I’m starting this journal to track my German learning progress over the next year. I’m getting married in Germany, and I want to connect with my spouse’s family and wedding guests. “Fluency in a Year” is ambitious, but even if I don’t quite get there, I’ll be happy just to follow along and join in here and there without immediately switching back to English.
The hardest part so far has been nouns, specifically remembering each noun’s gender. Since gender changes the words that come before it, they’re really quite important to know when speaking. I’ll be experimenting with different memory techniques to make those articles stick.
Many years ago, I discovered mnemonic techniques and spent a great deal of effort building a system to memorize a deck of cards. I made good progress toward that goal, but my motivation eventually faded. Recently I returned to these methods and have been using memory palaces for German with varying results. My hope is this journal will help me experiment with different techniques and become more efficient at memorizing new words and phrases as I track my progress.
Strictly speaking, “fluency” simply means “being able to talk without hesitating/interrupting yourself all the time”. So yes, you can be fluent while still making a lot of mistakes, as long as you manage to interact with people without feeling that your lack of language skills gets in the way. So it’s definitely attainable
Sometimes I miss the days before the “speak like a native” and “become fluent” trends - and the snobbery that often comes with it - that grew on the internet in the 2000s - never mind that “like a native” cannot be precisely defined… as long as you can acquire decent language skills that allow you to interact with people on a regular basis in the contexts you need, it’s good. Just ask yourself regularly “what are my pain points?” and address them (nevermind if you don’t use the right gender for a noun, depending on what you want to use the language for, it’s probably not a priority - except if it truly impedes understanding).
Well said! I learned Portuguese to a fluent level in a few weeks (I already knew Spanish, so that was a significant shortcut). I was making so many errors when speaking, but at least I could have real conversations with Brazilians.
On the other hand, I learned French at school to a good technical level, but never had fluency in that language. (And I learned Spanish as an adult to a high level of fluency and technical level.) So you can have a good level in one of (fluency, technical) without necessarily the other.
Also, although you didn’t ask for advice, I’ve mentioned many times on this forum that memory palaces are not a suitable tool for learning languages—especially if you want fluency. Without repeating myself in detail, the main reason is that memory palaces are fundamentally an inefficient data structure for arbitrary retrieval, which is what you need for speaking/listening in a foreign language. You need a dictionary-like model, not a list-like model.
Congratulations! As for your ambition: 1 year to learn German? That is very possible given enough exposure to the language! You can do it
