Romancing the Germanic

I love languages, real and fictional. I find it fascinating to see how different words and sentence structures can be between languages. I also loved the twists and surprises a language can carry in terms of similarities as well. Modern day English is a stew of many different languages.

When I was in grade 6, I decided to go into french-immersion. I recognized it was a skill that would be good to have in the future, for occupational and traveling opportunities. I stayed with the french immersion program till I graduated highschool and enjoyed it thoroughly. There were some challenges to overcome, but I was able to complete them with ease. 

When I came to the UofR, I discovered they offered Latin and Greek courses. I took the Latin course because latin is the root of the 5 romantic languages (french, italian, spanish, portuguese and romanian). If I knew some of the Latin vocabulary and how it was structured, I could use it as a baseline for learning other romantic languages in the future. I completed the course with ease, thanks to my French immersion background. 

One of my dreams I’d like to fulfill one day is to travel Europe. I’d like to visit countries like England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I’d include more countries, but it’d be pretty expensive for one trip. I’d love to spend a week or so in each country to see the history, to eat unique dishes, and to experience the culture. I believe I have enough French/Latin  to do moderately well for half of the countries I’ve listed. The other half is another story because their languages are not based on romantic languages, but rather the germanic languages. The Germanic languages are another branch on the tree of languages with its own vocabulary, verbs and sentence structure that generally have no relation with the Romantic languages. 

I believe learning German will prove to be a bit of a challenge considering I don’t know a lot about it. I know a couple of words and some of their pronunciations because of movies and world war 2 documentaries. I have two advantages going into this learning project. One is that I have a general idea as to how languages work and where to begin, thanks in part to learning French and Latin. The other advantage going into this is my knowledge of English. According to the tree of languages, the English language is a branch off of West Germanic, the same branch as the modern German language.

For the first week, I wanted to learn some basic verbs (to be and to have), adjectives (hot, cold, loud, quiet, beautiful, etc…) and nouns (family and food). I decided I would try Duolingo, as it is one of the more popular apps to learn a new language and I know some friends who use it. After using Duolingo for a week, my conclusion for now is that it is an alright app for beginners.

I was able to get through 3 units in the Rookie section. I think it is a good tool to practice new vocabulary.  I’ve been able to go through some of the units fairly quickly because of the combination of pattern recognition and repetitive practice. The sentence structure portion has been fairly simple, which is understandable given what level I’m starting from. However, I’m disappointed the app has only had me learn partial conjugations for 2 verbs so far – to be and to come. I was expecting to know the full conjugations for those verbs and learn the verbs ‘to have’ and ‘to do’. 

Duolingo is one of the free mobile apps to learn a language, but it is also plagued with 30 second long ads after each lesson. The other drawback is that you have a limited amount of hearts/attempts to complete the lessons. If you run out of hearts, you can gain one every 5 hours. This isn’t a great way to learn a language as it punishes you for making mistakes, which is inevitable when learning something new. By the time you get back into the lesson, you may have forgotten what your mistake was, and then get punished again. Duolingo provides opportunities to regain hearts by practicing, spending diamonds (money) or subscribing to their Super plan. I was tempted to try their Super plan to see how much more efficient the course is. However, I recently tried the PC version of Duolingo and because I have an ad blocker on, I don’t see those pesky ads! The heart system is still lingering in the background, so I have to be careful. 

For the next 3 weeks, I want to expand my knowledge in 3 areas. Each week will focus on a different verb tense (present, future and past). I want to continue growing my vocabulary and will focus on numbers, colors, emotions, vehicles and more. Finally, I want to understand how to properly compose a sentence or question. This last point may seem odd, considering that Duolingo content seems to imply an English-like sentence structure (from an English speaker’s perspective…technically it’s the other way around). However, the French language places their adjectives and adverbs a bit different from English. With Latin, there is an order to follow where to put nouns, adjectives, adverbs first and verbs at the end of a basic sentence. 

I may be a bit ambitious with what I’m wanting to do, but I hope for the best!