German Deutsch
For English speakers. 4 lessons · 3 references · about 50 min of reading, plus as much practice as you like.
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Lessons
4 in orderRead them in order; each one has a drill you can come back to.
Lesson 1German 1: Sounds & SpellingGerman spelling is a dependable code once you know its signals: long and short vowels, three umlauts, ei and ie, and a handful of consonants. Learn them and you can read almost any word aloud.Lesson 2German 2: The Present Tense and Word OrderOne small table of endings conjugates hundreds of verbs, a few common verbs change their vowel, and one rule puts the verb second. Learn them and drill the forms with a trainer that brings back what you miss.Lesson 3German 3: Sein, Haben, Werden, the Modals, plus Gender & CasesNine irregular verbs carry a huge share of German, and every noun is der, die or das. Learn the verbs as blocks, the honest rules for gender, and the one article that changes for the object.Lesson 4German 4: Your First 150 WordsA deck of 150 common words that schedules its own reviews: two cards per word, every noun with its article and plural, and a saved schedule that carries across the German pieces.
Reference
3 toolsKeep these open while you learn: words by level, every verb, and how to say things.
Words by LevelGerman: Words by Level715 German words from A1 to B1, by topic, each with an example and a play button. Search them, filter them, and turn any list into flashcards that come back on a schedule.Verb TablesGerman: Verb Tables166 German verbs in every tense you need up to B1, irregular forms in red, a play button on each form, and a typing drill for any verb that will not stick.How to Say ItGerman: How to Say It138 German phrases for the first situations you meet, with notes on formality; 27 sentence patterns by level; and a one-page survival sheet to print.
Where to go next
Outside the library: the resources from German 4: Your First 150 Words.
- 🌐 A free course with audio. Deutsche Welle: Learn German, from Germany’s international broadcaster: courses from A1, including the video series Nicos Weg, free and without advertising.
- 🌐 Listening from scratch. Language Transfer has a free audio introduction to German built around working the language out yourself.
- 🌐 Real people, real speech. Easy German: street interviews on YouTube with German and English subtitles; free to watch, with optional paid extras.
- 🌐 A dictionary. DWDS, free, with the gender, plural and forms of every word.
- 📘 A grammar to keep. Martin Durrell, Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage (Routledge): a reference, not a course; look things up when a sentence puzzles you.
- 📘 A frequency dictionary. Randall Jones and Erwin Tschirner, A Frequency Dictionary of German: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge, 2006), the most frequent words with example sentences.
- 📘 Graded readers. Short books for A1 and A2 learners, from publishers such as Hueber, Klett and Cornelsen, once you finish the deck.
- 🗣 A person. A paid tutor or a language-exchange partner, one session a week, as soon as you can say twenty sentences. No app replaces talking to someone.