Learning German is a pain in the ass

[Bazooka56]

Well, last year they give us two choices to choose for this year French and German (I don't think it would have made any difference if I choose French) and I chose German. I thought it was going to be easy like learning English but I was dead wrong. It is just wa to fucking tough. I cannot pronounce the words right because I got used to the English way of talking (the Z in German sounds like an S for example) and the sentences seem so mixed up. The words are also huge so I can sometimes hve trouble spelling and my grade is low. Any tips for better learning?

 

[schimmel]

In all honesty it's easier to learn French than it is German. Granted, English is a really big mix-up of a lot of languages, but French stems from Latin which is a much bigger part of English than most Germanic languages. If you try hard enough it shouldn't be a problem either way, but yeah you have to get used to pronouncing things differently. It's the same with every language.

Stick with it, it shouldn't be too difficult, but like any language the key is PRACTICE! Don't just speak it in class, find someone you're learning with to practice it outside of class, or get a tutor.

 

[Paradox]

listen to german music, primarily rammstein. listening and then singing along helps you with pronunciation. i can sing several songs in german, even if i dont always know what im saying.

 

[MattAY]

UMLAUTS!!!!

..

 

[Eyebrowsbv31]

Ich heiBe eyebrows. Spreche sie duetsch, aber nicht gut.

I can count to a thousand in german, that's about all I got out of it.

Watch german films! Das Boot, stalingrad, etc.!

And English is still mostly german/latin with piles of french, gallic(?), and other loan words chucked in. It's why we have 2-3 words per thing. For example:

Dog
Hound (der hund, german)
Canine (Canis, latin)

and this helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIM1c9ks ... re=related teacher had us listen to this way back in the ...7th grade?

 

[LinksOcarina]

You think you got it bad, I need to learn Japanese or Chinese in the next few years or else im fucked....

 

[Grey]

Any tips for better learning?

Keep at it. Do you have any friends who speak German? Ask them to help you practice by conversing with them in German. I was going to say German is easy but I learned it at a very young age. We had a lot of international students at school so our school yard was a very strange place to walk around during break time. I'd be sat with a group of friends, mostly British with two German friends, we'd all be speaking German to aid our learning, the same thing happened with the French and Russian students.

Everyone had to do Latin, nobody bothered to practice. When you learn the fundamentals of Latin its actually quite easy to wrap your head around a text. But, that involves sitting through lessons learning fucking Latin.

gallic(?)

You just had to mention it didn't you? Fuck I'm already having flashbacks to learning Gaelic, thankfully I've forgotten all of it. (Just don't tell my family!)

 

[Rakon]

Why would you believe German and French would be on the same level of difficulty? French is a pretty easy language to learn. It's very basic, like Spanish.

 

[madster111]

Listen to German music, watch German movies and watch some German shows (fuck yeah Kommissar Rex) eventually you will start to pick up how to pronounce.


This is the easiest way to learn, as far as i can tell from learning Dutch.

 

[used44]

Yeah, you made the wrong choice. Chicks dig French.

German just frightens everybody.

 

[lokness]

German is easy and OP is a faggot.

 

[schimmel]

^ LIES! gaywad

 

[Bretimus_v2]

Everything I know about German, I learned from Hogan's Heroes. So effectively...

 

[TheDiesel]

I was awful at trying to learn other languages, I don't think I'd make it well outside of America.

 

[10000_Squirrels]

I travelled to Norway for 10 months and went to a school dedicated to teaching people Norwegian, and had it down fluently by the time I left... Although, Norwegian is similar to what you get if you cross German with English, so I had it easier than you. My best suggestion to you is to talk to your teacher as much as you can, you won't believe the difference it'll have if you speak to someone that that's their native tongue.

 

[DocMoc]

1. You always pronounce the second vowel: Wein = "V-eye-n"
2. Keep practicing your speech and you'll get the nuances.
3. When writing, ALL proper nouns are capitalized.
4. Study the rules of "nicht" very carefully. They suck.
5. Speak with vigour! It sounds better.

 

[-FCM-]

I didn't think there was a more irrational language than English until I started trying to learn Greek. That's fucking difficult.

Once you get good enough at German, read German books. They sell books for people that are learning German, and I cannot even begin to tell you how much reading the foreign language you're learning helps more than anything else.

 

[Hlallu]

I gave up on German after a year.

Gave up on Japanese after a week.

Going back to both..