How to learn German by watching TV shows in German?
German, or Deutsch, is one of the world’s largest languages, is spoken by over 130 million people and is the native tongue of over 100 million people worldwide. It is a West Germanic language that is mostly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most commonly spoken language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol, and it is an official or co-official language in the following countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg, Belgium, and portions of southwestern Poland, as well as Namibia’s national language. German is commonly taught as a foreign language, especially in Europe, where it ranks third after English and French, and in the United States. After English, German is the most commonly spoken Germanic language. It is the most widely spoken native language in the European Union. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual book circulation, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) written in German.
Let’s now see how to learn German by watching German Television actively
TV shows will help you develop an instinctual feel for the pace and flow of actual spoken German; and will introduce you to the kind of spoken German that rarely show up in regular German lessons or textbooks. TV shows include some street slang, subcultural expressions, shortened words, and even some beautiful poetic lines. Television Shows include Talk Shows, Documentaries, News, Game Shows, Comedy shows, Variety Shows, Sports, Sitcoms, Dramas, Scifi, Supernatural and Fantasy Shows, Soap Operas, Historical Shows, Adventure or Action Shows, Cooking Shows, Cartoons, Reality TV, DocuDramas, Police procedural or Crime Shows.
Some if not all can certainly be a value add to your learning and offer a similar if not same benefit as the movies can! Don’t miss watching News in German at any cost. It would be your friend for a lifetime! Choose a genre that’s simplistic to understand in the beginning raising the bar with every lesson learnt efficiently. Remember that the German language has evolved from the way it’s spoken in the 1960s and 70s to how it’s spoken today, so you may avoid learning from old shows.
Steps you could follow to get the best of your learning:
- Watch the show fully without any subtitles and record it simultaneously(if not available online to see again). Just soak up on the plot and try to grasp the “feel” of the show, what does it wish to convey. Go back to the start and re-watch it scene-by-scene: first, with no subtitles. After you’re done watching it in its entirety, watch it scene by scene to see which words you can grasp even without the help of subtitles. Every time you hear a word you’re not familiar with, write it down.
- Re-watch the scene but this time with subtitles. The German subtitles will help you get the spelling and articles used correctly. But if you want to check if your understanding is correct, switch on the English subtitles in your 3rd viewing of that particular scene. Pay attention to the vocabulary and the context on how the words were used. Look out for any idioms and slang, and take note of the grammatical structures used in the sentences. Write down anything interesting you noticed, and be ready to review it later on.
- Listen and repeat new words. If there are some new words that you cannot seem to pronounce, listen to it and repeat the words and sentences over and over until you get the hang of it. Look up the words you don’t understand.
- If there are some things about the show that are bugging you—slang terms, regional jargons, double meanings, wordplays, and subtle humour that you couldn’t quite grasp—do some research or ask a native German speaker to help you understand and appreciate it better.
- Re-watch the show until you are confident that you have understood the gist of the conversations and the context of the words.
Watch The Red Band Society, The Boarding School, The Boat, The Boarding School and more.
You could watch more at BestTVSeries, Netflix, Prime Video, IMDb
Finally,
North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic are the three divisions of the Germanic languages. The first of these branches can still be found in contemporary Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Icelandic, which are all derived from Old Norse. The East Germanic languages are now extinct, with Gothic being the only language from this branch to survive in written documents. However, the West Germanic languages have undergone substantial dialect subdivision and are now reflected in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch, Yiddish, Afrikaans, and others.
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