#also anon i'm not a native speaker by any means but i can definitely help you practice (up to a certain point!)

[princesstillyenna]

I finished reading the group chat fics and let me tell its becoming my comfort fic these past few days, my job is emotionally demanding and there was a lot of stuff in my personal life that were stressful and didnt want to talk about cus I felt no one would listen, but I found you fic by accident and let me tell its the best part of my day were I get home and relax and read it, I relate to matty T a lot and he somehow became my comfort character 😂, I feel a tiny but nervous about commenting on ao3 so I got the website for Tumblr since its banned from my country and I feel scared that you may take this the wrong way and feel stressed about how you help me deal with personal stuff but I just wanted to say this cus you deserve to hear it, I feel truly nervous and scared avout sending this so you could ignore it if you feel pressured about being my comfort person these days especially since you dont even know me, thank you gor being there for me through fics and I will try my hardest to comment on your fics but I wouldnt make any promises,

lastly I was wondering if there was a specific schedule that you stick to when updating? I’m just exited for the next update so sorry if that question felt invasive

First of all friend, like, thank you SO much for this message. You have no idea what messages like this means to authors. It really means the fucking world. I'm so glad this fic could help you - I actually started writing this not long after I came out of a psych unit, and it really took on a life of it's own when my marriage fell apart, so it's got me through some times also!

Also I like tumblr messages so I'm always just as happy to read either messages on tumblr or anons on tumblr as Ao3 comments. And I'm infinately more likely to reply here. Also Matty T is the BEST comfort character. He's such a poor little meow meow. I feel ZERO pressure from the fact that this is your comfort fic, because nonny, it's MY comfort fic too :) so we absolutely have that in common. No pressure at all, but if you feel brave enough/you want to, feel free to send me a message asking about joining the discord because honestly, team "english as an additional language" are DESPERATE to out-number the native english speakers. And they're really close damnit. Finally, I'm afraid there is never any schedule. I publish chapters as soon as they're completed, which means they happen as and when they happen. I've been unwell the past few months since I returned from my holiday (which was expected, but still has slowed my writing down) but I'm hoping as the summer continues I'll be able to pick up speed again. I also have quite a few WIPs in progress. For extra content, feel free to browse my "GCU" tag on my tumblr page here and there might be some snippets that didn't ever make it to Ao3 As you are so lovely... you can have a snippet from the current GC WIP document:

“I just hate everything right now.” Nolan sighs, “I fucking hate everything.”

“You had your buddy’s wedding,” Travis says, giving away how much he stalks Nolan’s Instagram, “That can’t have sucked.”

“Where I had to wear the worlds dumbest looking shades because my eyes don’t fucking work…”

“I mean…” Travis teases gently, “I’ve definitely seen you looking dorkier than that.”

Nolan barks out a tired laugh, “This is why I miss you Teeks.”

[sweetbitterpdf]

Any tips for learning french? :(

ooh this is such an interesting question!! 

i’m gonna first give context on my experience with french. as i said in a previous ask, i spent nine years learning it. this was in school, and for the first three years, it was in mandatory classes (there’s no national standard for canadian french education across all the provinces, but in my schooling system you had to start in third grade, and you could stop in tenth grade if you wanted to), the latter six years (7th through 12th) were in what’s called french immersion, an optional and—evidently— more immersive french education than the mandatory french classes that everyone had to take (we called it “core french”)

so i spent a long time learning french. when i graduated high school at 18, i had been learning french half my life. i also got an award for getting the highest marks in the french class i took in grade 12 which was, frankly, mad litty, still one of my crowning achievements, go 2017 em

... but telling you ‘dedicate nine years of your life to it’ clearly isn’t super practical for someone trying to learn it! so here are some more concrete tips:

vocab, vocab, vocab!!

the MOST IMPORTANT part of learning any language. keep track of vocab in any way possible. you can write words down, make physical flashcards, or use a resource like quizlet to make flashcards electronically. this is useful for french because of the gendering of nouns, which english doesn’t do. it’s a strange concept to grasp, and there isn’t a whole lot of logic to it— of course ‘girl’ is feminine (la fille) and ‘boy’ is masculine (le garçon), but it can be hard to remember whether something like the word ‘chair’ is masculine or feminine (for the record, it’s feminine— la chaise). 

so much of language learning is just rote memorisation, which i think a lot of people have trouble getting the hang of. it’s a lot of brute work, a lot of boring work, but seeing your fluency progress is more than worth it, in my opinion!

