Noah’s Journey to Learning 34,000 German Words with Migaku

As a high schooler, Noah dabbled in nearly a dozen different languages. He'd see a new language on Duolingo, think it sounded cool, and start studying. It was fun: he enjoyed learning languages.

Eventually, he decided that he didn't just want to dabble in languages. He wanted to learn a language very well. Like, really well.

We're talking bilingual well.

In pursuit of this goal, he's learned 34,136 German words (so far) with Migaku.

Here's his story:

Well, tell us about yourself

Hello! I am Noah.

My interests have always been of a more intellectual nature. My main interests since about the time I was in high school have been linguistics, philosophy, history and the reading thereof. I also like to go on walks and hikes. One Saturday in between my junior and senior year I walked 34 miles in a single day and was known as the guy who walks a lot.

I completed two years at Miami University studying German. I am now planning on attending Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena University, starting next fall, to get a philosophy degree with a complementary focus of Germanistik (editor: German for "German studies").

So, you started studying German in high school. How was that?

Well, on the first day of class, the teacher showed up and he only spoke German. Just to scare us, I guess. But he only did that on the first day, and I think we would have learned a whole lot more if he'd kept doing that.

Most of the time we spent inside the classroom was in English. We spent a lot of time talking about German, rather than engaging with it.

A lot of people would blame him for not being a good teacher, but I don't think that's the right thing to do.

Still, I think it would be better if we'd spent more time just interacting with German—like reading. The Spanish class had a ton of graded readers, and they dedicated time to letting the students read. I wish we were able to do that in German class, too.

I mean, we definitely had books in German in the classroom. When I was a senior I borrowed a couple of them and the teacher was very glad. He actually let me keep them after the end of the year since it was a seemingly rare occurrence that anyone used them.

After my high school German studies and a few college classes, I went into Migaku in May 2021 knowing about 1,500 German words.

And then you just dove right into German

At some point I heard of AJATT—short for "All Japanese All the Time"—in which people basically "immersed" themselves into the language, switching as much of their life and entertainment time over to the language they were learning as possible.

So I was like—Oh, I just need to do this (German) all day long.

And for a while, I did that. I just tried to listen as much as physically possible. I even grew out my hair a bit so I could always have a headphone in without anybody noticing. I worked at a grocery store in college and, you know, you're kind of just standing there and waiting, so I'd just listen to audiobooks all day long.

You went from high school classes to audiobooks?

Yeah—I'd listen to two things, mainly:

So you'd watch something, then re-listen to it?

Yeah, it was quite helpful.

But I have to say: listening to the same thing over and over again gets kind of boring.

The nice thing about it, though, is that just listening to the dialogue from a TV show doesn't take too long. You can get through an entire series in a shift. So I'd be listening to the same dialogues over and over, and each day, I'd have moments like wow, I hadn't realized they said that! I mean—I knew it happened later, but I had missed the foreshadowing. And it was cool to pick up on that.

... and you understood all this stuff?

Well, the first thing I did was find an audiobook version of my favorite book. I hadn't read it in German, only in English. And I'd just listen to that audiobook, passively, on repeat. I didn't really understand any of it.

Later on, when I set down to read that book (Siddharta by Hermann Hesse) in German, I could actually hear the Audiosprecher (editor: the person who narrates an audiobook) in my head just because I'd listened to it so many times. So... something stuck.

Looking back on it, though, I don't think this passive listening was all that useful.

If anything, I guess, it helped me get used to German pronunciation. Since I didn't understand anything, all I could pay attention to was the sounds. And I did notice some stuff—some sounds in some words stuck out.

And now you're reading Nietzsche. How'd you get there?

And when did you first start reading?

Well—I said I was following AJATT, right? And one of their suggestions was to only consume content that (a) was intended for native speakers and (b) that you wanted to consume. So I took that at face value. I tried to skip everything that was easy (boring) so I'd be challenged.

And then, down the road, I changed my mind. Like, I had read this book—I don't remember what it was, but I really struggled with it. So I thought, hmm, maybe I shouldn't be trying to read the hardest things in the world.

For example, there's this sci-fi author—Andreas Eschbach. Somebody recommended one of his books to me—it was a book series, Out-Trilogie, 1,185 pages.

The author actually has like 5 book series, and I'm reading another one, Das Marsprojekt, right now. Another book series that I enjoyed was Merle-Zyklus by Kai Mayer. He is a great introduction into German Fantasy.

Many of their books are aimed at people who are younger... and it turns out that some things can still be fun to read, even if they're easy. He also has books aimed at an adult audience, and it's kind of interesting to compare—see how much harder it is to read those. Recently I showed a screenshot of a book I was reading to a native German speaker and they were impressed I could read something at that level. I was confused since German teens can read this book, but it seems non-natives do not tend to read, so reading seemingly gives you a major advantage over other language learners.

