Learning a very difficult Langauge at an old age
By: Youssef Mohamed
Tags: Beyourself, Language, Language Learning, Learning, Deutsch

Learning a very difficult Langauge at an old age

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Introduction

I am not the oldest person by any means, however, I am for sure old enough that learning a language is more challenging than it used to be. I am currently a 23-year old medical student who started learning German or Deutsch with the hopes of traveling to Germany or any of the multiple German-speaking countries that speak German in Europe such as Austria, Switzerland, Lithuania, or one of many other counties.

So, almost two years ago I decided to start with this intense process of mastering such a difficult language and handling it good enough to be able to actually be a practicing physician in a foreign country which requires such a high speaking skill cap with an already very difficult language to start with.

My experience

So, there are many positives and negatives to such a big decision. I will be dividing this into categories and different points.

My experience with the language

Now, I can imagine that for a non-English speaker learning Deutsch can be a nightmare. Even for us English-speaking individuals, learning Deutsch is no easy feat at all, but it is of course a bit easier than for others. English is a Germanic language which means it is a language that is derived from German and originates from it. I consider English to be a much more simplified version of Deutsch, and throughout the learning process, you will find so many words in common and a lot of Grammatical rules in common. However, German is much more complicated, meaning that almost all words that have a single synonym or a few in English have many more meanings and words to represent them in German, therefore, I had to memorize a lot more words and a lot more synonyms. Also, the German grammatical rules can be much more complicated than those of English although they share some of the basics.

So, I am not actually a native English speaker. In fact, I grew up speaking Arabic as a first language since I lived in Egypt, but my studies in school were always in English and that also is the case for my studies in my college. Due to all these years of learning in English, watching English series, and even working and writing in English, I have massively improved and can speak English fluently which made the whole German- learning process a lot easier since as I said before English is basically a simplified version of Deutsch.

I started this process three years ago and the beginning was indeed the most difficult part of the process by far. Learning such a language was so very challenging at the beginning that I thought of giving up so many times, but I decided to not give up and to power through and I could not feel happier than I did. Years later, I am so proud of what I have accomplished and that I reached level B2 after two years of courses.

My experience with time management for such a task

Learning a language by myself was not easy and therefore I decided to take part in a nearby course instead which was a great choice, but it was of course very time-consuming. It took so much time of my day which already, due to being a medical student, was already very loaded, I managed to fit it in my week.

I took two sessions per week, each being 4 hours for a total of 8 hours of German per week. This was of course without the added time on the road going to and back from the course costing me a total of almost 10 hours to an already busy week. This addition to my week was not easy of course especially in the beginning but so many weeks later am used to it and can handle it much easier.

This added effort is indeed the most difficult thing to handle when it comes to any new thing you want to do, but it does get a lot easier as you get used to it. It will still be exhausting especially when it comes to weeks with tests or assignments that are already full to the max with things to do without the added effort of a language lesson, but there is no better feeling than passing such a full week and the progress that comes with it.

Extra steps I take to speed up my progress

Once I started learning and getting a better grasp on the language, I started finding myself a bit more excited especially once I started finding myself capable of forming my first sentences and handling a small conversation with a few words.

Once this happened to me, I decided to do an extra bit of effort to try to improve. These things include:

I started watching some simple German youtube videos that were suitable to my level at that time, and this indeed did help me. I started holding some conversations and thinking them out, and I would use a dictionary and search for a word every time I stopped due to not finding the suitable one. Once I improved a bit, there were so many films that are suited to every level of the language and I would search for some of these and make sure to watch them carefully and take notes Once I had improved even a bit more and could start understanding a language, I even started listening to some German podcasts, and this was surely a great step that had improved my listening and understanding of the language and brought me a bit closer to being a fluent speaker. Most importantly, the step that has helped me improve the most rapidly was finding a speaking partner who was learning the same language as me and willing to practice with me once or twice per week. This was indeed a crucial step that made me improve dramatically and help both of us improve so much in a short period of time.

Conclusion and my final thoughts

Learning a language is not going to be easy in most cases, but it can be very beneficial and open up so many new areas and opportunities to you that you never thought possible. For example, as a medical student, if I can master the Deutsch language, I can practice medicine in German. This is an opportunity that would have never been possible if I have not started learning this language. This is not only true to medical students but to so many others in different areas and fields who can seek better studying or working opportunities once they have learned another language.

Personally, I do not like learning languages and do not find it entertaining, but I believe it can help me progress through life and open up new opportunities for me. I believe that learning such a language was indeed a fruitful experience and helped teach me commitment and helped me become more organized and committed. It did indeed take me a lot of my time, but at the end of the day, nothing feels better than speaking a few sentences of a language that I never thought I could learn and form a few sentences of.