Listening: Subtle Differences Until Attuned Part 2

I wrote a bit of a segment on listening, however now I explain why I went into that in the first place.

Differences and the Same.

Currently I am, as you may have guessed, starting to learn German. I decided to take the more structured route this time, because I have a purpose in mind when learning German, whereas the other langauges were strictly for fun and communication, expression, etc. This means I have chosen a FSI course that is publicly available. It have text and very well recorded tapes to study.

So I am currently doing the introductory course and so far so good. However when I first explored it a few days ago, I had no idea what I was hearing. You see the talk english first, then they say a German word or words. Your task in this series of this course is to tune your hearing. Meaning, you need to "hear" and "listen" to the differences in the words said, AND determine there sllyable. It does not yet matter about the actual word, or how to spell it (though it is in the script section of the coursebook if you want to look at it), but that you can actuall differentiate the stress and the word.

The first example was café vs coffee in German it is café vs kaffee. When I first heard this woman speak, I was trying to figure out what in the world she was trying to say, as at that exploration time I was not looking at the coursebook. But when I looked at the number the narrator was on and paid more attention, I realized she was saying the word cafe and cafe. Or so I thought.

"Hmm why is she saying this twice?" Then at that point I tuned in more, and I started to hear it. cafe kaffee. When I heard it sounded like this "cah-fay and cah-fay", but when I listened again I heard finally "cah-faayy and cah'fay"  Basically café  is well, café and coffee was cah'fay. Quick and short. Coffee, Kaffee. Café, Cah'faay (that's not how it's really spelled btw)

So how do I remember it, Café like you are upper class and fancy Cah-faay. And Coffee like... you would say Coffee quick, short.

It took me a few more times to really sharpen my ear to what she was saying and then this required me to pull out my latent English skills. Syllables, where is the stress? How many stresses? What what is this and what does it mean again?

So that's my discovery on that. It's still early in the learning, but I have faith I will learn abit more so that I can accomplish my goals.

Happy Learning Everybody!