Does anyone know what is the best German curriculum for the autodidact? I am looking to do intensive study, so I want a textbook that goes from beginning to advanced levels.
I have no experience with it personally, but if you’re looking for reading knowledge, “German Quickly” by April Wilson is highly rated. That’s what I’ve been planning on using when the time comes… unless of course there are better suggestions.
I’ve also heard good things about “German Quickly” as well, but I haven’t used it – I’ve used “German for Reading Quickly” (don’t remember the authors) which I would recommend, although I don’t think it quite takes you to an advanced level. But German is a fairly “unexotic” language by European standards (except maybe for those ridiculous separable verbs 
), so I think that once you familiarize yourself with the basic grammar (declension, conjugation, word order, and so on), you should be able to make a lot of progress by tackling actual texts, and getting used to some of the more convoluted constructions. Even vocabulary is not too bad – on the more basic level, you can recognize English cognates, and for higher vocabulary, once you learn the German equivalent of Greek and Latin roots, it’s not too hard to work out what they mean.
I should say though that my comments are mainly about acquiring a reading knowledge as well, and I did a year of German in school so I wasn’t jumping in with no experience at all.
The Foreign Services Institute of the US Government put together a program for US diplomats. Since it is a product of the US Government it falls into the public domain, and you can download the course from various sites for free, probably the best of which is:
http://fsi-language-courses.com/
I don’t know anything about the German course specifically, but generally these courses are heavy on the audio (which is often of fair, at best, quality), fairly dry and repetitive, but designed to give you a fairly good grasp on the language if you really put the work into it. They are also often dated, the German course having been made in 1961. Nevertheless, they were designed for the actual purpose of teaching people the language efficiently (unlike most courses, which are primarily designed to sell and make money, regardless of whether or not they are effective), so for the price of $0 it’s probably worth looking into.
Several companies also repackage this course and sell it, but it’s not clear what the paid-for courses offer that you can’t get from the free one.
the recordings for the german course at this fsi page are highly lowquality, for this reason i would not recomend it.
I am in 5th semester German at university. I can recommend the textbook we are using this semester. It is called Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik. Authors Jamie Rankin and Larry D. Wells. The reason I think it would be useful for someone trying to teach themselves, is that it is quite complete. It covers more grammar than we have covered in those 5 semesters. On the other hand, it isn’t merely a reference grammar. There are a lot of exercises and there are a lot of discussions of idiomatic usages. I generally find the explanations clear and thorough.
One other thing I have to inform you of though is a very cool item regarding German adjectives. Adjective endings are horrible, at least compared to English or French. Just this semester though we got a handout which simplified them immensely and totally truthfully. If I can save you the hassle of all those charts of different endings in different situations I will, unless of course you are into that kind of thing!
Go to
http://nthuleen.com/
click on “Teaching” on the Left and then on Grammatik in the horizontal list of topics, and this will bring up a page with a bunch of handouts. The adjective ending one is great. Looks like there is a bunch of other stuff there too. Good luck!
I like German adjective endings, personally.
eine große schöne rote Hand. Sehr toll.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll consider each of those textbooks. I read a review of German Quickly that stated that it used proverbs to instill memorization of vocabulary, a concept that really aided my study of Latin vocabulary, so I’m leaning towards that course currently.
Where have you seen that method applied to Latin? If there is an available source, I would be very interested.
“Wheelock’s Latin” uses many proverbs and pithy phrases in the chapter exercises. Also, the book occasionally has a very dry and academic (lame) sense of humor, if that’s your thing.
Vir litterarum, it’s not German, but I used the Living Language series “Ultimate Italian: Beginner-Intermediate” to teach myself a good amount of Italian. The ‘Ultimate’ courses are highly rated, and based on my experience very well done and tailored for independent learners. I’ll be going back to them for German, and I already own ‘Ultimate Arabic’. Even if you want just a reading knowledge, the audio practice they provide is a great help and high quality. They’re all 40 chapters, cover all the necessary grammar, and in addition have lots of exercises, reading sections, audio reviews, and cultural notes. For audio, there are 4 CDs for the book, and 4 bookless review CDs that you can listen to wherever. $50 on Amazon. They offer “Advanced Courses” as well, although I haven’t used those.
I powered through my Italian copy in about two months and felt competent in reading and a two week trip to Italy. I’d bet the German is similar.
