Tips and Resources to Learn German
Hear it from a German!
Willkommen & welcome! So you are one of the brave people — those who want to learn Deutsch despite the stereotype that it’s super aggressive (most of you will remember this video)! While I’m not a qualified German teacher, I love helping foreigners to improve their German and have been teaching international students and refugees as part of student initiatives. Let’s dive right in, los geht’s!
Focus on Pronunciation First
For me, this is valid for every language. Once you have a fairly good pronunciation in your target language, native speakers will not only understand you better and assume you have a high language level, but you will also understand people better. One of the hardest things when trying to understand the spoken language is to grasp where a word starts and another one ends. Learn the rules of pronunciation (Aussprache) and try to repeat the sounds Germans make.
Good news: In German, we pronounce everything pretty much as we write it. However, there are certain sounds like the one in “ich” or “acht” that you are not accustomed to as an English speaker. We Germans also have certain letters that don’t exist in English: ä, ö, ü, and ß.
