The Best Way to Learn German

So, have you also made this experience? Wherever you travel to in this world, German are everywhere. Nice people – without doubt – and mostly, their English is quite impressive. But have you heard Germans speaking among each other? Well, it sounds strange and really complicated.

And when you have a look on German texts it becomes even worse! Surprisingly there are words like “Donau­dampf­schiff­fahrts­elektrizitäten­haupt­betriebs­werk­bau­unter­beamten­gesellschaft” describing an actual shipping company. By the way, this so called compound noun has its own article on wikipedia.

Anyway, German is also a very exact language. So, you can express actions, objects, feelings and many other things in a quite astonishing manner.

Furthermore, learning German is worth the pain! Just imagine the beautiful world of German, Swiss and Austrian culture you can get access to by learning only one language.

Anyways, in this article I’d like to show you some steps that will teach you the best way to learn German.

Find Your Reason to Learn German

Before you start to learn German grammar and vocabulary, you should become about your main motivation for learning German. Well, there can be many motivations to learn German.

• First, you will be able to get in contact with a lot of German speaking people all around the world. Furthermore, you can travel within Switzerland, Austria and Germany and talk to local in their native language. Well, that’s a big advantage!
• Second, you could maybe find a job in a German speaking company. At least German is one of the biggest economies in the world with a lot of international companies like Siemens.
• Third, the whole world of German speaking culture opens its gates for you! Well, there is classic literature from Goethe, Hesse and Kafka, but also operas and so much more. And don’t forget German moderns culture with its movies and books.

So, I think the reasons to learn German are, of course, personal. But there is no excuse – learning a language – no matter which one – never need further justification!

Make your Home German

After you have cleared up what your actual motivation to learn German actually is, you can go over to the next step and start learning this beautiful language. Well, there are some ways that make it far easier to learn German.

1. Switch your smartphone and your computer into German! Maybe this might be confusing at the beginning. But after some days of work with your system in German, you will understand the meaning of menus and button in German.
2. Download the application of the ARD Mediathek I have mentioned above or any other app, and start watching German television. Luckily, there is a lot of offer in the internet, so there are no excuses. Although you will not understand to much at the beginning, you will succeed at last!
3. Finally, try to find some German speakers you can talk to. Maybe this is the most important step to learn German, the interaction with this language. I am sorry, but I have to do some advertising. Well, there is a German course offered by language-online.org. It has fair prices and there are real German native teaching you. Maybe that’s a good way to invest your money and to learn German.

Start to Use Conversational Connectors

Well, there is an interesting topic that you usually don’t find in your German books in school. So, I am talking about conversational connectors. These are simple phrases or words you just add to your sentences and questions. As a consequence your spoken language becomes a lot more fluent. Well, here is an example. So, your answer to the question “How was your meal?” can be…

• “Gut, danke!” – Good, thanks!

But with using conversational connectors, it sounds a lot better:

• “Um die Wahrheit zu sagen, sehr gut! Vielen Dank der Nachfrage.”
  – To tell the truth, very good! Thank you for asking.

Focus on the Topics of German Language

Of course, everyone of you has heard the same: German is an extremely difficult language. But let’s be honest. Luckily it is a lot easier than many people might think! You have some parts that are even far less complicated than in other language. So, as a strategy to stay on a positive path to learn German, you should simply focus on these parts. But what parts make German such an easy language compared to other?

1. First, there are no tones, as there are in Chinese or Thai
2. Second, there are no liaisons between words, as there are in French
3. Third, there are the same letters as English, unlike Japanese or Korean
4. Fourth, there are no postposition or preposition suffixes, like in Hungarian
5. Fifth and last, there are no strings of difficult-to-pronounce consonants like in Czech.

Additionally, there is another argument to learn German. Well, it is a so called phonetic language. So, that means: You can pronounce a word exactly how it is spelled. Logically, you can derive the spelling of word from its pronunciation! Unfortunately, it is very different in the English language…

Some Last Words…

Well, I think we have come to the end of this article about the best way to learn German. Hopefully, I could demonstrate you how interesting and useful it can be to learn German. Apart from German speaking culture, job opportunities and the contact to thousands of people are a huge argument to learn German. In case you are interested to learn more about German Grammar and culture just have a look on our topics on language-easy.org!