The German language is one of the most popular foreign languages to learn. In fact, it is the third most studied language by English speakers on Duolingo. It’s also the official language of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol and the German speaking community in Belgium and Luxembourg. It is a Category II language on the State Department’s FSI scale, which means that it has four grammatical cases and three gender inflections.
It can seem intimidating at first, but learning German is not as difficult as you might think. For starters, many English words have similar pronunciations in German. Unlike some other languages, there is no new alphabet to learn; the only exceptions are the umlaut symbols atop certain vowels, like e and o, and that double s that replaces the sound of English “s.”
In our German lessons you will discover these similarities as you listen to German conversations and follow along with Jens as he cleans out Oma’s basement. You will also start building your vocabulary by learning how to ask questions in German: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? and How much?
Ultimately, one of the biggest reasons to learn German is to tap into Germany’s rich cultural heritage. German has produced many great writers such as Goethe and Schiller, and some of the world’s most famous paintings have been created by German artists such as Albrecht Durer and Caspar David Friedrich. By learning German, you can access these works in their original language and understand the thoughts of their authors in a way that is not possible when reading translations. German lessons