Ceejaythe630th 2024-01-20 13:18:29

I see you are practicing the funny German language. Hope you do well with all the school stuff as well as your art stuff, balance may be difficult, but it'll be worth it. Good luck.

ShangXian 2024-01-22 03:55:13

I am studying German too and I find it a beautiful language. It can be a bit challenging if you are not used to cases (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative) and adjective declension paired with strong verb paradigms and phrasal verbs don't help an immediate learning but it's not impossible. I studied Latin, Ancient Greek and Serbo-Croatian so declensions were easier to me especially if compared with Latin and Serbo-Croatian.

May I give you a tip to better memorize adjective declension once you will meet it? In German there are three types of declensions that apply to both nouns and adjectives: strong, weak and mixed declension.
Once you have learned the endings of noun declension to make the study of adjectives more smart and not hard keep in mind this:

-definite articles (der, die, das) ---> weak declension aka n-declension (since almost all endings are with "n")
-indefinite articles, and -ein word determiners (ein, eine, ein) ---> mixed declension (strong declension endings in the singular and weak declension endings in the plural)
-no determiners ---> strong declension

And remember to always learn nouns with their articles like I see in the paper but add plural forms too because this way you can also determine if the declension is strong, weak or mixed. After a while you will automatically almost guess the plural form and even the gender. German language has this beautiful trait to determine gender of its nouns on phonological, morphological and semantic basis.

Another tip: you start learning a language the very moment you forget you are learning a language. I mean apply the learning to casual and funny moments that help you to fix better new nouns, phrases etc. by focusing on your passion. For example I tend to watch history and literature videos in German to learn new stuff about the culture and history of this amazing country while at the same time I forget I am learning the language.

I apply the same principle to Spanish, another language I am studying. Good luck with your study! I think you will manage to master this language and cool drawing!

ShangXian 2024-01-22 14:33:20

@Charlie57913 If you need other tips or help with German feel free to ask me, even via DM if you feel more comfortable^^

Another tip for German strong verbs is to write down a list of verbs by classifying them in two possible ways: frequency of use (you start from the most used irregular verbs and end with less used) and similarity of sounds (as if they were rhymes).
I prefer the second way because hearing something like bergen (bergen, birgt, barg, hat geborgen) and bersten (bersten, berstet/birst (usage seldom), barst, ist geborsten) is easier as my mind can pick up immediately the sounds "er", "ar", "ge-or-en". Remember the auxiliary verb too in Partizip II because it will make the study easier (protip: transitive verbs usually have "haben" as Partizip II auxiliary verb while verbs that indicate states use "sein" as auxiliary.
Biegen and bieten are other two verbs that sound similar to my ears when I see and read their paradigm:
biegen, biegt, bog, ist gebogen
bieten, bietet, bot, hat geboten

Of course remember to be exposed by texts in order to meet these irregular verbs because a mere list where you write them down and memorize passively is not that helpful, only reading, listening to texts helps to fix them. I suggest 15 irregular verbs per week as good start.

I confess you that Latin helped me to memorize almost all Spanish conjugations, minus Imperative, because endings sounds a lot like Latin to me more than Italian (my mother tongue but I'm Romanian). Of course I still have a lot to learn but now I can understand roughly a good 70-80% of a Spanish text when I read or listen to it. Recently I discovered a TV show called "Caso Cerrado" and I love it mainly because I use it as way to be exposed to Spanish oral language. The Romance languages that sound Latin to me (especially for verbs) are Spanish and Sardinian (I am taking a look at some of its grammatical structures and I see similarities with Latin). Italian and French seem the ones that developed their own unique traits in terms of irregularities and phonological changes, yes I studied French in middle school but I abandoned the language so now I don't remember anything but I remember for sure the many irregularities it has when it comes to verbs XD.

Yes, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world by number of speakers after Chinese Mandarin and I would like to learn it to read stuff in Spanish especially historic stuff and even literature in its mother tongue.

It's fantastic that you are studying Latin, congrats and I wish you all the best^^