German

**German** (*Deutsch* [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ([1] listen)) belongs to the West Germanic language group alongside English, Dutch, and the Frisian languages. To a lesser extent, it is also related to the East (extinct) and North Germanic languages. German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family with significant minorities of words derived from Latin and Greek and a smaller amount from French and, most recently, English (known as Denglisch). German is written using the Latin alphabet with an additional three vowels called Umlauts (ä, ö, and ü) as well as Eszett (ß) or *scharfes S*  (*sharp s*).

German is an inflected language with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and strong and weak verbs. Despite sharing many cognates and other similarities with English it can be quite difficult for English speakers to grasp. The FSI classifies it as a Category III language, which is a more difficult rank than any other Germanic language besides Icelandic, and at a minimum requires 36 weeks or 900 hours of study to become "proficient".

 File:GermanSpeakingWorld.png
German dialects are distinguished from varieties of standard German. German dialects are traditional local varieties and are traced back to the different German tribes. Many of them are not mutually intelligible, since they often differ in lexicon, phonology, and syntax. Standard German originated as a written language and developed over the course of several hundred years, in which writers tried to write in a way that was understood by the largest area.

Around the world, German has approximately 100 million native speakers, as well as about 80 million non-native speakers. German is the main language of about 90 million people (18%) in the EU. 67% of German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language, 27% in at least two languages other than their own.

 File:Brandenburg-Gate-Berlin.jpg

## Orthography

The German uses the standard alphabet along with four special characters. Three of them are umlauts (two dots over the letter that frontalizes a vowel). The other is a ligature called an eszett or a sharp s. When restricted to the Latin alphabet, the umlauts can be represented with the letter without the dots and followed by ⟨e⟩ (i.e. ae for ä). The eszett can be represented with the digraph ⟨ss⟩.

 ẞ/ß

There are also a few differences in the way that some letters are pronounced in German and in English.

 eu
 j
 r
 s
 sch
 th
 v
 w
 z

## Grammar

Main article: German Grammar
German contains three noun genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, which inflect for number. Nouns also inflect for one of four cases: nominative (subjects), accusative (direct objects), dative (indirect objects), and genitive (possession). Adjectives inflect based on the nouns they modify.

The word order in German is generally V2. In main clauses, the finite verb (the verb with the subject) must be in the second position:

*Ich **esse** einen Apfel.*
*I **eat** an Apple.*
Due to the way cases work, it is possible to move elements of the sentence around and still communicate the same sentence:

*Einen Apfel **esse** ich.*
*An apple **eat** I.*
Since *ein Apfel* is in the accusative case, we are aware that it's the direct object of this sentence, even if we were to change the word order for whatever reason; because of this, the sentence would still translate as "I eat an apple". Note that the verb, ***esse***, is still in the second position. If we were to write "*Ich einen Apfel **esse**"*, that sentence would be grammatically incorrect, since it violates V2 word order.

Non-finite verbs are moved to the end of the sentence:

*Ich **werde** einen Apfel essen.*
*I **will** an Apple eat.*
Many verbs have prefixes that can be separated from the stem. When separated, these prefixes move to the end of the sentences.

## Resources

### **Apps & Programs**

See General Resource page and the Resource Review page for more information

### **Books and .PDF** **files**

 Dino lernt Deutsch Series | A nice series of easy to read short stories. Each title comes with an anki deck, audio, and the text. Progressively gets harder (A1 to A2). There is another series of detective books for A2-B1 level.https://pastebin.com/8V9MLYh5 (1079 unique words)
https://pastebin.com/X2dVZ01x (894 unique words)
These two texts combined have 1543 unique words. Learning how to read these two docs alone will grant you a half decent starter vocab. The first 8 books in the series have a combined wordcount of ~5500 and they don't take long to get through.

Other:

* **A compilation of .PDFs and books of grammar, vocabulary, etc.**
* German Grammar Sparkcharts

### **Useful Websites**

Dictionaries

 Wiktionary | can be useful for trying to understand certain words

Guides/Grammar

* Toms Deutschseite A website which mainly teaches grammar and conjugation
* German for English Speakers A nearly-finished complete guide to the German language
* Busuu.com really good website to learn German. Has vocab, sentences structuring, conversations to listen to and teaches levels of German from A1-B2
* Collection of grammar worksheets
* german.about.com Wonderful website that covers all things German (such as traditions, etiquette, culture, etc) but in particular: grammar, pronounciation and how to use certain words.
* A Review of German Grammar by Bruce Duncan
* German Language Blog "Auf Deutsch, bitte!" offers many helpful posts on various topics in German grammar and tips on how to improve more generally.
* Jabbalab - good grammar resource with very simple explanations
* Speechling - 1000s of audio recording, comprehension, and vocabulary flashcards and quizzes at all levels. Few lessons covering the conventions of the language.
* Your Daily German - someone's well flushed attempt at a language learning blog, has not been updated in sometime, but still very useful. There's an annoying limited article membership scheme, but if you're smart with blocking your cookies, you can get around it.
* learngerman.dw.com - Well organized and engaging free courses that fit into the rest of the DW Series. They also have a corresponding youtube channel that might be easier to navigate. Highly recommended.
* German.net - Useful website containing various tools and exercises. Many beginner texts and quizzes as well.
* Wikibooks German Guide - Incomplete guide with a few lessons. Has information on regional differences.
* FSI German Course - Slightly outdated, but very valuable course IF you have the discipline to see it through.

