Learning German: 10 pieces of advice you can safely ignore
#1. You can learn be fluent in German in 3 months
If you, like me, follow the works of the productivity gurus on the internet you might be under the impression, as I once was, that you can learn a language in as little as three months. With this in mind, I moved to Germany full of pep, threw myself headlong into German classes and fully believed that within a year I would be fluent. Three years later I can hold a conversation but am far from fluent. But in this time, I’ve learned a few things about learning German.
The first thing you have to realise is that English speakers have a very different definition of ‘speaking a language’ to the rest of the world. When I first came to Munich I went to a bar with a friend of mine who had been living here for a few years. I looked on in wonder as he ordered our meals in German. After the lengthy exchange with the waiter, I said to him, “wow, you are fluent!” I didn’t, of course, understand the exchange with the waiter, couldn’t have known how he had absolutely destroyed the language with his horrible accent, confusing grammar and childish vocabulary. The waiter had been gracious and patient and so, despite the train wreck, they had got there in the end, but to me, it seemed like nothing short of magic.
It wasn’t until a year or two later that it hit me, it was a magic trick. I understood how people like Tim Ferriss and Benny the Irish Polyglot had fooled so many people, myself included, into thinking 3 months was possible. It’s easy to fool a native English speaker into thinking you are fluent because they don’t know what fluent means. To English speakers, you either speak a language, or you don’t. English speakers don’t realise that there is a vast wasteland filled with landscapes coloured in a thousand shades of grey that one must traverse in order to go from zero to fluent.
Most Germans under the age of 30 speak English at a level that is hard to argue is anything but fluent. However, when they travel to a native English country, most inevitably have trouble understanding the locals. Slang sprinkles itself over every exchange, strong accents spike the vowels causing one word to sound like another and the sheer speed of native speech leaves no room for their burned out aural loop to catch up, leaving them with a headache and a desperate craving for some soothing lines from Tatort. This is the experience of someone who has learned English, mostly at school for 15–20 years. Most need a good year before their ear fully tunes into these localisations. Now, if it takes a fluent speaker a year to be fully comfortable in their new land, how long will it take for you, the person who yesterday learned to say ‘ja’ and ‘nein’, to be able to live day to day in Germany? Three months? You’re dreaming.
There is no minimum effective dose (what is 80% of ‘speaking German’?), no shortcut and no silver bullet when it comes to learning a language. There are a million apps, books, courses, techniques, websites, tutors, meet ups, conferences, podcasts and gurus out there, some work for me but won’t work for you, some work when you’re a beginner but not when you are intermediate and others work when you are an at the intermediate level but not as a beginner, some work when you have a job and have to work full time, others only work when you have all day every day to focus on learning. The one thing that they all have in common is that they all take time, discipline, intelligence and commitment. You cannot give up, you have to stick to whatever you are doing, be aware enough to realise when something’s not working, then move to a different method. You have to continue doing this for a really really long time and that my friends, is really really hard.
Think hard about your reasons for learning a language. If you want to reach fluency, understand that you are making a commitment of at least a few years, if not the rest of your life.
If you considered it purely from a effort vs reward perspective, it makes next to no sense. You may have some moments of admiration from English speaking friends, or the odd compliment from a German on your progress (if you are lucky)… but the real reward is just being able to do everyday things in a different country: read the fire escape plan, understand the train ticket machine, read a magazine, talk to an old person about the weather, read the paper, have a conversation with someone about politics, ask for directions, understand why someone is angry with you, be able to get angry back, write a story, give a speech, write a love letter, watch a movie without subtitles, read a contract, attend a weekend course, teach a weekend course. This is the real test of fluency and it’s simply not possible in 3 months. Sorry folks.
