I taught myself some german in line with what i was learning in my first year of spanish (yes my first year. i started taking it along with french, which i have been learning for four years), but since then i have gotten very lazy. i only know colors, numbers, months/seasons/weekdays, a few foods, a few family member names, some slang, and fragments of basic conversational german. it's pretty pathetic.
i think that because of r+ and because of all my german friends, however, that i understand a lot more than i can speak. german is like that with english speakers: with a phrase like "J'ai deux stylos," we go slightly crosseyed, but with "Ich habe zwei Stifte," (both these phrases mean "i have two pens" btw, one is in french the other in german) we
immediately pick up on subject>verb>modifier>object. believe it or not, phonetically and grammatically english is most like german. in regards to vocabulary it is most like french (i would say).
sorry, potential future language instructor rambling again...
but yeah, i intend on learning german when i enter college.
anyway, if you want to learn some simple german, i recommend these resources for your free time:
Languages Online. just go to the "Deutsch" section. my french teacher uses this and it's very effective. i've used the german one before on my own time. the games are fun.
About.com: German Language. a lot of grammar help and a TON on culture. i use about.com mainly for cultural studies for french class, and the german one is very informative as well.
Dowload BYKI from this site! BYKI is a simple resource with flashcards with simple phrases on them to get you going, and it will quiz you will fill-in-the-blanks and stuff like that. no substitute for a teacher but it does read aloud, which is hard to find on the web. the download is totally free and as far as i know you can use it as long as you want. i used it for a while and i found it rather effective.
enjoy! i'm going to copypaste this into a separate topic in order to reach out to more r+guild members... ^__^ happy trails!
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