Wie lange bis Film verstehen oder einfache Roman lesen?

I’m sorry my German isn’t yet good enough to post a question in … but I’m wondering how long people think it takes on average to understand a German movie and to read a novel (non-literary but something at the level of say a krimi or general contemporary fiction)? I’m guessing they could be quite different timelines.

I’ve been using LingQ for about 2 weeks and am doing a beginner 2 course which feels the right level for me (I didn’t start as a complete beginner). I know I’m still a long way off but it would be good to have a timeframe to work towards… Thanks.

I am learning English, and I am a Little older, but for me it lasted Long and I do not understand everything correctly.
I think, there is no timeframe, it depends of the learner!
Try it, again and again. Suddenly you get the feeling, it will be better and better.

What I like to do is, to read English book on my kindle. There, I have a dictionary, too, and I I am unsure for the word, I can mark it and see what it is.

But it is every time good to listen to the German language as often as possible, so you can get the Sound in your brain. It doesn’t depend on understanding everything!

After 6 months living in Germany I could watch soap operas on TV and see most mainstream movies at the cinema well enough to enjoy them (i.e. getting at least 85% of the dialogue.)

Reading novels is a different matter entirely. The vocabulary of literary German is MUCH deeper than the vocabulary needed for normal conversation, and the syntax is probably more complex too. After about a year I could speak German reasonably fluently - but it took another year (at least) before I could comfortably read fiction.

Personally I would recommend that you saturate your brain with purely spoken language for about a year before even trying to read fiction.

“After 6 months living in Germany I could watch soap operas on TV and see most mainstream movies at the cinema well enough to enjoy them (i.e. getting at least 85% of the dialogue.)”

As I understand it, spritsmugler was learning German for a year before he went to Germany, so this was his 1.5 year level. Please correct me if I am wrong. I think I am at a similar level to this and I have been learning for a bit more than 1.5 years.

I read my first book outside of LingQ without much help from a dictionary after about 8 months. This was a relatively long novel for kids.

After about a year, I read an adult book on the history of mathemtics that I had a few years ago read in English and remembered relatively well. I did this almost entirely without a dictionary. At about this time (so a year after starting), I started to be able to watch movies and TV shows and follow them comfortably, though there was still lots of diologue I could not understand.

Since then, I have read a few novels and can understand them easily, even though there are usually quite a lot of words I don’t know and quite a lot of sentences I don’t understand. I can also read a lot of non-fiction stuff. I am currently reading the German translation of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, and I don’t have many problems. On the other hand, with books about philosophy, politics, or newspapers, I have a lot of trouble with if I am not reading on LingQ. I think the main difference is that in these books, as opposed to novels, there are many fewer superfluous words. Novels are much more full of adjectives and adverbs and other words that you really don’t need to understand. For example, if you read this sentence in a novel

  • and John looked BLAH across the BLAH and saw a beautiful BLAH woman sitting BLAH on a BLAH.

You get the idea here about what is going. John looked somewhere and saw a beautiful woman sitting down. Usually in a novel that is all you really need to know.

Learning to understand what I could in this timeframe took a gigantic amount of work and I am not sure I could do it again. I was going to language classes for hours a day for the first few months, and then doing one on one sessions on Skype several times a week afterwards. I was listening to German non-stop, even when I went to bed for some periods. I spend several months doing 45 minutes a day of work on Anki memorising vocabulary, and so on. If I didn’t do so much work, it would have taken much longer.

On the other hand, I had my first one on one lesson with a teacher on Skype after maybe 3.5 months and was able to speak entirely in German for an hour. There seems to be a big difference in how fast one can develope different skills.

My experience is quite different from spritsmugler. I find most of the native English TV series difficult to understand, and I had less problems when reading. But it strongly depends on you level and what you watch and what you read.

