*** Currently redoing this resource page… more stuff to come :) ***
My own stuff
I’ll definitely keep you up to date here, but for more info, we’ve set up a little info page about the project, where you can (and should) also sign up for our book newsletter :)
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Check out the info page for more details and sign up for our newsletter about the card game. I think it’s a really cool game and I can’t wait to get your feedback.
Courses and Apps
If you’re looking for a structured, paid program.
Anja is one of the biggest Youtubers in the German learning sphere and her channel has almost a million subs. Last year, she created a new German learning course that is centered around a… comedy series.
The episodes follow a consistent storyline that gets ever more crazy, and each of them present you with new grammar concepts and vocabulary, all in context. Of course, there are subtitles, too, and for each episode, you’ll get a bunch of exercises, a vocabulary sheet and there are some exams at the end of a block as well.
So far, they have three seasons, for A1, A2 and B1. And it’s not all shot in one room. It really feels like a proper TV series.
If you like Anja’s Youtube videos or you like quirky humor, this might be the perfect choice of a course for you, because they put a lot of effort into making an actually funny and engaging story that you WANT to watch.
It’s not exactly cheap, but if you have the funds for it, I can highly recommend it.
Oh, and you’ll likely recognize some faces from German learning Youtube and Instagram. And I have a couple of guest roles as well :).
For more info, just check out their landing page… a bit ugly but it has all the info you need:
Or you can check out my review for it here:
Seedlang is an app for learning German made by my friends Jeremy as well as my other friend Cari from the Easy German Youtube channel. At the core of Seedlang are short lovely video clips that show you German vocabulary and grammar as it is really used, spoken by native speakers. And all the grammar and translations are always one click away.
It’s got a lot of cool functions and the lessons itself are handcrafted and full of love. And my grumpy self is in a few of them as well :).
And the price is quite affordable. Less than 5 bucks per month if you take a full year. You get your money’s worth 10 fold.
Oh and by the way… they have Spanish and French now too, if you get sick of German :)
If you want to learn more about it, you can check out my review here:
Seedlang – My Review (Update 2022)
Or you can go directly to their website:
Watch
Originally, Cari and Januzs started out by interviewing people on the streets about a topic and adding German AND English subtitles, so you can learn how real Germans sound like while also getting a glimpse into their minds. But the channel has grown a lot and they’re also doing grammar easy grammar explanations and awesome lifestreams.
And if you’re a premium supporter via Patreon, you also have access to exercises and vocabulary lists for the videos.It’s really a great channel, the concept is great, the production quality is great and most importantly, the people are great and I’m happy to call them friends!
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At the end of each episode there is a little recap of the important phrases, and last but not least… the episodes are long so none of these 5 minute things that are over before you know it.
Bottom line: this BBC made series is extra super.
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The language is simply and the speaker speaks very clearly and if you don’t understand the words the video often helps out and allows you to guess.
Of course you need a decent amount of vocabulary to really enjoy it but for an intermediate learner it’s a great way to train listening while learning a lot of random interesting things like “How is a toothpaste made”.
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Other stuff (description soon)
My German Short Stories (GREAT Youtube channel, much underrated)
Listen
(And it’s an OG podcast… podcast before they were cool)
In each episode, Tim Pritlove talks with one or to experts about a certain topic. A lot of topics have to do with computers (IPv6, the DNS-scene, ARM architecture, various programming languages, app-design) but they also discuss the German tax system, Bitcoin, coffee, beer, board games, World of Warcraft, the solar system, the human ear, secret services, movie dubbing, feminism and post-structuralism…. just to name a few :). I’m sure you’ll find something.
They really go into depth on a topic. No wonder that an episode is usually between 1 and 3 hours long. But it’s not a boring presentation but rather two guys just having a relaxed dialog along an outline. And Tim Pritlove is really pushing for layman’s terms and has a great talent to rephrase and summarize things. There are about 200 episodes and I think I’ve listened to almost all of them, even if I wasn’t too interested in the topic. It’s just kind of soothing. Like a slow evening where you sit with friends and you just listen to their nerd conversations.
The audio quality is amazing by the way, and it’s completely free and runs on donations which is amazing, too.
So… if you want to listen to
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And it’s legal.
Isn’t that great? There are lots of classic stories of (mostly but not exclusively German) literature like Kafka’s “Die Verwandlung” or “Frankenstein”. Or how about one of the wild west novels of Karl May, one of the most famous popular writers in Germany, who has written about the wild west like no other and yet he’s never even been there.
The audio quality is great and the speakers are generally good at what they’re doing. There’s also a large crime story section and you can find some drama and some non fiction there too. So if you are into audio books and serious literature and you want to improve your German… check it out.
