Entire German Grammar Course: Learn German Smarter Not Harder | German with Laura

In this ‘German for Beginners’ grammar lesson video series, the German language will be DEMYSTIFIED. Principles & patterns will be uncovered! Grammar will actually make sense!

(👆 UPDATED VERSION of 'English Grammar for German Learners')

1. Check in and make sure you’re not spinning your wheels by being stuck in the 3 common traps German learners fall into.
2. Do a mindset shift to ensure that you’re on track to learn German as efficiently and effectively as possible.
3. Systematically tackle the most essential German grammar topics.
4. Learn about concrete, practical tips for how to continue learning German smarter, not harder!

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JUMP AROUND:
0:00:00 - 3 Classic Pitfalls
0:10:06 - 3 Key Solutions
0:16:41 - Noun Gender*
0:32:09 - Noun Plurals**
0:44:50 - Case System
1:02:53 - Declensions
1:14:36 - Declension Patterns
1:40:12 - Personal Pronouns
1:58:32 - Word Order
2:18:46 - Study Tips
2:40:52 - [BONUS] English Grammar for German Learners

So many German learners make the mistake of trying the ‘instant immersion approach’, which includes a focus on vocabulary and completely ignoring German grammar.

These same students ultimately discover that you can have all the vocabulary in the world, but without the grammar to ‘glue’ it all together, it’s relatively worthless.

Your ADVANTAGE as an adult learner of German is that you can ANALYZE grammar structures, which means you can understand how German works (it’s often quite different from English) in a FRACTION of the time you’d otherwise spend.

The Pareto principle applied to German grammar means that there are 20% of the grammar topics that do 80% of the work for you! This is where you need to start. The ESSENTIALS. The FOUNDATION.

In every aspect of how you learn German, you need to work with PRINCIPLES & PATTERNS (our brains love this approach! it works!). If you understand the WHYs, the HOWs become a whole lot easier!

This video series (all spliced together for your convenience!) takes you from the very beginning of how are you approaching German through the CORE grammar topics you MUST understand to a set of tips that will empower you to continue studying German as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Get ready to JUMPSTART your German learning! It’s time to LEARN GERMAN SMARTER, NOT HARDER.

I’ll show you how!

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IMPORTANT NOTES:

* (NOUN GENDER) Around the 24-minute mark, I reference countries being a neuter noun group. There ARE exceptions! A handful of countries are masculine (e.g. der Irak). A few are feminine (e.g. die Schweiz). A few are plural (e.g. die USA). But the DEFAULT is neuter and this is important in any instance in which you might use a determiner or adjective before the country's name (e.g. In dem französischsprachigen Kanada ist das Gericht "Poutine" sehr beliebt").

** (NOUN PLURAL) Around the 35-minute mark, I give 2 sets of examples of common nouns that take the 'no change' plural, but several of nouns I chose to highlight were poor examples because *after* 'getting off the train' at 'train stop #1' (with my system that you'll learn in this video), these nouns are further shunted to short, easy exception lists (but I don't specify this in the video).

Firstly, 'Vater', 'Mutter', 'Bruder', and 'Boden' do indeed take the no-change plural ending, as I say --BUT they also belong on a list of 24 nouns that additionally take an umlaut in the plural (Väter, Mütter, Brüder, Böden).

Finally, all feminine nouns ending with -el and -er (there are none that end with -en) ALSO get off the train at train stop #1 and take the 'no change' ending as the first step ... but, then you learn (just not in this video!) that this particular body of nouns also has to add an 'n' (Gabel becomes Gabeln, Schüssel becomes Schüsseln, Schwester becomes Schwestern).

So, sorry! My apologies for not using clear-cut examples and/or not clarifying the essential nuances of the examples I did use. But hopefully it all makes sense to you now. And REMEMBER: smarter learning is always about learning the rule first, exceptions later. :-)

[Manu-setx]

"these are the mistakes new learners should absolutely avoid" *proceeds to list everything i've done*

[Nojon-cybc]

French, Italian, Spanish are perceived as beautifull right from the start.
German like English becomes beautifull as one masters the language, so beautifull.

