Author Archives: Syed Rahman

Taking Wien’s temperamental weather in your stride

It would neither be particularly interesting, nor fair to say that this spring has not been all that conducive for some sun and frolicking. After all, Wien is not known for sunny beaches and warm weather. Its a central European city, situated very close to the Alps, which make for a cooler, unpredictable weather.

This aspect of local climate was brought to the fore last week, when people were somewhat surprised by snowfall in the middle of April. Most days of the month saw cloudy or slightly cold weather and it did feel like winter was not really ready to loosen its grips on the region and make way for spring. So, personally, my earlier blog on a spring outing location may have been a bit optimistic. But take heart, not all is lost! Out of season snowfall is a pleasant surprise and life goes on as usual. However, I thought that a few wardrobe tips may be appropriate for students or backpackers planning on coming over.

  1. A raincoat is in order – It does rain quite often in the city, so be prepare yourself with a raincoat or an umbrella. I suggest both!
  2. Have a mix of clothing – while it can get quite warm in the summers (Austria is landlocked), the weather can take a turn for the worse pretty quickly thanks to the mountainous terrain, so make sure you pack both light and heavy clothing. Since its not very humid, people don’t tend to perspire much, so you don’t need too many sets of clothes as long as you manage your laundry well.
  3. Stock up on warm accessories – the cold weather does mean that you may be needing thermals, think hats, gloves and earmuffs. Summer season travelers can ignore this tip
  4. Take it in your stride – rain may temporarily ruin your planned outings, but rest assured that a bright sunny day is right around the corner and the city has some great places for memorable excursions and outdoor activities!

I hope you find these tips handy and useful! Let me know if you have any tips of your own in the comments section below!

 

Some tips to top up on new languages (Part I)

One of my all time favorite science fiction scenes comes from the cult movie ‚The Matrix‘, when Keanu Reeves ‚downloads‘ martial arts skills into his brains by plugging into a computer and having a faithful sidekick ‚install‘ packages that teach him Jujitsu, Taekwondo and other esoteric fighting skills. It was so cool to imagine that I could master an art by just installing relevant knowledge into my brain instead of having to put in all that time and effort that would be better used fighting agents and sentinels.

Unfortunately, such technology is still in the realms of science fiction and for good or for bad, one needs to invest a significant amount of resources to pick up a skill such as a German. However, there are some hacks and guidelines that we can practice to be more efficient in picking up a new foreign language.

Finessing your skills in a new language requires much sweat and burning of late night oil. There are multiple dimensions to a language, the vocabulary, grammar, nuances in pronunciation and spelling are just the obvious ones. Some of these hacks and guidelines to learn are obvious while others are quite counter intuitive, some very genuine and the rest looked a bit shaky. I decided that making a small look up list would probably be a good idea. The list below is a condensed version of other more exhaustive articles that I have referenced for the interested reader.

  1. Have a strong motivation: Language experts suggest that having a clearly defined, strong motivation to learn a language is a key element to acing it. Our motivations have a big impact on our actions and on how well we ‚take up‘ to something and linguistic skills are no exception. One must be clear on why she is putting in all this effort. The reasons should also be credible and be more than ephemeral fancies. For example, someone learning German for professional growth or to genuinely benefit from the benefits of knowing a different tongue is likely to do way better than somebody else doing it because she feels like ‚trying out something new and impressing friends‘
  2. Practice, practice and practice!: The nature of linguistic skills demands that we actively put into practice all that we learn. To be able to fluently converse in a language means that we are able to process the vocabulary (oral or in written) in real time to its underlying meaning. Generally, beginners have to mentally translate what they are reading into their own tongue and then process the meaning. However, this puts natural limits on usage. For example, when I try to literally translate a long sentence from English to Deutsch, I always have issues with the verb placement as sentence formation in two languages is quite different when you have more than one verbs. The only feasible way to get around the problem is to force yourself to use the language repeatedly so that common phrases and sentences become second nature.
  3. Understand your own learning patterns: It seems that picking up a language is a very personal process. Some activities that are helpful for some, may not be that useful to you. For example, I find classroom discussions with the teacher very helpful in learning proper usage of words, while others pick it up subconsciously when they are going through exercises. So, to use your time more effectively, you must try to identify what works for you and what does not. Do you find that you build your vocabulary faster by answering multiple choice questions rather than memorizing from a word list? Can you speed up memorizing words by drawing pictures when you come across them? Also, make a list of what does not seem to work in your case. That way, you can use your time more effectively
  4. Take your skill to the real world: The faster you can start having conversations in your new linguistic muse, the better. The real world is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to your new linguistic exploits! So be ready to start talking with your security guards, waiters and colleagues in Deutsch. Mistakes are a part of learning, and you are going to make a lot of embarrassing mistakes in the beginning, but the practice it gets you is more than worth the blushes!

