Learning German - Difficulties and Tips

[@Thelinguist]

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[@lazzarinfederico]

I totally agree with you @mindmapyourgerman

[@German1184]

"ignore the cases." - This is a very good tip.

[@kobaomg]

I'd suggest to anyone learning German to search in the language on KZbin, there's really a lot of stuff you can watch. Reviews about products, news, vlogs, etc, this really helped me a lot to reach an intermediate/advanced level by just having fun. About the relative clauses and the verbs going to the end of the sentence, I agree this can get very confusing. Even now that I am able to speak German quite well I still find these long clauses very distracting during the conversation, perhaps because of a short-term memory problem I sort of lose the train of thought if the person takes too long to get back to the main clause.

[@alwaysuseless]

German nouns: 4 cases, 3 genders (singular) and plural. That amounts to a 4x4 table of endings for nouns. My approach to this was to learn the table. So, in effect, I was applying an 4x4 table as I spoke German. I neither recommend nor advise against this approach. It worked for me. But I admit I found it hard to believe that I'd ever get to the point where, like a native speaker, I could automatically make the right choices without thinking about it. Then one day, in Germany not coincidentally, I realized I was speaking German correctly without any thought about that table. It had actually become automatic! As for word order, the rules are simple and clear, and hence never posed any problem. Using English word order in a German sentence would be as weird and difficult to do as imposing German word order on an English sentence. I kind of like having to wait until the end of a sentence to say or hear the verb. It's like a mini-cliffhanger. It forces you to pay attention. :-) I find Romance languages with their abundance of vowels very melodic, but I was delighted by German's abundance of consonants. *_Vive la différence!_* Or as the Germans say, *_Lang lebe der Unterschied!_* Also, German's propensity for concatenation, resulting in very long words is fun! The fire insurance company = Die Feuerversicherungsgesellschaft. Who could resist that? After all, "fire insurance company" is one concept, so why not one word? German also has its ways of saying things more succinctly: The day after tomorrow = Übermorgen. Finally, capitalizing the nouns actually makes reading easier.

[@PauloNideck]

I studied German for two tears with an Austrian teacher and I got crazy about those declensions and it frustrated me so bad that I stopped studying it. Now I flat out ignore the cases and I'm back to German. Eventually they will fall into place.

[@gickalruafa7582]

You should learn Austrian dialects. There are only three cases (Nominativ, Dativ, Akkusativ) and there is no declination in Plural. (De Leid san freindli. (Nominativ); I gib de Leid wos zum Essn. (Dativ); I siag de Leid. (Akkusativ))

[@pol...]

From own experience I can say that they don't fall into place.

[@TheZeyver]

I should do the same....declination so and the four cases demotivated me..

[@MrMattgood14]

That is the key man! Ignore the cases do your best to memrise the vocab, irregular and separable verbs... If cases don't come, no one will care!

[@Tavarna]

@@gickalruafa7582 hello, I am from turkey, I want to learn german because I want to study in vienna applied arts university. Everyone I talked there, said learn hochdeutch but I kinda wanna learn the austrian german, spesificaly vieannese. Do you know any sources that are preferably online but printed is ok too? Thank you.

[@Jefff72]

I found that learning German grammar has made my English grammar better. It forced me to pay attention in English on how I structure my sentences. I'm now trying to pick up Icelandic and I find a lot of common ground with German, although not say as close as Swedish. Exit: Icelandic-útgang German-Ausgang

[@ghenulo]

Of course, both are calques with "exit" (from Latin, "ex" (out of) and "ire" (to go)).

[@Jefff72]

Good to know!

[@SiggiNebel]

ghenulo But probably the direct influence of German to the Scandinavian languages has been very strong. German and Scandinavian languages are so close related that Scandinavian could take over German expressions and modify them slightly so they didn't look foreign at at all.

[@viktornoikristinsson]

How is your Icelandic now? Ertu mjög talfær? 😊

[@LuizLucena3]

Trying to remember the declensions when speaking really used to slow me down. I noticed a huge improvement in my speaking skills after just focusing on getting my message across as fluently as possible. So, focus on communicative competence before diving into linguistic (grammar) competence.

[@Acid_Lace]

It's silly people don't like German because Italian, French, and Spanish are "languages of love." A language is loving because the person speaking it is loving. You can't go into a language thinking it will be difficult. I've studied Spanish, Japanese, German, and American sign language. Japanese is the easiest for me to pronounce, I get the most real world practice with Spanish, German words are the most memorable for some reason, and signs can be done alongside vocabulary for any other language. They all have prose and cons. I really want to learn German so I can listen to all my favorite German language operas :) .

[@lucaorlando6754]

I think that people usually call Italian and French "languages of love" due to their musicality... German is really interesting but it's so "musical"

[@qwertyls8552]

@BabyUnicornio lol, true

[@christophercano4809]

@@EresirThe1st That's an extremely unpopular opinion though, if you go out asking people about the most romantic languages, 9/10 times they will mention a romance language

[@christophercano4809]

@@EresirThe1st Even then people will most likely say either their native language or a romance language lol

[@vaelerys5379]

EresirThe1st Couldn't agree more. As someone who has lived in several Spanish speaking countries, I find Spanish quite annoying. It depends the accent it's spoken with though. I really dislike how spanish in the Caribbean, Mexico sounds and instead love how it's spoken in Spain and Colombia. - Just a thought. With French, even though I'm not able to speak it nor be able to catch up one single word, doesn't sound any appealing to me. Sounds to me as If they were hocking up a loogy.

