My family and I are from Germany, but my parents moved when I was only three, obviously leaving me without the ability to speak German. The recent death of my Grandfather makes me sad, but not as sad as my parents who are still crying over the news. My grandfather and I never had a chance to "know" each other except by appearance, and what my parents translated back and forth. I am left without the knowledge of his childhood, his life as a Nazi soldier, and much much more. I am lucky to recieve many personal items of his, such as his diary. I don't want to lay more grief on my parents by blaming them for the language barrier. I feel I owe it to my family to learn this language so that they may have a Grandson, Nephew, etc, and not some kid who stands there smiling nervously while constantly replying "Ja!"
The sad thing is, I took two years of German in high school and made A+'s in both. We never learned anything useful besides "Hallo, Wie Geht's" "Aufwiedersehen" "Ich habe..." "Ich brauche..." and so on. The chapters of the book gives vocabulary words on things like tents, pipes, diapers, among other useless words to a novice. The reason I know so little from two years is the teacher didn't seem to care if you knew any words, but only grammar and conjugation.
I was thinking of finding a German book and translating it into English. The logic seems to be that surely common words must be repeated many times in a novel, and that constantly looking them up in a dicionary will make me remember them. In the past, I told my parents to only speak with me in German, but when you know so little,it only leads to confusion and frustration. This summer, I will be visiting Germany for two and a half months, and would like to talk everyone's ears off and vice versa.
Any suggestions?
The sad thing is, I took two years of German in high school and made A+'s in both. We never learned anything useful besides "Hallo, Wie Geht's" "Aufwiedersehen" "Ich habe..." "Ich brauche..." and so on. The chapters of the book gives vocabulary words on things like tents, pipes, diapers, among other useless words to a novice. The reason I know so little from two years is the teacher didn't seem to care if you knew any words, but only grammar and conjugation.
I was thinking of finding a German book and translating it into English. The logic seems to be that surely common words must be repeated many times in a novel, and that constantly looking them up in a dicionary will make me remember them. In the past, I told my parents to only speak with me in German, but when you know so little,it only leads to confusion and frustration. This summer, I will be visiting Germany for two and a half months, and would like to talk everyone's ears off and vice versa.
Any suggestions?
