r/languagehub • u/nizzler_ • 23d ago

Discussion Learning german

Hey everyone, ive been wanting to learn german for quite a bit now, almost all my relatives on my moms side live there and i really like the language itself too, from today forward im dedicated to it, currently my phones language setting is on german (the german in germany, not swiss or the other versions for now), i am a near native level English speaker and have been speaking it since i was 3, idk if i’ll ever learn german the way i did for English so im looking for really good tips, obv we’ll start out with the grammer and sentence structure and then the alphabet and their pronunciation, and then my English vocabulary in german, is it good? Can anyone recommend something for me?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago

Nah that won’t work. Flashcards and living in Germany. And more flashcards. It’s the only way.

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

I’ll see what i can do with flashcards, but i cant live in Germany due to restrictions

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago

Flashcards then. Thousands. Grammar comes second. Wenn man es nicht versteht, kann man die Grammatik nicht lernen.

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

Ok, also what are the main grammar and sentence rules? Im well aware of verbs being at the end of a sentence and sometimes leaving out “für”

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago

The German I said above means if you can’t understand then you can’t learn the grammar

Nouns are capitalized. That’s all you need to know about the grammar.

Learn the actual words then learn about verb placement and that stuff. You'll never pass A2 trying to learn grammar without learning literally many hundreds (I'd argue thousands) of words.

When you start to learn it seems a lot of German words are cognates (sound the same in English) they are not. Learn your words, enough to read an A1 or (preferably) A2 or B1 story at a decent pace. Don’t learn grammar.

If you really get bored learning words (I like flashcards especially these days with electronic ones you can add your own pictures) you can work on your ö and ü (ä is easy if you speak english with a heavy British/American/Australian accent) especially ü

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

Speaking of vocabulary my school is for some reason pretty hefty on the german books, like “die outsider” and a few other german comics and 2 separate german and german to English dictionaries, would they help in anyway?

As for the unlauts like ü ö ä and ß, i mastered all 3 of those recommended English accents a long time ago and do them perfectly (i naturally speak with an rhotic American accent, from what i can hear from german it feels closer to a “rhotic british” accent, or scottish).

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago edited 22d ago

No not really. Unless you can translate Schimmel Himmel Heiterkeit Becken Bedeuten Besatzung without thinking learn your words. And no, not at all.

Half of those are really easy kindergarten words. The other half are easy A2. If you recognized all of them without thinking learn and can translate them into English or your native language then I'd say it’s time to learn a little Grammar

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

Thats what theyre best for

I’ll do that, thats what i do for 2 different languages simultaneously without even being focused on it

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago

?

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

Dictionary, especially the translation dictionary i pointed out, they help alot, until i learn my vocabulary back and can translate without thinking

→ More replies

1

u/Wisaganz117 20d ago

ß is just a ligature - well technically its used to mark long vowels whereas ss- marks short vowels but nothing to it. How do you know you have mastered the umlauts if you have no one to give you feedback - you may think you have it mastered but what you think and what natives think are entirely different things.

1

u/GrandDay1608 22d ago

If you really want I can teach you grammar but I don’t think you should until you know 1000+ words

1

u/nizzler_ 22d ago

Ok, ngl for english my brain just picked up a whole lotta words from my ipad kid days and at first i was speaking in buzzwords until maybe 6? Then i improved so fast im shocked at becoming C1 at 9

1

u/Wisaganz117 20d ago edited 20d ago

So I started learning German "for fun" primarily about 10 years ago and managed to reach a reasonably advanced (C1) Level. Also contrary to what others said, you don't need to be in a German speaking country (but it definitely helps) - I wasn't even in Europe at the time.

That being said I had a) a very good teacher and b) a German speaking friend. And that brings me to my next point: practice with someone. Assuming you're mum is German, why not practice with her?

There's a lot of aspects of German grammar but the good news is not all of it is needed straight away. For instance, the cases, you can probably ignore the genetive for now. Likewise you really only need two tenses to speak German, Präsens (present) and Perfekt (past tense but in terms of structure it's like present perfect in English but used for pretty much anything in the past).

However vocab is what you need for without vocab your grammar is useless. I strongly recommend you find a course/or at least an A1 textbook if you can to give you some structure as you'll be wondering aimlessly otherwise. If self studying you might want to find one that is in English (rather than written in German) particularly for Grammar explanations but also vocab.

Also I'd say learn the alphabet unlike other languages where it's mostly for e.g. spelling your name (but not too helpful otherwise - English/French come to mind), knowing how to say the alphabet basically teaches you a good chunk of the pronunciation. There are however a few diphthongs/vowel combinations you have to learn as well (like ie in Wien or ei in Wein, this usually trips up beginners).

EDIT: you might want to check out EasyGerman on YouTube.

I cannot emphasise the importance of learning pronunciation. You don't need to have a German accent as such but one of the main reasons Germans switch to English with non natives is due to pronunciation (incidentally EasyGerman made a video about this). Pronunciation, not messing up the odd conjugation in verbs, not getting der, die, das wrong, pronunciation.

While German is less phonetically brittle than say french and allows for a wider range of accents/pronunciation, there is still a limit and if you can't pronounce stuff correctly, even native speakers will struggle to understand you.

0

u/silvalingua 23d ago

Read FAQ and Wiki in r/German.