[@MrDionaea]

You are 100% right. I was learning english without study grammar. Maybe my english is not very good but i have understood all that you said, and i can speak too. Now is the moment of learn more about grammar, but yes, in the begining is better read, listen and try to speak and not pay attention to these foggy things.

[@Thelinguist]

MrDionaea Once you have experience with the language, the grammar explanations become more meaningful, and easier to retain. You have a point of reference. But spend most of your time enjoying the language.

[@MrDionaea]

Thats true, and when people speak several languages, they can learn faster other because there are a lot of similar words. Now i´m learning german and i need a base vocabulary, so 1º i´ll memorice 100 verbs in infinitive and a little more of sustantives, but i´m watching videos too. I like languages and when im listening some conversation in other language, even if its a normal or "bored" conversation, is funny because i´m trying to understand. I am from Spain and for me the exotics languages are german and rusian so i´ll try to learn one after another. I´m watching all of your videos now hahaha. Thanks for advice, is very usefull when its right.

[@Falcon988]

Your sentence is pretty well done and your grammar is almost there. Since I like it when people correct me when I write German, I'll correct your English so you can get a better feel for it. You're almost there though. Corrections in caps: "You are 100% right. I was learning English without studyING grammar. Maybe my English is not very good, but I have understood all that you HAVE said, and I can speak too. Now is the moment TO learn more about grammar, but yes, in the beginning IT is better TO read, listen and try to speak, and not pay attention to these foggy things." Also, "now is the moment" is perfectly legible, but "now is the time" is how we would say it. And instead of "foggy," we would use confusing. As you see though, you're doing damn well. I don't think my German grammar is as good as your English grammar.

[@MrDionaea]

Thank you very much!

[@utkarshpande11]

MrDionaea so is learning german a big thing in Spain? coz ppl all over the world norw wanna learn spanish....

[@Thelinguist]

Aber für mich war das nicht möglich die Deklinationen am Anfang zu lernen.

[@Nekr0n35]

"...keep reading and listening!"

[@Thelinguist]

I mentioned the fact that I basically stayed away from trying to master the declensions. I speak better when I don't try to speak correctly. Informal and formal is not a difficult thing to grasp.

[@MarianneExJohnson]

The key to learning German cases is reading a lot of high-quality content. In the spoken language cases are used a bit less and are sometimes hard to distinguish, depending on dialect, but in the written language they are quite clear. Try to understand, every now and then, why you are seeing dem vs den or die vs der etc., and with time it will fall into place.

[@mainlander3920]

Learning German made me appreciate English much more. Thank God for this simple and effective lingua franca we have nowadays.

[@4555678]

I couldn't disagree more on Germans being good English speakers. I live in Germany and I find it impressive how there are so many people that do not speak English (or any other language, most of the time). That is my motivation to learn German.

[@daddy_chill1530]

True, working in the hospitality industry I had encountered a lot of Germans, lot's of them actually don't speak English even at the intermediate level. It seems that there are 2 types of germans speaking English: either they speak it super fluently, or they barely put words into sentences.

[@Thelinguist]

Sorry I lost track of that question. Unfortunately KZbin is not very efficient in keeping track of comments. After what I listen to, it depends on the language it depends on how advanced I am, etc. I usually start with what we have in our library at LingQ since it always includes audio and text and is graded for difficulty. I then search for radio stations or podcasts, preferably those that have audio and text. If you want detail information per language, please let me know.

[@garfieldnate]

I *love* that you put timelines in the descriptions. Extremely convenient. Very appreciated!

[@XanderLusk]

I honestly believe that we shouldn't look up how 'difficult' a language is. I think you hit the nail on the head about motivation. If you want to learn German... or any other language for that matter... you'll learn it. At this moment in time I have no interest to learn Mandarin for example, however have a huge interest in Polish. And I will guarantee that if I started studying both, my Polish will be at a much higher level after 6 months because of that.

[@carlosparra6521]

I come a bit late, but I have to thank you. You have increased my motivation and you talk with such a clarity.

[@sallyann985]

You have my same approach to language learning. I'll only care about perfecting my understanding of cases and stuff once I get to at least an intermediate level. My main problem at the moment is acquiring enough vocabulary and getting used to the structure of the language.

[@christiancarrigan3464]

My first language is English and I learned dutch fluently(c1 approaching c2) so german word orde should be no problem so it should be pretty easy!

[@MushyBanana11]

Hallo Steve, bitte gestatte mir, dass ich in Deutsch antworte. Denn dein Deutsch ist sehr gut und so gut wie akzentfrei. Doch zunächst vielen Dank für deine Ausführungen. Ich glaube, was du über Motivation erklärt hast, ist sehr wichtig. Auch ich habe einiges von dir gelernt. Nicht, wie ich meine eigene Sprache verwenden muss, sondern einiges über die Strukturen im Deutschen, die für mich als "native speaker" selbstverständlich sind. Als Deutsch-Lehrer für Flüchtlingskinder ist es immer wieder wichtig, über meine eigene Sprache zu reflektieren. Vieles, worüber du gesprochen hast, hat mich an meinen eigenen Deutsch-Unterricht mit Flüchtlingskindern erinnert. Vielen Dank für deinen Beitrag. Grüße aus Deutschland Wolfgang

[@Thelinguist]

+MushyBanana11 Danke sohlen. Vielen Dank. Froh das zu hören.