[alexandershushkevich]

What I can say - I'm a Russian-speaking Ukrainian/Belarus doctor who is learning the German language. I know English, but my level is far from fluent. Laura, you are the best online tutor I've ever seen (trust me, I watched dozens of different online channels on YouTube). Even the fact that you give all materials in English it is more understandable for me as I heard the same information in Russian. Vielen Dank. Please don't stop doing what you do!

[SailingDrew]

My God why do I only see you now, I was learning German for so long and I never knew about this. I have only watched 30mins but i did learn a lot. Thank you very much.

[-LAVAMPIRA]

Since I'm half German from my mother's side, I wanted to learn German and this is by far the best video I've come across. I know my grandfather is happy in heaven watching me learn his language.

[Steeveek]

Being a native German myself, I remember so well, that when I started to learn English in fifth grade, I was so relieved, that I wouldn't have to learn the gender of every noun there is, or that, apart from some very rare exceptions I could conjugate verbs with ease. Of course English is not completely void of booby-traps, as well, but in direct comparison with German, you are far less likely to get stuck in one.

[vincentsaysno]

I’m only 21 minutes in and it’s already more understandable than my highschool German class. I can tell this video is going to be a HUGE help.

[nicolawilliamsonphotograph]

I'm attempting to learn German using Duolingo and I have been practicing for at least 30 minutes to an hour each day for the last 75 days and I really feel like I'm hitting a wall in my understanding especially when it comes to word orders. I came across these videos and oh my god this is a god send. Everything is finally starting to make sense! Thank you so much!

[samsherie]

I literally got to that "i am stuck", "where am i going wrong", "i don't understand this anymore" stage of learning german on my own and came across your video. Lets just say, by the end of the day i was signed up for the course on your website. You made understanding the basic concepts so easy and relatable. Thank you for taking the time out to give back what you have learned and interacted with while on your learning german journey.

[Twisted_Logic]

I took three years of German in high school (a little over 10 years ago) and this has honestly really made me appreciate my high school German teacher, as she used a lot, though not all, of the methods you used here. And because of that, despite a decade of atrophy and large holes in my vocabulary, I was able to premptively answer nearly all the exersises you showed in this series. I still have a lot to learn before being fluent in any appreciable sense, but you're not kidfing about how learning like this really gets you to internalize the language. Thanks, Laura, and thanks, Frau Schultz!

[kausarmahmud]

I came here to learn German; finally, I learned how to speak English properly. Not bad at all.

[dreamytaleshub]

The best German teacher in youtube for English speaker to learn German, although my native language is Chinese, I still believe Laura's way to learn German is the most efficient way, thanks to rebuilding the confidence not to give up learning German

[wales]

I am German, but struggle to explain grammar to my online language exchange partners. So I guess this will be very useful

[birachel]

This series not only recharges my enthusiasm for learning the German language, but it motivates my interest in English grammar as well. I didn’t realize how lazy I’d gotten with my native English grammar and vocabulary. Thank you for this video!

[krishnanRan]

I'm now 28 minutes into the video, and I'm noticing the subtle way in which Laura is teaching us the pronunciation of the words in her example lists while, side by side, she's teaching us the smart way to learn German grammar !
Amazing and eloquent teacher.

[benhu]

idk who would be so hateful to dislike this video. thank you for using your time and energy to make this!

[ginismoja]

This is actually how I learnt German. I didn't make it into a chart, just mental notes. It's great to see it done that way, makes more sense and is logical.

[janesantos]

Yours is the best German foundations course I have ever taken. I recommend it to everyone who seeks to understand the underlying structural principles, and to apply that framework to building their language proficiency. I commend you for your generosity in offering such a helpful resource for free.

[Lusifer__]

I have been learning German for a year now and at certain points it’s really easy to get unmotivated, so I’m 10 in minute and reading the comments and I’m already feeling so much better! Your overall vibe just makes me feel excited to learn more

[nwaokorojohn]

This is mind blowing, how Laura could teach German language like this. My interest to learn German language was so strengthened just about 50minutes into this video. Definitely I will watch and rewatch again to really get every sentence of what Laura explains here. 🙏 Thank you Laura for this sacrifice