Learning the language...

I have four months to learn German...in southern California! You must understand the hilarity of my situation. I live in San Diego, California, a mere 20 minutes from Mexico. I live in a community of mostly immigrants from Iraq which means my neighbors speak Assyrian, Aramaic, Kurdish and Arabic. Our immediate neighbors of 18+ years speak Greek and Czech. Our community college gives classes on Spanish, French, Italian, Assyrian/Aramaic/Arabic and Kumeyaay(our local Native American dialect). But no German.

So it's just me, the library and the internet. And you know what? I'm a little disappointed.

Before you start shouting, "Rosetta Stone!", realize that the program is $600 and consists mostly of vocabulary. Even when I had free access last year to R.S. through a friend's library account, I got bored fairly easily and remember almost nothing.

So far here's what I've discovered about language programs:
1. If it has fun games and cool graphics, it's just vocabulary.
2. If it has good grammar information, it's boring and dry.
3. If it has fun games, cool graphics and good grammar information, it will cost you a month's worth of rent.

But after looking for over a month, here are the resources that seem to be working out okay:

1. Book: really old conversation textbook from the 70's a friend loaned me. So the spelling hasn't been updated yet(did you know German people decided to standardize their spelling in '96? That's crazy!), but I can deal with that. It's good solid grammar and reading practice.
2. Web: www.babbel.com A great web site for learning and reviewing vocabulary and common phrases. It keeps track of what you've gone over and has you review every two days.
3. Web: http://www.deutsch-lernen.com/ Free online grammar course that goes over the basics and gives you a chance to practice. Did I mention it was free?
4. Web: http://www.lingorilla.com/frontpage It must be good because the web site is completely in German! You watch a video and then do exercises based on grammar concepts in the video.
   
5. Web: www.youtube.com Yes, Youtube! I found some easy language videos that a bunch of university students in Muenster made that are fun and informative. You get to hear real people speak.
   

There are other more advanced programs I'll have access to once I get the basics down and there are plenty of web sites I can read for information (reading the T-Mobile website to try to figure out what cell plan to get is insane!). But for now, I'll plug along and hopefully by the time I get to Germany I'll be able to sound respectable!

Tschüss!