[@mikesimmerman5908]

Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve thanks my German has got better when I ignored the arctles an when you told me rolling r is in the south that lifted alot off me

[@FingersKungfu]

Certainly, motivation is the biggest factor there. That how I learned Ancient Greek and be able to read Homer in the original on my own. I am a Thai (ethnically Sino-Thai) and speak Thai as a mother language. I used to learn Chinese when I was an undergrad but then lost the motivation (though not the interest) because I realized I had to master English first if I want to pursue a graduate degree in an English speaking country. People need motivation to study languages. But I do think that our English-speaking world places a lot of constraints on people who don't speak English as the first language. It pressures them to spend much time and perseverance on English first. And the contemporary standard of English comprehension/command is pretty high. You are expected to master it - not just picking-it-up-and-let-see-how-it-goes things like you do with other languages. After that they may enter a working life and have less time or could no longer invest in acquiring new languages.

[@flaze3]

+thucydides Neo There are many millions of people who DON'T speak great English, which is why there are so many ESL teachers (including me). Personally I don't expect everyone to speak perfect English and I like talking to people in their own language when I can, in any case :-)

[@pajamaman2989]

Might I offer an opinion on the capitalization of nouns? Nouns are, in general, the focus and main building blocks of sentences. Language is a way to convey how we perceive the things in the world around us and their interactions with each other. By capitalizing these "things" it draws more focus to them and may make them seem more vivid or prevalent. Also, in German sometimes nouns are combined with adjectives and other words to create very lengthy words. The fact that these words are usually capitalized makes them a bit easier to look at in my opinion and in turn a bit easier to read. Again, these are all opinions.

[@Thelinguist]

Glad to hear it.

[@siddipper3048]

I am going to apply for a foreign exchange for my senior year in high school. My country of choice is Germany. I am applying to CBYX (Congress-Bunderstag Youth Exchange) and I am really excited. I came across this channel a while back, and I just want to say that you've helped me ALOT. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

[@TS29er]

It's been five years now...did you go to Germany? If so, how did you like it?

[@carj3181]

On the subject of capitalising nouns, I find that with certain words it's really helpful. For example, morgen and Morgen. With one meaning tomorrow and one meaning morning. You can tell from the context which is which but I still found it helpful to be blatantly told by whether the m was capitalised or not.

[@josepcorretja]

I work as customer service in a Cultural Centre in Barcelona and I receive thousands of Germans each year and I can say that they are happy when you try your Gernan with them (so are Swiss and Austrians). Shoukd you dream of living and working in Germany German is imprescindible.

[@coach3348]

I 100% agree with you. Motivation is key for learning German. When watching KZbin I start in German but I then swap to French which is more appealing to me.

[@sugaminny1447]

Learning Latin helps you with cases as well. As a German i always used the cases correct unconsciously, but for Latin i studied the Latin cases and since these two systems are really similar it helped me understand the German cases much better.

[@BobTheTrueCactus]

In Germany the newspapers sometimes use very odd wording in order to avoid using the same word twice. So instead of saying "the beatles" over and over again, they might substitute their name by several descriptions of them, such as the amount of band members, their haircut, the albums they released or whatever. That's not really a natural use of the language. It depends on the newspaper and the quality of the journalist and I may be exaggerating a little bit, but sometimes it gets kind of absurd because they may give you totally irrelevant information about the person in order to avoid the repetion of his name. It's a bit like writing an article about Voldemort. Also those very long sentences are in my opinion a very bad writing style. People try to pack all the content they want to tell you into one sentence but it can become almost incomprehensible. As a native German speaker some English scientific papers are easier for me to understand than German ones. That's simply because the sentences are often shorter. If a sentence contains 50 words, 8 of them being technical terms that I'm hardly familiar with, then understanding it is difficult. My school books in physics and maths were written like that and for me they were totally incromprehensible. In general newspapers are probably an easily accessible source that has little limits for use - but one should be aware that it's not always a natural usage of words. I can recommend www.tagesschau.de by the way. I use it on a regular basis and there are several articles that got audio plus transcript.

[@ihavenoname6724]

From someone who is learning German at the moment: you are right in everything you say!

[@Thelinguist]

That is why I prefer to ignore the whole thing. I don't worry about gender and cases and do better. I naturally start to get it right more and more of the time.

[@TheNemphis]

i am german why i look the video ?? :DD

[@j.r.6664]

R. K. Ich auch, mich interessiert es irgendwie total, was Leute aus anderen Ländern über unsere Sprache denken und vor allem, was sie schwer finden

[@tmoii4882]

Natürlich, der die das finde ich sehr schwer.

