do so for some time.

I’ve studied a lot of languages to varying degrees: 3 “dead” ones (Classical Latin, Hellenistic Greek, Classical Hebrew) and around 6 living ones (Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Russian, Swahili, and now I’ve started German). Now, keep in mind I said “to varying degrees”! That’s an important qualifier. My Greek is excellent and my Hebrew is slowly coming along but I remember very little Spanish, Swahili, and Ukrainian and I’m a poor communicator in French and Russian. Thankfully I can use some reading knowledge of Russian for work on verbal aspect and reading French will also be important for my academic work.

I’ve learned a thing or two as I’ve been studying languages of various sorts for the last 9 or so years. And I’m trying to put that to work in my approach to German this time. I want to succeed. For starters, it should come as no surprise that my fastest language learning came from being around people that spoke the language. So, Swahili came along at a fast rate in the six weeks I spent in Tanzania and Russian, which I had been studying for a bit before, was moving quickly while trying to interact with Russian speaking Ukrainians over 10 days.

But, it’s a given that I’m not, at this time, going to be in a properly immersive environment for German. And, my end goal is first and foremost to be able to read academic literature in German anyway.

At the same time, I have not decided to start German with a reading approach. I have done that with other languages and a lot of my Russian study was reading-based. I was rather ill-prepared to converse beyond a basic ability in Russian when I arrived in Ukraine. And I’ve decided that since I’m going to study German, I would like to benefit from learning from real-life conversations, movies, radio, etc. and be able to hold a conversation.

So, this time I’m starting with the oral component. I’m speaking and listening. And since the oral component is the primary component of language (reading isn’t), I’m going to start this way and add reading after a bit of time. I think it is easier to add reading to a foundation of oral understanding than to move from reading to oral comprehension.

I’m hoping this will encourage a few things:

1) My pronunciation will get off on the right foot and I’ll work on sounding somewhat native.

2) Vocabulary acquisition should move at a faster pace as I listen to native speakers.

3) I should be able to start making sense of native German conversations which will then help me grow.

4) Once I do begin studying grammar formally and reading text, I should have laid a good foundation with a good feel for the language.

I’ve decided to begin with Pimsleur. I was impressed four years ago when I borrowed the German Quick and Simple audio package (8 lessons) from my library and I felt I learned those 8 lessons very well. For whatever reason I didn’t buy the others and continue it.

I’ve especially decided not to go with Rosetta Stone. I went through the first 3 levels in Russian a few years ago, and while it helped my pronunciation greatly, I didn’t come away knowing nearly as much as I thought I should have given the price of the package and time I spent on them.

I’ve also looked at a whole host of other programs and I may move to them after Pimsleur but Pimsleur seemed the best for me to start with since I don’t have a lot of time each day for another language (I’m already engaged in lots of Greek and Hebrew work and want to further develop my French) and it offers a strictly oral component that is graduated for 100 levels (3 phases with 30 units each + 1 phase with 10 units). I’ve looked at a number of critiques of Pimsleur. I’m willing to push through the valid critiques and give it my own go.

So far so good. I feel I’ve made incredible progress in these nine days and I’m going to update again as I go. Maybe things will change. But maybe, just maybe I’ll progress faster than I have with any other language.

How have you been successful at learning another language?