Learning a third language by myself - My ongoing German challenge

To learn something by yourself, the first thing you must have is discipline. You need discipline in order to achieve the next three most important key factors: to be consistent, have patience and to be able to concentrate despite all the daily distractions we face.

I am not disciplined and I since I can remember, I lack long term consistency. On the other hand, I'm able to be patient as long as I see progress and, despite what you might think of me, I can completely concentrate on getting something done as long as it doesn't take a long time.

_Source

Why am I a masochist and want to learn German?

Since I was young, I used to admire the Germans and their mentality; despite whatever negative opinions you might have, you have to accept that their culture and mindset is one that deserves a closer look, so that got my curiosity.

Can you imagine what it would be to read Kant, Heidegger, Hegel (or maybe even Marx) in their own language? Philosophy has a way with words and expressions to get concepts and ideas going and, the idea is as important as the wording and the way the author tries to transmit his opinions. When you read a philosophy book that is translated, you are reading the interpretation of the translator, and you might get some ideas lost in the process, or perhaps the english speaker who is in charge of getting those ideas translated is biased, or maybe he's not capable of grasping the higher meaning of some concepts. But imagine you are able to read those ideas directly from the source... that has some appeal to me.

The mindset. There's a theory that goes around the lines of the way we speak defines how we think, a language is the way we express ourselves and we created it, we molded it, but as we speak it, it also molds us back. Have you heard - or maybe have you experienced, if you fluently speak more than one language - that people has different personalities depending on the language they are speaking? I know it's true because I experience it, and I have a few friends who speak a couple of languages who can confirm. Well, to understand - or at least try to grasp - that German mindset, it is only obvious that learning their language is a good approach.

Then you have all the German travelers - more importantly, German girls traveling - and how they pretty much dominate in numbers everywhere you go. As you may know, I am a low budget, heavy traveler nomad and I frequent hostels all the time; there's always a German speaker. It's not that they love traveling more than Mexicans, or Spaniards for that matter, it's just that their economy is so strong that pretty much anyone with a job can save some money to go traveling once a year. Some times there are conversations that you can only have in German, or people that will only open to you if you speak their language - even if you both end up speaking english - and, last but not least, when there's more than one German around, most of the time they end up speaking German between each other; I've never liked not knowing what's going on, so, as you correctly guessed, learning the language is a big plus for a heavy traveler.

These are not the only reasons I have to learn German...

I won't be replying to comments on this post, but you can find the rest of this post in the best Blockchain there is, where I'll be replying to every comment.