Learning German?
 

Well, lately I've been interested in learning German and was wondering what would be the best way of going at it besides joining a class (there are no classes near here, unfourtunatly). Any books you could reccomend (besides a dictionary lol) or other methods would be very helpful. I'm not looking to learn really formal or fantastic German, just enough to get by in a conversation or something. Thanks in advance.

Mad props to you if you learn Deutch without a teacher ...

even with a teacher I had a very had time. It's not an easy one ... not to discourage you ... but there are so many little exceptions in german. It has a basic structure, but some of their sentences don't come out right if they follow it(the pernounciation) ... so they break the rules to make it sound right. You can get the vocab down pretty easily, but the grammar is killer ...

edit: best I could do to tell you about german :/ ^, I know it sucks

Why German ?:confused: :confused: :confused: Why not Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese ? Did adolf hittler conquer the world ?

“The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today:
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.2 billion)
English (330 million)
Spanish (300 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (200 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Portuguese (160 million)
Russian (160 million)
Japanese (125 million)
French (75 million)
Punjabi (90 million)
Javanese (80 million)
German (60 million)

However, in terms of secondary speakers, list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

French (190 million)
English (150 million)
Russian (125 million)
Portuguese (28 million)
Arabic (21 million)
Spanish (20 million)
Chinese (20 million)
Japanese (8 million)
German (4 million)

Thus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million)
French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million)

The following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of countries where each is spoken. The number that follows is the total number of countries that use that language

English (115)
French (35)
Arabic (24)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
German (9)
Mandarin (5)
Portuguese (5)
Hindi/Urdu (2)
Bengali (1)
Japanese (1)

I realy dont understand your school, especialy a canadien school. Anyways.. good luck with your future job hunting :)

Haha, very informative ???.
Well, I'm taught French and Spanish in school anyways, and it would be nice to learn Japanese or Chinese at some point, but that would require a lot of work since I would think pronouncing symbols would be harder than german words. Also, I wanted to help out with the German exchange program at our school, and for that you need to be able to speak atleast minor german. As for other languages, I don't really have any interest in them, so it would be a pain to learn ^^"

German ? Da hell ? :eyebrow: Yes it would be a waste of time and brain cells. Did you know if you learn Chinese you can talk 50% of the world ?

Where would you find germans to talk with ?
Find a canadien german is rare here.. very rare... i suggest chinese cause they are everywhere :)

My suggestion: Don't. I've been studying German for a couple of years at school and it wasn't something to look back on with Joy. As well the pronounciation is pretty difficult. Whereas with English you form words in the back of your throat with German (and Dutch, Yeah me) you form the words in the middle of your throat. If this is not properly done than the words would sound like jibberish.

Besides this German has a very intricate grammatical structure and for some reason Germans only seem to understand sentences if they follow this intricate code.

But concerning the best way to be learning another language is pretty simple. We had to do it once at school. We had to write down every hour 10 of the sentences we used that hour. At the end of the day you pick out 10 sentences that you used the most today and do that for one week. Then the next week study those sentences in the other language. This helps you get down the basics of another language and can help you become able to at least make yourself comprehensive during conversations.

Speeking chinese is easier then german. If you can read:

Yonggong (hard-working) then you'll be fine
Actually i realy dont understand german speeking: harte Funktion (hard-working) :confused:


Once you know chinese, japanese would be very easy for you and then, you will be able to Fansub anime :p

I doubt that harte funktion is german for hard working...
Work = Arbeit

German is not really that hard to learn, however there is an exception.
The hardest thing to learn are the cases (casussen in Latin).
It's kind of hard to explain, but I think it's what Lexander meant with the "breaking the rules" thingy.

The best way to learn it is from a teacher I guess.

wtf?you want to learn german just enought to lead conversation?phaahah,in order to do that,you'll need around 1500 words+a whole bunch of idiotic gramatics,not to mention the other things...believe me-you dont need to learn german....its just too hard...if you want to learn proper german you'll have to work your butt off...its just not worth it

yeah,right..it might be easy for you,but i personally think that chineese is far more dificulter to speak than german is :)

i learnt german.... i got a E in it for GCSE :D ... i got a D for all the copying work i done when we had coursework and i got a U in the speaking and writing exam :D:D

to the best of my knowledge lemme enlighten people with who i am, where i live, how i look like etc etc ... i cant even remember what i know ...

