Best Way to Learn a Second Language

Another suggestion: play Gothic (assuming you like/love it, of course) in German. It's not an adventure game, but there's a fair amount of dialogue - and there's the added benefit of actually knowing what it's about, so you won't have a problem if you can't understand a specific word.

For the record, I picked up my english mostly from cartoons (someone used to illegally rebroadcast Cartoon Network when I was a kid) and films (which had subtitles, though). After that, the internet helped me a lot to refine my skills, and especially to expand my vocabulary.
 
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I should learn how to speak english.
 
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If you like NWN, you can play with Corwin and CM. Don't weather it improves your English a lot, but at least you have some fun.

Oooooh, that's a great idea. And jolly good fun indeed! It really is too bad that they are playing during ungodly hours though.

magerette: here are some links to German TV webcasts - http://german.about.com/library/blrtltv.htm
 
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magerette, the only foreign language I can use freely is English, currently. As far as German and Spanish go, I can try being creative, having as little knowledge as I have, if the need arises.

Given what everybody already said, are a great sources to keep your 2nd language up to date and improving, but if you have the resources (time most importantly) and any good language courses available somewhere convinient would be a great to improve your basics and then build up more from there.
 
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And as to add to the overkill an article on the language used in Cologne : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kölsch_language

This is where I come from, more or less.

The Bavarian Dialect is imho very difficult to master - I mean the Bavarian Dialect used in rural areas.
 
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I should learn how to speak english.

You do just fine-I don't think anyone has ever missed your point in a discussion anyway. ;)

Thanks very much to Myrthos, Gorath, Arhu, HiddenX, and Alrik for the hands-on links and suggestions about German media--I've bookmarked them all. I actually do have a friend who'll be traveling to the UK next month--I may ask him to see what he can pick up in the way of DVDs and video games--VPeric--that's a great idea about playing Gothic in German if I can find a copy. Gothic is one of my favorite games and having played it already, there'll be some familiarity with the gist of the dialogue. Same with the newspaper--world news covers familiar topics and has a journalistic style that repeats itself regardless of the language.

@Atrachasis: Opera is also an interesting suggestion-easy to find and sure to have a translation. It works, too--in jr. high school I had a strange infatuation with Puccini's Turandot and could sing and understand lots of it before I moved on to things like the Beatles and other teenage girl stuff.

@GhanburiGhan--you know, I think there may be a small town around here somewhere that was originally settled by Germans--also, the college in my town does have a lot of foreign exchange students, so you may be right. :)

I think the internet is going to be my greatest resource. There are two colleges that offer German language studies in the area, but both won't have the beginner courses offered til the Fall semester.Sometimes I regret living out here with the cowboys--for instance, the closest branch of the Goethe-Institut is in Chicago, about 800 miles away--but it also has it's good points; they just aren't multi-cultural.

For those of you who have learned your English informally and on your own initiative, I want you to know you're a great example, because you speak it better as a second language than many of my countrymen do as natives. Thanks so much for all the help.

Edit-@HiddenX--interesting how all those languages are related. I actually spoke some Swedish when I was a small child around my grandparents-I could understand more than I could speak. As they always used it to talk about things they didn't want me to hear, I was highly motivated. :) Maybe that will be a bit of help.
 
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Thanks, Magerette. :)

Just a short comment:

@GhanburiGhan--you know, I think there may be a small town around here somewhere that was originally settled by Germans--also, the college in my town does have a lot of foreign exchange students, so you may be right. :)

There should be several ones in the USA. One I know of is even called "Germantown". ;) No joke. ;)

Edit: Ooops, there are several more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown
 
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The problem is, the waves of immigration that brought most of the European settlers were a long time ago(1800's to early 1900's) and we're talking great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of those people.

Most have lost all touch with the language of their forebears. There are some small towns, and small groups like the Amish, that have kept a lot of the culture they came with, but language-wise, it's unusual here in Oklahoma to meet anyone even with a European accent.

There's a small town in North Texas I think, that has a Bratwurst and Oktoberfest event every year--New Braunsfel, I think. I'll check around here and see what I can find. :)
 
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New Braunsfeld ? I know a town called Braunfels in the state of Hessen, the mother of my father used to work in an Apothekary there, when she was young.

Braunsfeld is a part of Cologne.
 
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Move to California

I already speak Spanglish. :) Maybe the governator would help me out with German, though...if I was thirty years younger and had better cosmetic surgery...

@Alrik--It really is a small world sometimes. :)
 
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He speaks Austrian, actually. ;)

This is very much like German, but with a few different pronounciations and idioms.

It's I think even closer than AE and BE. ;)
 
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He speaks Austrian, actually. ;)

This is very much like German, but with a few different pronounciations and idioms.

It's I think even closer than AE and BE. ;)

That's true, even I noticed that the tongue was a bit different: sort of like Flemmish-Dutch and Dutch spoken by someone of the Netherlands.
 
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I got extremely lucky on my first foray into the TV links and hit a gardening video. Imagine my delight--all the plant names are of course from the latin botanicals, and easy to recognize, and I know all the procedures and materials. Only problem is, the gardening expert seems to be talking at the speed of light! But with the help of an online German-English dictionary( a free Firefox plug-in), I actually could decipher a small bit.

Have some books/cds and learning aids coming, as well as being able to rent the DVDs of Das Boot and Lives of Others from Netflix with English subtitles. It's a start, anyway.

Thanks again to everyone , or rather danke schön. :)
 
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Bitte, gern geschehen. :) ;)
 
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