German

Advance Your German With These 11 Award-Winning Screenplays

Why learn German with screenplays? Hannah Arendt (2012) Systemsprenger (2019) – “System Crasher” Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (2005) – “Sophie Scholl – The Final Days” Kirschblüten – Hanami (2008) – “Cherry Blossoms” Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland -“Almanya: Welcome to Germany” Weissensee (2010-2018) Further Resources Reading German novels and short stories is a…

German

Read Free Stage Plays & Sketches To Improve Your German Conversation Skills

After having released my first book of easy German dialogues last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the immediacy of the spoken word, and how this more direct way of storytelling can be helpful for language learners. There’s something about the back-and-forth of two (or more) people speaking that just pulls you right into the natural…

German

4 Sites To Help You Improve Your German Pronunciation Which Aren’t Google Translate

What do you do when you don’t know how to pronounce a German word? It’s a simple question, right? But there are many answers! Today I’d like to share some resources that will help you find the right pronunciation of any German word out there within just a few seconds, no matter how offbeat or…

German

From “Sneeze Shame” to “Hygiene Knights”: 10 Strange New German Words Created By The Pandemic

After more than one year in the grip of a global pandemic, our  daily lives have changed extensively. The way we work, travel, socialize and decompress have all undergone strange transformations. And these changes have begun to be reflected in the way we use language. The Leibniz Institute for the German Language, an organisation for documenting…

German

7 Literary Classics In Simplified German

How do you make the leap from studying German textbooks, flipping flashcards and poring over worksheets to reading (and enjoying) classic literature? Even native speakers who make their first acquaintance with the classics in high school often find themselves bewildered by archaic vocabulary and convoluted nested sentences. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence,…

reader

Learning German with Stories: The Short & Funny Tales Of The Schildbürger

Let’s escape our current timeline for a bit, shall we? Let’s travel back in time to the Middle Ages, to the fabulous city of Schilda somewhere in the middle of Germany. Its inhabitants were called “Schildbürger”, i.e. the citizens of Schilda. They were strange people. Everything they did, they did wrong. And everything they were…

German

The German Prefix “be-” Explained

Once you’ve started learning a few German verbs, you’ll notice that there are a number of awkwardly similar verbs which have a slightly similar yet sufficiently different meaning. I’m talking about those pesky German verb prefixes which sometimes are just two or three letters long but completely change the meaning of the verb. Let’s take…

German

“I Can’t Get No …”: N-Declension In German

Welcome back to another instalment of our German grammar series in which I answer some of the questions that have popped up on the newsletter. Today’s question is by Douglas: My question: why do some German nouns add a final ‘n’ in the acc. sing., e.g. ‘meinen Namen’ , einen Geldautomaten, which, of course has…

German

New: Dino lernt Deutsch Episode 11: “Lockdown in Liechtenstein”

The wait is finally over! Dino is back, and although his world has gotten a lot smaller, he still finds himself at the center of much mischief. Get volume 11 on: 📙Amazon 🍏Apple Books 🔽EPUB/PDF 📕Kobo 📘Barnes & Noble This book comes integrated with flashcards (Quizlet & Anki) across all platforms and retailers (check at…

German

Demonstrate This! – Demonstrative Pronouns in German – A Brief Overview

This is another instalment in my grammar series where I try to answer some of the questions posed by readers of my newsletter and (hopefully) shed some light on certain bewildering grammar topics, always with a practical focus on how people actually speak. Here’s today’s question, by Myron: “Would you explain all that which is “Demonstrative”…

Hacks & Tutorials

Learning Languages With Netflix Has Just Become So Much Easier

Many language learners are watching movies to improve their listening comprehension and pick up new words. Some like to just immerse themselves in the foreign language with foreign subtitles, others watch it with foreign audio and subtitles in their native languages, but no matter how you’ve been doing it, learning German (or any language for…