here goes:

hallo, meine name ist anita und ich bin sebt zehn jahre alt .... pretty good wont you say ;) ... ich habe braune haare und habe braun augen (still pretty good at this point) ... ich am nicht tall :confused: un am sehr dick (i think that means slim) :heh:

ich wohne ist in London, Nightwish gelive near ich (its breaking down badly here :( ) meine hobbies sind radfahren, fussball und ticht-tennis (bike riding, football and table tennis ... this aint really my hobbies but they were standard and easy :D)

now for sum random jibberish:

NSW ist nicht eine manchen (i think that means girl ) :confused: und xris ist eine b*****d .... :joke: :heh:

ok i cant think of anything i learnt from my german teacher, this is all i have to show for my 4 - 5 years of learning german in a cheap public school in London =.=

holy shit.rofl :heh: :heh: :heh: :heh: :)

Heh, It starts out pretty good, and it gets worse when you said that it's breaking down :p
Dick is the opposite if slim, meanig fat (Could be wrong though :p)
Mädchen = Girl :p

I am german and I agree and disagree with ??? :) . There are probably easier to learn and more useful languages then german. French and spanish could be more useful imho.
Spanish would be my personal preference...

Hehe, good joke :D. Chinese is so easy...maybe for a chinese.
Of course german is a germanic language like english. Easy...

"harte Funktion?" Are you some sort of pervert ;)? How can a "Funktion" be hard? Maybe in mathmatics 1.01? No, I don´t want to tease you, but it is funny :).
"hard-working" means something like "schwer arbeitend". Don´t cite me, my english sucks.

The "Language Today" site obviously sucks, because in germany alone there are 80+ (82) million germans.
Add some Swiss and some Austrians (+other german minorities) there are about 100 million native speakers.
I don´t know about secondary speakers.

If you learn it for fun, learn german. If you want to learn something really useful, learn another language...

Let's see how rusty I am ...
Hey, my name is Anita and I'm 17 years old. I have brown hair and green eyes. I am not tall and am very 'dick'(am = bin) ... I hope dick does indeed mean slim

I am from London(you don't been the ist I think).

my standard hobbie was schwimmen :heh:

Ich Spreche nicht gut Deutch. Mein pen0r ist sehr klein. Es ist nur 5 milimeter. traurig ... nein?
(omg what am I saying ^... I totally forgot german :uhoh:)

LMAO! I hope I do not butcher the english language the same way.....Hmmmmm, actually I don´t care :D.

I can understand the meaning of your german.

OMG, do you think some moderators speak german?

Last estimate I've read said there are about 110 million native german speakers in Europe, also there are alot more secondary speakers as well. Basically while German might not be the best language to learn in the US or Canada, it is the biggest European Union language (in terms of native speakers). Adding native and secondary speakers I think (can't remember exactly) it falls just short of english (I'm only talking about Europe here, so US etc not included).

About chinese being easy : well the language itself could be easy (I have no idea) but the kanji aren't, not in a million years, I'm studying japanese and the kanji are hell, so chinese can't be that easy ... (written language that is)

Go to classes, 'cause there are so many things in German you need to think of when speaking. Really, some times it's even more stupid then English and English is stupid (at least compared to Swedish).
There are so many things that is diffrent in German than in any other lang. so you got no choice.

Now why are everyone complaining about German? It just makes things so much easyer to able to speak German, at least in Germany!

well only 3 years in high school :)

I pray to god no :lol: ... plus ... I don't know what I'm saying ... german is a very tough language indeed right?

omg :heh:

dick = fat

Learning german from a book? That wont be easy..
There are some grammatic basic rules...which I learned in school and already forgot. ;)
You cant use them much anyway.. too many exceptions.
Considering french is supposed to be easier than german and after 3 years french in school I ended up knowing like 20 words, learning german would be impossible for me (if I didnt speak it naturaly.. of course..).
In addition to the grammatic exceptions, the genders of objects must be hard to learn. In english you can just refere to anything with "it", in german (and french... :sad: ) many things have a gender and you would have to learn them along with the vocabs.

But what about that exchange program?
If you dont want to come over here and only want to help out, you shouldnt need to speak german for that. :twitch: I mean, those german students shouldve learned english for several years in school (everyone does that... there are no schools without english as secondary, or at least third languae). They should be able to speak at least some english (better than you would be able to speak german with only some books and little time to learn ;) ).

Can someone tell me why in hell german is one of the main language to learn at school ? Did adolf Hitler invade canada or something ?

I remmember when i was at collage, i used to choose between Spanish VS German and most students choosed spanish and 1% choosed german :P