5 chilled out ways to learn German-speaking at home

German or Deutsch, a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe, is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg, Belgium and parts of southwestern Poland, as well as a national language in Namibia. 

German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German (Low Saxon), Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish and exhibits close similarities in vocabulary to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, although these belong to the North Germanic group. 

One of the major languages of the world, German is a native language to almost 100 million people worldwide and is spoken by a total of over 130 million people. Most spoken native language within the European Union, second most widely spoken Germanic language after English, German is widely taught as a foreign language, especially in Europe, where it is the third-most taught foreign language after English and French. 

It is the second most commonly used scientific language and among the most widely used languages on websites. 

German is an inflected language, with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs.

The majority of its vocabulary is derived from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share is partly derived from Latin and Greek, along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English.

German isn’t as difficult to learn as people say, in fact just by being an English speaker, you know more German words than you think you do? English and German are both Germanic language and English language use lots of German words.

Get yourself a conversation partner 

Speaking is a skill that is developed only through talking, speaking, and repeating! There is no shortcut to learning to speak fluently. Hence we strongly recommend finding a conversation partner for yourself possibly, a German native speaker around you in your neighbourhood, if not, you could explore online resources such as language exchange programs, Meetup or italki( you can get a teacher as a conversation partner)

Do your best

Everybody isn’t blessed with enough money and time to take German language classes or a trip to Germany. Let this not deter you! It doesn’t mean you can’t start somewhere. 

Enrol for a free online German language course on an app such as Duolingo, Busuu, Multibhashi to get started. A quick glance at words or phrases selected for the day while waiting in the queue, watching television, in the washroom, while on the bus or review of new grammar topics like German pronouns while at the airport, may yield wonders in the long run without your knowledge.

Make a Mini German at home

Label every bit of furniture, kitchen objects, study table occupants, with a post-it bearing the object’s German name so you start thinking in German when you look at common objects. This activity will help you transition into speaking German much sooner than you think!

Practice daily

Accept practice as a way of life. Read something. Speak aloud something. Use Flashcards with Anki. Watch something in German or write something in German each day. Even if it means for 15-20 mins do keep doing something in German to make your subconscious accept it as its own!

Take online classes

In order to take your German learning to the next level we recommend you to take online classes preferably live, so you can clear your doubts, speak with the trainer, your classmates, which not only help you to learn the language thoroughly in terms of reading, writing, word pronunciation, but will also aid you to train your ear besides grant you an extra edge to get confident to speak the language soon. 

Two bonus tips:

Build a smarter vocabulary for yourself!

Instead of capturing single words and meaning, we recommend you capture phrases that will enable your brain to remember more than one word at a time 

Example. Instead of capturing Auto (“car”), try to capture the word in a phrase like mit dem Auto fahren (“to go by car / drive a car”).

Another very good and interesting way to learn any language is by watching online videos, movies, talk shows in your target language.

In this case, we recommend you either watch a German movie with English subtitles or watch an English movie with German subtitles very closely, like a project! While you watch the German movie with English subtitles we recommend you try to ape the accent of German speakers in the movie, talk show, or the video to get a hang of the way they are talking. Repeat play and practice as many times required to get the right accent and dialect. It will help you learn the local pronunciations, where stress is applied to words, or where it’s allowed to stop for a breather between words. This will help you capture the native way of talking German. In the beginning you basically maybe just behaving like a child copying his mother while she talks, sometimes taking gibberish but eventually it will come through. Once you are done copying the accent to your maximum possible level, you can go ahead and look at the German transcripts to know exactly what they were talking about and then you can try to talk in the same accent using the German words. This time the practice is stronger.

So if you’re looking for the best way to learn  German, you could choose from any if the above that suits your personal learning style!