“but em,” i hear you ask, “where do i get vocab?”

watch french tv/film & listen to french music

i started doing this around sixth grade i believe? it was part of our daily homework, to go home and watch TV in french.

and, if i was lucky, i would understand a word or two in a sentence.

this one seems very daunting at first! and it’ll be super confusing initially, with or without subtitles (that one’s up to you! i’d recommend subtitles at first, before trying to watch without them, or maybe watching with french subtitles!)

skam france (which i’m assuming you’re into, if you’re following me...?) is a lovely option for consuming french media. 

listening to music in french is another excellent way to learn! you can look up the lyrics, in french or english, and work your way through the song! i still have to look up lyrics to french songs pretty frequently. though, mind you, i do that for english songs pretty frequently as well oop

there’s this pre-conceived notion that, when you do something like this, you have to understand everything for it to be a success. that’s not the case— far from it, in fact! i spent so long— and in some cases continue to— only being able to get the vague plot of the film/show i was watching, only catching maybe half of the words. but— and stay with me here— that’s an achievement in itself! you aren’t going to ever completely know a language, even your native one! i look up english words all the time, still!!! and understanding the general plot of a story in a language that you’re learning is another one of those super gratifying feelings that you encounter while learning a language.

utilize online resources

this is a huge one, and also a broad one. by this, i mean stuff like duolingo (which i advocate for wholeheartedly!! it has a really good structure lesson-wise, and french is one of its most extensive courses, if not, the most extensive one!)

but by this i also mean things like PDFs of french textbooks! those will give you a similar structure to being in an actual class— i would recommend taking a class if you can, because it forces you to continue learning, even when you don’t want to (because you aren’t always going to be super motivated, let’s be real), but i know that’s not an option, for a lot of people.

and i also mean things like looking up soundbites for introductory french learning. youtube would most likely have plenty of stuff like that. it’s one thing to learn from one source— and if you want to start easy, that’s absolutely fine!— but learning from multiple places would work wonders on comprehension!!

read in french, write in french, speak in french

this is another daunting one, but another ridiculously necessary one. you may feel like you aren’t ready to do any of these things, especially very early on, but one of the biggest tips i have for learning french, or any language really, is to do these as much as you reasonably can, right from the get-go.

another thing i would HIGHLY recommend— and this forces some people to embarrass themselves— is to start off by consuming french media made for babies.

think about it this way: learning a new language is sort of like starting your entire life over. rather than being an english-speaking adult (or teenager), you’re now a french speaking baby. do babies follow proper sentence structure? do they read novels? do they get everything right, linguistically-speaking? no, of course they don’t! conversely— were you born fluent in your native language? or did your parents and family and teachers teach you, word by word, until you got to where you are now?

speaking french aloud is probably the most intimidating part of learning it, at least to me. mind you, this is largely due to circumstances (anglophone teachers, and many of them, leading to me having an awful accent, when i speak french!). for a lot of people, myself included, the fear comes from messing up, especially when talking to francophone people (native french speakers), because there isn’t as much time to think, to verify grammar/vocab/etc.

but this ties in to my baby idea, from above— think of the amount of patience and flexibility that’s necessary when talking to a toddler. do you always understand what a toddler is trying to say to you? no, but you do some of the time! and as the toddler gets older and they learn more and more, conversation gets easier. also, if they get something wrong, you correct them (well, sometimes!) gently, and patiently. you’re basically a toddler that’s more willing to learn than an actual toddler is. communicating with native speakers is key— people that can give you constructive criticism, while also treating you the patience that you deserve. if you know a french person irl, ask them if they’d be willing to talk with you in french, so that you can practice. alternatively, another great way to practice like this if you don’t have someone like that in your life is via email or even snail mail! worldpenpals is lovely for either— you can search for people by country, by language, etc., and once you start talking, you can keep it online, or exchange info and write letters to each other!

another pre-conceived notion that runs rampant in language learning, that i’ve noticed, it the idea that you either know a language or you don’t, that you’re either fluent or you’re not. 

and it’s just... not that simple! like at all! like i said a little while ago, i’ve been speaking english for (roughly) 20 years. but would i say that i know english? that i know the entire language? absolutely not!! i look up new words on like a weekly basis!!

if you’re trying to learn a language so you can say “alright, i speak it, i’m done now,” then you’re not learning a language with the right intention! languages are organic things, they grow and change, and you’re never not learning a language, you know? each language is its own little world, and there are so many people who are willing to help you explore it.

