A couple of coursemates asked me this earlier, and so I compile a list of all the desperate measures I have taken in learning German. No, I have never learned German before, and I have never even touched the language save one or two swearwords. So maybe this list would help aspiring upstarts in this new language to find a foothold. Also,1. Label everything about the house with colour-coded cards (I use blue for Maskulinum, pink for Femininum and purple for Neutrum). Walk around when slacking and note each label passively every time you pass by them. It is best if they are put in as conspicuous a place as possible. This makes your life easier and gives you something to show off to guests.
2. Because not everything can be labeled, rewrite new vocabulary into a notebook and classify by nouns / verbs / adverbs / prepositions. Take special care to divide nouns by the three genders, and better still to subdivide them again: for this task, I use this scheme of classification:
i. Abstract concepts
ii. Mensural quantities
iii. Places and collectives
iv. Objects
3. Speak in a bastard pidgin of German and whatever languages you know already. This is arguably easier for Singaporeans who have been doing language syncretism all their lives. The idea is to feel a sense of ownership towards German.
4. Do your tutorials in German for subjects other than German. The ideal subjects to do this in would be Mathematics and Physics (more logic than number of scientific terms) so you can learn a minimum of German specialist terms and proceed confidently from there. Again, this is more for growing into the language than anything else.
5. Specialist terms: You might have come across a few German words as you read through class notes, novels, textbooks, etc. In that case, remember them and do not let them go! Many such terms have since been borrowed into English. Some examples:
Gedankenexperiment - thought experiment (usually used in Physics)
Schadenfreude - happiness derived from someone else's misfortune
Gestalt - The "thingness" of a group of things (usually used to sound smart)
Gesamtkunstwerk - total work of art (Art)
Sprachbund - group of superficially similar languages (Linguistics)
Urheimat - original homeland of speakers of a particular language family (Linguistics)
Weltschmerz - a feeling of despair about the world (Literary Criticism)
Urtext - musical scores as written by the composer (Music)
6. Learn from cognates: Using a little bit of imagination, link German words to their English correspondent. e.g.
die Rechnung - the "reckoning" (= calculation) - the (restaurant) bill
jetzt - "yet" - now
If you are feeling adventurous, rope more languages into the game:
das Fenster - fenestra (Latin) - window
warum - värfor (Swedish) - wherefore (early modern English) - why
kennen - ken (Scots) - to know
These may or may not be true cognates, but anything goes if it works as a memory aid!
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Additional possible tip for verb conjugation: You might have noticed a pattern in the verb conjugation tables: some irregular verbs may not be so irregular after all! As it seems, some verbs actually fall into another category i.e. those with a change of pronunciation when applied to (du) and (er/sie/es). This pronunciation shift is called an ablaut (German linguistics term again!) and so we term these verbs "ablaut-regular"
eg 1: (wir/sie) nehmen - (du) nimmst - (er/sie/es) nimmt - (ihr) nehmt
ablaut: e to i
eg 2: (wir/sie) schlafen - (du) schläfst - (er/sie/es) schläft - (ihr) schlaft
ablaut: a to ä
note that the ablaut tends to be from a "broader" vowel to a "narrower" one
note also that there is no ablaut when (ihr) is concerned.
