One of the greatest things you can do to learn the German language is to talk with the German people, and to listen to them, and to, you know, if you're in a bus, if you're in a train, if you're in a Bahn, like, just listen to people, listen to people, talk to them, say, hey, can I practice my German with you? And I think that's one of the most important things, is just talking with everyone.
So you might have heard German is a hard language. I don't agree with that. I think it's actually, if you decide you're going to learn it, you can learn it. It's a very mathematical language, so if you're a mathematical person, it works really well. It's always the exact same order, exact same everything. Germans don't break their rules. Like they do, there's always exceptions, but they don't like to break their rules and they keep their rules. The nice thing is too, Germans know their grammar. Like if you talk to any English speaker and you're just like, what's this grammar principle? They don't know what you're talking about. You talk to Germans and they have it down and you can literally ask anyone on the bus, at church, anywhere, I don't understand this, teach it to me. Um, so I definitely make use of the German speakers around you. They are so willing to help you and so excited.
Things that really helped me a lot with learning the language, if you have a copy of something in English and German, reading it in English and then reading that same thing in German so you know what you've already read, and then you can point out, oh that's how they, or you can figure out, that's how they say this word, or that's how they phrase this, that's what that means, things like that. My favorite studying material was German in Review, that book is amazing. And then once you've studied that, you do have to go out and practice speaking to people, because you have to apply it somehow. It's clear that you're not a German, you just ask them, hey how do you say this word, and then they'll be like, oh you say it like this, Germans are very helpful.
I would say be diligent, you know, when you first get there, write down the words that you don't know and Not every single word But the ones that you hear a lot if you if you've heard it before and you know You've heard it before and you're like, what does that mean? Write it down and figure out what it means and then the next time you hear it, you know And just do that with words As you go only the ones you're hearing a lot only the repetitive words Write those down Also German in review is a great book if you have it go through it over and over and over never stop going through it So you'll learn something new and Then love the language. I love German and it is difficult at first But if you just let it touch your heart and if you just try to let your personality come out in the German Don't even worry about if you're getting all the words, right? Just let your personality be there and you'll love it. I promise
If you're interested in the German language, a really, really good place to start is Duolingo. You can get it as an app or online, super nice, free, in a really good way. Yeah, just introduce yourself. But, as you progress in the German language, don't rely on that alone. Just do everything you can to practice vocabulary every day, even if it's only ten minutes. So, vocabulary acquisition, Duolingo for an introduction, studying grammar, those would be my tips for acquiring the language, and listening to and emulating native speakers as much as possible.
Just take off little pieces at a time and try to improve every day, even if it's something super small and you think, Oh shoot, I'm never going to learn it. You will learn it. It just takes time, but go through it in your head. Try to speak as much, as often as frequently as you can. And eventually you'll get it. At first it will be very tough. You might be discouraged. I was super discouraged. It took a lot of patience. So just be patient with yourself. Don't beat up on yourself. Everything will end up being okay.
For language tips, speak it as much as possible. This is going to sound cliche but hit the false end on it. When you're when you're learning German, you got to push yourself and same with any other language. Set ambitious goals like learning 10 words a day or 15 words a day. Tell your friends about them and tell everyone about them to keep yourself accountable so that you actually you complete the goals and this way you won't you won't stagnate and you won't you won't kind of just be there. But yeah, really speak it as much as possible. Be ambitious but also remember to be patient with yourself. German is a hard language, just telling you.
Okay, so my language tip for Germany is to not get do and z confused. Do sounds like you and it is, that's how you say you. You can say you two different ways, do or z. I would stick with z most of the time because that's for someone you don't know as well. If you know them a little better then it's offensive if you don't say do, so that's a little tricky. But as long as you've only met them a few, you know, if you don't feel like you know them very well, you should say z. So, and do is for close friends, so if you go up to someone on the street and you use do, especially if they're a senior or older, they're going to be, it's bad manners, they're going to be offended.
As with any language, speaking it as much as possible is a very, very good idea. The times where I spoke mostly English, my German didn't get much better. The times where I spoke a ton of German, my German got phenomenal. Being patient is also key, just not getting frustrated, just having fun with learning the language. A lot of general things, really. Also, when you learn a new word, learn whether or not it is masculine, feminine, or neutral, because that is, at least if you want to sound educated, a very important thing to know. So der, die, or das. And then also knowing the case of each word in the language, so the sentence structure, because German loves its sentence structure. They're very precise about it too, which is very convenient.
A couple of sounds that you can get in German all the time that are a little bit less common in English, one of them is Z, so anytime you get an S before a vowel in German, that turns into a Z, at least in the area it was. So, for example, Z, S-I-E, for you, you formal, or she. It's written with an S, but it's pronounced Z-E-N. Another example is Sehen, which, S-E-H-E-N, for seeing. Same thing, S, but there's a vowel after it, so you pronounce it Z. The other thing I wanted to touch on was how to say U, it's the U-umlaut. I got the description from a book somewhere, but it's to say E, but then pinch your lips close together, so you start E and then go U, and that's your U.
Just on the German language, speak it as much as you can, practice as much as you can, speak with Germans as much as you can. Do your best, but give yourself credit for the good things that you do. Make it, work hard, give to others, and don't be too hard on yourself.
So my favorite bit of German language advice is just to memorize things. I would just memorize things with sentences in them that I could easily use in everyday conversations, and when you memorize, you say those sentences correctly. So you already say it correctly if it's accusative or dative, and then after I would memorize things, I would kind of work backwards and figure out why it was accusative and why it was dative so that I actually understood what I memorized. But I would first memorize and then try to understand the principles behind what I memorized, and that really helped me.