How to start to learn German to read and write as well?

German is an inflected language with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and strong and weak verbs. Altogether, German is the native language of more than 90 million speakers and thus ranks among the languages with the most native speakers worldwide. German is widely studied as a foreign language and is one of the main cultural languages of the Western world.

Old High German, a group of dialects for which there was no standard literary language, was spoken until about 1100 in the highlands of southern Germany. During Middle High German times (after 1100), a standard language based on the Upper German dialects (Alemannic and Bavarian) in the southernmost part of the German speech area began to arise. Middle High German was the language of extensive literature that includes the early 13th-century epic Nibelungenlied.

1. Find Reading Material for Beginners: Now that you have both a foundation of German words you can understand and identify, as well as a rough idea about how they belong together in a sentence, it’s time to put your knowledge into practice with some easy reading material! It doesn’t have to be sophisticated (stay away from reading the newspaper for now) but it should just be something filled with easily understandable content, preferably on a topic that actually interests you.
2. Interact with people who speak German: Do you have someone in your family or among friends who speaks German as a native language? Arrange some meetings or start a pen friendship. If not, I would recommend making use of the benefits of social networks. You’ll definitely find some groups or forums that deal with German as a foreign language and who knows, maybe thereby you find some new possibilities to improve your German skills. Join these groups and take action as a user. Ask questions or try to get some useful advice. The purpose of these groups is the exchange of ideas or approaches, which might help you to get a better understanding of something.
3. Classroom learning and tutoring — You’ll get more regular, personalized feedback from an instructor and be able to practice speaking, but it can take a regular commitment of time and often money, and you might not be able to work at your own pace.
4. Watch movies and TV series in German: Studying while watching TV? Yes, that is possible. In the age of DVDs and Video-on-Demand providers, movies and TV series can be used as an alternative learning method. First, you should check in which languages the content is available. Maybe your favourite series is also available in German so you can turn on the subtitles in your native language. The vocabulary will wander into your brain without much effort. The coolest thing about it is that you train your listening and understanding skills as well as your pronunciation.
5. Create some helpful study tools: First, write vocabulary or important phrases on a piece of paper. You can use a post-it or a large poster for that. Now, place this magic list all over your apartment. Choose places where you spend a lot of time like: next to the coffee machine, above the stove, on the toilet or on your mirror. Whenever you are at one of these places, you will automatically have a look at the list and will be surprised how well it works.

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