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[atomicwinter]

So I have been talking to a lot of people on Skype lately, and recently it has been my pack of German/Austrian friends that I have been gaming with. 2 of them speak good English, the rest speak none. I have been trying to one and one with one of them, and we just can't understand each other and its getting frustrating for me. I need to at least learn some basics or something so we can establish some level of communication and work from there. Anyone here have an opinions on software or online resources on how I could do that? Whats your opinions about Rosetta Stone I am thinking about that.

Thanks

[Argembarger]

Rosetta Stone's fine if you have the cash and the spare time to sink into it.

Nothing's better than good old immersion -- Rosetta Stone will give you that, but perhaps another method is to buy a German-English dictionary and start frequenting German websites and forums. When I started learning German it's one of the things I did; it really helps (also I have some family members that speak it fluently to talk to). Even if you have to look up every single word at first, eventually they'll just start to sink in.

Of course, I was doing that alongside taking a class for it, so your mileage may vary. But it can't hurt.

You'll probably want the dictionary, at least. It's indispensable for language-learning.

Also I highly recommend leo.de/leo.org. It's a great resource. Especially when you just need to look up a pronunciation, you can listen to them there (sort of like Rosetta Stone, native speakers)

[DJ]

I learned most of my German by watching satellite TV. Give it a shot, it's quite fun since syncing can be hilarious at times, especially if you've already seen the movie in English.

[Melagius]

I'm not a native german speaker, but I learned how to speak it in class, so I kind of understand the learning process. If you need any help, du musst nur fragen.

[Hed]

Don't do it. This stuff is ugly.
I'm a native speaker, and I don't like it.
Articles for instance. In English, you've got your "the". In German, you've got:
-der (male)
-die (female)
-das (neutral)
Let's go through your cupboard:

Die Gabel (fork), das Messer (knife) der Löffel (spoon).
Der Teller (plate), die Tasse (cup) die Schüssel (bowl).

As you can see, almost everything has a sex, and it doesn't make any sense.
(might be the same in english, but then Im not aware of it )

Then there are these weird "Umlaute" ä,ö, and ü.
Eventually gives you garbage on screen if you don't have support for that crap installed.

We've also got a lot of weird stuff with punctuation and capitalization going on,
and it just sounds ugly.

Why do these people don't speak English btw?

Everybody here has to learn it in school, and we got thrown at with more and more English in commercials, TV shows and whatnot.

There are only a few reasons I can think of, why they don't speak English:

- they are a good bit over 30 and come from the old GDR where they had to learn Russian instead.
- they are from Austria as you mentioned, I don't know what languages they learn in school.
- they are a bunch of lazy bums.

I guess its the last one. I know a lot of people that forgot all they learned for that reason.

Go for something useful, like Spanish or French.

Oh and I'm an almost 50 year old worker with only pretty basic education, my last english lesson was over 30 years ago.
I know my English sucks, but that's because I'm a lazy bum, too  .

So tell those guys to learn some English.
They'll even be able to play the most awesome game ever!

[webadict]

Oh pish posh. The genders on nouns aren't even that big of a deal. Not only will you memorize the important ones, native German speakers aren't too thrown off by using an incorrect gender. Usually. There are a few times where it might be bad (Meer, for instance, means two things... but it's the difference between lake and sea), and all you really need to remember is plurals. In fact, saying das plus an English word is often a good substitute for a noun you can't think of (Das T-Shirt.)

Personally, I have fun with learning German. I sort of sync it with computer programming with unique sentence structures and what-not, but that's just crazy ol' me.

See, the thing about German is that it is far easier to learn if you know English because they both are closely related in origin.

The best way to learn any language is to know English grammar well. It makes learning the new grammar structures (Verb placement) much easier to understand and relate to.

But, all the German you're going to learn is going to be formal German. What you're going to be dealing with very often is informal German. Full of idiomatic phrases and shortened words that you'll take a while getting used to. I think whoever suggested watching German television is probably the most right. There's a certain limit to any learning from books that only speaking and hearing can give you.

And that's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place. And don't let that guy spoil your fun.

[Sappho]

I spent seven semesters in college studying German and got the basic grammar, but when I went to a German-speaking country I discovered to my dismay that I couldn't converse with a native speaker.  After three months of living in a boarding school in Switzerland (they spoke Hochdeutsch at the school), I was fluent.

