Articles - Snippits

Many people want to learn German but say it is too hard when they are faced with the obstacles of the German grammar and the sometimes confusing vocabulary. The German language might not be the easiest one to learn but it definitely is a very fascinating one. In case you are a native English speaker you will recognize a lot of similarities and find many clues that English and German actually belong to the same family.

A fascinating fact you find when learning German is that actually German is the language most similar to English - more than any other language. This is because English and German both belong to the same family of languages: The Germanic Languages. In Europe three language families dominate: Germanic, Romanic and Slavic.

It is interesting that in Northern Germany - which is close to England - the dialect versions of many expressions get very similar to English.

This is probabaly why there are many web sites written in English doing a fantastic job teaching German. They are able to use examples from English that most students can easily understand and then translate them intuitively to better understand the respective German phrases.

A fact that makes it so difficult for some people to learn German is that most text books are too abstract and boring. This is why students of the German Language love to turn to online tutorials to start learning the language.

There are many tutorials out there that provide illustrated examples or audio tutorials. The disadvantage of text books is always that they are exactly what their name suggests: Books with text. But to truly learn a language people need to hear and speak the language. This is why any type of multimedia tutorial is perfect for beginners.

If you want to find a German language lesson you can easily find some examples on the Internet. However, most free lessons turn out to be just a trial version or the first chapter of a paid program or an expensive product.

If you are more interested in complete free German tutorials - check out this list of free German tutorials.

Although it might seem tempting - do not use music and song lyrics to learn German. Many songs contain either a form of dialect, inappropriate slang or rude language. Too many songs play with language by falsifying it and twisting it around. Some use very old-fashioned and poetry-style language. So don't use it.

Do not read German newspapers. Most of them are very political and use a a type of language which is extremely hard to understand. Phrases are extremely long, so usually when you get to the end you cannot remember what the beginning was. Newspapers are more suitable for the advanced language learner. So please stay away from them in the beginning.