[@xl9473]

Ich bin ein Mann

[@brendon2462]

For english input

[@magnus00125]

@@xl9473 ich bin auch nicht einen frau

[@Thelinguist]

Sorry for the typos, that dictation software makes me lazy!

[@truework8676]

😂

[@tailerroberts4722]

i actually learned a lot of German by listening to a German metal band i really love called Rammstein.

[@eeeiii5319]

A Rammstein's fan here too! *Wunderbar!!!*

[@urla234]

Hey!, try with Oomph!

[@pettypuppyjonghyun]

Du Hast

[@Catire92]

How did you learn German listening to Rammstein? I am a German native speaker and I find it somewhat difficult to understand the lyrics.

[@uncreativepanda]

​@@Catire92 I guess it would depend on the song but most of the time the lyrics sound pretty clear to me.

[@ThomasKossatz]

Hi Steve, the German language as we know it now was "melted" from various dialects by Martin Luther when he did the first "German" translation of the bible. So, it started as a written, not a spoken language. This explains a few of the differences we see now between English and German. Still today in the parliament you will quickly recognize if a politician uses a written manuscript. The complicated sentence structures are hard to comprehend. However, if you buy a German tabloid, you will often find sentences with only 5 or 6 words. So, your strategy to avoid problems with sentence structures should be to use shorter sentences. Example, Don't say: Der Unfall wurde in den frühen Morgenstunden, kurz nach Sonnenaufgang und für den Fahrer unvorhersehbar durch ein Reh, das vom Wald auf eine Wiese wechseln wollte und mit erheblichen Folgen auch für nachfolgende Fahrzeuge, verursacht. WHAT? Try this: Kurz nach Sonnenaufgang verursachte ein Reh einen Unfall. Es war von einer Wiese über die Straße Richtung Wald gelaufen. Der Fahrer hatte es übersehen. Auch nachfolgende Autos wurden darin verwickelt. 3 sentences instead of 1, and even shorter! Many Germans who play hide and seek with the verb believe this is "good German". It is not. I totally agree with you that learning rules is not the preferred way to learn German.

[@yacineaitmessaoud1173]

depend on where you're living

[@Thelinguist]

There is no problem understanding what the Dative is, no need for mnemonics. The problem is remembering the endings.

[@davidcanoart]

Hello again Steve, vielen Dank, dass du diese interessante Video gedreht hast! Ich glaube, dass es besser ist, wenn man die Deklinationen am Anfang des Lernens lernt, danach kann man ein bisschen vergessen, um fließender zu sein. Meine Meinung nach, sind die Deklinationen bzw. die Fälle aber nämlich sehr wichtig, um es zu merken, wie es genau mit anderen Sprachen funktioniert. Man muss in diesem Fall bewusst sein, es lohnt sich am Ende und es ist außerdem nicht zu schwierig.

[@Thelinguist]

I don't worry about gender or cases.

[@Thelinguist]

You can find them in our library at LingQ. In some case our members have transcribed them.

[@ahamilton2528]

What are Das Der Die Den Dem THE.

[@clairet188]

I have seen Katjas video so many times that I completely forgot the fact that you are a native English speaker. you sound so straaaaaaange!!! love youuuuu you are the best of the best! :D

[@valq10]

Motivated to know German to read the philosophers! Edit: And the poetry!

[@joshuaronquillo1673]

Philosophy really makes German and French a must

[@fahadhussain66]

Du sollst Schopenhauer lesen.

[@ConsideringPhlebas]

Personally, I find it fascinating, enriching and helpful to study/learn languages in groups, e.g., the Semitic languages or the Germanic languages, etc. I'm presently learning Swedish, and studying OE has helped me understand things like definite/indefinite adjective inflexion in Swedish, e.g., ett rött hus vs röda huset, and to remember Germanic vocabulary that's obsolete in modern English but retained in Swedish and OE: att fara, gammal, dom, barn, etc.

[@thomasc93]

I have do disagree with you on your thoughts on the German cases. They are a crucial part of the language and - like in Russian - the wrong case or just not using cases period can change the meaning of a sentence or make its meaning entirely ambiguous. Plus, as another user mentioned, complete disregard of the cases makes your German sound painful to a native speaker. If you're just learning German for listening comprehension, I guess you can disregard them, but if you want to be able to speak and communicate in the language, then leaning the case system is really required. Also, if you can master the Russian case system as you have done, learning the German case system should be no problem as it's much simpler. Just my thoughts for what they're worth.

[@NicolaiCzempin]

Still, if you have limited time and e. g. you have to choose between learning more vocab and fine-tuning the cases, you're probably better off just learning more words. Although I can immediately hear that you're not a native speaker if you get any one case wrong, you could fool me for a long time just using simpler words. But the goal is not to fool me into thinking you're a native speaker, and I can easily understand what you're trying to say even when you use the wrong cases (or, even more common it seems, a combination of wrong gender and sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect cases).