[littlespoonevan]

Tomorrow I've got a job interview and I'm so nervous, i mean, partially, I'm thinking they need people, you don't really need any experience, so i should get the job but on the other hand, what if i suddenly forget how words work?? And i really need a job, cause, bills and rent, don't pay themselves... and the first time i had a job interview i sent you and ask asking for advice and that interview went well, so now I'm trying to increase my chances fiekkdkes

ahhh omg good luck, anon!!!! i’m sending you all the good vibes right now!!!! and ok ok some last minute tips to get you through tomorrow, let’s go:

a big one i discussed with my friend recently: if you find it difficult to “sell” yourself, talk instead about the experiences you’ve had in the past to develop a particular skill as opportunities. eg. say one of the assets you bring to the job is you’re fluent in italian and they see you lived in italy in a year. rather than talking about how great you are at italian, say something like “I was really lucky to be given the chance to live in Italy for a year as I felt it helped me develop my fluency and my comfort in speaking the language with native-speakers.” etc etc. This way you’re showcasing your experience while also demonstrating that you value the opportunities you’ve been given and you don’t have to do the awkward thing of trying to praise yourself when it might not be something that comes naturally to you

often, you can lead the interviewer to the questions you maybe want them to ask you by slipping in offhand comments/details in your answers that you want them to pick up on

in general, i like to prepare answers for questions i expect them to ask ahead of time. not even so i can rattle off a word for word answer that i’ve pre-prepared but just so i’m not shocked/freaked out if they do ask me that question. it definitely helps me calm down a lot

one bad answer doesn’t mean your chances are blown. if it’s a panel of people interviewing you then there’s almost always one person there that’s been designated to ask the “difficult” questions. don’t take it to heart <3

finally, remember if they’ve called you for an interview they already want you for the job. your resume/cv did the majority of the work. you just need to close the deal and convince them they did the right thing in calling you. 

I have all the faith in the world in you, bud. you’re gonna do amazing!! <3

[magistralucis]

I don't know if you're the same person, but I think I came across your old DeviantArt account. The reason why I bring this up is because I found your translations of Till Lindemann's poems, and in them you mentioned that you were just a beginner when it came to the German language. As someone who is trying to learn German myself, I was wonder if you had any tips on how to learn the language. I'm finding it quite difficult to get the hang of. Again, please ignore this if I have the wrong person.

Hi, it’s the same anon who asked you advice about learning German. It’s a bit off topic from my last ask, but the reason why I want to learn is mostly due to becoming a huge fan of Rammstein. Mutter is my favorite album, it’s so good!

Hello anon. I am definitely the person you’re looking for. I was working on this message when I initially received it and it was beginning to get rather out of hand - then I received the second one, and so I’ll meld the two responses into one and cross my fingers and hope for the best!

I started learning German about six years ago, when I first got into R+ and Till’s poetry. The motivation you have is pretty much the same one I had (same favourite album too! High five) and this is how I went about it. Apart from the standard ‘take it slow and steady, practice often’ advice that applies to every language, I’ve also added some German-specific advice beneath the cut:

1. If you can attend a beginner’s class, try to attend at least a year’s worth, especially if German is your first attempted foreign language. If you’re not used to learning languages, this is probably the most helpful advice I can give, because languages are by definition social constructs and you need people to speak it to and keep it alive with; this is also the place where they’ll teach you the basics of grammar, enough for you to begin navigating textbooks and be able to pick out the advice that works for you. 

This applies regardless of whether you want to learn ‘fully’ (in all capacities) or more ‘academically’ (reading + writing + information gathering prioritized) or if you literally want to be able to ‘speak’ it (listening + speaking prioritized). I may or may not be against the advice of langblr when I say this, but there is absolutely a limit to self-study, especially if you have no one else to talk in German with. I’d be hesitant to advise that going to classes for the entirety of your German learning will be helpful, because those things differ and there are very real concerns like money to consider, but they do make for an invaluable foundation.

