Learn German on your own

What is easier than it seems#

Reading: letters and combinations follow rules with almost no exceptions — sch is "sh", ei is the "eye" sound, eu is "oy", ie is a long "ee", and w sounds like an English v. Stress usually falls on the root. The umlauts ä, ö, ü and the ch in ich and ach need training, but take a couple of weeks.

Vocabulary: German and English are both Germanic, so a large share of everyday words are relatives — Buch/book, Milch/milk, Freund/friend, helfen/help. Learn to notice the regular shifts (German d often matches English th: Ding/thing, du/thou) and many words come almost free.

Word building: German glues words together. Handschuh is "hand shoe", a glove; Krankenhaus is "sick house", a hospital. Long words are usually just chains of short ones — break them apart instead of panicking.

What will take patience#

Gender. Three genders — der, die, das — and they rarely follow meaning: das Mädchen "girl" is neuter, der Löffel "spoon" is masculine. Suffixes give hints: -ung, -heit, -keit make nouns feminine, -chen and -lein neuter. But on the whole there is one rule: a noun is learned only together with its article and its plural — der Tisch, die Tische.

Cases. There are four — nominative, accusative, dative, genitive. English keeps only traces of them in pronouns: he/him, who/whom. In German it is mostly the articles and adjective endings that change, not the nouns. The masculine article changes by case: der, den, dem, des. Know the article table as firmly as the times tables — adjective endings depend on it.

Prepositions with cases. Some prepositions always take the dative (mit, nach, bei, von, zu), some the accusative (für, durch, ohne, gegen). A group of "two-way" prepositions — in, an, auf and others — take the accusative for "where to" and the dative for "where".

Word order. In an ordinary statement the conjugated verb is in second place, even when the first place is not the subject: Heute gehe ich ins Kino — literally "today go I to the cinema". In a subordinate clause it moves to the very end: …, weil ich heute ins Kino gehe. Separable prefixes break off the verb and go to the end too, a bit like English phrasal verbs taken to the extreme: Ich rufe dich morgen an, "I'll call you up tomorrow".

A six-month plan#

Month one — reading, numbers, the present tense, sein and haben, gender and articles in the nominative. Month two — the accusative, modal verbs (können, müssen, wollen) with the infinitive at the end of the sentence. Month three — the dative, prepositions, separable prefixes. Month four — the spoken past, Perfekt: ich habe gegessen, ich bin gefahren; verbs of motion and change of state take sein, where English always says "have". Months five and six — subordinate clauses, the Präteritum of the main verbs, adjective endings.

German is in the second group of the US Foreign Service Institute ranking for English speakers — a bit longer than Spanish or French. A rough benchmark at an hour a day is level A2 by the end of six months: everyday conversation, simple letters, understanding slow speech. Timing varies from person to person.

How to keep notes#

Set up a colour code for gender — for example blue for der, red for die, green for das — and write nouns in that colour in your notebook and on your cards. The visual cue helps you recall the article. For verbs record three forms — infinitive, Präteritum, Partizip II — and which auxiliary the Perfekt takes. A separate table for prepositions by case. Cards go into a spaced repetition deck; the general rules for building them are in how to memorize vocabulary.

Checking yourself without a teacher#

• Every week — ten sentences with subordinate clauses: check where the verb is.
• Gender cards: show yourself a noun without its article and name the article. If you get fewer than nine out of ten, those words go back into the deck.
• Once a month — a Goethe-Zertifikat sample paper at your level (the institute offers exams from A1 to C2). German universities more often require TestDaF or DSH, but that is a task for next year.

Step-by-step plan

1. Month 1 — reading, gender, sein and habenReading rules, umlauts, the present tense, nouns only with article and plural.
2. Months 2–3 — cases and prepositionsAccusative and dative, the article table, prepositions by case, modal verbs, separable prefixes.
3. Month 4 — PerfektThe auxiliaries haben and sein, Partizip II; a story about last weekend.
4. Months 5–6 — subordinate clauses and a testThe verb at the end of the clause, adjective endings, a Goethe-Zertifikat A2 sample paper.

Check yourself

Sources

• DW — Learn GermanFree Deutsche Welle courses from A1 to C1 with audio and exercises, interface in English
  free
• DudenDictionary: gender, plural, pronunciation
  free
• Goethe-InstitutExam descriptions and sample papers
  free

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