What is the best way to learn German without being able to speak it with native/other speakers?
October 19, 2008 by Admin - LearnGermanLanguage.org · 3 Comments
What is the best way to learn German without being able to speak it with native/other speakers? I am trying to learn the German language and am using the Pimsleur German and Berlitz German programs. I am wondering if there is a faster, easier, or better way to do it. I also have a very large library of German teaching books with exercises, but I have yet to use them very much.
You can use an audio-book-cd, than you can buy the book in english and in german. If you want to speed up german language learning and speaking German fast. I suggest to really combine your materials (reading, courses, movies etc).
What is the best way to learn German?
September 4, 2008 by Admin - LearnGermanLanguage.org · 6 Comments
I very much want to learn the German language, but I can't find one good method to do so.
Non-native German speakers- and anyone who has learned a foreign language- how did you learn? Please give me any tips you can.
I've been learning German on my own for a 2 years now, and actually have had reasonable success. I wouldn't consider myself fluent or anything, but i could probably get by with my German abilities (but im not positive i haven't spoken to anyone in German in a while).
Rosetta Stone honestly was a complete waste of money. You really won't learn much for the value of it, however if you can afford it it will get you over the basic basic german. Rosetta stone won't teach you any of German's complicated grammar either. I'm really not a big fan of grammar, i think its more important to learn vocabulary in order to be able to communicate first, and learn the grammar that is affecting your ability to be able to communicate, write, and read succesfully. However, Rosetta Stone does not explain any of the grammar and expects you to learn it all basically through osmosis.
Also Barron's Learn German the fast and fun way, is decent for starting out, but its going to start you out with immersing you in it and it will be more brute memorization then rosetta stone if you really want to learn the vocabulary. The good part about Barron's book is that it will teach you some important grammar, but not an overwhelming frustrating amount that's gonna make you wan tto quit learning.
Once you know a bit of German, I've found, for me atleast, the Lustige dialoge (funny dialogues) book to be extremely good. It gives you a bunch of short stories, that have a twist at the end that's "funny" their generally so stupid its kinda humorous, but these storeis are much more interesting then traditional texts in German where they're going to go over culture and random boring stuff that just makes you want to quit learning. After the Dialogue, there are a few questions adn then it gives you some grammar exercises if you want to do them. The book doesn't teach you any of the grammar for the exercises but i've found http://www.ielanguages.com/German.html to be a really good website for any grammar. After your done, or while your going through the passage and questions, i personally underline any of the words that i dont know and make vocab cards out of the words that i don't know and then study those. The only down side to the book is that it doesn't have an answer key, but the book is such a good tool for learning German that i'd use it anyways. Plus there are two sequals to it, Geschichten Mit Humor (Stories with humar) and Spannende Geschichten (Exciting stories) Descritions of the books are on http://www.glencoe.com/sec/catalog/cgi-bin/secDisplay.cgi?function=display&area=fl&category=productinfo&nameid=810, and you can order them on amazon, or you can order them through borders and request to see the book first before you purchase it.
Two most important things with learning German
1. Try to study every day, ATLEAST every other day. Yes there's going to be occataionally days where you can't study because your too busy to study, but make sure you study atleast the next day if you have too. If you don't you will get out of the habit of learning German and will likely end up qutting.
2. Mix it up occationally. Sometimes a too formated routine for learning a language gets boring. Listen to songs in German (even if you don't really understand the words to it) Ohne Dich (without you) is a very basic song in German that would be a good one to start out with though. But there are many other ways you can mix it up such as: read newspaper articles in german and try to get a general gist of what they're saying even if that means using the dictionary a bit but try not to look up word for word (that drives me crazy atleast), use podcast on itunes, there's a ton of podcast for people from uber beginners in German to Advance, to podcast meant for people who speak fluent German, go to the library and see if there are any little kids/simple books in german, rent/buy a movie in german and try to get some meaning out of it, and even if you don't understand much of it you start to pick up how the words are seperated and slurred together after listening to it for a while, Speak/email other people you know who speak German, find a pen pal for German, and find ways that you find are fun ways to learn German, I'm positive those aren't the only ways.
Don't follow what i said exactly, tweak it up for what works for you, only take what you find useful, whatever works, we all learn in different ways. That's just the way i've found i've been able to learn German with
Hope that helps 
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Learn German with SpeedyConKiwi! (Pronunciation Fun!)
March 21, 2008 by Admin - LearnGermanLanguage.org · 25 Comments
New Episode! Subscribe for more! (yes yes, I do mostly other stuff, but a girl’s gotta be able to promote herself, right? My channel, my rules.)
Today we’re gonna go through the alphabet and general pronunciation of the German Language.
Sounds like fun? It is!!
Besides the alphabet we will also take a look at how to pronounce
- Ä (like “ai” in English “fair”),
- Ö (kinda like “o” in English “word”)
- Ü (say a looong English “eeee” and while doing that, form your mouth to say “you”. It should be kind of in the middle of the sound of “ou” in “you” and the long “eeee”)
- ß (basically a double “s”, sounds in general a bit stronger than the normal s)
and combinations such as
- ie (English “ee”)
- ei (English “i”)
- eu (English “oy”)
- äu (same as “eu”: English “oy”)
- au (like “ow” in English “wow”)
- sch (English “sh”)
- ch (two different pronounciations, watch the video and try again and again, I can’t really describe that in words LOL)
NOT MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO:
“qu” is pronounced like “coo” in English “cool”. The Q basically never really stands alone. Hope that helped
Thanks to all the new viewers and subscribers for the support and feedback! It’s overwhelming and I really appreciate it!! This started out as a silly video response and became this big project, and I know it takes me forever to post a new episode, but I will keep on posting more of these!
Just a few sidenotes: I will not tutor you personally, not via email and not via messenger. I cannot go through your homework. If you have questions, you can of course message me and I will try to answer them, but that’s about all I can do. It takes a lot of time to make these videos, and I make them because I have fun making them.
And I really appreciate each and every one of you who supports me with that.
THANK YOU!!!
And since my friend was stupid and deleted her videos, no link to her channel. Sorry : )
Duration : 0:8:15
Free German Course