2. If you are committed to self-studying for whatever reason, research your resources thoroughly. I’d recommend finding a textbook that works for you and sticking with it, because some grammar terms can and will differ across media. This isn’t a fix for knowing the correct grammatical terminology in all cases, because there are multiple ways to refer to a concept, but knowing what process is involved in what you’re referring to and being able to refer to it by a consistent name will help when you’re looking up resources elsewhere. 

This is an example of what I mean: the ’Subjunctive II’ in German used to be called ‘past subjunctive’ as an interchangeable term, when in fact the Subjunctive II is a class of subjunctives that utilize simple past/imperfect, pluperfect, and conditional tense forms to form themselves - they are not merely subjunctives that are only meant to be used in past tense sentences, as the term ‘past subjunctive’ can imply. I mean, simple past/imperfect subjunctives are meant for unreal events taking place in the present or future.

Took me a while to wrap my head around that. 

The books in my arsenal are Essential German Grammar by Martin Durrell, Katrin Kohl and Gudrun Loftus (very grammar-oriented and strict, but helpful), a verb conjugation book of the 500 most common German verbs (useful for reference), a German dictionary, a translation theory book (you won’t need this, necessarily, if your focus isn’t on translation), and some textbooks with translation segments in them. When I was going to classes, I used the Wilkommen! series of books by Paul Coggle and Heiner Schenke, and I have a GCSE German textbook from CGP Books for when I tutor German to younger students (because that’s also a thing I do, haha). I gathered all of this in the UK, so this list may or may not be helpful to you; but in the end, the language isn’t going anywhere, so some research will help you make the right choice.

3. Brush up on your grammar terminology. If the above Subjunctive II example induced in you a case of math_lady.jpg, the problem you’ll first run into isn’t a German problem - it’ll be a problem of what you understand of the grammar of your native language, or at the very least, the language your resources are written in. Even if you are a bilingual or residing in multilingual territory already (e.g. you are from somewhere like Canada where monolingualism isn’t standard, already know some foreign languages, etc.) it’s worth brushing up on the grammar. Terms such as ‘copula’, ‘adjective’, ‘preposition’, ‘gender-based inflection’, ‘accusative case’, ‘indirect object’, and ‘adverbials’ absolutely need to make sense to you in order for you to understand your resources. 

I mean, I have to be honest. You don’t really need grammarspeak in order to be fluent in a language, because you also pick those things up via immersion; but if you are using textbooks and learning at a later stage of life, you are going to come across heavy use of grammar terminology at some point. And German grammar is painful, I won’t lie. When I tutored German from scratch, it took a full year just to get the fundamental grammar down. German is very logical, save for when there are exceptions - and there are always exceptions, thousands of them - and when the underlying structure of the language hasn’t begun to make sense yet. To my experience, you sort of break eventually and accept it. It’s, uh… always best to be prepared. If you’re adept in grammarspeak already you may ignore this section, save for the bit about German grammar being hard, because that is absolutely true.

4. Practice, practice, practice. I can’t stress this enough. I actually have no one method to recommend, because I had only a very specific goal in mind when I was first learning German: I was going to finish translating Messer. My practice involved translating German texts into English (not the reverse!), regardless of what they were, and listening to German music and radio. This will not work for everyone. What matters regardless of what you do is consistency - 10 mins every single day revising is far better than two hours of revision weekly. Don’t let the stigma of being a beginner get you down. You want to have a go at a German poem, but it’s too ambitious-seeming for you? You won’t know it unless you try. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. You will make a boatload of mistakes and embarrass yourself constantly, and this is a sign that your learning is going well - patience and tenacity is the key here.

5. Penpals and Tandem/speaking partners can be helpful. This may not be immediately applicable advice, because it can be intimidating for a beginner to write to or talk to native speakers, but once you reach a certain point in your studies it’s important for you to be acquainted to the way native speakers do things. It’s how you pick up slang and other quirks of the language, for one. Same for total immersion.

6. Don’t trust Till’s ‘r’ when it comes to the German ‘r’ sound. The strong rolled ‘r’ is a feature of sung German and has nothing to do with the rhotic, throaty ‘r’ of German and French. Please ignore this section if you’re already familiar with the rhotic ‘r’.

