German10

I spent some time with a relative who came home from Japan. She's considerably older than I am but we are both in our second year of college. She said that Japan has six years of High School, just like Deutschland and the likes I thought. Then I've read somewhere that Japan purposely revamped their education system to mimic that of Deutschland und Frankreich in order to become more globally competitive.

Sie spricht vier Sprachen. Sie kann Englisch, Japanisch, Filipino, und ein bisschen Französisch. Ja, war ich slightly impressed, I must say.

She came to Japan when she was a second year HS student here in the Philippines. It was a complete change of environment obviously. She went from long, checkered, ankle-low school skirts to short, checkered, japanese anime school skirts.

I asked her how long it took before she could speak like an anime and she said it took her a little over two months. Zwei Monaten! I thought it was blasphemy! I've been studying languages for a year now and I could not even construct a sentence without having a brain aneurysm.

It darted at the back of my mind that maybe she was just showing off.

Aber ja, if you think of it, it is really plausible. You would have no choice but to learn the language or be swept aside into social redundancy. My friend said that she became more fluent in Spanisch after spending drei Wochen or so in Spanien.

Zwei things are at work here: the life-threatening urgency of learning the language and the state of being surrounded by it 24/7.

When I look at my situation, I see that these zwei factors are barely seen even with a magnifying glass. The life-threatening urgency only throbs when it senses exams coming and the state of being surrounded by it 24/7 has been reduced to a mere 1 ½ /4. So I have resolved to intensify plan language-learning, send in more troops and explosives.

I’ve always thought that the key to learning a language was immersing yourself into it. So whenever I have the chance, I listen to French and German radio, I read articles on the net, I watch interviews of my crushes talking in French or German. So now, I vow to do only these things forevermore.

Aber nein, I also think that one of the most important factors in language learning is having fun and enjoyment as your driving forces. Sometimes, this acts like a full moon for me, it comes and it vanishes. Maybe because sometimes it comes across as another nagging academic responsibility I have to shoulder. So there, the inspiration to learn, I believe it is there I just have to build on it more.

Lately It’s been a normal hobby for me to listen to French and German Radio, but more on the French Radio(the DJ is funnier). I’ve changed my FB account to German. I’ve changed my Google settings to display searches in French and German so when I want to read an article I have to read it in the language. No cheating! Now I just Yahoo for my English searches. Hard at first but through daily immersion, possible.