Here are some examples:
Doctor Who: Too fast, too strong accents. It works with subtitles, but I’ve to concentrate because it is so fast.
Gilmore Girls: Some actors don’t pronounce well enough. They mumble.
How I met your mother: Works without subtitles.
Star Trek: I had a short glance, and I guess it would work.
Books: Chick lit works perfect without any effort. Crime stories and fantasy have worked too. But “Bridget Jones” was difficult because it includes too much slang.
Radio programs for native speakers: BBC works perfect now, but at the beginning even the programs for learners were difficult.

You will experience the same differences with German programs. You just have to try some out to find some that you like, and are able to understand. I don’t know if the number of known words on LingQ reflects your German level. You should listen and read a lot to aquire more words before you should think about TV programs. How fast it will work depends on the time you’ll spent with the language. The more you listen, the better. Some learners listen 100 hours in a month, others in 3 or 6 months. It’s up to you.

Thanks everyone for your responses. This is really gives me a much better idea of what I can generally expect, and also of the huge variation. My husband is actually German and I kept asking him but he was getting exasperated as he said he had absolutely no idea how long it might take! I was still impressed with the level of understanding that spritsmugler achieved so quickly. Don’t think I could achieve that.

I had a weekly tutor for about 6 months before a trip to Germany but I was pretty half-hearted and did no practice between classes. So I probably only learnt a few basic phrases and words, and was introduced to the concept of nominativ and akkustiv cases (touched on dativ). This year I suddenly got passionate. I used Memrise for a few weeks then started with LingQ, plus I have a couple of textbooks I read from a few times a week. I’ve only done about a dozen lessons on LingQ so far but I think it’s already improved my listening.

VeraI I think I know quite a few more words than my profile indicates in that there are quite a few yellow words that I can recognise the meaning of during the vocab tests, though I may not be able to recall the German word without context. Also, there are quite a few where I know the root word (e.g. wissen) and can recognise some of the forms when seen in context but wouldn’t be able to recite the conjugations. I am mostly doing the lessons in your course Annas Tagebuch, which I’m really enjoying. I find that when I first listen to a new lesson I can grasp maybe 20-25% of the meaning and it feels fast. After LingQing and reading it through once, then listening to it on a loop for maybe 30-45 minutes, I find I can follow around 80% of the meaning, and feel like I am ‘hearing’ at least that percentage of the individual words. It requires concentration and I’m not sure how much is just memorising the meaning of an individual lesson but it doesn’t feel too hard and I like that I can feel quite a dramatic difference in understanding over the course of a day or so.

It is interesting re some of the level classifications on LingQ…for example I also listened to I think it was your interview Irene777 about your trip to Malta. I loved this lesson because it was a natural conversation and the content I found very interesting. But I was surprised it was classified as intermediate because I could understand the gist of this more easily at first listen, than the lessons in Annas Tagebuch which are beginner 2. I think this was largely because the speech was much slower, and also the interview format with questions helped give a better textual framework. My husband is Swabian also and it was interesting that I sensed something familiar about your voice but didn’t realise what it was until my husband who was also listening pointed out that you were Swabian (and that Swabians also speak more slowly)!

ColinJohnstone, that’s great motivation to know. You studied a lot more intensively than I am doing but I still think it’s fantastic what you manage to read in that timeframe, especially the more scientific stuff. One of my ultimate goals is to read Rilke in the original as I love poetry. In the intermediate, it would be great just to be able to read contemporary literary. For now, I’m starting on kids books though. I managed to read ‘Wie shoen is Panama’ and understand most of it, while not knowing quite a few individual words. Hope to read ‘Die Kleine Hexe’ series maybe in a month or two, and I guess ‘The Little Prince’ a little after that. Starting simple! I could probably work through them now but I want to have more vocab under my belt so I can enjoy the flow.

I think I’m listening to LingQ about 30 minutes to an hour a day, but am going to try to increase that.

I guess I’m not paying too much attention to the known words marker because I’m not sure how it can be an accurate representation when different forms of the same root word would be considered different words by the LingQ system? I had assumed knowing ‘a word’ wouldn’t mean counting the different forms (e.g. blau, blaues) as new words? So the known words figure on LingQ could become quite inflated? Anyway, that’s probably a different thread…

Thanks again everyone (and to the German course content producers).

