Tagesschau -

The Serendipity of the Railway Tie

Day 470 of German

It was a typical German study day. I watched the Tagesschau (the evening news) and looked up all the unfamiliar words. I sometimes question whether it’s truly effective to study German this way, as news media doesn’t follow the logical, progressive structure of a textbook. It often forces me to encounter words that, while vital to a news story, I’m not likely to use in everyday conversation.

Yesterday offered a perfect example of this: the word die Schwelle (Bahn), meaning a railway tie or sleeper. The news segment involved an investigation into a train derailment reportedly caused by faulty ties. I eventually had to search the topic in English just to fully grasp what a railway tie is.

This inquiry quickly spiraled. I looked up the term in both Japanese and Chinese, thankfully finding the same character combination: 枕木 (zhěnmù / makura-gi). From there, I started reading about the engineering purpose of the ties and the function of track ballast (the crushed rock beneath the tracks). Eventually, I had to remind myself to pull away and finish the German news!

It’s amazing how a single German word led me down a rabbit hole of discovery—from the language lesson to learning about railway construction and the function of the rocks under the train tracks.

It’s a cool discovery, even though I might not encounter die Schwelle again for a very long time, and I may eventually forget the exact terms in English or 枕木. But I guess this is precisely why learning through authentic language is more rewarding than using textbooks. These experiences lead to serendipitous discoveries about things I wouldn’t normally pay attention to.

I think I’ll stick to the Tagesschau.

October 30, 2025

Authentic Learning, German Learning, Serendipity, Tagesschau
The Hin und Her of Learning

Day 460 of German

It took me three days to work through the transcript of the Tagesschau broadcast from October 17th.

My learning platform, LingQ, has been buggy: the text underlining feature—which normally follows the audio—disappears whenever I pause to look up a word or process a sentence. To work around this, I now read the entire transcript first for comprehension, then listen to the audio with the text-tracking enabled. This method helps, but the platform friction certainly doesn’t speed things up.

Last week, I felt great about my listening comprehension because the crisis in the Gaza Strip dominated the news for weeks, giving me consistent exposure to the same core vocabulary. Now, the news cycle has shifted, and I’m encountering a whole new set of terms. Even factoring in work and life obligations, taking over three days just to understand a single 15-minute news broadcast is rather discouraging.

On the bright side, one news item was mildly amusing. I learned that Austria has a Fuel Price Fixing Act (Spritpreisverordnung) that prevents gas stations from increasing the price more than once a day (though they can decrease it freely). Germany, however, lacks this regulation, meaning prices can fluctuate several times daily. Many would like to see Austria’s Spritpreisverordnung introduced in Germany. One person in Germany’s Baden-Württemberg complained that this back-and-forth must stop:

Herbert Palme in Tübingen findet, das Hin und Her an der Zapfsäule muss bald aufhören.

What I find amusing is that someone has the patience to observe gas prices all day just to track the fluctuation. I wish I had that kind of time on my hands! That kind of focused observation is a luxury, but my own daily Hin und Her—that constant back-and-forth and distraction—is just the reality of language learning.

October 19, 2025

Discipline, Frustration, Hin Und Her, LingQ, Tagesschau
25000 Words

This has been a very busy week with work and obligations, but I was quietly satisfied to see my LingQ word count cross the 25,000-word mark today. While this counts individual words and not word families, it’s a small victory that reminds me I’m making incremental progress toward proficiency.

While listening to the Tagesschau, I was able to understand most of the content without relying on visual or image cues. My working vocabulary was sufficient to bridge the gaps of the unknown words. This moment brought genuine happiness—a profound joy that is difficult to describe adequately.

I find the best expression for this drive in Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Dream:

Volition is the driving motivation behind our thinking, speech, and actions. It determines everything. Everyone of us has a strong goal for our life. We want to achieve something. We feel a ball of energy in us, a tremendous, powerful source of energy. We want to feel truly alive.

For now, I will happily follow this internal volition and enjoy the daily dopamine hit it provides, regardless of how ridiculous the goal of learning German might seem.

October 10, 2025

25000Words, LingQ, Tagesschau, Volition
The Flügel Moment

Day 447 of German

The word “Flügel” came up in my daily viewing of Tagesschau 20:00 Uhr. I consume the news almost exclusively through this broadcast because I want to eventually understand the version of German most widely used in German-speaking countries.

My language study method is probably considered lazy by many. I consume substantial amounts of content, but I rarely look up every word or dedicate time to memorizing grammar or vocabulary lists. I don’t use spaced repetition systems like Anki and sometimes feel guilty for not being more disciplined or deliberate.

The word “Flügel” has probably appeared many times over the past year but never truly stuck. Yesterday, I instantly recalled the word while watching the news. My memory was triggered by a quick association: I remembered an old online quiz from the Goethe Institute’s Threads feed which asked what German word meant both “wings of a bird” and “piano.”

The Tagesschau clip, about a man whose piano company was purchasing pianos (Flügel), made the connection click. My brain worked hard and, within a three-second pause of the broadcast, I confirmed the double meaning.

That small moment of recognition brought intense happiness. I felt a surge of joy knowing that I had finally absorbed the word into my long-term memory just by consistently exposing myself to the language. I feel this happiness very strongly because German is my fourth language studied seriously. I suspect I never experienced this kind of joy when learning my first, second, or third languages, either because they were learned under greater pressure (school/scholarship applications) or because I was simply too young to pause and reflect on the process of acquisition itself.

October 7, 2025

Flügel, Immersion, Joy Of Learning, Tagesschau, Word Acquisition

The Serendipity of the Railway Tie

The Hin und Her of Learning

25000 Words

The Flügel Moment