It can't hurt. But I think the most efficient way to learn german would be to live in germany... "It's confession time: after nearly eight years living in Germany..."
If you can't learn german in germany, then you simply do not want to learn the language. Don't think anki will make a difference.
This sounds counter-intuitive, but if you live with people that speak your native language, and you work in your native language, then simply being in Germany actually holds surprisingly little value for learning the language.
Why? Well, obviously it still takes a lot of time and effort, factors which aren't altered by being in Germany. You still have to put in private practise (which isn't helped by being in Germany - you can do this anywhere) and you probably need to seek out classes or lessons (which isn't helped by being in Germany - you can do this anywhere). You might want to seek out people to practise conversation with, meaning other learners, who you can also find anywere, although there are probably more in Germany.
Also, my experience is that it's actually very rare that casual interactions with people e.g. in shops or restaurants is helpful - they either make no effort to help with your halting attempts to communicate (or worse: I've had some quite unpleasant responses from native Germans, even when I was trying my hardest to speak their language), or they try too hard to be helpful and immediately switch to English instead.
Of course, if a person was to move to Germany, completely immerse themselves by living amongst native speakers, while focussing on learning the language, then yes it would probably help. But for most other folks where the situation is less perfect, it still comes to interest and motivation, and being in the country is of relatively little benefit.
Let's be honest, if you've been avoiding learning it for years, it's hard to see how a flash card system is going to turn the entire thing around. It still takes a lot of discipline and effort to stick to it.
If you already live there, forget flash cards, take a basic in-person course then just pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV, talk to that gas station employee in your broken German... Having actual conversations, no matter how broken, is IMHO way more beneficial than any app or course. And yes, I've learnt several languages (including German) this way. There's countless ways, but in the end it pretty much boils down to the willingness to learn it, not an optimal learning method.
I think it’s possible that it can be a useful step. Fleshing out vocabulary can help with all the real-world use, because you’ll have more context and can fill in meanings, and get more out of real world use. But probably only as a booster to real world use. By itself, it does very little.
I disagree, I got to B2 in 2 years in Germany by simply making time to go to my local Volkshochschule to learn (i.e. evening classes). Why? Because it was fun and I enjoyed learning a langauge. If you want to learn, you will. If living in Germany for eight years doesn't really make you want to take learning German seriously, then what will? I know many people who've been in Germany 10+ years and can't speak German. Honestly, if I was them I'd have either left or killed myself by now, I cannot fathom sustaining that isolation for ten years. But they are built differently, they are somehow happy anyway. I would not be.
And Anki is a nicety but won't revolutionise your learning. In fact in the end I stopped using it and switched to just reading German books and watching German movies.
I understand that perfectly, but that's still isolation from wider society. Like living like a Gypsy or an illiterate Pakistani housewife in Northern England. Why would I actively choose that life for myself, when it's not the one I was born into? So I learned German. But somehow these people are happy anyway. And I don't get it. But I guess to be happy no matter what is a good skill to have, so I don't think I'm better than them or anything like that. I don't buy into this shit "oh you're in Germany you must learn because it's disrespectful not to", either.
Illiterate Pakistany housewifes are connected to other Pakistani housewifes. Their loneliness levels are lower then ours. Likewise Gypsies - they live very communally and socially. We are perceived as cold and non-communal by them.
Their issues are poverty, violence, lack of education that makes it impossible for you to really earn money. The expats speaking English do not have these issues.
I don't care how much fun they have with other gypsies or Pakistani housewives. I am telling you directly that I don't want that life for me. That's all. So I learned German, because it is in accordance with my own ideals and how I would like to lead my own life.
The newer migrants might still be linguistically isolated. And the poor, helpless Amis also in any case.
But the Türkendeutsche no longer are - not the under-50 set, anyway. Try ordering a Börek in Berlin sometime - the person serving you will answer in perfect Berlinerisch.
Socially/politically they might be in some kind of a bubble, but so are the rest of us.
I did learned two foreign languages and did not used flashcards memorization of new words. It was recommended against by the teachers anyway, unless you actually like it. Anki seems to be good for you to create a system where you do not forget the words you learned and keep being able to translate them there and back. But it is not nearly the same as making you "acquire" those words or making you learn new words.
Flashcards can be help, somewhat to learning foreign language. But they are not necessary nor able to teach you to communicate by themselves.
