How I Learned German

CC subtitles available in: English, Portuguese, Mandarin, Malay, French, Spanish and French.

I'd like to thank the volunteers who created this video's translations:

Fernando Arancibia
Elizabeth
Mario

I started learning German before the age of the Internet. I'd had some exposure as a young man, but during a month between jobs, in 1987, I really went at it. I found second hand German readers, and I went at then, massive comprehensible input.

0:00 When I started learning German.
1:40 The books I used to learn German.
9:10 How I learn German on LingQ.
11:24 I hope to improve my German moving forward.

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My Podcast:

#learngerman #learnlanguages #polyglot

[Thelinguist]

What have the greatest difficulties you experienced when it comes to learning German?


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Social Media

[skzyr]

"Having Kaufmann as last name gives you 50% of the German language knowledge at the start of the adventure"
Such a great buff for early game german learning.

[alexandernordic]

I highly recommend the Youtube challenge "Easy German". They interview normal people on the streets and put subtitles on it and other things that help you learning the language

[bianca.sartori]

Hi, Steve! I am learning German by now and it was really stimulating to see this video and to know a little more about your history with this language! Thanks a lot for sharing, I really appreciated this! 💜😊

[JayYuka]

I'm german and I felt like your pronunciation when you read the titles of the books were really good! 👍

[nicolasherrera]

I am from Colombia (South America), however idk why I've fallen in love with German... I expect to become really fluent in 2022.

[annfraser]

When I was studying languages at university I found it very useful to translate German into French so I did not think in English. I still use French when trying to learn a new language.

[auge]

Ich liebe es wie du deutsch sprichst :) Für mich als Deutscher ist es ein riesen Kompliment, dass du dir die Zeit genommen hast, um diese schwierige Sprache zu lernen. Teilweise erzählt dein Deutschakzent auch eine Lebensgeschichte - du klingst manchmal wie mein Opa, manchmal auch wie ein Franzose. Faszinierend! :D Grüße aus Sachsen

[mizutanikoichi]

ありがとうございます。
thank you for
your sincerely

[amenibenyusuf]

I love German so much that I can't even notice that it's difficult

[longhaulblue]

Wow! Deutsche Sprache für Ausländer was the book I used when I was attended the VolksHochschule in Germany. I can commmunicate well enough like when I'm travelling there but I'd really like to nail down the language and have been toying with the idea of re-learning it. But I also want to learn Spanish. Seems like a really useful language to know especially here in the Americas. Thanks for your inspiring videos.

[sarahzaza]

Oh that's perfect, because I am learning German also

[BackgroundNatureSounds]

My dream is to have a job that allows me to use my passion of language learning just like you! I love your videos!

[IKEMENOsakaman]

So I guess it's not just about "brain power", but more so about "thirst for adventure" and "a thirst to see the bigger world"!

[ladyshady]

I have to start to appreciate times we live in- the knowledge is so available and yet I do not learn as much as I could or should...

[StickNate]

Here’s what I did, when I started learning German.

I purchased blue, pink and yellow Post-It Notes. I labeled my refrigerator with a blue masculine note that read “DER Kühlschrank/ Die Kühlschränke”.

I labeled die Mikrowelle/Mikrowellen with a pink feminine note. I placed a pink note on mein Kühlschrank mit Milch/Butter/Sahne/Cola/Torte as well as the plural versions.

Das Fenster gets a yellow neuter post-it note.

I labeled my mirror, window, stairs, door, appliances with labels. Anytime I see the label with the object. I say the object with the article.

As my vocabulary improves. I use the word in a sentence.

[taunus]

Thank your for sharing yout experience. I heard your interviews in German and in Russian - they have impressed me!

[marciafatima]

Obrigado e
Steve por trazer este tipo de contéudo no seu canal é exatamente do Que preciso muito obrigado

[herculesbarbosa]

Steve is a legend.... along with Richard Simcott, is my biggest influence on language learning

[theprophet]

As a German native speaker I agree that the language is pretty hard, even many native speakers are having trouble with it(mostly the written part though). Pupils are learning to write in the correct grammar for at least 8 school years straight -even though it's the language that is native to them. I am quite proficient in German and can point out most errors when I read them on message boards, though I wouldn't dare to claim that I never make any mistakes, cause I still do. Pretty much everyone does, even news writers will have the odd spelling error here and there. - I was baffled about how easy English was in comparison. The grammar rules are much simpler, capitalization rules are pretty easy to understand as you can write most stuff in lower case to start with. However, one thing that German has going for it, is that reading and then pronouncing something is pretty easy. English isn't that hard either but it has its quirks, French would be one of the more difficult beasts in that regard.

As I am currently learning Japanese I found that the language was very straight forward with the pronunciation, much like German in a way. It is similar to German phonetics actually, maybe because the vowels are spoken almost the same way, which play a huge part in any language I guess.