I've being working quite long and hard here and have a rotten apple above my avatar lol, was wondering why. I've watched quite a few of Steve's blogs on You tube and get a lot out of them, but lately I've been a little discouraged with my learning German and sometimes feel like a rudderless ship at sea, looking for direction. German is a funny language with separable verbs which makes it challenging when translating word for word. Does anyone know any way around this on this site? I know grammar sucks and I would love to hear some suggestions how a beginner like myself should go about this.

Ooops, I feel silly. Sorry Steve if you bother reading this, I should have put this on the main forum questions. But in case you do read this, you answered a question I had been asking myself about how many words do you need to really understand movies, books etc. One fellow was asking this question about Russian movies, and said he was at around 10,000 words or so. I know no system is perfect, as a huge number of those words are basically the same stem words, tenses etc. What you said about when you are getting to under 10% of the words are unknown your there, it gave me a great goal to strive for. I'm more interested in being able to watch german movies and books and one day hope to get to approx. C1 level or so. I'm in no hurry, just want to enjoy the process, but want to make decent progress, and of course, one day if I get the chance talk to some non-suspecting german.

The key is to find content that you enjoy listening to and reading. The vocabulary just starts to pile up, just when you think nothing is sticking you will find that you can read more and more without looking things up. I would not worry about milestones, and just enjoy the journey.

As a native speaker of German, I'm very happy to hear that you are interested in my mother tongue. As for your learning process, I'd like to second what Steve suggested. German grammar might be complex but the good news is that you can make lots of mistakes and still be comprehensible. This could take some pressure off you while you are still a beginner and should make you less worried when it comes to speaking. I can't give you an exact number of how many words you need to know to understand movies, to be able to read books etc., but I don't think you would need 10,000 words for that, at least not in the sense of studying all of them by heart. Context is the key word, you will be able to understand many things without having studied individual words once you have a basic understanding of how the language works.

A lot of German words are compounds which are easily understandable even if you have never come across them before. Take the word "Hausmeister". If you know the meaning of "Haus" and "Meister" you will be able to guess the meaning of "Hausmeister", especially if you come across the word in a proper context. The same with "Straßenbahn" which is composed of "Straße" and "Bahn". There are many more examples like this in German. Just don't let our rather complex grammar discourage you and don't be afraid of making mistakes. I made good progress in my languages by listening to audiobooks and reading along. Fortunately, there are lots of audiobooks available in German so you should have no problems finding interesting content.

Good luck to you :-)

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In my experience, grammar, as in explanations and tables, is something you need to review over and over, without worrying about what you understand or remember. The key is to start noticing examples of how the language works when you read and listen. Gradually the brain starts to put labels on things, and create patterns for itself. As long as you are just reading and listening, you will not make mistakes, although at times the meaning will not be clear. The meaning will become clearer over time. To become more accurate in using the language, you need to use it , more and more, again noticing the patterns of the language. The more you listen and read, the more you notice the language. The more you speak and write, the more you notice your own gaps and problems. You just keep at it, and gradually improve, hopefully enjoying the process. At least that has been my experience.

It was only when I stopped trying to remember the declensions of German that I started speaking more, and with more confidence, and enjoying the language more. Then I read a lot and listened to a lot of interesting interviews involving real people. The complicated nature of German construction becomes one of the attractions of the language, one of the enjoyable aspects of reading and listening to it, even if we stumble when trying to reproduce these patterns in our own speech.

I should have been more specific. To the bearded guy, my stats are in one or two days. I "joined" on a certain day but put in hours yesterday. Thanks for yours, the German guy and Steve's input and advice, always great to hear from someone who's actually been there, rather than some arm chair "linguist", there is some nut on you tube that puts down Steve and other language enthusiasts...bald guy who seems like he escaped from some mental institution, more funny than anything. I think my problem is consistency. I miss a few days, then read or study for hours, BTW I've listened to a lot of your blogs Steve and really enjoy them and find them spot on, even though they may ruffle a few feathers.

Yeah, I can only stress that you need to find something you enjoy doing in the language and do that every day. Myself, I have not even cracked 5000 words in German yet, but I like to watch twenty or so minutes of German TV each day. It is a TV show I have already seen in English (scrubs), and it is the kind of show that you can follow quite easily even with low dialogue comprehension (lots of visual gags). I'm half way through the second season now and I am quite pleased at how much I have picked up from it (apologizing, greeting, swearing, etc. ^^) I might use Lingq twice or three times a week for a little bit, but TV is my 'anchor' of contact with the language if you will that keeps me coming back. I also like flicking through a few pages of a crappy dan brown book (Diabolus). Just make sure you have a habit of enjoying the language each day and then you will =want= to put in a bit of extra 'study' here and there to help you understand the things you are doing for fun anyway.

You might find the following useful too..

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/no-fu...
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/on-th...

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