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Trying to learn German. Please save me.

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L

L Thammy

Member
I've been trying to learn German through the Duolinguo app for a few months now. Not sure what I'm going to do with the language, but I have a long commute, so I figure that I may as well do something minorly constructive while I'm stuck on the bus.

Unfortunately, the app does absolutely nothing to teach grammar. Duolinguo claims that I am 9% fluent. That little bird is a gigantic fucking liar. I have absolutely no idea how you conjugate things. I don't know what cases are. I made some Anki decks to learn the der/die/das/etc, the ein/ein/einen, and the ending gender things (-ant/-age/-chen/etc). But I don't know where to go from there.

I tried going to Wikipedia, but I just end up feeling overwhelmed. I should note that I have no aptitude for language acquisition at all. I only made it through mandatory French in elementary school by using AltaVista Babelfish. But I've also just about finished with Human Japanese - again, it's a long commute - and I think I'm doing pretty well with that just because the explanations are so good. So I think I should ideally look for something like that, but for German. Does that exist?

tl;dr: please give German grammar for stupid.
 
T

torre_avenue

Banned
I learnt German for 2 years, and I still don't know genders for the words. That's why I gave up and began re-learning Chinese. German, as annoying as the genders and tenses are, is still a fairly logical language. It's just those two things that prove cumbersome.

My best advice is, if you really want to learn it, keep up with the Duolingo or take a community college class on the subject. Nothing works better than an actual teacher helping you along the way.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
torre_avenue said:
I learnt German for 2 years, and I still don't know genders for the words. That's why I gave up and began re-learning Chinese. German, as annoying as the genders and tenses are, is still a fairly logical language. It's just those two things that prove cumbersome.

My best advice is, if you really want to learn it, keep up with the Duolingo or take a community college class on the subject. Nothing works better than an actual teacher helping you along the way.
Click to expand...

If it's true that the ends of German nouns usually demonstrate their gender, then I don't even think that's so bad. That I can memorize. But right now I'm just googling random grammatical things because there's no way I'm going to intuitively figure them out.
 
H

haxamin

Member
a41d5511492badb6dee7ca69d797551a.jpg

obligatory
 
A

Aaronology

Member
Deutsch is gar nicht einfach, aber was ist? I mean, is there a language to learn that isn't a hurdle? I'm fairly grateful English is my native tongue, honestly. I've heard it's a real bastard mastering. Gendered nouns are indeed a pain, though. They are the only thing that continues giving me a headache, and it's primarily an exercise in memorization. I think coming from English it's hard to see them as anything but a pointless annoyance, especially in German where it's not as simple to guess by eye as it would be in the Romance languages.

Anyway OP, I would suggest not relying on Duo at first. It's great, and it's come a long way. But things like Pimsleur and the Michel Thomas audio courses helped get my German off the ground initially whereas Duolingo left me feeling much the same way you described. On the other hand, Duolingo is free. So there is that. The advice to take a college course is also sound.

Viel Glück!
 
S

SecretMoblin

Member
Unfortunately there is no real "German grammar for stupid"; even native Germans fudge the "standard" grammar quite a bit. Complicating matters is that German has both a standard form and all sorts of fun dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible.

The best way is honestly to sit down with a grammar guide and go through the basics, and deal with the (many) exceptions when they come up while studying.

There are a bunch of resources online, none of which you'll find very appealing or easily understandable. Honestly the best way might just be to find a pocket German grammar guide at a local bookstore or online for cheap and carry it around for any questions. Those things are much nicer (and usually quicker) than online resources.

As always, native speakers/teachers are infinitely preferable to any other method. Stuff like Pimsleur or Michel Thomas are great for early-stage learning mnemonics.


You can also touch base with DeutschGAF, I'm sure they'd be more than willing to help out.
 
O

oti

Banned
According to Duolingo my Spanish is 19% percent fluent. I can tell you that the woman isn't a dog.

My French, which I had had at school for 7 years, is at 21%.

Regarding German, I have no idea. We could chat over Skype or something if you want to though.
 
C

chadskin

Member
Watching movies and TV shows helped me learn English, to just hear native speakers talk in a casual fashion gives you a better feel for the flow of the language than a stiff learning program like Duolingo ever could I think. Obviously, you need to have a modicum of vocabulary down to actually be able to comprehend what they're saying and talking about but once you do, you can often fill in the blanks due to the context.

If you're on a long commute, then perhaps give a German podcast a try? The Deutsche Welle broadcaster offers a "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten" podcast as well as other "Deutsch lernen" podcasts. I'm not a big podcast guy but there are loads of German gaming podcasts as well.