Other

* A song for learning the alphabet.
* Coffee Break German Podcast Series - You'll have to get used to the Scottish pronunciation, but the native speakers are actually quite good. Very easy to listen to with grammar explanations and practice phrases.

Dead Links

* Uz-translations (a very useful website that you should definitely check out)
* Native Monks Learn German language online through skype.
* Marathon Sprechen Blog A blog on German grammar concepts. They're not posted in any certain order like Tae Kim is, but the examples and explanations are very helpful.

## Media

### **Movies**

Subtitles

* Subscene
* Findsubtitles
* Opensubtitles
* TV4User
* Sublearning - learn languages from movie subtitles. Flash cards of movie lines in 62 languages
* (add more if you know them lol)

Movies

Interesting German directors: Michael “Bully” Herbig, Leni Riefenstahl, Jörg Buttgereit, Olaf Ittenbach, Andreas Schnaas, Uwe Boll, Ulli Lommel, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Fatih Akin, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

TV-Stations

 Germany
 Switzerland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_German-language\_television\_channels

### **Anime/Cartoons**

* A lot of current anime and manga are licensed and translated to German. Look up Carlsen-Manga, Kaze and the news section of animexx they usually have an up to date article about recent manga releases.
* Spongebob
* South Park
* My Little Pony
* One Piece
* Death Note
* Soul Eater
* Alfred J. Kwak
* Heidi
* Ducktales
* Darkwing Duck
* Pinocchio
* Almost all of the Ghibli movies
* Puschel
* Pipi Langstrumpf
* Nils Holgerson
* Biene Maja

## **Brotips**

If you have experience learning this language please share it, it's greatly appreciated.

### **General**

* No single resource will advance you to fluency. Experiment with different apps, programs, books, audio, and other media.
* Many videogames have German language support which can be a good way to get some extra practice. Some games may even have German voice acting (e.g. Skyrim). Keep a bilingual dictionary on hand. Many online games can be played on EU/German servers so you can interact with other German players.
* Recommended Story Heavy Games with Voice Acting: Witcher Series, Dishonored Series, Assassins Creed Series (Germanic Italians lol), Alan Wake, Metro Series, Gears of War Series, Bioshock Series, New Deus Ex, The Saboteur.
* You can easily install German along with your native language on your phone. This is very useful when using language learning apps, or chatting with others on your phone in your target language.
* When reading the Graded Readers be sure to read those that are one level above yours. If you're studying A2, try reading those labeled B1. That way you'll be practicing your A2 and learning new things from B1.
* If you know what you're looking for Book Depository sells a variety of foreign language books, including books and manga in German. And it's free shipping!
* A guide to buying manga in German

### **Grammatical**

* When learning vocabulary it's important to learn the article as an important part of the word and not just the word by itself. So it's not *Hund*, but *der Hund.* Not just *Halskette* but*die Halskette.*
* Learn about the High German consonant shift not only will it help you understand a little bit about how German spelling works, but will help your acquisition of cognates. For example, an English D is a T in German, e.g. World -> Welt, Good -> Gut, Word -> Wort, Dance -> Tanz.

**Tips for studying word genders:**

* When writing out vocabulary or adding nouns to Anki, colour code your words! Blue for masculine nouns, pink for feminine, green for neuter.
* One technique I learned in class is visualizing a male, a female and something considered neuter (let's say ET) along with the noun I'm learning. So David Hasselhoff sits on *der Tisch,*Angela Merkelopens *die Tür* and ET drinks *das Bier.*
	+ Use this in conjunction with Anki! I use a bunch of kawaii as fuck images I pull from the internet with my cards to remember my genders. Want to remember the gender for *die Sandburg*? Find a picture of a little girl playing with a sandcastle and stick that in your Anki cards.
* There are also a few hints you can use to recall genders of certain words.
* If you have time, write three stories and use only nouns from one gender for each one. This way the next time you need to remember, for example, the gender of "Nachbar" all you have to do is remember in which story was the word used. Make the protagonist of the story the same gender as the other objects. For example, if you're a man, you can be the protagonist of the story with masculine nouns. Your mother can be the protagonist of the story with feminine nouns, and something that you know to be neutral (e.g. Mädchen) can be the protagonist of the story with neutral nouns. My story for the masculine gender starts like this:

```
*I wake up and my **Kopf** is on the **Tisch**. I've fallen asleep on front of the **Bildschirm** of the **Computer**. I've fallen asleep over my **Kugelschreiber**, **Radiergummi** and **Bleistift**. I sit up on the **Stuhl** and I take a look at the **Kalender**. What **Tag** is it today? Oh shit, I'm gonna be late. I take my **Rucksack** from the **Boden** and throw my **Ausweis** inside. It's cold today, so I better take my **Pullover**, my **Schal** and **Handschuh**. I get out of the **Raum**. I can hear a **Schrei** from my **Nachbar**. "Mein **Gott**", I think. They're always fighting. Perhaps I should write them a **Brief** and put it in their **Briefkasten**. I drink my **Kaffee**, clean my **Mund** and take the **Aufzug** to go out.*

```

### Transcribed Videos

Use these in Lingq/FLTR...read with audio, make anki decks, etc. I use the youtube generated transcription and edit it to be more useful.

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