Also:

How was the transition from books to TV?

Maybe the timeline wasn't clear, but I'd actually been listening to German before I started reading in German. I got an Audible subscription early on, so I'd listen to books, and I also watched German shows.

The first series I watched in German was called Dark. This was early 2021. I watched it with English subtitles then again with German subtitles. I'd initially planned to do that with all series, but I realized that the initial watch with English subtitles was unnecessary.

From there I got into all the German Netflix series... and they were OK. German television can certainly be a mixed bag, although I have learned to appreciate German television even if some of it is quite formulaic or a bit campy. I also re-watched a lot of series that I'd grown up watching. Since I knew everything that was going to happen, it meant I could completely focus on making sense of the German.

For example, one thing I watched was Avatar the Last Airbender. That was one of my favorites. Although it was a kid's show, it was actually pretty hard to understand—there's a lot of complexity. There's also all this fantasy vocab that you just don't hear in real life.

I really got into some of the period pieces as well as regional dramas that were available on Netflix at the time. Babylon Berlin, Weissensee, Tannbach, Kleo, Das Boot, Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter.

Native speakers have a ton of cultural knowledge from growing up there and by watching these you can help yourself acquire some of that information.

And how'd you balance reading and listening?

Well, basically, I just tried to spend as much time in German as possible, however that worked out. I'd listen to about 10 hours of audio during the day, then read after dinner until I went to bed.

How do you read in German? Like when you sit down with a book, what do you do?

So, I read in the Migaku Clipboard on iOS. It is the closest thing to that "e-reader feel" that is currently possible with Migaku.

I either find the book on Projekt Gutenberg (editor: the German version of the website) or upload an epub to Neat Reader.

If you select the text at the very bottom, then just drag your finger upwards, you can select the entire webpage for copy relatively quickly. You can then paste that into the Migaku Clipboard. I also like to listen to an Audible audiobook as I read a text version of the same book, if one is available. That is to say that I concurrently read and listen.

One of the reasons I like audio is so I can hear the correct pronunciation of words. For example, the indicative past tense of the verb "sein" (to be)" is "Ich war" (I was), while the subjunctive past tense is "Ich wäre" (I were). In German, a and ä are pronounced differently, and I hadn't realized that I wasn't differentiating them until I heard a native speaker say wäre.

I also like the Migaku reader (editor: currently not available in the main extension)—it's so useful. You can import things to read and make cards on the fly. I really like the comprehension stats. You could import all the epubs you are interested in reading, check Migaku's comprehension score to see how difficult each one is, and then read your books in order of highest to lowest comprehension. Taking this approach, I’d see my comprehension score for some difficult books go up by 5% just by waiting to read them until I’d finished a few easier books first.

So, you started in 2021. When did you realize your efforts were paying off?

2022.

I started Migaku in May 2021, and I went into it knowing 1,500 words (according to Migaku). And then I started listening to German and reading it as much as I could.

I was in university at the time, and basically, because I'd been doing that, I was able to skip a lot of classes—about a year's worth of German courses.

In particular, I remember this one day—sometime in the spring of 2022—when I was in an upper-level German class. The teacher brought up some grammar rule because somebody had made a mistake with it. Something to do with word order, I don't quite remember.

And how has your German been more recently?

From late 2022 to mid-2024, my motivation for German dropped significantly and I was hardly doing anything with it. I would do occasional things, but not much; I was in a very different headspace than I am today or back in 2021-2022. As it would turn out, despite this break, my comprehension and vocabulary remained in place. I thought it would go out the window, but no, when I came back, I could understand most everything and read books fine—with the exception of some high brow literature.

Or, like, more recently—the other day, I was talking to some Germans. I told them I was American before I started talking. And they thought I was lying about being an American. Now, they didn't think I was German, but just that there was no way I was American. I didn't have an American accent. I had to speak English for them to believe me. I still stutter a lot when I speak in German, and I forget basic words—I just haven't practiced it enough, so I'm not very good at it, although in my last conversation I felt like I did quite well and that fluency is right around the corner.

Recently I had 100% comprehension according to the Migaku Extension of an episode of a TV show I hadn't seen before—like I watched the episode, and there were some words I didn't know, but 100% from a rounding up from 99.5% or so is still rather impressive in my opinion. Actually, I got “100%” comprehension for three episodes in a row. That was cool, too.

Recently, I read Götzen-Dämmerung oder wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert by Nietzsche in one day. I had a goal of becoming capable of reading the real works from German philosophers by the end of the year, and I met that goal. Nietzsche is a good choice since his writing style is more concrete, in contrast to the more abstract philosophers. He is such a fun writer to read. If you are at that level, I would recommend this book. This one, and many more, are in the public domain and available for free on Projekt Gutenberg.

Where do you see yourself going with German from here?