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Play
I’ll add more detailed descriptions soon, but in the meantime, here’s a couple of games that might be fun
Aschkalon – Interactive Fantasy Adventure for learners (My review and links)
Exam Preparation
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Enough motivation?… by the way… there is not many of the usual fill in the blank grammar exercises there, so this is good I guess.
The link here leads to the digital version, but there’s also a separate preparation section for a paper exam. Just click around and you’ll find it.
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By the way… if you’re not sure which test is the one for you (since both are enough to enter university, as far as I know) here’s a (subjective) comparison:
Other helpful stuff
Patrick, the creator of this online school, lots of material to read in German and also plenty of exercises.
And if you like his style, he also offers courses on improving vocabulary & pronunciation,
a regular language course from B1 to C2 and special grammar courses, in which you learn essential grammar for the language levels B2 and C1.
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German.stackexchange is a great forum for all kinds of questions about the German language like nuances, differences or grammar. A lot has been asked already so you can find a wealth of information there. There is also a rating system and one can collect reputation so our natural human desire for gathering things is definitely catered for ;).
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Hello Emanuel
May I ask if you would have a resource/book for prepositions as well? because I feel that the usage of German prepositions is sometimes hard to understand for non-native speakers.
Thank you so much in advance
There’s nothing specific that I can think of, unfortunately.
Have you seen the various articles on the topic here, though?
Hello Emanuel
Thank you so much for your suggestion
Actually, I’ve read some parts of the module “preposition”. There are some prepositions which were written as separated series such as “aus”, “zu”, “von”, “auf” etc., but not for some prepositions such as “uber”, “durch” etc. So, I am not sure if the latter type of prepositions might need specific explanation or not.
(or they’re not required because the meaning/logic is quite direct that they might not need separated series)
Thank you so much again
Oh, I could definitely do an article about “über” or “durch”. The question is just how much “new” information there is in it. “durch” for example is rather similar to English “through”, so there’s not much to say.
But I think I’ll write one about “über” at some point.
Till then, you can look them up in my dictionary (the search) and ask in the comments there, if you have a specific question :)
Thank you so much Emanuel for your reply. :)
I just found your website and OMG I LOVE IT. the humor, the information, the helpful-ness? (native english speaker, but also an 18 year old…) Im learning German for uni so im taking kinda a gap year but ich habe eine Frage. Im not sure if youve made an article on this but could you talk about the cases and MULTIPLE cases in a sentence? Including personal pronouns. I understand nominative, akkusativ, and dativ and when to use them; but when it comes to long sentences its more challenging. Same goes for when you have to use personal pronouns in dativ or akkusativ. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOURE DOING AHH ILL THANK YOU FOR MY DEGREE!!!
Happy to hear you’re enjoying my stuff :)!
I don’t have an article about multiple cases specifically, but I’m happy to answer your questions in the comments.
It’d be great, if you could just paraphrase it under one of the articles about cases.
That way, other people who might have the same questions are more likely to see our conversation.
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-cases-accusative-dative/
Oh and have you checked out my exercises on cases? There’s lots of pronouns in those.
Here’s the example for masculine entities. You can find the others easily there.
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-cases-exercise-masculine/
Liebe Grüße and I’m on the lookout for your comment with the questions :)
Many great site suggestions. May I add one for German grammar explanations? https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/german-language-blog
hmmm, I’m the one that posted about the german idioms on the Cool Resources page. It prompted the comment as anonymous for approval. I must’ve been logged out accidentally before posting the comment.
Anyhoo, just an FYI. Wasn’t just a random creeper. Twas me, a marginally less, but still somewhat random, creeper.
I replied to the other comment :)
I wasn’t sure where to post this question, but “cool resources” might be the best place…
Every language has idioms and sayings that are often metaphorical or figurative and impossible to translate literally from one language to another. I was curious if there was a way you could list a few good ones.
For example, I was talking with a native german speaker and asking him what the german version of “when the shit hits the fan” might be. First, it was hilarious to learn that he’d been saying “when the shit hits the fin” for years and had no idea what this saying meant until I corrected him and explained the visual. The clarification prompted some laughing. Then he said the german version is “die Kacke am dampfen ist.” Which. Is. Hilarious. Because what!? hahaha.
Anyway, I would love to learn some more of these–just to spice up my native mojo
Hey, so I do have a few posts with idioms in my Advent Calendar series, but they might be hard to find. You could also try the search/dictionary here because I have some in it as well.
