WILLKOMMEN ! | Learning German: A Journey through Language and Culture | The Great Courses

Learning a new language is an adventure like no other. Sounds that were once gibberish start to make sense. Words and cultures come alive. And visions of foreign travel begin to take shape.

And yet, the first step in learning a new language can be daunting. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself into believing, “I’m just not good at languages,” or “My days of learning are behind me.” Or maybe you’ve decided that, “It’s just too much work to start from scratch.”

While it’s true that there is no effortless route to learning a language, an inspiring teacher makes all the difference. With the right instructor to guide you, these doubts and hesitations disappear. And what can be an ordeal of memorization and drills turns into an accessible and entertaining adventure!

Consider German. It’s one of the world’s most important conversational, commercial, and literary languages—and also one of the most challenging to master, which makes a superb teacher truly vital. On the one hand, German and English are both Germanic languages and share a lot of vocabulary: Mutter, Vater, Hund, and Katze are probably words you already recognize. On the other hand, unlike the Romance languages, German has case endings, three grammatical genders, and very particular rules for its word order.

German, you might say, has gotten a reputation for being difficult.