Problems You Might Run Into When Teaching Yourself German

Read More About Language

Learning German can be a lot of fun. Whether you're simply naming various beers and sausages or stringing breath-defying compound words together (an often cited example is "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapit?n" which simply means "Danube steamship company captain"), German is an interesting 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 one of the most widely spoken languages in Europe, or maybe you're one of the more practical types who just wants to do business in the EU. Either way, learning German presents a few challenges to the English speaker in several aspects.

to begin with, German has some sounds and letters not used 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 especially how to pronounce them, when to write them, is the first challenge you must overcome to teach yourself German.

As 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. To put you further at ease, in German, all nouns are capitalized. This saves you the trouble of having to distinguish between common and proper nouns.

But, 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, people and animals are either masculine or feminine, and everything else is neuter. German also has 3 genders. However, in German, assigning gender to nouns is actually kind of random. 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. A helpful way to do this would be to include a corresponding gender-specific article with the noun you're memorizing, "der, die or das".

When 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.

All in all, despite its difficulties, learning how to speak German can be easier than you might expect at first glance, especially if you're only out to teach yourself basic phrases. So, besides phonetics, gender would be the most difficult part of learning German since it is random. Otherwise, there's really nothing stopping you from teaching yourself German.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

To find out more about teaching yourself German, go check out my site quizilla.teennick.com/stories/15453145/problems-you-might-run-into-when-teaching-yourself-german

Please Rate this Article

Not yet Rated

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Language Articles Via RSS!

Additional Articles From - Home | Culture & Society | Language

Our other websites
All about SEO
Beauty Tips Forum

	Print This Article
	Post Comment
	Add To Favorites
	Email to Friends
	Ezine Ready

Submit Articles
Member Login
Link Us
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds
Sitemap

New Stuff
About Us
Developer
Good shopping portal
Link to Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service