I realise this is now an old thread but I’ve been thinking about ColinJohnstone’s comments:

“Since then, I have read a few novels and can understand them easily, even though there are usually quite a lot of words I don’t know and quite a lot of sentences I don’t understand.”

"- and John looked BLAH across the BLAH and saw a beautiful BLAH woman sitting BLAH on a BLAH.

You get the idea here about what is going. John looked somewhere and saw a beautiful woman sitting down. Usually in a novel that is all you really need to know."

Does this mean that when there are gaps in your understanding you tend to skim over them as long as you get the main gist? At what point would you look something up in the dictionary? Or do you find that over repeated exposure you absorb the meaning via context eventually and learn this way, similar to listening? I like the concept of this and it’s probably less effortful than stopping every couple of minutes to look something up… but I do wonder if in the long-run it is a slower way to accumulate vocabulary. i.e. the greater effort of looking something up = deeper processing

I am reading something now (an interview in Mobil magazine that you get free on German trains) and looking up probably every seventh word. It’s slow going! I don’t mind the effort and feel like I’m learning new words and making good progress but I just wonder if it might be inefficient/counterproductive.

To cut to the point, I can see how with listening to LingQ podcasts containing words whose meaning you have previously been exposed to (even briefly) can increase your vocab with the help of context, repetition etc.

But I wonder if people find it works to the same extent with reading NEW words that have never been looked up? I know this is how we learn our native languages largely but that can take decades and obviously there is constant immersion…
If anyone has any thoughts? Thanks

@Debbie: “…Does this mean that when there are gaps in your understanding you tend to skim over them as long as you get the main gist? At what point would you look something up in the dictionary?..”

Let’s take an example (from a short story by Horst Eckert)


Leo Kösters Hände zitterten, als er die Zigarette anzündete. Er zwinkerte seinem Sohn zu. “So sehen die Typen aus, die’s nicht schaffen, bei der Polizei unterzukommen.”

Der Wachmann schlenderte ihnen entgegen, ein junger Kerl mit aufmerksamen Blick - er erinnerte Leo an die Zeit, als er Uniformen und Waffen noch für Insignien der Würde gehalten hatte.

There are degrees of understanding - I think that is always the case when we see words in context. Most of the words here I am 100% sure about. The verb “zuzwinkern” and “schlendern” I am 70% sure about. Even more interesting is the verb “unterkommen” - because it is obviously linked to the basic vocabulary word “Unterkunft” (accommodation) but here clearly has a slightly different sense. I wouldn’t look any of them up. My instant understanding of this passage would be:


Leo Köster’s hands trembled as he lit a cigarette. He winked at his son. “That’s what guys look like who don’t manage to get into the police”.

The security guard strolled towards them, a young man with an alert expression - he reminded Leo of the time when he still regarded uniforms and weapons as signs of importance and dignity.

It may be that I have slightly misunderstood something - but I think my comprehension is good enough to enjoy the story. If I saw a word cropping up repeatedly I would look it up. Otherwise I just go with the flow.

Generally speaking it is the sentence rather than the individual word which is the unit of understanding. After enough familiarity with basic vocabulary and sentence structure, one can scan a whole sentence in a split second. (Occasionally, however, there might be a key word - a word without which an entire sentence or passage can be unclear. These must, of course, be looked up.)

EDIT
By “basic vocabulary” I mean the 5000 most frequently occurring words.

‘Generally speaking it is the sentence rather than the individual word which is the unit of understanding. After enough familiarity with basic vocabulary and sentence structure, one can scan a whole sentence in a split second.’

Yes, that has been my experience also. I read lots of books. I find that narratives of some kind work quite well for me, because the story is sequential - Krimis and other fiction, and some kinds of biographies for example. I also like reading science history. There are lots of blah, blahs for me, but quite a lot fewer than when I first began. I only look up words if they occur more than once or twice and if broad understanding is dependent on the meaning of a particular word.

