" Yves, give us your views on how to learn German! Yves "

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" Great question, Yves. How to Learn German I My contribution to the topic. 1. First, move to a German-speaking country. Like Switzerland. 2. Next, buy the biggest, most expensive E/G-G/E dictionary you can find. Anything less is simply a waste of both money and time; with the cheaper ones, the word you''ll be looking for often won''t be in there. Mine is a Collins 3rd edition, 1997. $55 bucks at Barnes and Noble. 2.5 Expectations: It''s going to be a long haul. Forget about ever speaking like a native, it''s too late for that. But you should be able to attain a very good listening and reading ability in about 1 year. 3. Forget grammar. Save that stuff for later, when you''re looking for refinements. Otherwise you might lose your enthusiasm right at the beginning. (Actually, I''ve never come back for this step; probably never will at this point). 4. Start reading one of the free daily papers that are available everywhere (in my area ZH: Zürich Express, 20 Min, Metropol). The articles are short, interesting, and will begin to generate some context for you for understanding the country. 5. Get a composition notebook (like schoolkids use), start filling it up with words from your reading. Visualize each page as having 3 columns: Nouns, Adj&Adv, Verbs. When a column fills up, start the next page (not worrying about unfinished columns). You''ll start seeing where your weaknesses are. (After 2 years, my Nouns column still always fills up first). Carry the notebook around everywhere & review each day''s catch as often as you can. I find the notebook stuffs perfectly in the back of my pants, under my shirt, halfway in and halfway out. No one knows it''s there. I''m never stuck anywhere without anything to do. I''m not a very formal guy. 6. After a couple months with the freebies, you''re ready for Tages Anzeiger. They''ll give you a 2 month trial subscription for 25 francs (it comes in the a.m. 6 days per week). When that runs out, sign up for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung with one of the ad inserts that fall out of the Tagi. Same deal, 25 francs. Milk this ""trial"" stuff for another rotation or two. When you''re ready to start feeling dishonest about it all, the Tagi will call you up for a trial 6 month subscription for 100 francs. (They do cold calls to former subscribers for this about once per quarter). 7. Well, that''s it. I said it would take a year. When that''s up, you''ll be ready for anything printed in German. It still won''t be quite as easy as reading English--you know what Mark Twain said about German--but your satisfaction gained at overcoming such an obstacle and the smug knowledge that you can negotiate any type of German print are the fuel for maximizing your understanding of this place. 8. Last step: go back to the Tagi, and stay loyal to that one. The intellectuals look down on it, sure, ''cuz of all those pretty colors and graphs, but it''s more suitable for the Auslander. Remember what I said about context? I think the Preis-Leistungs Verhältnis is richer for the Auslander with the Tagi than with the NZZ, because it deals more with the factoids of daily living than the other. Kind of like how you instinctively know USA Today is better for foreigners trying to understand the US than The New York Times is. Good luck in your efforts. Be diligent, else it will all just take longer. Yves (trying to figure out what to do with this notebook stuck in his pants, full of words he''s forgotten) "

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" Yves, Great work and interesting comments. In regards to points: 1) If you are trying to acquire good High German, then Switzerland is not the place to go. It has a very unusual form of German which quite rightly is called Swiss German. They can be understood by people from other German Countries, but only just. Most Swiss who are raised and schooled here, usually revert to High German to make themselves understood. They have great difficulty with this and their neighbours know them as being slow talkers and make fun of them as farmers or Heidi''s. Language schools here teach High German first and then a very small course in Swiss German (large variations for each Kanton). It is quite common to leave Switzerland speaking High German, but not Swiss German. 2) One big dictinary is great but supplemented with one smaller for travel is even better. Read anything and everything as you travel and translate as you go. 2.5) Sounding like a native is natural ability and requires voice training with a good ear (sort of like a musician). Can be achieved, but lots of practice. General other comments. Most of the written language used in Switzerland is High German. They throw in a little dialect for variety, but not really used. You can find dialect books, but they are very rare. Therefore reading and writting here is quite easy. Speaking is something else. I found the biggest learning problem I had was to try seperating Swiss German and High German in my mind. This doubled the work. After 18 months I was barely coping with tourist German. We then went to Austria and I watched my Swiss German daughter cope with the hard Austrian High German variant. She had trouble, but coped. Once I removed this artificial barrier and accepted an even poorer German for a time (High mixed with Swiss), I developed more rapidly and now can communicate on phones, etc with minimal problems. I now throw some Swiss German in with my High German for cultural variety and to put my hosts at ease (they find it difficult to communicate fully in High German and will even switch to English to avoid this; sort of like the French who once you try speakign French and then murder their language, will switch to English only to stop the pain; otherwise they ignore you - not quite true, but certainly in Paris....). Allan "

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