L Thammy said:
If it's true that the ends of German nouns usually demonstrate their gender, then I don't even think that's so bad. That I can memorize. But right now I'm just googling random grammatical things because there's no way I'm going to intuitively figure them out.
Click to expand...

As a native German speaker I have to tell you probably no German gives any thought to the gender of the word before deciding on the correct article haha. It's clear to everyone that it's "das Auto", not "die Auto" or "der Auto" because the latter two just sound unnatural. But like I said, I think you'll get the hang of it in most cases once you get a feel for the flow of the language.
 
C

cptodin

Member
If you feel confident you can search for articles written in simple language (leichte Sprache).

Here's an example: http://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/

There are only short sentences and no complicated words are used.
Reading news in german can also help getting the gist of what might be written in the article so it is easier to understand and analyze how the sentences are structured.
 
P

Pikelet

Member
Duolingo actually has a decent section on grammar, though it's not accessible on the app. Try going through the website and reading the theory before attempting any of the lessons
 
S

szaromir

Banned
chadskin said:
Watching movies and TV shows helped me learn English, to just hear native speakers talk in a casual fashion gives you a better feel for the flow of the language than a stiff learning program like Duolingo ever could I think. Obviously, you need to have a modicum of vocabulary down to actually be able to comprehend what they're saying and talking about but once you do, you can often fill in the blanks due to the context.
Click to expand...
I'd really like some recommendations on cool interesting content in German (movies/TV series/youtube channels). I'm learning German but it's difficult for me to discover quality entertainment (or edutainment) randomly. I actually understand German very well, but I'd like to be able to immerse myself in German completely so that it becomes second nature to me.
 
H

halfbeast

Banned
wouldn't it be easier to download some simple educational kid-games/apps (in german) to learn the very basics? I find the adult approach of learning a language way too overwhelming.

something like "Die Kuh macht muuuuuh! Der Hund macht wuff-wuff!" than the usual: "Bettina's mother died, she tries to pick her up at the train station: Wo ist denn hier die Leichenabgabe, bitte?"
 
C

chadskin

Member
szaromir said:
I'd really like some recommendations on cool interesting content in German (movies/TV series/youtube channels). I'm learning German but it's difficult for me to discover quality entertainment (or edutainment) randomly. I actually understand German very well, but I'd like to be able to immerse myself in German completely so that it becomes second nature to me.
Click to expand...

To be honest, there's not a whole lot of German quality content around but some good ones include:

Movies:
Victoria
Das Leben der Anderen
Der Untergang
Die Welle
Good Bye Lenin
Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex

TV series:
Deutschland 83
Der Tatortreiniger
Stromberg (the German version of The Office)
Pastewka
Morgen hör' ich auf

No idea about YouTube.
 
C

cyba89

Member
szaromir said:
I'd really like some recommendations on cool interesting content in German (movies/TV series/youtube channels). I'm learning German but it's difficult for me to discover quality entertainment (or edutainment) randomly. I actually understand German very well, but I'd like to be able to immerse myself in German completely so that it becomes second nature to me.
Click to expand...

Sadly good german fictional entertaiment is pretty much a wasteland. Good tv series are the german The Office-clone "Stromberg" and "Der Tatortreiniger".

Edit: beaten.
Those are some good suggestions above me. Although Pastewka is a bit hard to recommend if you have no clue about the german tv-landscape.
 
F

Freeza Under The Shower

Member
I read the remark on genders in german and kind of went 'what genders' and then I realized we (Dutch) have those too, we just don't care. :')
(either you know them, or you don't. native speaker privilege, yeah baby)

French (Latin derived?) related languages are a lot less bullshit in that regard.
I want pick up both again (and some other languages), but like OP I've found there's not exactly a wealth of good free material online. Guess it's buying a course.
 
L

Lima

Member
szaromir said:
I'd really like some recommendations on cool interesting content in German (movies/TV series/youtube channels). I'm learning German but it's difficult for me to discover quality entertainment (or edutainment) randomly. I actually understand German very well, but I'd like to be able to immerse myself in German completely so that it becomes second nature to me.
Click to expand...

Well that's easy. Since we Germans love to dub everything you can basically watch any American movie or TV show out there in German.
 
E

El Topo

Member
If German is so hard, then why are there over 80 million people speaking it rather fluently? Schach und Matt, OP.

szaromir said:
I'd really like some recommendations on cool interesting content in German (movies/TV series/youtube channels). I'm learning German but it's difficult for me to discover quality entertainment (or edutainment) randomly. I actually understand German very well, but I'd like to be able to immerse myself in German completely so that it becomes second nature to me.
Click to expand...