I remember one story that contained the word ‘Felswand.’ I needed to know what that particular word meant. After checking its meaning in the dictionary, three whole pages started coming alive for me. Once I looked the word up, I could see that the second part of the word was a word I had already known, ‘Wand’, which means ‘wall’.

By the way, the whole word means ‘rock face’ or ‘cliff face’, so ‘Fels’ means ‘rock’. Seeing the way ‘Felswand’ was constructed has helped me work out the meaning of many words by myself. I am using three strategies: context, relationship to other words I know in German, also likeness to any English word that could in any way be related to the German word I am trying to puzzle out.

It is fun! At the moment I am reading ‘Herr Aller Dinge’ by Andreas Eschbach, and understanding enough to not want to put the book down.

@Prinz-Wladi

Your “interpretation” looks fine to me.^^

"Even more interesting is the verb “unterkommen” - because it is obviously linked to the basic vocabulary word “Unterkunft” (accommodation) "

I´m pretty sure that´s what I thought when I learned that word as a teen/tween.^^

In einem Hotel unterkommen = “Ich …komme…unter…das Dach eines Hotels. Okay, verstanden”.
(literally: in a hotel undercome = I…come…under…the roof of a hotel. Okay, I get it.)

Things like “…bei der Polizei unterkommen” started making sense, all of a sudden.^^

“…bei der Polizei unterkommen” = to get nicked?

@Colin

I’m guessing that “gettin nicked” would be: “von den Bullen erwischt werden” (bzw “festgenommen werden”)…?

BTW

If you want to say “okay, I’m coming quietly!” while they’re taking you down, I think you can say: “es ist ja gut, man!”

(Not that I would know about that kind of thing, of course!)

‘Herr Aller Dinge’ by Andreas Eschback

Ginkgo, das hat mich Neugierig gemacht. In youtube habe ich ein kurzes Gespräch über das Buch gefunden!

j;-)

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"If you want to say “okay, I’m coming quietly!” while they’re taking you down, I think you can say: “es ist ja gut, man!”

“S’ja gut eeeeey!” has the same meaning. But it´s much more classy.

In such a situation, I am sure I would find a way to get myself shot.

In such a situation, we are sure you would find a way to contact Jolanda.

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@ debbielim

Regarding your post, I generally now only read books on the Kindle. I have the new Kindle Paperwhite, which is excellent by the way. It has a touchscreen, and I have installed a German-English dictionary, so when I press on a word, a little English definition appears. It is a bit slow, so I can’t do many words, but it is still much faster than looking the word up in a dictionary in the classical way. Usually when I see a word I don’t know, I just skip it, unless it is very important for my understanding of the passage. If I see a familiar word that I don’t know, or one that keeps coming up in the book, I will often look it up, even if it is not important for my understanding.

You can of course also read on LingQ, in which case you can look up every word you don’t know as you read without disturbing your reading so much. I have read a couple of books on the LingQ app with my iPad and it is very effective for learning vocabulary. The main reason I do not do it so much is that it is more work. I need to import the book into LingQ, then go through the lessons making the LingQs for the words I don’t know. Then I need to open it on the iPad app, which can be quite slow and unstable. It will often crash, or there will be some bug, or whatever. Still, it is very good.

A secret Colin, (don’t tell anyone else on the Forum), you will soon be able to create LingQs on the improved iPad app. I am doing so now as we test it. A much improved experience. But shhhhh!

@steve

aaaaaaaaaaa

I was thinking it was a dream!

j;-)

@ Steve

It sounds exciting. I remember how disappointed I was when I first started using LingQ and I downloaded the app and realised it could not be used like the website (at that time, it was still not setup for the iPad). I am not sure I will do it so much because typing onto the iPad is so much slower, so for books and stuff, I will still make the LingQs on my laptop prior to reading on the iPad. It might be good for news articles and stuff like that.