re: Anyone here ever learned German? New Year’s resolution was to start learning a language.

Are Louisiana high schools teaching German? My grandpa would disown me if I tried to learn the language of his enemy.

I’ve been trying to learn Deutsche for 2 years.

I learned quite a bit of German in my youth watching Hogan's Heroes....

Nein.

4 years in high school and 4 more in college. spent 4 months living outside munich too
i can still get the gist of what's being said in conversation or reading it. my spoken word is pretty janky now. just like any language it gets more complex the deeper you go
my girlfriend is half cuban and 100% fluent - does court translation for high profile trials like murders and massive medical cases. its always funny when we meet some honkey and they say "oh im fluent spanish". she just laughs

I’ve always said that when I retire I would learn French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Mandarin.

Probably will never happen, lol.

Gesundheit

When someone sneezes

I came to Germany in Nov. 1988. Been here ever since. I was lucky to have a fantastic teacher (Turkish, ironically) in the only formal course I took. She was instrumental in my learning the basic German grammar. After that, it took about a year to become "fluent". I remember dreaming in German, but not understanding what was being said. I live in Bavaria, so it was a double hurdle to learn the language and the dialect. I cannot speak Bayerisch without sounding like a fool, but I understand it.

If you want to learn German in the States, finding a "German language group (Stammtisch)" in your area to develop your speaking skill would help a lot. It's also a great idea to watch movies and - more importantly - the evening news programs. The newscasters speak clearly and not too quickly. I can't count the number of young Europeans I've met who learned English through movies and music.

I've grown to love German. To me, it's a logical language, i.e., the pronunciation, grammar, and word structure make much more sense than, for example French. Learn der, die, und das, the prefixes and suffixes, and you're good to go.

I will say, the internet (and my laziness) has hindered my development of fluency. When I came here there was one - Times Herald Tribune - newspaper, no magazines, and books in English were pretty expensive. USA Today came later, but I had to get the news and sports results one or two days later. AFN radio was here, but I could hardly pick it up where I live. All in all, if I could do it over, I wouldn't change much of anything.