> Anki seems to be good for you to create a system where you do not forget the words you learned and keep being able to translate them there and back. But it is not nearly the same as making you "acquire" those words or making you learn new words.
I agree. Far and away, the fastest way for me to acquire a new word is to use it incorrectly in conversation. My theory is that the emotion of social embarrassment makes it stick (there is some research associating strong emotion with learning).
Maybe there's something about the act of using the word that also adds to the impact, because similarly, if I learn a new word for the first time in conversation, I rarely forget it. Words acquired via flashcards or reading or whatever take ages to stick in my brain, and then I usually have to go through another learning process it be able to use them effectively in real life.
This is a naive view of it. Language learning ability isn't equally distributed.
I lived in Mexico for years and was still surpassed by people who were there for six months. I had to fix a lot of quirks and setbacks just to begin the process.
For example, I couldn't understand people in English esp over the phone if they had any accent, and I never listened to lyrics of music (unintentional, I just didn't do it naturally).
I'm at a loss as to why you'd invest time and energy in studying kanji, because Japanese is such a different language from virtually any other.* Besides the thousands of Chinese characters and the couple hundred building blocks they're constructed from, there's the numerous different semantic and pronunciation readings and the very high rate of homonyms in Japanese due to its relatively small set of distinct sounds. Plus there's zero linguistic overlap with any European language so bootstrapping is significantly more work.
If this seems easier than the hurdle of learning German, it makes me think issue is more psychological than technical, eg maybe you find German people a bit intimidating or there are some socialization patterns you don't feel comfortable with.
Certainly Anki will help if you stick to it daily. But grinding unrelated vocabulary and sentences is also likely to feel fragmented and random until you pass some threshold where things start to gel in your head and you notice emergent patterns of word formation and sentence structure. You need more German friends and you should probably buy a bunch of children's books. Also listen to daily news broadcasts on radio or TV; newscasters are selected not just for looks but for perfect elocution.
* I'm exaggerating somewhat; Japanese is part of a family of related languages. That said, only native speakers and linguistics nerds care, because these related languages are only spoken within Japan or the surrounding islands.
> I'm at a loss as to why you'd invest time and energy in studying kanji
The explanation for that is that I used to study Japanese at Uni, and my wife is Japanese. So in some sense, it already is easier. Starting something from scratch is always a lot more difficult.
Some good other suggestions. I also thought of playing something like Broken Sword (adventure game fully voiced with text in german).
Ah, with two head starts like that it makes a lot more sense. Absent context I thought you had perhaps just taken it up out of curiosity or as an intellectual challenge.
You might find it helpful in Anki to color-code things as you encounter them (you can do this very easily with a control and the digits 1-7), as well to switch Anki itself into German, so you have to read it to check your intervals, progress and so on. I grind Japanese for a couple of hours a night and the forced-immersion aspect helps me a lot.
You might also like this site which has graduated short readings in German that start out very accessibly - I was able to read the first few cold despite never having studied the language. I think it's very important to study vocabulary in some narrative/situational context because the filling-in and inferential processes you do with a text are very important; they help you invest a word with meaning rather than just assign it.
Anki won't change your priority issues. If it's not a priority, it doesn't matter how you try to learn German. And nothing is more valuable than a German course with real people.
You're right that Anki won't change my priority issues. But at least starting to give some priority to learn German that way may lead to more motivation to other activities, such as German course with actual people.
My plan is to re-evaluate where I'm at end of January next year.
Personally I found Anki to be fairly demotivating way to learn. You need to find something you actually find fun in order for it to be motivating. For me, it was Duolingo. But it can be also in person class, peppa the pig series you keep watching in foreign language, whatever. But you need to actually like it.
Babbel Live costs $99/month or less if you pay for more than a month. It has classes with a native speaker as instructor and 0-5 other people. The classes focus on a specific topic in your level and are entirely in the given language.
This is very personal. I credit "fun" classroom conversations with scaring me off French for a decade. Anki on the other hand is great, it's a big dopamine hit when it lets me pick out a word in the wild for the first time, especially when it's something niche that I was dubious about learning.
If you can't even enjoy speaking the language in a controlled environment with other people who suck at speaking then you probably aren't going to learn anywhere. Same as this idea that Anki will magically somehow fix 8 years of complete inaction or whatever. Language learning isn't about knowing words, it's about speaking, reading, writing and listening. Anki is actually none of these things.
If you can't learn german in germany, then you simply do not want to learn the language. Don't think anki will make a difference.