I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know).
As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since
> trying to think in the target language
for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example :
auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so
"Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct
If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning
"Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial.
So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.
Grammar is a science, and it's not necessary to speak a language. My mother tongue is Turkish, an agglutinative vocal-harmonising beast with hundreds of suffixes, yet I don't need any grammar while speaking nor while reading or writing.
I'll start my archaeology double major in short, and German seems to be quite an important language in the field, so I'll have to learn that. I'll use my way and see if you and the others who agree you are right that German requires heavy grammar. Though I can reasonably guess that I'll start reading research by the six months mark.
I personally tend to think about languages a lot in terms of grammar. The reason might be that in German (my native language) grammar plays a much larger role (four cases and lots of rules for declination and conjugation) than in English (also in Russian grammar plays a very central role, as far as I know).
As I have often written on Hacker News when learning German I would strongly recommend to get the grammar by heart (yes, it is complex and ugly), until you don't have to think about it anymore (if necessary by rote memorization) since
> trying to think in the target language
for German means thinking in the German grammar. Any approach that tries to skip grammar at the beginning will soon confuse learners, because for example verbs are typically associated with some class of object (either based on a case or a preposition) and if you use it wrong often the meaning can change. For example :
auf etwas warten (to wait for something) has to be used with an accusative, so
"Ich warte auf den Zug" (I'm waiting for the train) is correct
If you use a dative instead, this is also yields a correct sentence, but with a completely different meaning
"Ich warte auf dem Zug" means you are on the top of the train and waiting, since "auf" followed by dative is a local adverbial.
So learn the grammar correctly from the beginning.