I took a couple of German courses in university and did a brief internship in Germany, and managed to pick up basic conversational German. Although it's been a while and I've forgotten a lot of vocabulary and grammar, I found the language itself to be relatively easy to learn, compared to, say, French.
In my opinion, the key to quickly being able to communicate in any language is to imitate a local's pronunciation and tonality from the start, so you are able to immediately establish good pronunciation habits with your larynx/mouth. You see tons of Americans/Canadians who have learned French/Spanish with great grammar and vocabulary but when they speak it literally sounds like they are all rednecks. I think it's absolutely key to build the habit of imitating the sounds of a language as soon as you start learning it. It sets you off on the right path and gives you the greatest utility -- speaking.
This is especially effective for German because it is a language where the pronunciation follows very reliable patterns (German efficiency and order hah) -- you will not see any curveballs thrown at you like in English or French. My German is pretty rusty now but I don't think you ever have to worry about silent letters or how a vowel sound is pronounced depending on where it is in a word. In English you might wonder how an "a" is pronounced in "masturbate", but in German, an "a" is always going to be an "ah" sound, just like how "e", "o", "u", "ä", "ö", "ë", "ü", "ie", "ei" are always pronounced the same way, regardless of whatever consonants are on either side.
For me what I did to learn the pronunciation when I first started was to go find the language's alphabet on Wikipedia, and learn the pronunciation of each letter and letter combination. Be mindful to distinguish slightly dyslexic combinations like "ei" and "ie" -- "ie" is always pronounced like "eee" while "ei" is always pronounced like "eye". Once you've remembered the individual sounds, practice reading words out loud and you will quickly master the pronunciation of German words. Following this method, I learned how to pronounce any Hungarian word I saw during my 1-week stay in Budapest. I knew no more than 7 Hungarian phrases but I could say every single one of them really well and be easily understood, and the local girls were much more approachable as a result of that.![[Image: banana.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/banana.gif)
Honestly, after you can properly speak the sounds of a language, all that's left is just some old fashioned blood and sweat. The grammar rules can be learned from any book or the internet. German grammar is a bit complicated with the extra neutral gender and several different cases (there is something called "dativ" or dative, which can be confusing), but it shouldn't take too longer to get down for the intelligent average RVFer. Apart from that, all you've got is vocabulary really, which obviously comes with seeing more words and repeating more words. Luckily for us English speakers, there are many similarities between these Anglo-Saxony languages and a decent portion of German words are very similar to their English counterparts. e.g. pervert vs Perverse![[Image: biggrin.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
The toughest part of German, for me, is simply remembering the genders of words and what articles/conjugations to use. But then again, if you are simply trying to communicate verbally, this won't matter. People will understand what you are saying even if you keep on saying "deine Arsch" instead of "deiner Arsch".
Good luck on your learning journey. I love the sound of German and found learning German to be quite enjoyable. You will get extra bad ass points when you randomly bust out your Deutsch skills in a North American city, especially in the presence of all these girls who "love to work out and travel".![[Image: hump.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/hump.gif)
In my opinion, the key to quickly being able to communicate in any language is to imitate a local's pronunciation and tonality from the start, so you are able to immediately establish good pronunciation habits with your larynx/mouth. You see tons of Americans/Canadians who have learned French/Spanish with great grammar and vocabulary but when they speak it literally sounds like they are all rednecks. I think it's absolutely key to build the habit of imitating the sounds of a language as soon as you start learning it. It sets you off on the right path and gives you the greatest utility -- speaking.
This is especially effective for German because it is a language where the pronunciation follows very reliable patterns (German efficiency and order hah) -- you will not see any curveballs thrown at you like in English or French. My German is pretty rusty now but I don't think you ever have to worry about silent letters or how a vowel sound is pronounced depending on where it is in a word. In English you might wonder how an "a" is pronounced in "masturbate", but in German, an "a" is always going to be an "ah" sound, just like how "e", "o", "u", "ä", "ö", "ë", "ü", "ie", "ei" are always pronounced the same way, regardless of whatever consonants are on either side.
For me what I did to learn the pronunciation when I first started was to go find the language's alphabet on Wikipedia, and learn the pronunciation of each letter and letter combination. Be mindful to distinguish slightly dyslexic combinations like "ei" and "ie" -- "ie" is always pronounced like "eee" while "ei" is always pronounced like "eye". Once you've remembered the individual sounds, practice reading words out loud and you will quickly master the pronunciation of German words. Following this method, I learned how to pronounce any Hungarian word I saw during my 1-week stay in Budapest. I knew no more than 7 Hungarian phrases but I could say every single one of them really well and be easily understood, and the local girls were much more approachable as a result of that.
Honestly, after you can properly speak the sounds of a language, all that's left is just some old fashioned blood and sweat. The grammar rules can be learned from any book or the internet. German grammar is a bit complicated with the extra neutral gender and several different cases (there is something called "dativ" or dative, which can be confusing), but it shouldn't take too longer to get down for the intelligent average RVFer. Apart from that, all you've got is vocabulary really, which obviously comes with seeing more words and repeating more words. Luckily for us English speakers, there are many similarities between these Anglo-Saxony languages and a decent portion of German words are very similar to their English counterparts. e.g. pervert vs Perverse
The toughest part of German, for me, is simply remembering the genders of words and what articles/conjugations to use. But then again, if you are simply trying to communicate verbally, this won't matter. People will understand what you are saying even if you keep on saying "deine Arsch" instead of "deiner Arsch".
Good luck on your learning journey. I love the sound of German and found learning German to be quite enjoyable. You will get extra bad ass points when you randomly bust out your Deutsch skills in a North American city, especially in the presence of all these girls who "love to work out and travel".