Learning 30 German Words a Day

I studied my first 30 German words today, and it was tough but fun. German has this kh sound that I’m having trouble making. Words like ich (I) and vielleicht (maybe) are tough for me to say, but I know I’ll get better with practice. Other words are more fun to say, like auf keinen fall! (no way!) and schade! (what a pity!).

Like I alluded to in my last post, I’m approaching this language differently than I have with others I’ve tried learning. My main focus is on just speaking and listening. Reading will sorta come through with my flashcards, but I won’t be focused on that or writing until later. My main goal is to have a conversation with Mona in about six months, so my focus has to be simple and direct. I’m also limiting myself to about the most common 1,000 words I’ll need to know to hold a basic conversation with someone, and to just basic grammar. Nothing complex yet.

There’s a section in the Ultimate Language Learning Guide that I loved. To paraphrase: the one thing that matters with language is to express what I want to express and have the person I’m talking to understand what I’m expressing. If I just focus on that, then I think I’ll be okay.

I’m using Anki to make my flashcards and study them, and I’m using a simple spreadsheet to keep track of my words and their definitions. I’m also using this German to English dictionary by LEO for my audio files and Lonely Planet’s German phrasebook and dictionary for most of my German words and grammar.

There’s so much more work I need to do, but I think I’ve built a solid foundation to build off of, so all I have left to do is to keep working, so let’s go.