As pointed out above me, virtually every show gets a German dub though, although I'm not sure how you would get your hands on those. There's also Tatort, I guess. You could always visit DeutschGAF, although lately they've been talking a lot about their bizarre business plan involving Döner.
 
S

soco

Member
Things like the gender is nothing more than rote memorization. There's no general tricks that I ever learned. Duolingo will probably help you build a good general vocabulary, but then you're going to have to use it in some sense. Start watching german videos and find some place to speak it. Eventually, you'll start to pick up on these things.
 
A

Aaronology

Member
chadskin said:
To be honest, there's not a whole lot of German quality content around but some good ones include:

Movies:
Victoria
Das Leben der Anderen
Der Untergang
Die Welle
Good Bye Lenin
Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex

TV series:
Deutschland 83
Der Tatortreiniger
Stromberg (the German version of The Office)
Pastewka
Morgen hör' ich auf

No idea about YouTube.
Click to expand...

I will be checking all of these out myself, thanks!


Familienoberhauptvogel said:
I'm austrian and more fluent in latin cases than german.

It's a dumb language tbh the only thing it does well is stringing words together.
Click to expand...

Something about this sentence made me laugh really hard. Last week I met a German nurse here on one of the Native reservations. She was shocked (as I expected her to be) when I greeted and started speaking to her in Deutsch. It was an awesome moment, but she kind of deflated me a bit when she suggested I take up Chinese or Russian instead. Basically, "lol why would you learn German? No one speaks it here and it's hard!" I didn't have a legit answer to that besides, "idk lol it sounds cool?"

feltbadman.jpg


Edit:

oti xero said:
When GermanGAF read this thread's title:
"Oh someone wants to learn our language, that's nice AND FOOLISH"
Click to expand...
Ahaha, yeah. This here.
 
O

oti

Banned
When GermanGAF read this thread's title:
"Oh someone wants to learn our language, that's nice AND FOOLISH"

We support you.
Don't listen to Austrians or Bavarians or Schwabenländler. They don't speak German.
 
T

Tater Tot

"My God... it's full of Starch!"
I learned a little bit of German because my ex girlfriend was foreign exchange from Kiel. I thought it would not be very hard since I am fluent in Spanish and English but it is. Especially when you get to dative/accusative/genetiv cases.

For me the most challenging part was the gender of certain words. Der/Die/Das there is not real order to them you just have to learn them when you learn a new word. It is cool though I am also doing Duolingo I am about 25% fluent heh.


It will serve me well once I go to germany later on i hope.

Ich denke die Deutschen Frauen sind die Schonsten Frauen :p
 
M

Milchmann

Member
chadskin said:
To be honest, there's not a whole lot of German quality content around but some good ones include:

Movies:
Victoria
Das Leben der Anderen
Der Untergang
Die Welle
Good Bye Lenin
Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex

TV series:
Deutschland 83
Der Tatortreiniger
Stromberg (the German version of The Office)
Pastewka
Morgen hör' ich auf

No idea about YouTube.
Click to expand...

Great list. A good starting point for TV shows is Deutschland 83 which does well in other countries. The best German TV show of the last years is Weissensee IMO, but it requires some knowledge about the GDR and Stasi.
 
F

Familienoberhauptvogel

Banned
Tater Tot said:
It will serve me well once I go to germany later on i hope.

Ich denke die Deutschen Frauen sind die Schonsten Frauen :p
Click to expand...

Nailed it except adjectives being lower case and there are swedish women in europe.

oti xero said:
When GermanGAF read this thread's title:
"Oh someone wants to learn our language, that's nice AND FOOLISH"

We support you.
Don't listen to Austrians or Bavarians or Schwabenländler. They don't speak German.
Click to expand...

The country that actually speaks Hoch Deutsch and Bavaria has about the most bearable german german.

Milchmann said:
If you want to start riots among native German speakers ask for the gender of Nutella.
Click to expand...

das Nutella
 
R

Ratros

Member
I have been studying German on Duolingo for almost 2 years now. Suggestion: get a grammar book, check your answers with the book before submitting them, and try to memorize those stupid cases, words and their genders that make absolutely no f***king sense one bit at a time.
 
S

SilentRob

Member
I've been speaking german for 25 years now and even I have no idea what I'm doing. This language is a huge asshole, trying to actively fuck you up around every single corner.