[@k0pera]

I am Bulgarian and i prefer to learn more words and not foucs so much on grammer bacouse i work as a lawer and I don't have the time to spend for learning all cases becouse in my language such a thing as 4 or 6 cases don't exist. W-Frage tip only slow down my thinking when i speak with people and if i focus more on the grammer i will forget what ot say in the sentance. The bigest motivation for me learning german is german law system and i think this is enoght but the words in German are very intersting and unique and that motivates me more than just learning German for my job. The only think that kills my interest for German is the grammer and the cases. I think that if you are not native in the language and you don´t have case system in your own language you will need very good learning skills for German which i don't have becouse i feel that i am good at memoraising the words. Maybe i will try to learn cases by learning every verb what case requier becouse i feel myself stronger in memorising words than using grammer by W-ways becouse this thing dosn't exist in my language or any language that i am fluend or good at it. I am a Slav native and i can understand Russian and also learn it at school but i can't speak it becouse the barrier of cases.

[@tenor9216]

A good way I found to get better at the cases was through writing, simply by checking the cases in the e-mails I had to write, and occasionally doing other writing exercises. You just get more used to using the right forms, and become more aware of what mistakes you tend to do, without it being the daunting (and way less effective) task of learning the whole table at once!

[@andreasmeier7728]

Hey it's me again. I just came across a German text that is really worth reading. I mean really. It's from the novel "Momo" written by Michael Ende. Here it is: "Was die kleine Momo konnte wie kein anderer, das war das Zuhören. Das ist doch nichts Besonderes, wird nun vielleicht mancher Leser sagen, zuhören kann doch jeder. Aber das ist ein Irrtum. Wirklich zuhören können nur recht wenige Menschen. Und so wie Momo sich aufs Zuhören verstand, war es ganz und gar einmalig. Momo konnte so zuhören, dass dummen Leuten plötzlich sehr gescheite Gedanken kamen. Nicht etwa, weil sie etwas sagte oder fragte, was den anderen auf solche Gedanken brachte - nein, sie saß nur da und hörte einfach zu, mit aller Aufmerksamkeit und aller Anteilnahme. Dabei schaute sie den anderen mit ihren großen, dunklen Augen an, und der Betreffende fühlte, wie in ihm plötzlich Gedanken auftauchten, von denen er nie geahnt hatte, dass sie in ihm steckten. Sie konnte so zuhören, dass ratlose, unentschlossene Leute auf einmal ganz genau wussten, was sie wollten. Oder dass Schüchterne sich plötzlich frei und mutig fühlten. Oder dass Unglückliche und Bedrückte zuversichtlich und froh wurden. Und wenn jemand meinte, sein Leben sei ganz verfehlt und bedeutungslos und er selbst nur irgendeiner unter Millionen, einer, auf denen es überhaupt nicht ankommt, und er ebenso schnell ersetzt werden kann wie ein kaputter Topf - und er ging hin und erzählte das alles der kleinen Momo, dann wurde ihm, noch während er redete, auf geheimnisvolle Weise klar, dass er sich gründlich irrte, dass es ihn, genauso wie er war, unter allen Menschen nur ein einziges Mal gab und dass er deshalb auf seine besondere Weise für die Welt wichtig war. So konnte Momo zuhören." What do you think about it, Steve?

[@ArphenMaethor]

"Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" is a book about how the genetive case is being replaced by the dativ case in modern times and if the trend goes on the genetive may vanish completly. Today, while in theory 4 cases exist, only 3 are really used in daily life, coming closer to english there

[@arvidfalk5719]

Ha, and concerning the word order: In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Sherlock Holmes famously said: "Only a German is so uncourteous to his verbs."

[@hieronyma_]

I think german is the most beautiful language ever. I may be biased though, because I'm a native speaker. Also, german tv shows are popular in the netherlands and in poland sometimes.

[@JacobSprenger]

During the 80s (other eras _may_ apply) many German pop musicians recorded their albums in several languages for international releases. Kraftwerk and Nena (with her "99 Red Balloons") are just two examples. So, for quite a while, you didn't actually have to listen to German to enjoy German music. As for a motivation for learning German, how about that old chestnut of a quote by Kaiser Karl V.: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." - Maybe you should learn German if you spend time with horses. Before the mechanisation of agricultural labour, they were some of the hardest workers among domesticated animals, after all. ;)

[@mohantys.r.3767]

Thank you so much Sir for your valuable time and guidance. As a German intermediate language learner, I must say initially it was bit difficult to get a sense of grammar especially Akkusativ & Dativ cases, trenbarren verbs, praposition & prefixes etc. Nevertheless, it was very exciting to explore the nuances of the language with the help of various videos by so many experts and apps. I allocate my time appropriately for different objectives such as vocabulary, grammar, concept & conversations around certain themes. This way, I am able to maintain my motivation for learning further.

[@ana-mz8ix]

This was a really fun video to watch, and I could relate to everything you said!

[@GarryBurgess]

I like the fact that I can hear the sounds of German. And when I hear it, I feel that I'm connected or, home. I find that it's easy to say the words as compared to French, Chinese or Esperanto.

[@veon777]

I can't agree with you more!! Thanks for the tips! But I think it depends on the purpose of learning. Living a HAPPY life in Germany requires at least CORRECT German. Otherwise you could misunderstand what the insurance company wants from you, what your doctor says about you, or probably, getting divorce, talking to a lawyer would be a problem too. For some comments below: "Die Zeit" is not the only source of 'good' German for educated people. THAT is actually everywhere unless you're just a child who can't see that. Steve was quite right. AND German speaking countries only seem to be very English- friendly if you only stay for a short time.