Alright—so I didn't actually graduate university with a degree. I want to get a degree from a German university, and I did enough school in the US that I am eligible to transfer to a German university. To do that I need to know German, obviously, but

Then, what I'm entering is a philosophy program, so by the time you graduate, they expect you to have learned either Latin or Ancient Greek, as well. I am undecided on that front but leaning towards Ancient Greek. I like a lot of the writers from ancient Greece and am looking forward to being able to hear the beauty that Homer wrote in the original language with the proper pitch accent.

Then, so far as personal goals go, another goal I have is to be able to just sit down and read pretty much anything with 98%+ comprehension.

Generally speaking, though, it'll be cool to live in Germany and experience life there.

Wait, you're learning a third language?

Yeah. The philosophy program at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena requires 2 modern foreign languages and also that I learn either Latin or Ancient Greek by the time I present my thesis.

For my third language, as mentioned, I am choosing French—many German thinkers like to quote it verbatim without translation, so it would be useful to have French in my toolbox. I've already started learning it, actually. It has been about 2.5 weeks and I've just hit a "known words" count of 2,000 words. Initially my plan was to learn 45,000 German words and then switch my focus to language number 3—that being French—until I pass a the B1 test, but I changed my mind.

What are your goals for 2025?

I think when it comes to goals you should both be doing something realistic, but also difficult to complete. If you fail, you can always finish later.

My goals are to have read, by the end of 2025, 10k pages total for French and 50k pages total for German. By the end of this year I suspect I will only have read 15k pages in German total, but a large sum of those were since I got back into German in the later half of this year—meaning that I've read 15k pages in just several months.

Reading 100 pages a day for German is definitely doable. Hitting 10k pages in French is definitely going to be a stretch, but that is only 28 pages a day, on average, so it is doable. I suspect I should be able to read books in French by mid January. Consistency is key. I want to be able to read any text in German or French that I may need to read in any philosophy course with complete and utter ease.

Let's swap roles. Say I want to learn German. What are your top 3 bits of advice for me?

If I had to pick three things:

Then, as boring as it sounds, the most important thing about language learning is probably time management. If learning a language really is important to you, you can probably find the time in your schedule to do it.

Like, I was spending 3 hours a night after dinner reading. And I mean, you don't have to spend three hours reading. But like—I know people who say they have no time, but they just mindlessly scroll on their phone at night for hours. They never do anything… but they never have time for anything. You do have time, you just aren't making time for your target language.

Looking back there were many things I did that weren’t optimal. Like—I’d read this book that was way above my level and... that wasn’t optimal... but I enjoyed the book. And I ended up learning German. So I don't really care. Worry less about being optimal and more about having fun and being consistent.

Any thoughts, looking back on your journey with German?

Yeah, sure.

I don't think learning a language is all that complicated. You find something you're interested in, and then you read it. And then you find something else you're interested in, and you read that. And you just keep doing that over and over again.

Try to mix it up—news articles, online magazines, easy books.

You just kind of have to treat your second language a lot like your first. Like—nobody is going to say oh, I can't listen to anymore English today. It's too hard! And you just have to treat the language you're learning like that.

It's a really gradual thing, of course. Some people think you get from zero to one hundred in a couple months, and that's not how things work.

It really just boils down to consistency.

What sort of learner would you recommend Migaku to?

Immersion learning is the best method—but, ultimately, it is something that is not hard so much as long. It is a marathon not a sprint. One thing that a lot of people tend to underestimate is how long it will take to learn a language. A lot of people want to be done in a matter of months. I think a lot of people like the idea of learning a language more than the time and effort required to do it successfully.

Migaku is ideal for people who are serious about acquiring fluency in a second language—people who are are willing to put in time and effort every single day.

A lot of people hold that immersion learning has the potential to change the language learning landscape, but I think this claim is exaggerated. People who do not want to put in more than 30 minutes a day are not going to get fluent regardless of method—at least, not in any reasonable time frame. Nevertheless, if you can show up everyday and not care where your present ability resides, the progress you will make will be immense. You need not get bogged down if you don't know every single word. Just do your best.

The ideal person for Migaku is people who will actually use it and enjoy the learning process.

Anyway...

Hi y'all! Editor here.

In closing, I'd like to highlight something Noah said way up in one of the first sections:

That, to me, is gold.

It's what I think every success story will boil down to, if you boil it long enough.

You learn to ride a bike by actually riding the bike, and you learn languages by interacting with them. There are many ways you can learn a language... but, at some point, you must begin interacting with your language. Fluency is a byproduct of having spent a lot of time using your language to do things that you find important or meaningful.

If you'd like to start learning a language by using it, but don't think your level is quite high enough yet, I invite you to try Migaku. It's totally free for 10 days, and you don't need to enter a credit card or anything like that to sign up.