Hello, good afternoon! - Hello!
- Is it good morning? Here in Vancouver it's good afternoon. Good morning!
- Today, I'm going to be speaking with Maxie
about the German language.
- Thanks for having me! - Nice to meet you, Maxie!
First, please introduce yourself.
- I'm Maxie, and I live in Japan.
I've been studying Japanese for 12 years,
and I teach German to people that speak Japanese.
- Pretty interesting, right? When I go to Japan, I go to the bookstores.
The first thing I look is the language section.
Around 70 percent of those books are English; to study English.
The rest are Chinese, Korean, Spanish...
There's not much German books - Only a little
- What do you think about the main goal, or like
the main reason Japanese people learn German? What's a common motive?
- Well, um
There's a lot of women who loves Classical music
- I see - And those people, well
for example, Schubert, Bach, Beethoven's lyrics
are in German and they want to sing it.
Or people that want to go to Vienna, the town of music,
or Bonn where Beethoven was born
but there's also people that have interest in
German philosophy, and stuff like that.
Some want to study abroad to Germany, or work there for economy relations.
- Um, how about German Rock music? Like Manheimm
Manheimm? Not sure, I don't know much Rock music, but
I heard there's people that learn German because of it - Oh,
that's true. There's a lot of people that like Rock in Japan as well.
So yes. - I see, cool.
For me, German or Germany, well and
also Austria speaks German too, right
around those areas, the middle of Europe, has many important countries, many important cultures
I know that. That's very interesting, but
Japan is an island country, right?
They do learn English; well, recently there's other languages like Chinese and Korean, but
Germany is very far. It's impressive for them to learn German. - It's impressive.
- It's also hard compared to English, right? Or is it not?
- Well, the funny thing is that in Japan, the doctors used to learn German.
Now there's English in universities, but in Japanese universities
there's students that learn German after English
which is still less than before, but there's still a lot of people.
Doctors, for example "Karte" and such
words are sometimes in German.
Now there's English words, but it used to be all German.
So there's still some doctors in Japan that would say "I learned German in University".
- I see. Well then, when we compare Japanese and German,
there's masculine, feminine, neuter words in German, right?
and, how do you say it, case endings and such are complicated
but in Japanese, plural forms and gender for words don't exist.
In that aspect, I always think this, but Japanese is loose in those terms.
- Yes, that's true. - If you say something,
it kind of works out. However, German doesn't work like that. It's more complicated. What do you think about that?
- Well, I learned Japanese by ear at first. For example, "wa" and such
and those things got messy when I learned the writing form of the language.
I didn't study grammar first, so it improved once I learned that, but for German,
I think learning it as a pair is the best.
Many people want to learn the feminine, masculine, neuter forms "die der das" rules first, but
repeating words, rather than learning a set rule
has less chance for you to mess up.
When studying, if you learn the words with the masculine "the" with it,
it's easier to learn. I think it's harder to learn via rules.
- I agree. A habit is good.
If it becomes a habit, such as "this one for this word", it's less complicated
and more natural. But it's not just "die der das", right?
There's a lot, but...
Well... When I learned German, well I'm not very good at it now, but
when I went to Germany for work,
my German wasn't bad, although it's not the best now
but when I tried to learn "der den dem des",
I didn't improve at all. Just listening, reading,
speaking, not worrying about messing up as nothing happens if you worry,
when I was able to get in that mindset, my German started to improve.
- I agree. When you worry, when there's the anxiety, there's not much
improvement. Courage to speak is key. - I agree.
- So it's best to have even just one friend that speaks German, one person that's interested in you
and since they're interested in you, even if you speak poor German
they'll still listen to you.
Yes. So make friends first. That's important. - That's true. And also,
I don't know them personally, but on Twitter, there was a Japanese person that is learning
Georgia, right? The country with Caucasus mountains. He's trying to learn the language.
And obviously, when a Japanese person is trying to learn that language, the natives there would encourage and cheer him on, right?
In Germany, however, it's different.
For Germany, if a Japanese person goes to Germany
and speaks very poor German, most Germans reply in English.
- That's also true for Japan as well.
When I walk in Japan, rather than saying "Konnichiwa" to me, many people like children say "Hello!"
But if you say "I'm learning German, so please speak in German to me", then
they'll switch. It's just that many Germans believe that foreigners understand English better than German.
But yeah. A lot of Japanese people that are studying abroad in Germany say
"I can't speak fluent English, so please speak in German". - Oh, that's a good idea.
That's good even if you do speak good English.
"Sorry, I don't speak English well, so..."
- Also if you go to Berlin and closer to the city, there's more Germans that can speak English, but
I recommend going to the countryside where there's places that's only in German, so
if you're studying abroad or coming to Germany for the first time, go to the countryside. The landscape is prettier too.
- It's very pretty. The small, rural German towns and such are nice.
Rosenheim too. The medieval aesthetic is preserved.
Dinkelsbühl too. I visted many towns like that.
I stayed there, and it's cheap, and it's really fun.
Well, I think Germany is a very fun place overall. - It's very fun.
- Some people say that Germany is heavy, or too strict, and stuff but...
Well, there's always people that say that, but for me, Germany is a very fun place.
So please learn German! - Please!
- I'll put Maxie's link down in the description box, so
- Click the bottom! - Please click it!
Check out Maxie's channel to learn German.
Well, that's it for today. Thank you! - Bye!!