Learning German 101

So you've decided to move to Germany. Maybe for one year, or maybe forever. The point is you will have to learn the language, or at least some of it. Learning a second language as an adult is a daunting task. It will consume nearly all of your waking moments and even some of your dreaming ones. They don't call it immersion for nothing. It can be incredibly rewarding, and yet sometimes impossibly frustrating. Becoming self sufficient in German, I feel, is one of my greatest accomplishments in life.

I moved to Germany in 2012 around the same time as another guy. Former FC Barcelona trainer Pep Guardiola. He had just been hired by FC Bayern and, like me, he had to learn German. This gave me an interesting perspective. No matter how much money you have, there are no shortcuts when it comes to learning a language. Sure he had private tutors, but he still had to put in the work in everyday. In this one aspect, I felt we were almost equals. Both of us, just two guys trying to learn a new language.

I can't really teach you German in a short blog post. I can however give you some tips to make the process go faster.

Tip 1:
Practice Makes Perfect.

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is the fastest way to learn. Practice practice practice. Make mistakes. Don't worry about sounding stupid. When learning a language you are going to make mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the faster you'll learn. Keep in mind that this is also the German way of learning. Germans love practising their English. They will practice every chance they get. It makes things easy sometimes for new comers but it can also develop into a crutch. You might have to force the conversation back to German once in a while. The ideal situation is when you can make friends who don't speak English. This makes staying in one language easier. You may not realise this, but the language you build your relationships on will most likely be the language you stay with. It's pretty hard to switch languages after you've already built a friendship in another language. Patience is also key. It takes a while before you build up a vocabulary large enough to hold even the simplest of conversations. Try to order food and drinks in German. Don't take ii personally if they respond in English. I know it feels like a failure but they're most likely just trying to make you feel comfortable.

Tip 2:
Read and Write

Writing is easier than speaking because you can always correct yourself. You might miss things when you listen to someone speak but you can read the same sentence over and over a hundred times. Read and write as much as you can. A tip my wife gave me was to read newspaper and magazine articles, highlight the words I didn't understand and write them down in a book along with the translation. This is something her mother used to do when she first moved to Germany from Poland. This was an incredible exercise to help me build my vocabulary. Another great exercise was writing a German journal. I would write it and my wife would correct it. You will also notice that if you take a German course, there will be a lot of letter writing. Trust the Germans. They know how to teach and learn languages.

Tip 3:
Learn a Noun, Learn the Article

This rule can't be stressed enough. I wish someone would have given me this tip before I started learning German. It makes things so much easier down the road. The article is the German version of 'The'. In German they have 'Der' 'Die' 'Das'. In English we just have 'The'. When you get into more advanced German, articles get more complicated. Memorising articles is a must. I plan on writing an entire post later just on learning articles but here are a few tricks to start you off.

• Anything ending in 'chen' or 'lein' is always 'Das'
• Most nouns ending in 'ung' or ' keit' are usually 'Die'
• Seasons and days of the week are 'Der'

Tip 4:
Avoid Swearing and Dirty Jokes

Someone once told me the hardest thing to learn in a language is how to swear properly and how to tell jokes. Different swear words carry different weights in different languages. It is very easy to slip up and use the wrong word in the wrong situation. It requires a fair amount of nuance and fine manoeuvring to tell a good joke even in your native tongue. Trying this in a second language can have disastrous consequences. The safe option is just to avoid them all together.

So I hope these tips help. I plan on writing more detailed posts on specific language topics. If there is anything you need help with, please leave a comment or just email me directly. And remember, it's supposed to be fun. So enjoy yourself!