[@ihori779]

German sounds pretty cool. I like it. And it goes really easy if you get the grip of English. The trouble for beginners may be capital letters in nouns, which a bit annoys, and long words made of combinations of short words, but one may get used to them later, and counting with reversed system of units and tens, which is hard to understand by ear.

[@flx2525]

I just wanted to mention that there is formal and informal because for people who don't have experience with languages where it exists, it's another thing that makes it more difficult; in addition to cases and genders. I got what you said about the cases but for people who want to go for C2, it's important… although even a lot of German natives use the wrong cases all the time (they're not C2, basically). That's why the book you bought exists and is titled "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod".

[@andreasmeier7728]

Hi Steve, sorry my english sucks, but I wanted to say something anyhow.. WE DON'T USE LONG CONVOLUTED SENTENCES WITH THE VERB AT THE END!!! The problem is that the "Zeit", the "Welt", the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" or the "Süddeutsche" deliberately use this type of really complicated constructions!! In reality, NO ONE talks like that. It seems that they deliberately use these constructions as if they wanted to say "look here, WE write for people who are more initelligent and better educated". They don't WANT to be understood "by everyone"..... sorry but the truth is that that's the mentality of a lot of the "better educated" people here :(

[@Thelinguist]

Andreas Meier Interesting and your English does certainly not suck!! Thanks for the comment.

[@andreasmeier7728]

thank you Steve..... I just wanted to stress that the language used in papers like "Die Zeit" etc is an "especially complicated" language..... and it's DEFINITELY not more complicated because they put more information in less words ;) What do you think about reading for example German novels with many dialogues in them? I think this language would be WAY closer to normal spoken German (and the German written on internet forums)......

[@Thelinguist]

I don't read much fiction these days and not in German. However, the non fiction books that I read in German were easier than Die Zeit, and I must admit that I am fond of the rhythm of Goethe's language even though his sentences are not short. All better than Die Zeit.

[@Cuddletoe]

The thing is that the language used in chatrooms and forums on the internet is closer to how people speak than to proper German. There's a difference between written and spoken language. If a newspaper was publishing articles in a style similar to that of your average internet user, nobody in their right mind would take them seriously as a source of information. Furthermore, "die Zeit", "die Frankfurter Allgemeine" and so on are actual newspapers, not popular press. The majority of their readers are well educated and work in a rather sophisticated environment and to those people, the language used in such newspapers isn't all that different to what they usually encounter in their everyday lives. For me, the same goes for books. If I'm reading a book on a serious topic that I wish to learn more about, I expect the author to meet a certain standard. I won't take what's written in a book on e. g. history seriously, if the author sounds like he left school after two years and has since been communicating with text messages only. Now with novels, I want the writing to be good so I can enjoy it. A lot of potentially great books were ruined for me because I didn't like the style. I appreciate long sentences because if you have dozens of short ones just slapped there one after another, it kind of ruins the flow of the story. And then there's the issue of too few words being used. I expect the author to use a lot of synonyms and metaphors in order to avoid repetition and that is very hard to do if you're only going to use "easy" words and sentences. The only time I don't mind "simple" language is when it's used in a dialogue to emphasize on a character's personality.

[@andreasmeier7728]

@ Steve yes classic German literature (Goethe, Thomas Mann etc; also philosophers like Immanuel Kant) also contains long sentences. That's why I came up with the idea of reading (modern) novels (for ex. detective stories, if you like stuff like that) with dialogues in it..... I don't know, it's just an idea

[@arthurhistder1156]

Best advice ever in order to learn German: LISTEN RAMMSTEIN !

[@DanielSantos-hs7pt]

Best advice ever

[@mcmerry2846]

Check Alex Jolig

[@silverglovegaming5391]

I see you are cultured as well

[@freifreiheit1330]

Du Du hast Du hast mich DU HAST MICH GEFRAGT

[@silverglovegaming5391]

@@freifreiheit1330 und ich hast nichts gesagt

[@shamicentertainment1262]

i don't find it incredibly difficult to put the verbs at the end, but it is more difficult because basically you are describing the sentense for ages, then once you get to the end you find the ver, which you then need to apply all the previous context to. If that makes sense. It feels like they describe things forever, then when you finally get to the verb you can't remember what the previous adjectives and nouns were lol.

[@camposberovich6184]

Danke, Lehrer Steve! Ich liebe die Deutschsprach!

[@hendy24]

We don't have capitalized nouns to show each other: "Hey, look, this is an noun and I knew it!!!", texts without capital letters in it just don't look correct to us. i'm going to the store and i will buy a book there. This is a correct english sentence but the "i'm" and the other "i" don't look correct to you too. And in german, it also looks wrong when the nouns aren't capitalized. "ich werde in den laden gehen und mir da ein buch kaufen." looks wrong, correct would be "Ich werde in den Laden gehen und mir da ein Buch kaufen."

[@echo-trip-1]

Any unnecessary custom in any language is usually perpetuated only because the native speakers are just used to it, and so they continue to resist letting it go. I say it's time to let it go and just get used to it looking wrong until you can accept it. English also has a number of totally unnecessary customs that make writing and reading the language more trouble than it needs to be. We should get rid of those too.