Here’s a few links from my calendar:
https://yourdailygerman.com/work-proverbs-german/
https://yourdailygerman.com/kein-schwein-gehabt-meaning/
https://yourdailygerman.com/aussen-hui-innen-pfui-meaning/
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-proverbs/
There are a few more, but it might be fun to find them yourself in the calendar archive, based on the title. There’s usually a hint in there ;)
fun. i’ll definitely poke around in there. learning these sorts of sayings seems to be… where the rubber meets to road.
Meh, actually, learner tend to use them too much and then it sounds forced or like a wanna-be.
Having a proper handle on r-versions is a MUCH bigger boost for how idiomatic you sound. I would focus on that before learning a bunch of idioms.
But if you enjoy it, then do it, of course :). It’s not that it’s bad or anything, but it’s not where the rubber meets the road, imo ;)
bad joke, i guess (rubber meets the road is an idiom so it was supposed to be sort of an “eye roll” type of statement). joke flop. I can picture an east german judge holding a 6.5 out of 10 scorecard with an intense scowl of disapproval. Meh. Einmal ist keinmal.
yea, i agree. no forced idioms for newbs. although, they are fun to chuck into a convo after you’re done butchering some grammar, just for a cheap grin. but r-versions are good for that too.
thanks again E. keep doing the lord’s work spreadin’ the good Deutsch news.
Do you have a recommended source for looking at etymology of German words? In English I would use “etymonline.com”, is there a similar source in German?
The three big ones are Wiktionary, DWDS.de and Woerterbuchnetz.de
But they’re not as “fun” to read as etymonline.com, which is a bit more conversational.
And you can use my dictionary of course. I’m using etymonline and dwds mostly, and I cross reference the entries and dig around a little so sometimes I find connections that they have, but don’t mention.
Have you heard of “The Thinking Method” aka “Language Transfer”?
It’s just one guy (like you) that does audio courses for language learning, he’s done different languages including a beginner one in German.
The audio quality isn’t excellent but the content is really good for beginner level.
I heard the name before but I’ve never looked into it really. So you’d recommend it?
Yes, it’s easy to follow, he covers some good grammar without too much jargon and he focuses on remembering how to get to what you want to say, not just memorising rules.
He also encourages thinking about the meaning of words, and has some neat tricks for getting started.
here’s a link: https://www.languagetransfer.org/german
Hello Emanuel,
My hubby, Mark, and I are coming to Berlin for a week in November and want to take German classes in the mornings while we are there. We have considered ALPADIA, Inlingua, Victoria, Language International, Humbolt… Ak, so many! Do you happen to know anything about any of these? Any recommendations (or ones to avoid)? We have been taking private lessons in German for a while and I follow your blog site, but we are still at an A1-A2 level.
Thank you for any advice you can offer. (Lisa)
Hey hey,I’d love to help, but I have absolutely zero idea about the schools in Berlin.
If you are in the Easy German community discord, you might get better help there, but yeah… I can’t give any recommendations or warnings :)
OK. Thanks for trying!
Lisa
Hi Emanuel,
I asked my nephew, who has lived in Berlin for a while. He said,
“Hey there! I haven’t taken a one-week course, but I’ve taken many evening and intensive courses, for various lengths of time. GLS is generally regarded as the best school and my own experience agrees. I highly recommend it! And they do have one-week courses. I’ve also had good experiences with Goethe Institute, Kapitel Zwei, and Speakeasy, but quick glances at their websites lead me to conclude that none of them offer courses for just one week.”
In case anyone else is interested in this same topic…
Sweet, thanks for sharing!!
GLS is also collaborating with Easy German from time to time, which I’d take as another sign that they’re good :)
Emanuel…you had an article on a German website like Duolingo, but you liked it better because you could skip around the topics instead of just having to go step by step. Would you please let me know the name of this site…I want to share it with my kids. Thx so much
Yes, that’s OUino languages :)
https://www.ouinolanguages.com/
Meine Empfehlung: Slow German mit Annik Reubens. She speaks slowly and clearly and her audios all have a free transcript. The topics are so diverse that you wind up learning vocabulary about a huge number interesting themes.
Great one!!! Danke
Der Podcast das ich am liebsten habe ist “Zeit Verbrechen”. Die Geschichten sind immer interessant und sachlich da gesellt. Die Hauptdarstellerin, Sabina Rükert, sprich ein ausgezeichnetes, klares Deutsch und Ihre Aussprache ist wunderschön. Ich kann es ohne Vorbehalt weiterempfehlen.
Die Sendung mit der Maus is awesome, is a really good watch.
Yeah, and the way they speak is perfect!
Hi Emanuel! I just became member and unlocked the full power of being able to read your blog completely. Your explanations are super clear and entertaining as well. Super enjoyable!
