The Reading Bud

Well first off lets be very clear that this post is about The German Language. I’ve done my schooling from St. Mary’s Convent Sr. Sec. School (till 10th grade) and Air Force School (11th and 12th Science) but unfortunately we never had additional language classes. As a result I know only 2 languages Hindi and English (somewhat Marathi) but no other language.

Well I had a plan of going to Germany after completing Engineering for Post Grad. . But then I changed all my plans and dropped out of my college. I did BCom then and was thinking of doing MBA. Well so much for the plans!

Last year Vishal and I had a change of mind about staying in India. He confessed that even he dreams of going someplace better. So then 6 months later we came up with the idea of settling in Switzerland. Well we needed time ofcourse! But now we knew what to do next. We started searching about stuff related to immigration and living there and well we both understood that the first thing that we need to do (only second to Finances) was learning the languages. In Switzerland most widely spoken language is German, so we started right there and then.

We are waiting to enroll for the Learning German Language course in The German Institute. Vishal being busy with his work we’ll wait for another 15-20 days to join. As I am quite impatient I really didn’t think that I would be able to go easy till then! So I bought the Complete German: Teach Yourself book right away from Landmark store. Actually it was there in my mind to get a book on German and then I happened to visit Landmark with my sister-in-law. There I saw this book and just grabbed it. Well, later on when I came back home I found that it comes with a set of audio CDs (duh!) and I didn’t know about it so got only the book. Well I didn’t give up, I tried to find the CDs on the internet but failed so I downloaded this great app German Translater which has audio as well and now I am not having any difficulty.

I started with the book and tried hard to understand but then I stopped at, I guess, the 5th page and then something came to my mind. Well I started searching the net for it and there it was. I got prints of around 20 pages with the lists of general words and things in German. I thought It would be easier if I knew atleast some words and their meanings. So I started that way.

I don’t know if this method works for everyone or not, but I can say that it is indeed working for me! Last month I was stuck up at the 5th page of the book and literally didn’t  anything, but today I know atleast 20-25 German words with meanings. I guess it’s a good start. I am going to continue to learn more words with meaning and correct pronunciations, and then will switch back to the book. I hope I will succeeded in learning atleast 80 words this month and a few phrases.

Will keep you posted about my ups and down through this wonderful journey under the series The German Affair.

Have a great week 🙂

Auf Wiedersehen 😀