Some nights ago, I started to look around for some German words to add to my Anki deck. However, it happened to be hard! I mean, I had to try hard to find some unknown words. I even took a look at some long texts at the train station, but even there wasn’t a word I couldn’t understand. Some months ago, I used to walk in the city, having no idea what’s written here and there. But now, the situation is much different. I like it. I really like it.
I was feeling like I know the meaning of every German word. =)) However, it was a temporary feeling. While enjoying this feeling of mastery, I started to chat with ChatGPT in German. Immediately, it bombarded me with a shit tone of words I didn’t know. That fake feeling of mastery had to be destroyed anyway, so I could put more effort into learning the language.
Another thing that makes me feel good is that when I first started the university’s language course this semester, I felt like a total idiot when I compared myself to other students. I sat in the class, listening to the teacher, unable to understand a single word from her. But now that we’re close to the end of the classes, I’m able to consider myself one of the strongest people in the class. It feels fucking awesome to see this progress. Specially, for a competitive person like me, it’s the best feeling to see how I overran other students in the class.
Apart from it, there is one thing that annoys me. I started to learn German based on English. I mean, I learned the meaning of words by looking at their English translations. However, since some days ago something’s been happening frequently: I encounter a new word and start to look for its English translation. But even the English translation is new to me. Most of the times, I’ve never ever heard of the English word. It feels like my German knowledge is surpassing my English. It feels good and bad at the same time. It feels good because it means I’m getting more fluent in German, and of course because learning German is going to improve my English knowledge from now on. But it feels bad because I’ve started to believe my English sucks! How can I encounter German words whose English meaning I don’t know just after 10 months of study? Such a shame! I’ll try to enhance my English knowledge as well. Not immediately, but surely.
Another beautiful aspect of -intense- language learning for me is that it shows me different stages and pitfalls in the process of mastery. Since I’m reading the “Mastery” book in parallel, I pay extra attention to the process. Like the way I was unable to produce sentences in the beginning compared to now that I can handle most of the daily situations. Or my fear of making mistakes while talking German to other people, which held me back from actively using the language, and that’s the same pitfall that’s mentioned in the book in creative-active phase of mastery.
I’m also getting tempted to learn a new language. I know I shouldn’t do it until I reach a point where I can fluently handle all of the situations in German. But it’s really tempting anyway. I can’t even decide which language. Arabic would be fun because I already know a lot of its words. French is also cool and it’s from a different family than English and German. Chinese and Japanese are too exotic and are kind of a good challenge for me. Turkish is for some unknown reason interesting to me as well. But I don’t know. I’m almost sure if someday I start a new language, it would be either French or Arabic, because their communities are more accessible to me and I can train them easier. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do it anytime soon. At this point, I’m just rambling. So, better to stop and end the post.
Übrigens habe ich morgen eine Sprachprüfung. Drück mir die Daumen, und bis später. 😀