I’d like to see a list of articles with the most visits, or the most done, or the most comments, or which could somehow be deemed the best or most interesting. It would help me find the best content more quickly, and probably keep me more engaged too.
Also a button that takes me to a random article I haven’t read would I find cool. This is just not to keep track myself and search. The server already knows. :)
LOve the idea of the random article button. I’ll look into that for sure :).
Thanks for the nice feedback and viel Spaß hier!!
Hi,
Thank your for this blog, it
s great!All the links here are very helpful!m always on the look for more resources. So I thought I can contribute with some more.I just recently started to learn German and I
I found a great website for learning German: hps://ifu-institut.at/
From here I get grammar exercises, letters etc. all in all many examples and a lot of information!
I hope I could share my findings and help someone out.
Could you point us to all the material you are finding there? To me, it looks like it’s a language school. Which is fine, but I feel like you just wanted to post a link here, and I’m not a fan ;)
Could you give some details please, otherwise I’ll remove the link. It’s not very helpful if it’s just a link ;)
I discovered your blog by coincidence when I was searching for some word and I liked the way you explain things. I have a suggestion, why don’t you develop a mobile app? it will spread to more audience since the usage of mobile devices is much more than personal computers. Think about it.
Uff, mobile apps are expensive to develop and my site is primarily text. The only difference an app would make on mobile is that you wouldn’t see the browser line.
It would be nice to have one, but it’s not an investment I can make at the moment :)
Vielen Dank für all die Herstellung und andere Verbindungen. Hoffentlich eines Tages kann ich die meistens besuchen. Für mich heutzutage, finde ich mich auf You Tube, Filme auf Deutsch zu hören und schauen. Deshalb kann ich meine Hörenverständnis verbessern, besonderes bei den verschiedenen Dialekten, die man im vier Länder anhört. Die Grammatik kommt für mich immer später an zu lernen. Lesen steht in zweite Stelle, wovon man auch die Gramatik und neue Wörter lernen kann.
ja, lesen ist da wichtigste, meiner Meinung nach :)
There are more than 2,300 free German audio-books at
https://librivox.org/
You can use text to speech software to find out what your OWN typed text will sound like. This won’t sound as good as a natural speaker, but the days of Microsoft Sam (Stephen Hawking’s voice) are over. Microsoft Hedda isn’t bad, although I prefer Microsoft Stefan. There are several good free text to speech packages. I like Panopreter Basic, but you may wish to check out other products before making a choice.
https://www.panopreter.com/en/products/panopreter/index.php
Links worked and were safe when I last used them, but are not guaranteed.
They worked for me :). Thanks for sharing!!
Hey. The link to the “Zertifikat Deutsch – Sample Test” is missing; Is it this one: https://www.telc.net/pruefungsteilnehmende/sprachpruefungen/pruefungen/detail/zertifikat-deutsch-telc-deutsch-b1.html#t=2 ?
Looks good!! I haven’t checked these links in a LONG time! Thanks for the heads-up, I’ll put that on my to do list.
hi there,
A great list! Thanks a lot for putting it together. I am learning German and share my experience and strategies on my blog – https://blog.kwiko.app
Check it out and add to the list of you like it .
-Sher
Is that really your blog or is that the website of a language learning app? Because it looks a lot like a business (which is fine, just be open about it)
Hi Emanuel, thanks so much for the work you do. This site, your explanations, and even once-in-a-while your jokes ;) are truly amazing. I can’t thank you enough for your insight. Full stop.
I’m sure you’ve addressed this elsewhere but I haven’t been able to find it yet– I am wondering your recommendations or anyone on here’s recommendations for a B1 online course. I would love to supplement your explanations with a structured course. I am really learning a lot from your site, but with the piecemeal approach I feel I’m a bit directionless and not building on what I’m learning. I am struggling with figuring out what exactly I need to know to pass certification exams for each level. There are so many courses and teachers out there, I would love any insight or feedback from you or your readers on courses they have used to efficiently and quickly build their language skills. Any info would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!
Puh, good question. The only thing I can think of is the German with Jenny Website (it’s not an app, even though she calls it app). And Seedlang, though I think there’s a little too little structure to the grammar there. There’s of course more courses out there but I don’t have recommendations.
Maybe you can ask in my Facebook Group. Someone there might have a suggestion…
I have the same problem as you. Taking things from here and there that I’m always repeating the same thing and never reaching a good point. I have tried Goethe online self learning course and it’s good but to be honest I feel i need something else and besides I have realized that self learning is not my thing which I though it was!! . If you know about something please let me know!
Hmmm, if the Goethe self study course didn’t work, then I am not sure another self study option would be much different.
Maybe taking an actual course or tutor is the way to go for you.