Problems You Might Run Into When Teaching Yourself German

View PDF | Print View
by: info@teachyourselfgermannow.com
Total views: 0
Word Count: 509
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 Time: 5:14 PM
0 comments

Learning German can be a lot of fun. Whether you're simply naming various beers and sausages or stringing headache-inducing compound words together (an often cited example is "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapit?n" which simply means "Danube steamship company captain"), German is an equally unique and fun language to teach yourself. Teaching yourself German can be tough at times, but if you're still not charmed by it, consider that it's also a useful gateway into central European culture, or maybe you're one of the more practical types who just wants to do business in the EU. In any case, teaching yourself German presents a few problems to the English speaker in several aspects.nnto begin with, German has some phonetics and letters not present in the English language. Some of them most obvious ones are the umlauts. They are those curious-looking dots you see above vowels sometimes. You've probably only really used "?" (or possibly "?") as an SMS smiley, but you'll notice that these kinds of letters are used extensively in German texts knowing when to use these new letters particularly how to pronounce them, when to write them, is the first challenge you must overcome to teach yourself German.nnAs soon as you've become familiar with phonetics and spelling you can apply your new found skills to memorizing a few words. You can start with nouns: days of the week, the names of common household things, things like that. Keep in mind that words are spelled as they are spoken, making spelling easy given that you've mastered the phonetics. Also, in German, all nouns are capitalized. This saves you the trouble of having to distinguish between common and proper nouns.nnHowever, the next challenge for a person teaching themselves German has to do with nouns. The hard part about nouns isn't really stringing them together as compound words as was mentioned earlier, but has something to do with gender. In English, we don't really pay attention to gender that much. German also has 3 genders. However, in German, assigning gender to nouns is sort of arbitrary. Inanimate objects aren't necessarily neuter. And nouns that are masculine or feminine in English may fall under any one of the 3 genders. So when memorizing German nouns, always make sure you take note of gender. When I learn vocabulary I make sure to include a corresponding gender-specific article with the noun you're memorizing, "der, die or das".nnWhen it comes to German verbs and adjectives though, you'll be thankful to note that like in English they aren't gender-specific. The same can't be said for other European languages like Spanish. The only thing to worry about when teaching yourself German is sentence structure, which does not share many similarities with English.nnTo sum it up, despite its difficulties, teaching yourself German can be easier than you might expect at first glance, especially if you're only out to teach yourself basic phrases. Aside from phonetics, gender would be the most difficult part of learning German since it is quite arbitrary. Otherwise, there's really nothing stopping you from teaching yourself German.

About the Author

To find out more about learning German, go check out my site http://difficultieswhenlearninggerman.tumblr.com/

Comments

Add Comment