Don't even engage in its bullshit. Just speak however you want, chances are the germans you talk to have no idea how their grammar works neither.
This is a joke but not really
 
P

Piecake

Member
Buy this book, Fluent Forever.

The learning strategies are based on research in cognitive science (how we learn and remember), so it isnt some BS marketing shit. Used it myself for Chinese and I found the strategies in here far more effective than any college language course or puttering around on my own.
 
S

szaromir

Banned
chadskin said:
To be honest, there's not a whole lot of German quality content around but some good ones include:
(...)
No idea about YouTube.
Click to expand...
Thanks, though I've already seen some of those.
Lima said:
Well that's easy. Since we Germans love to dub everything you can basically watch any American movie or TV show out there in German.
Click to expand...
El Topo said:
As pointed out above me, virtually every show gets a German dub though, although I'm not sure how you would get your hands on those.
Click to expand...
Netflix+AdBlockfree works well for that. :p But the problem is, it sounds so fake, lipsync is obviously off and the experience is much worse than watching in the native language.
 
Soodanim

Soodanim

Gold Member
This thread surprises me a bit. My experience with German was in school (~14-16) and I ended up dropping French in favour of German because English's Germanic roots make a lot of things fairly easy. Granted, I only did foundation level work (highest grade was a C), but I easily got that grade.

German > French, that was my conclusion.
 
8

8bit

Knows the Score
Duolingo is unforgiving on German grammar (and spelling). It's counterproductive to learning that language in particular.
 
M

MrCow

Member
ich gehe
du gehst
er/sie/es geht

wir gehen
ihr geht
sie gehen

german is hard as fuck, even for native speakers like me.

the best is probably to learn how to conjugate
and to learn the different times, like Plusquamperfekt 2 (bwahaha love that word)

edit: DIE nutella btw .. i even have to fight my girlfried over this
 
B

Belfast

Member
Download Memrise instead and do some of those courses. The content is sort of crowd sourced, but I've found it a better way to drill vocab quickly and you do often get notes on grammar (though it isn't consistent due to the aforementioned crowdsourcing).
 
S

Sesuadra

Unconfirmed Member
oti xero said:
When GermanGAF read this thread's title:
"Oh someone wants to learn our language, that's nice AND FOOLISH"

We support you.
Don't listen to Austrians or Bavarians or Schwabenländler. They don't speak German.
Click to expand...

yeah this. We germans usually love to shit on our own language. I am a big fan of it tho...I usually don't state that anymore because people look at me like I'm crazy :D but honestly it is a language suited for writing novels and poems. Just look at Goethe god damnit. I love a good Faust reading.
Disclaimer: my german is shit. My Deutsch Leistungskurs teacher once challenged me to a duel on sunrise because of the many mistakes I made in a paper. I have a problem with the whole "groß- kleinschreibung" since my childhood

for science I would always use english tho.


OP, if you want we could add each other on a messenger and write in german >> or come and meet everyone in DeutschGAF.

Familienoberhauptvogel said:
das Nutella
Click to expand...

no. NO. DIE. DIE NUTELLA. I'll fight you. >_>
 
H

Hypron

Member
German is the reason why I laugh when native English speakers go on about how hard English is to learn. I learnt both at the same time (dropped German when I moved to NZ though), but German was way harder. The English pronunciation is nonsensical but at least the grammar and conjugation are simple.
 
G

Gorlak

Banned
MrCow said:
and to learn the different times, like Plusquamperfekt 2 (bwahaha love that word)
Click to expand...

What the fuck is that?

"Ich hatte ihm geschrieben gehabt" - that sounds like you are an idiot. Stop giving me a headache please. This can't be real, nobody talks like that. That's nothing you learn in school or should ever learn as a non-native speaker.

Edit: also buy a grammar book, otherwise you'll have a very hard time
that's a lie, you'll have a hard time learning german regardless
 
V

Violet_0

Banned
well, if you want to learn real German, you can watch:

Muttertag
Indien
Der Metzger (geht fremd/muss nachsitzen)
Komm, süßer Tod/Der Knochenmann/Silentium/Das ewige Leben

and there's also

Das Weisse Band
Die Fälscher
Hasenjagd

and I know Tatort is getting sort of a bad rep - it's a long-running [understatement] crime investigation series with about a dozen teams working in different cities, kind of like Law and Order - but many of the episodes are genuinely great television, far more interesting than just about all the (mostly) trashy US or UK or Scandinavian crime shows

German TV in general is a lot better than some people make it out to be, you just mostly never hear much about the good stuff
 
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