[@babab_m]

Vielen dank Herr Steve. i actually find German to be the most beautiful language, maybe it's not for european and american ears, but for me it really is. ps : + English ears too, since they are not europeans, how silly of me

[@Fireblaze15]

German Industrial. Some of the best.

[@guarini800]

Rammstein \o/

[@VeXoNCoNvIcT]

+guarini800 RAMM.......STEIN

[@NicolaiCzempin]

excellent illustration of the "verb at the end": du .... hast.... mich..... (what? what? tell me!) gefragt! (plus of course the homonym between "du hast (mich)" and "du hasst (mich)", "you have me...[waiting for the verb]" and "you hate me [not really waiting for a verb]")

[@fhollhuber1622]

Steve, i recommend you to try Reinhard Mey for advanced German music. On a more silly level you could also check EAV (Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung) from Austria.

[@arvidfalk5719]

English used to capitalize the nouns as well. I find it rather logical to do it that way, because you instantly see, who or what is the important "protagonist" in the sentence. Anyway, indeed there are not too many reasons to learn German for the cultural benefits of today. But one shouldn't forget that in the 18th and 19th century German literature, philosophical thought and historical writing were very rich indeed, so German even became the language of philosophy. If you don't care about scholarly thought and "les émotions fortes" then you don't need to learn it. You can enjoy the motorcars and the Autobahn without knowing the language...

[@dcmartns]

When you have a sentence with capitalised nouns, you get the content out of the sentence in between less than a second even without reading it. Thats the big thing an its great! ;)

[@kleschtremania]

cases are not needed to be understood. the meaning will always be clear out of context. But to speak good german the right use of the cases is very important. And people will greatly appreciate it. I (for some reason) am always happy if a foreigner uses the genitiv right because that way i recognize his effort in learning our beautiful language.

[@Thelinguist]

Of course we need to learn the cases. The only question is what is the best way to do so. Trying to memorize the endings is not as effective as an emphasis on understanding through listening and reading, mixed in with some grammar review, in my experience.

[@MinecraftMick]

Ich renne in der Turnhalle / Ich renne in die Turnhalle... two different cases, two different meanings...

[@Thelinguist]

Noted and agreed.

[@Cuddletoe]

We capitalize nouns because some words can be a noun and / or a verb / adjective and it helps a person to understand the meaning of the sentence. That being said, I don't think it's essential and we could probably drop it.

[@adamharris8389]

Thanks, Steve. Wonderful point about not worrying about the cases in German. We have a bit of this in English too, and does anyone really care if you say 'who' instead of 'whom' ? Best, Adam

[@Skipp376]

To be fair, German cases carry a bit more meaning to them than English ones. And there are english examples that are pretty mortifying all the same, like saying Him is my favorite guy, or I will talk to he.

[@derryjs]

Hey Everyone! Just adding to the conversation. I studied german for 2 years and it was ok. Trying to study the cases textbook style frustrates me so I stopped trying to learn like that. I currently watch german story telling for kids on KZbin. There is declension in the stories and you can learn the genders of words because of constant repetition. Also, I watch german makeup artist reviewing makeup products in german. I took this approach because (1). I watched a video with a young german boy (I am sure he was 7 or 8 years old) and his german was perfect! No mistakes...nothing! I am SURE he didn't really know about declension, the cases, hardly know how to read or right but he was speaking! (2) While studying german, there was a girl who came to our german class and she was fluent in 4 languages (French, Spanish English and of course German) but the gag was, she could hardly read or write in german. I was confused BUT also amazed because she was fluent! (She can read and write in the other languages though.) I think us language learners need to cut ourselves some slack and JUST speak. We should stop worrying about being right or wrong. As an english speaker, I didn't know anything about prepositions, past tense, future tense etc when I was a child but I used it everyday. I spent time with children and they are not perfect but they become better. Shit, I am a grown ass english speaking man and still make mistakes!

[@Alexander-te4ue]

I do love the inflection of sentences in Russian For someone who has learned Spanish,Portuguese and English, learning that inflection is awesome!

[@jamescook2412]

I make a little card for every noun I want to learn, on the backside I color them pink for girls, blue for boys and yellow for neutral. I never put a translation. This method has helped me memorize gender and meaning of nearly 800 nouns so far. That way your brain starts noticing the rules (such as suffix "ung" is always femenin) without you realizing!

[@johnrickert5572]

Another very fine video, Herr Kaufmann. I would like to suggest that German is good for the soul: 1. German hymns, especially 2. German Christmas carols, 3. the really superb series on philosophy by Prof. Peter Egger. In addition to this, if one knows the Hebrew alphabet and German, Yiddish falls out pretty directly, although some of the genders and grammar are different. In any case, it really is a shame -- es ist Schade, with a capital S -- that people think of German in terms only of WWII movies. Please continue to produce these videos.