Teaching yourself is tough even if you're immersed.  The best way to learn a language is to be surrounded by it.  But that's not always possible.  Your advantage is that you have native speakers to talk to, even if only through Skype.  Talk to them as much as possible.  And tell them not to change the way they speak for your sake - if they talk really slowly and simply, you'll never understand natural speech.  If they speak normally, you will eventually get used to it.

Unless you're a small child, you can't really learn a language passively.  You have to be active about studying.  If you're interested in grammar, then find resources online and study it - but it's not necessary.  My suggestion to you is to learn vocabulary.  A good goal if you're serious about learning is ten words a day.  Learn - REALLY learn - ten words each day.  Don't just study for half an hour each day, either.  You have to repeat it several times.  Study for 10-30 minutes, then take a break for a few hours.  Later in the day, do it again.  Keep doing it until you don't even have to think about it.  It sounds like a lot of work because it is, but it also really works and your friends will be amazed by how quickly you progress.  As for grammar, look up the basics if need be, but mostly just listen to the way your friends speak, the way they order words.  If you don't understand something, ask for an explanation.  (If their explanation doesn't make sense, ask someone else - you can throw a few questions at me if you like, I don't mind.)  Eventually the grammar will just come to you naturally - since you've only been speaking with native speakers, and you've only heard things the correct way, things will start to just "sound right."  And always ask your friends to correct you when you make mistakes.  German speakers normally don't have a problem with this. If they don't, you'll learn incorrect things assuming they are correct, and it's *much* harder to change it later.

All this does take a lot of time.  Some people have a gift for languages and it goes fairly quickly.  For most people it takes many months, even years, even if they're studying every day.  Be patient with yourself if it's a slow process.  And to help your motivation later, when it feels like you're hardly learning anything, write something in German now.  A few sentences, a page.  Do this once every couple of months.  Later when you're getting frustrated (and you will, just about everyone does), look back at these to see how far you've come.  It's a huge motivational boost, trust me.

As for resources aside from native speakers, I have a few.  By far the best dictionary I've ever used is this one: dict.tu-chemnitz.de - it's not only a great dictionary which includes colloquialisms and lists of useful words by category, it also has a "study" feature where you can make collections of words and study them each day.  It records your progress, drills you more frequently on words you've had more trouble with, and staggers the studying so you get new words a lot of times in a row, then take a break and get them again in a few days to keep your long-term memory strong.

For entertainment, the German TV station ZDF has a web site where you can stream full episodes of many shows.  I recommend ZDF Umwelt (environmental show), Mittagsmagazin (mid-day news show), and Die Küchenschlacht and Die KinderKüchenschlacht (cooking competition shows - the second one is all kids).  To access it, go to zdf.de and click "ZDF Mediathek" in the upper-right-hand corner.  You can browse the shows there (view everything on one list by clicking "Sendungen A-Z" at the top.)  Don't worry if you don't understand much at first - you won't.  First your ears have to get used to the sound (which is why watching/listening as often as possible is extremely helpful) and then you have to learn the vocabulary.  Write down a few words that you hear in a show and look them up afterwards.  Then watch the same show again.  If you do this enough times you might be surprised by how much you can understand.  Movies are even better, since you can watch them as many times as you want and get a few more words with each viewing.

I hope all this advice is helpful to you.  I'm an English teacher in Prague, so I have a lot of experience helping people learn a new language.  I'm also teaching myself Czech - with the advantage that I live in a Czech-speaking country, but still my friends say I'm learning faster than any foreigner they've ever met.  If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to help.

It's very ambitious to be trying to learn a new language.  Again, be patient with yourself and be disciplined about studying every day, and you will absolutely reach your goal.

[sebs]

Of course it's great that you want to learn some German. However, learning a language is not an easy thing and it will take some time, so you should be sure about your motivation. Most Germans of our age (assuming you are <30) know English quite well. So if your goal is to be able to communicate with as most people as possible, try Spanish (gives you almost all of latin america) or French (because they won't learn English for some reason. They even need their own df wiki...).

Learning German will just enable you to speak with those who don't know English. These are either older people, or the lazy ones. Better teach your Skype friend some English instead. He will be grateful for the rest of his life.

