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Learn German

F

Fearless Leader

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 21, 2006
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Hoosiertown
I just got into a german 1 class for the remaining weeks of this school year. I need to get through the entire year of german 1 and be ready for german 2 in the fall. Does anyone have any tips or additional material that would be good for learning.

Also is their any way to get german TV in the US?

Gute Nacht.
 
hallo! I did German from year 7-10 at school. I don't remember too much of it :eek: Gets difficult when you have to learn all the male and female verbs etc
 
Firstly, if you're taking a class, you'll have textbooks, right? That's a good start.

Buy some Audio CD + Course Book combos from the bookstore. Some of them are quite good. Even the ones that aren't great are still quite good.
 
These tips work for learning any language:

1) Go to System Preferences > International and switch the primary system language to the language you are trying to learn.
2) Look for newspapers in the language online
3) Movies, Television and Music
4) Explore Wikipedia in the language.
 
viccles said:
hallo! I did German from year 7-10 at school. I don't remember too much of it :eek: Gets difficult when you have to learn all the male and female verbs etc
Click to expand...

Male and female verbs? Please explain... :confused: If you speak about verbs, I think you refer to "he goes" or "she goes", but it's quite the same in German ("er geht", "sie geht"). Maybe you are mixing things up a bit...?
 
c-Row said:
Male and female verbs? Please explain... :confused: If you speak about verbs, I think you refer to "he goes" or "she goes", but it's quite the same in German ("er geht", "sie geht"). Maybe you are mixing things up a bit...?
Click to expand...

Maybe I mean just verbs in general ie ich essen du isst etc etc I can't remember back that far I just remember something regarding verbs confusing the life out of em
 
viccles, are you sure you're not confusing verbs with articles?

I've never studied German, but have studied Spanish and teensy tiny bit of French and you do deal with feminine and masculine articles.

Example:
  • el sol (masculine)- the sun
  • la luna (feminine)- the moon
 
devilot said:
viccles, are you sure you're not confusing verbs with articles?

I've never studied Germany, but have studied Spanish and teensy tiny bit of French and you do deal with feminine and masculine articles.

Example:
  • el sol (masculine)- the sun
  • la luna (feminine)- the moon
Click to expand...
Exactly. It's the same way in German as well. I'm almost sure they were referring to articles & nouns.

  • die Zukunft (feminine)- the future
  • das Auto (neutral)- the car
  • der Himmel (masculine)- the sky
 
c-Row said:
Male and female verbs? Please explain... :confused: If you speak about verbs, I think you refer to "he goes" or "she goes", but it's quite the same in German ("er geht", "sie geht"). Maybe you are mixing things up a bit...?
Click to expand...

Another example:

die Katze (female) - the cat
der Hund (male) - the dog

As a German I had some problems the other way around. Referring to that type of animal, i.e. "dog", we tend not to use the neutral form "it", but "he".

G: "You have a nice dog."
E: "Thank you."
G: "Does he eat a lot?"

You might get away with it, if the dog is physically male. For whatever reason bitch is not used often for a female dog in English, otherwise the dialogue would be like this:

G: "You have a nice dog."
E: "Thank you, it's actually a bitch."
G: "Does she eat a lot?"
 
devilot said:
viccles, are you sure you're not confusing verbs with articles?

I've never studied German, but have studied Spanish and teensy tiny bit of French and you do deal with feminine and masculine articles.

Example:
  • el sol (masculine)- the sun
  • la luna (feminine)- the moon
Click to expand...

That's fun until you get to la policia and el policia, which I believe would be the police and the policeman, respectively. I suppose they didn't consider that women might work for the police some day.

Rokem:

One of the local PBS channels just had two 30 minutes lessons in German although I don't remember hearing the name of the programme. It was likely a bit boring as in the one lesson, she was naming everything in the house.
 
bousozoku said:
That's fun until...
Click to expand...
Well, like most languages there are anomalies, especially since most languages aren't dead like Latin.

Another anomoly example for Spanish?

El agua-- the water (singular)
vs.
Las aguas-- the waters (plural)
 
Well I understand the masculine feminine, I had spanish until friday dropped the class and am auditing german 1.

The reason was I have plans for traveling/ staying for an extended time/ living there(germany or german speaking countries). Also I didn't much care for the teacher.
 
Hello,
To get German TV in the United states you can A get it through satelite, though that costs a bit

or

http://www.onlinetvrecorder.com/ Is a website youll have to make an account and you than download tv shows right after the are aired in germany.

Id say the best way to learn german Is to go to Germany for a few weeks. (Which it seems you already have planned, out of curiosity where are you going?)

Good luck!
 
1.Like other have said, movies. Try to get movies that have a German closed-caption track or German with an English track that you can read until you've mastered the dialogue.
2. From what I remember of my German lessons, getting used to the long words was the second hardest thing to get used to.
3.The hardest was reading to the end of many sentences only to find the "nicht" (not), negated the construct I've built up in my head. Kind of like Valley-girl speak from a couple of decades ago. Or not;)
 
Well a lot of people recommended it in this thread about learning a foreign language in general. I have never used it myself.

Rosetta Stone German got 3.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Customer Reviews

I read a few of the comments on Amazon and some people are saying that Tell Me More is better.

The Premium Version got 5 stars on Amazon. Read the reviews. The only downfall is that it is Windows only!

Hope this helps you somewhat--I plan on learning German myself.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Try Before You Know It German free learning language software. If you find it works for you, you can buy more advanced lessons. After you've mastered the basics, Pimsleur would be the next logical step up.

This and Rosetta Stone worked for me. :)
 
viccles said:
Maybe I mean just verbs in general ie ich essen du isst etc etc I can't remember back that far I just remember something regarding verbs confusing the life out of em
Click to expand...
I know what you're talking about - verb conjugation.

e.g. ich gehe, du gehst, er/sie/es geht, wir gehen, ihr geht, sie gehen, Sie gehen.
 
Since you're just getting into the basics, this should be a good help for you. I found that fairly useful for testing myself when I was learning.

Also, the website for the Treffpunkt Deutsch textbook is pretty good, even if you don't have the book to go along with it :D They have all sorts of listening activities too.
 
spicyapple said:
Try Before You Know It German free learning language software. If you find it works for you, you can buy more advanced lessons. After you've mastered the basics, Pimsleur would be the next logical step up.

This and Rosetta Stone worked for me. :)
Click to expand...

Hrmm how good is rosetta stone, really, Someone offered to buy it for me as a gift, but i declined out of skepticism. Are you conversational in German?
 
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