[@Russianlearner17]

Audio is perfect, Thank you :)

[@belerik01]

well grammar in german is rather easy. you just have to understand that in german you don´t follow the subject predicate object rule most european languages use but the predicate is usually on the second spot. The other prats of the sentence you can just flip around the way you want to, but be careful for it changes the meaning (focus) of the sentence. for instance you could say for "i love you": "Ich liebe dich." but you can also say "Dich liebe ich." which brings the focus on the you. thats pretty much it on simple sentences. and yes that comes from a native speaker

[@SiggiNebel]

Still, German word order is a tricky thing, though (mostly!) very logical in his way and as a native spear I think, anyone who has been learning German and hs has mastered its word order, has mastered the whole language, too. You meet hardly any foreign speaker who has just problems with the word order and gets along well with the rest of the German grammar.

[@zweiosterei]

Maybe that guy on the forums was talking about 'krautrock'. A form of german progressive/experimental rock music from the 60's and 70's. Very good stuff. There are some good german indie rock bands today like Tomte, Kettcar and the now defunct Wir sind helden. One of my favorite german singers is Annett Louisan, she makes a very interesting mix of french chanson with traditional german music. I highly recomend her stuff.

[@teaartist6455]

the verb dosn't always come at the end,but often. in german you can vary sentences widley 'der hund,den meine oma einst hatte,hatte schwarze ohren' and 'meine oma hatte einst einen hund der schwarze ohren hatte' are both right and I'm pretty shure that I could find at least two other posibilities of using these words to make an sentence with the same meaning. also Faun is a german band witch makes nice music.

[@utkarshpande11]

Hey Steve, might I say that you confirmed my theory about language acquisition. I was telling my friends that I believe our minds are not like tabula rasa as far as language acq is concerned. I believe its like a hidden circuit..you dig more and more (like reading words/getting familiar w/o worrying too much about the rules and all and when that is suddenly done for a long enough period of time, voila the floodgates open and the circuit lights up.....suddenly everything nbecomes easier and the verbs come alive also......

[@angelsrosena]

hahaha I find it so funny when he says "I DON'T CARE". 😂😂

[@SteveKaufmann]

Yes I find it annoying switching to different keyboards. That is why the dictation software on my Mac is so convenient.

[@PeacyKat]

we capitalize nouns because it looks better in the sentense. it looks like a floating river with waves and so on. at least thats what my teacher in primary school was telling us :P

[@Spitfireseven]

The sound was great. For a video like you do here you really do have to have good sound. Many computer audio systems are horrible. Its a bit of a widespread technical issue but this good.

[@veronikasvrcekova1631]

Greetings from Slovakia :-)I just found your channel. I am motivated to learn German in 2 years time just because in Germany there are much better job offers. After watching your video I am encouraged to learn it without many difficulties ( i hope so). i' d like to know what motivated you in learning more difficult languages like Japanese for example :-). Have a nice day :-)

[@ismann9148]

+Veronika Svrčeková I just wanted to say I was in Bratislava last week and I loved it!

[@abbynormall207]

German 3 episode series Generation War is fantastic!!

[@rockYhre]

Danke, diese zwei Deustsche Videos waren sehr nützlich.

[@ЛеоМолинаЛопез]

What do you think about Hello Talk and Hello Pal, and other apps to chat with foreign speakers? Vielen Danke für dieses Video

[@schnuersenkellabor9248]

As a leftist I joined the fashion of dropping any capitalization, but then returned to standard german capitalization. Makes it easier to read, and some possible misunderstanding is avoided, e.g. "Ich habe liebe Genossen (I have dear comrades)" vs. "Ich habe Liebe genossen (I have enjoyed love)"

[@gammondog]

This mic is much better. Even the timbre is much richer.

[@zambianyoutuberx]

Thanks! Your tips are very useful! especially the one on verbs!

[@syco98]

Steve, when are you going to learn the Karamojong dialect from uganda.

[@2699030]

+syco98 why should he?

[@Skipp376]

God steve, you've learned so many languages. Why not MINE?

[@antoni5934]

german classic music it's incredible, bach it's enjoyable. Japanese anime and japanese music. Those things are those ones who motivates me to learn them !!

[@shamicentertainment1262]

that's what it's called, a gutteral R. I find that quite difficult, but rolling my tongue is very easy

[@arslanrasit]

Having verbs at the end is really troublesome. My mother tongue is same in that sense and I hate that too... English is much easier to understand when it comes to long sentences

[@nicholasschroeder3678]

I think you only really get the cases down by writing a lot. But hearing a lot of sophisticated spoken German as well helps a lot. Es geht I'm Ohr, and dann weisst man es auswendig.

[@ArphenMaethor]

My tip on learning german: dont believe ppl telling you that its hard to learn or a difficult language. it is more complex than english but its easier than most languages on the globe in special for a speaker of english. i know guys who dont even try cause of this myth and its just wrong biased on comedians who try to make fun of "harsh" sounds but you can shout in every language. by scientific facts, german uses more consonants than english but less than other germanic or even slavic languages

[@queend8887]

I speak russian, ukrainian and english. I have lots of german friends and I want to learn the language. The pronunciatiom comes easy to me. Sentence structure in any language is the hardest.

[@bcalife]

Pretty interesting, and don't mind for those who ate complaining about throw long is the video, the one who's interested still enjoy it.

[@HeHanrui]

He was talking about the author of "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod", Bastian Sick, who first published his op-eds under the title "Zwiebelfisch" in the German magazin "Der Spiegel". I agree that they are boring, but of course that's personal taste.