However, if you want to learn it just for the joy of it, learn some basics (attend a beginner's class), then try speaking as much German as possible. Your Skype friends might be a good start, ask them to correct your biggest flaws. Watch German movies (see Sappho's tips), read German books, and so on.

Hed: I don't think umlauts and der/die/das are that much of an obstacle. Every language has its "flaws". We had to master the difference between English spelling and pronunciation - that's barely the case with German. As for the punctuation - that was the old spelling. It's way easier now. Separate all subordinate clauses with a comma, and 90% of your punctuation will be correct.

[Puck]

Don't do it. This stuff is ugly.
I'm a native speaker, and I don't like it.

I'm also a native german speaker, but I LOVE the language. I also make my living knowing german. (I take care of bad grammar and general stupidity by the advertisement guys. They sure love their redundant sentences.)

But I have to agree. Shit is ugly. In a certain way. You might also argue its beautiful, but it's beautiful in the same way a steam engine or a clockwork is. I always thought german sounds exactly like the german stereotype you got. You know, like Stackenblochen.

English, on the contrary sounds like a language which is perfect for commenting baseball matches, while chewing bubblegum.

Where was I going with this? Ah yeah, nowhere, I'm just rambling on. The complex part of german isnt really the articles (its just the beginning) but the friggin whole grammar behind it. It's fairly complex and convoluted, if I wasnt native and wouldnt have had an easy time picking up the proper grammar rules later on, I probably wouldnt have tried to learn it.

Same as french, I hate that friggin language with a passion. First of all, its not onomatopoetic AT ALL. Everything sounds like the friggin dubbing of a soft porn flick, no matter how bad the stuff is you'Re saying. The rules are stupid, and I MEAN IT. "quatre-vingt-cinq" (four-twenty-five) for 85? REALLY? Fuck off, you cant be serious. And on top of the stupid and seemingly arbitrary rules they put a whole shitload of exceptions, as if they wanted to piss off foreigners.

You can tell I dont like french and german is a language like a steampunk-style machine. I think that's my point, and I have no clue why I felt the need to share this. Good day.

I need to at least learn some basics or something so we can establish some level of communication and work from there.

Like this, yo

[Muz]

I love German. It's got a lot of stupid rules, like the male/female object mainly, but it's a fun language when you know it. I find it much more elegant than English, especially with how the sentence structure and the long words are. Then again, English is one of the more uglier languages out there, it's just practical and not so hard to learn.

I'd suggest you just fork over some money and take a class on it. It'll save you a lot of time. You could spend a year on learning just the very basics, or just go and spend a month on it. Then once you know the basics, the vocabulary is a lot easier to pick up.

[stummel]

best online-dictionary for german-english (should be fine the other-way-round, bonus - it's from my hometown):

http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/

I'm also a native german speaker, but I LOVE the language.

yeah!

[The Willow Wisp]

I personally enjoy the very small German I remember. It is a fun language to me but I can see how many would become frustrated by it. Of course considering my other options maybe i love german because it was the more fun of the bunch.

My options were as follows:
Spanish(Hated it, still do)
French(no interest)
German(I picked it after developing hatred for spanish during my 2 years of spanish classes)
Latin(Dead language, plus it seemed hard at the time. Might be interested now though.)
Chinese(Oh, fuck that. I've heard horrors to rival Poe and Lovecraft about that class)

So my love of German is a bit biased.

But for those who have an understanding of German and wish to get some laughs from it pease enjoy Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language".
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

[Mindmaker]

Native speaker here, too.

I don't exactly know what's a good way to learn german, but I guess taking a course of some sort might be a start.
Learning a new language from scratch, all by yourself, just seems quite a challenge.

Feel free to ask me questions, if you have any.

[Dwarf]

Native speaker, and I must say, I love German. It just has this mix of archaic roughness and elaborate elegance, in my opinion.
Hed, who in today's day and age has not got support for ä, ö, ü, ß, or even more obscure characters like æ, ø, þ or ð?
Also, not everyone learns languages for usefulness - sometimes, it's knowledge for knowledge's sake

[DJ]

I've never seen æ, ø, þ or ð in German writing, only in Icelandic and possibly in Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish. And hasn't ß been replaced with ss?