I hope you find the above list useful and practical. Some of the more elaborate articles that I found online (and borrowed heavily from) are here. I will probably have another article on this topic as there are many other interesting aspects that we could find useful.

  1. 22 Tips For Learning A Foreign Language
  2. 10 Tips And Tricks To Learn Any Language

App oder Kurz? What’s the best way to learn Deutsche?

Back in 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone, few people would have imagined what a game changing device the smartphone would eventually become. In less than ten years since, the phone moved from being a cumbersome contraption to call family and friends and snapping rudimentary pictures to become an indispensable personal assistant that helps us in almost all aspects of our life. We now have hundreds of thousands of apps designed to help with every possible activity (or the lack of any). Students, as a group in particular have benefited immensely from the arrival of the smartphone. We can now access collections from the world’s best libraries and connect with leading researchers from every field with our discreet handhelds and it was only a matter of time before the app revolution had its impact on the linguistic skills improvement front as well.

A simple search on any major appstore yields hundreds of apps that claim to aid language skills and many of them have excellent course material and a fun interface to make the experience interesting and hopefully, rewarding. Duoling, Fluenz, Babbel and Rocket Languages are some of the most famous apps out there and are used by millions of people to brush up on language skills. However, can apps really offer a credible alternative to classroom based study? The short answer is of course no, not in the foreseeable future at least, but they can be tremendously helpful aids and must be explored by every serious language student.

Over time, app design has improved by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when students would have to repeatedly tap an arrow key to painstakingly move the cursor near the right answer to see an apple and a star appear on the monitor as the reward. Developers now take great pains to make their apps engaging, interactive and effective. Many language apps feature interesting technology like speech recognition and natural language processing techniques to make exercises comprehensive and to more effectively simulate a classroom atmosphere. Apart from all this, apps also offer unparalleled convenience – one can take up exercises as and when convenient, in the U-Bahn, waiting for the bus, before falling asleep (although many sleep therapists discourage phone usage before nap time).

I have personally found that apps are a great way to practice and cement vocabulary training. However, that said, I strongly feel that current language apps lack the level of direct interaction that an average student needs to pick up many basic and advanced linguistic skills that can easily be taught in the classroom.

For example, the app may help you remember the correct article for mannlich nouns when used with ‘besuchen’ or ‘brauchen’, but they don’t necessarily do a good job teaching you about when the accusative case kicks in and what effect it can have on the sentence formation. The problem only compounds when other complications get added to the mix, such as the impact of prepositions and subtleties linked to subject/object focus. Current apps, in general have not figured out a way to clear the many doubts and questions that crop up in a student’s head and just expect the user to go through exercises and mentally note what’s correct and what’s not.

The lack of a troubleshooting ‘Guru’, who can explain fundamentals, simplify, aid and warn against pitfalls is the real drawback with many of these apps and that’s why I think they cannot effectively substitute a classroom course. So, while students may use these apps as aids, they should definitely take up structured courses if they are serious about learning a new language.

To sum up, language apps are fun and help you practice and perfect many skills that are needed to speak good Deutsche, but they are no match for a real life teacher and colleague environment. It’s much the same way that we all find Siri amusing and useful, but we don’t necessarily ditch our friends to spend more time talking to her.