7. In fact, look up proper pronunciations for everything. Sung German is its own territory, and not the best thing to refer to when you’re learning Standard German. The two ‘ch’s especially - they’re their own sounds, not just e.g. ‘ich’ -> ‘ish’ and e.g. ‘ach’ -> ‘ack’. The former is closer to ‘i-hh’ sounded at the front of the mouth, while the other ‘ch’ is pronounced like the ‘ch’ of the Scottish ‘Loch’ (make ‘hh-’ sound with the back of your tongue touching or near to the soft palate). Again, please ignore if you have the pronunciation down pat already.

8. When you learn words, make sure that you learn the article that comes with them. ‘Das Mädchen’, ‘Der Tisch’, etc. It is absolutely more work, but if you are not acquainted to grammatical gender, knowing the appropriate ‘der/die/das’ that comes with a noun is extremely useful. There are three main grammatical genders in German - this may not be the case for you even if you already speak a gendered foreign language (like French - no neuter gender), so this is absolutely vital advice I plead with you not to ignore.

9. Don’t shy away from compound nouns. I unironically love this feature about German and have never had problems with it personally, but I know sometimes it can be intimidating to be faced with a huge string of words that pop out at you from nowhere. 

I tend to break them down to their components to figure out what the singular word means, approaching them like a puzzle rather than a singular concept to just know firsthand: ‘Fallschirmspringen’ means ‘to parachute’, but its components literally boil down to ‘fall-umbrella-jumping’, for one; compound nouns are rather whimsical concepts, and also very literary, and I think there’s a real beauty in them! Take it slow and listen to what the compound noun is trying to tell you.

10. Verb conjugation tables are your friends. Especially for the strong verbs. I got nothing else to add to this.

11. Like in every other language, beware of false friends. These are words that look alike to those in your native language, but do not mean what you think they mean. ‘Also’ in German does not mean ‘also’ in English. (It’s closer in meaning to ‘so’ in English.) The German ‘bald’ means ‘soon’, while the English ‘bald’ is ‘kahl’ in German. ‘Kritik’ in German is referring to the act of criticism, not the ‘critic’. It is because of this that you must resist the temptation to do literal translations from English/[insert your native language here] to German, unless you know what you’re doing.

12. Read up on grammatical cases. German has four, which is one more than English, and the four cases are nigh universally called the nominative, accusative, dative, and the genitive. There are none of the ‘subjective/objective/possessive’ stuff that English uses, or worse, the ‘I-me-mine’ relation that doesn’t name anything helpful. 

These four are also true grammatical cases, which means that full inflection of nouns, pronouns, and noun phrase elements (e.g. adjectives/numerals…) need to be learnt in German. At its extreme, this can mean learning up to 48 adjectival endings for each adjective - accounting for gender, number, case, and strong/weak/mixed endings. All because case inflection is a thing.I make that sound a lot more intimidating than it actually is, because said endings usually follow a pattern and sometimes don’t even change that often. Inflections are just things that you get used to. If cases are already your bread and butter because you’re familiar with a language with true cases, you can go ahead and ignore all of this; let us be thankful that German only has four. We could be… like… talking about Russian or something.

13. You are learning a new way of thought, not a new way to put words together. This is applicable to every language you might wish to learn. This is why you ought to look up words in both directions to verify the exact sense that you need, and why you can’t rely on [native language] -> [target language] translations forever in order to become familiar with the target language. The old way of thought will absolutely cling on and try to impede your progress; language learning is about unlearning this process as much as it is about learning new things. 

I’m six years gone, and if you stuck me in Germany I’d still be stammering and blushing and nonfunctional. We don’t consider eight-year-olds who’ve grown up speaking a language all their life ‘fluent speakers’ of that language; it can be easily another eight years for you, too. You’re in for the very long haul, and that means you can take as much time as you need. Don’t be down if you don’t get it right soon enough, or if it’s taking a very long time.

14. [SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO] I also tutor German. Contact me if you wish clarification on certain things or if you feel that you may require actual tuition. [/SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO]

I don’t post so much about R+ anymore, but German remains a very strong and integral part of my life. I am glad that my attempts at contributing to the fandom have led you to the same interest I developed all those years ago. I hope that the advice above is helpful, but if it is not, I would love to hear feedback from you on what parts of German you are struggling with so I am able to give more specific advice. My inbox is open whenever you want to ask me questions; I wish you luck on your journey and would love to hear from you, wherever you may be in your pursuits!