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- Finished the German Tree
Finished the German Tree
. . . in two weeks. Of course, I wasn't starting from scratch, I studied German in college - but that was over 50 years ago, so I suppose it is still quite an accomplishment. And there have been changes to the German language over those 50+ years - particularly in computer-related terminology - but then, I worked as a computer programmer for about 25 years, so that wasn't a real challenge. The biggest challenge, I think, was my brain-to-finger coordination. More than once, I was thinking the right answer and wrote something quite different - as well as a lot of just plain old typos.
Well, now I'm going to go over it again - keeping it refreshed, I'll go through every lesson once more, then a second time in refresh mode, as I did with both Italian trees. And then, time to start on the reverse tree - English from German.
47 Comments
Congratulations! Keep practicing German though even after you've gone through the tree three more times. With such good expierience in German I recromend your next target should be Dutch. If you managed to get through German, Dutch will be really easy, for example the German sentence "Ich bin in mein haus" is "Ik ben in mijn huis" in Dutch (I am in my house). Most native German speakers can read what Dutch people write. However judging by your expierence with Italian I would also recromend you go for another Romance Language. Believe it or not Italian shares many words and aspects with the others, especially French and Spanish. For example the words for "Yes" and "No" are the same in both Italian and Spanish, "Sí" and "No", however the accent for italians "Sí" faces left not right. The words for "Yes" and "No" in French are "Oui" and "Non". However French also uses the word "l'" before vowels with consenents, like in Italian "l'acque" and in French "l'eau" (the water in English). You can also go for Portuguese which is actually spoken by a lot more people than French but less than Spanish, however it doesn't share as much in common with Italian than Spanish and French do, same with Romanian when it comes out. But keep practicing German and Italian! Don't let those meters go to low, and once again congrats.
I'm not particularly interested in learning other languages. I first got interested in Italian and a relative pointed me to duolingo - so, since I already had studied German, I thought this might be a good opportunity to "brush up." If I did go for a third language, I suspect it might be Portuguese, as I have a brother-in-law of Portuguese background. Although I never see him any more.
If I were ambitious, I might consider Greek; I learned a little of it when my sister was taking it in Bible School, but I never got into it afterwards. And of course, in Bible School, she was learning New Testament Greek. Her husband - the Portuguese man - is fluent in at least 7 languages, one of which, is, I believe, NT Greek. I never did learn what all of them were.
Yeah, knowing two second languages can be enough. But if you want to know a fourth go ahead! Portuguese is the 6th most spoken language in the world, and is spoken in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia (its the only Romance language that is an official language in an Asian country). And if you want to know Greek, try it, its not out yet but it will be. Stop when you feel like your brother-and-law will be impressed with you ;)
Hi Susanna35, I think he was directing his comment at me.
Khan Academy is self-study site, primarily for math, but it covers many other subjects as well (science, art, medicine, etc ... ). It has very good content, but the game mechanic is a bit of a mess. It doesn't do languages - so is complimentary to a site like his one.
Great! There are very few people, who really know this stuff today.
SAP stands for "Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing" and is a huge European software company founded in 1972 which implements business logic for companies using building blocks of software and a lot of software consultants.
Susanna, you must have a phenomenal memory and mental capacity! I, too, studied German in college - 40 some years ago. I found Duolingo Feb. 2014 and began the tree. I only finished a few months ago - more than a year later. I do a few minutes every day to keep the tree golden. I find that the words I learned in my twenties are still there, while the ones I am trying to learn now don't stick very well. :)