Where there is smoke, there is fire – A look at the smoking culture in Wien

Wien is widely regarded as one of the best cities to live in globally. It is clean, surrounded by natural beauty, has excellent recreational facilities and has many excellent restaurants and cafes. It has a pleasant night life and you often read that the city also has great cafes and restaurants. However, for a nonsmoker like myself, going to a cafe to relax for a bit is not as straight forward as it seems. Austria is one of the few remaining countries in Europe that still allows smoking in cafes, and well let’s face it, I cant really go to many good rustic cafes without having passively smoked a few good swigs of tobacco every few minutes I spend there.

Wien’s romance with smoking is a bit of an enigma to me. Why do the otherwise health conscious people here tolerate public smoking, disregarding the substantial and ever increasing research pointing to the harms of active and passive smoking? The problem is in fact darker than what it seems at the surface. The country already has one of the highest smoking rates in Europe.[Source] In Austria, lung cancer, which is one of the most direct and harmful consequences of smoking accounts for 6.8% and 3% of total deaths in males and females respectively. Central Europe (including Austria) lags behind the US and countries in Western Europe in terms of decline in the prevalence of smoking. More worryingly, prevalence of smoking seems to still be on the rise among women and this has corresponded with an increase in lung cancer rates among females. So, we must admit that the problem is more than just skin deep.

For years, protesting lax regulations on smoking seemed to be just as pointless as donning expensive Calvin Klein perfume to one of the smoke filled pubs, cafes and bars of the city. However, finally there has been some good news for anti-smoking activists after their long, commendable fight. In 2015, years and years after similar measures in other countries, the Austrian government finally decided to bring about a complete ban on smoking in pubs, bars and cafes by 2018.[Source] So we can hope for clearer, healthier breathing for coffee lovers, employees and visitors who just want to sip their cup of delicious cocoa and watch the city walk past without dabbling with carcinogenic agents swirling around, eagerly looking to ensnare their next unsuspecting victim.

Since late is better than never, we must wholeheartedly welcome this progressive step to limit smoking in public areas as it will definitely help Wien become a healthier city for everyone living here.

Neue Donau, An excellent spring outing

Lets face it, learning Deutsche can sometimes be hard work. Poor, unsuspecting students regularly  have to confront complicated, cryptic rules and more numerous, but just as baffling exceptions. The drudgery goes on, class after class, week after week, so every once in a while, the brave new Deutsch learner needs a good break from the classroom and has to head out to get some fresh air.

Fortunately, we in Wien are blessed with many scenic locations right at the doorstep of the city that make it a naturist’s paradise. The city’s Public Transport System makes many of these natural attractions so accessible, that an outdoor excursion is pretty much as easy as visiting a mall. Among the many beautiful locations that Wien boasts of, I rate Neue Donau among the best.

The U6 line takes us right to the doorstep of Neue Donau, and here, if the weather indulges you, one can take part in a plethora of activities – biking, jogging, swimming and boating or any other outdoor effort that catches your fancy. The elegantly laid out jogging trail and cycling paths right by the gleaming waters of the river and the pristine green meadows get you straight in the mood to burn some calories and if you are not ready to to sweat it out, just get you to relax by the river bank, feeding the swans and gazing at the occasional boats that traverse the waters serenely.

Another startling aspect of Neue Donau is the urban skyline that makes a contrasting backdrop to all the nature that surrounds you.  The city dweller in me is reassured by the imposing Donauturm and the Millennium tower right by all this greenery. On weekends the place is flooded with families that come out to enjoy the crispy spring weather.

Neue Donau also boasts of summer stations that serve refreshments to visitors and facilities for trampoline enthusiasts and a small football court. And if you are really fortunate, you may also encounter a couple of rare skateboarding xenophobes, who will expose you to areas of Deutsche that are generally not addressed in the classroom! If it happens to you, just take it sportingly and continue to enjoy the many great things about the place.