Resources for learning German

Language Corner
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I remember this thread on EnglishForum - sadly I only kept the link and managed to get a screenshot of the first page but no more before I was redirected to the Local’s homepage.

I shall attach a screenshot of that shortly as it has some resources on it. In the meantime, I also remember Bellingua and Hallo Deutschschule were mentioned but not the comments relating to them - does anyone else have a better memory or any input?

I’ve used Coffee Break German as a good way of getting into the German headspace when walking to work but know that I now need to start writing and having that writing corrected.

Any other recommendations?

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HI AIl!

I have been learning German for 4 years now - over time more or less successfully I must say it is very hard to learn German especially in Switzerland since I can’t understand Swiss German yet and on the other hand everybody speaks English so well.

The biggest help for me has been an online teacher. I was really struggling and wasn’t moving forward as a self-learner until I started learning with a teacher. So if there’s only one thing you would take from this it’s - don’t think twice and start learning with a teacher!

But there are so many resources that can help German learners - which even more important for learners in Switzerland where we often don’t get so exposed to High German.

I assembled some good resources I can recommend so I am sharing below! I even started my own project for learning German vocabulary which is listed on the bottom

Online reading in German

DEUTSCH LERNEN | DW Deutsch Lernen - a well-known resource no need to introduce g

https://www.der-postillon.com/ - sarcastic news (like the Onion)

https://www.geo.de/ - interesting articles on a variety of topics

https://www.focus.de/ - news

https://www.spiegel.de/- news

For total beginners (A1)

Nicos Weg | DW Deutsch Lernen this is the best resource if you are just starting. It’s a video story with lessons about Nico created by Deutsche Welle

Apps

  • I personally don’t like the apps which are out there but if you like learning from flashcards, Anki is quite good. You can download the lists below and then download the Anki app and load the list into it. After that you can learn words with flashcards. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/653061995 - 4000 most used words by frequency https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1264085591 - this is a list of Swiss German vocabulary.

Dictionary

https://www.dict.cc/ - this is a good dictionary to use instead of Google Translator with more details about words

Online Tutors

https://www.italki.com/ and https://preply.com/ - websites where you can find online tutors for private lessons. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a private teacher if you are learning German. I can definitely recommend these websites - so go for it!

Books in Simple German

https://www.orellfuessli.ch/suche?sg=simple+german - Just pick one and order & A very good way of learning is reading in simple German. I would recommend to get a book in a lower level than what you have - that way you can read more and faster without struggling.

Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...en/id28293209

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There may have been more but that’s all I could save.

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I’ve finished audio course form Pimsleur and I’ve found out that I can understand children cartoons in German, for example Peppa Pig.

Can anyone suggest something more interesting but on similar level? Preferably something freely available on youtube.

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I watch documentaries from ARTE with subtitles in German, it helps :slight_smile:

Sad thing is that content from ARTE is taken down from YT, 6 months or 1 year after release, but…there’s always people reuploading

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Small tip for beginners, subtitles don’t always follow the audio 1:1, but YT can auto-generate subtitles for movies which don’t provide it explicitly. The auto generated text is 1:1 with audio and I’d say very accurate, it depends on the audio content (and language) of course.

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This could be one of the ‘good uses of AI’. There are tools that can transcribe audio very accurately and also create accurate time-stamping for subtitles. e.g. GitHub - linto-ai/whisper-timestamped: Multilingual Automatic Speech Recognition with word-level timestamps and confidence

You can create karaoke style highlighted subtitles which can help match spoken words to the subtitles.

Error rates for German aren’t too bad:

image

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