I’d avoid Living Language’s “The Basics” courses, though. I have the German one, and while it’s cheap it’s vastly inferior to the Beginner-Intermediate version. However, I’ve used the cheap “Beyond the Basics” course for Italian and found it a convenient expansion.
I’ll inject a brief cautionary note about April Wilson’s German Quickly. I’m using the book right now as part of a German reading course, and we’ve almost finished the book, so to some degree I know whereof I speak.
First, the book is designed to teach you how to read German, or better put, how to translate German. It’s all about translation: “Look to this part of the sentence to find this, transform the word in the following way to find it in your dictionary, plug the Englished word into your running translation, continue.” Since German is quite rule-bound in its word order, this actually gets you some mileage, but … I don’t approve of the methodology.
The vocabulary you will learn is rather limited. Such is life with any introductory textbook, but be aware that after finishing the book you’ll spend most of your time in the dictionary when you’re reading original German of any complexity. (Unless you supplement your vocabulary one way or another.)
You won’t learn anything about speaking, obviously, nor will you write any German at all. You will only translate from German to English; again, I emphasize “translate.”
As a student of Greek and Latin, you will find its presentation of grammatical points insultingly basic. The book is pitched at an audience who’s never heard of concepts like the genitive case or subjunctive mood. You will find the explanations verbose and imprecise and wonder why she didn’t just use the proper terminology. You will absorb the grammar very easily; some of the most foreign things to English speakers seem quite natural to those who know Greek (e.g., the “overloaded adjective” construction).
The book is typo-ridden, even in its most recent printing. Alas. The tone is very chatty; Wilson tries to be humorous. This may or may not work for you.
I haven’t used any other books, so I can’t make any comparisons. Maybe this is the best thing out there. It certainly has taught me German grammar, and I can now, for example, read a German newspaper article with little trouble (as long as I have a dictionary!). I cannot, except with extreme pain, write or speak a sentence of German. I plan to remedy this deficiency as soon as is practicable with other courses/materials.
In any event, viel Glueck!
I definitely don’t want something that basic. I want a textbook that is designed for someone who has studied foreign languages already.
I’ve been using the German edition with a student I’m tutoring, and it seems pretty good and moves fairly fast. The only caution is that it’s highly geared towards real-life situations, so if you’re primarily interested in reading, the topics and vocabulary covered may be less useful.
I’ve also used Schulz and Griesbach’s “Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer”, which is a natural method textbook, starting out with very basic dialogues which become rapidly more complex. All the grammatical explanations are in German, but I find them fairly clear. You would probably have to order it from Germany, and I’m not sure whether there are tapes that go with it.
I wouldn’t know about any beginner’s textbooks, since I’ve been taught German at school, but as far as the companions Schulz and Griesbach, I own a normal systematic grammar of the German language by them, and it is very pleasing to use in any situation (of course not for a beginner, the book being written in German, but this is merely a recommendation of the writers)
You know what I’m interested in: a book or website that details German morphology and etymology of words, and makes the connexion between those German roots to the Graecolatin ones that are so much more familiar to me. For instance, I have no idea what the prefix “be-” as in “benutzen” litterally means. It would be very helpful having a detailed comparison with Latin, such that I actually understand the vocabulary I use.
I’m not sure if these would be exactly what you are looking for, but there are several (old) comparative grammars on google books (and archive.com) such as this one:
http://books.google.com/books?id=km41AAAAMAAJ
which may have some of what you want, though it would probably be more from the grammar rather than vocabulary side of things.
If you know some German: “Deutsches Wörterbuch” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm seems to be exactly what you’re looking for. It lists many, if not most words with its meaning in Latin, sometimes even in Greek and Gothic, in addition to giving a detailed etymology and many example sentences. For example, here’s an excerpt of the entry for the prefix ‘be-’:
BE [Lfg. 1,6], eine partikel, deren buchstäblicher verhalt zu dem ganz nahen b e i vor allem erwogen werden musz.
…
I. vor dem v e r b u m hat b e
- die bedeutung von circum, was die verwandtschaft zwischen bi und umbi bestärkt. sehen ist das blosze schauen, ansehen das auf einen gegenstand gerichtete schauen, besehen das schauen nach allen seiten
…
It consists of 33 volumes and therefore is a bit expensive in printed form, but there is also a digital version called “Der Digitale Grimm”, available at http://www.zweitausendeins.de and probably at Amazon aswell. There even exists a Mac version, which I own.
But there was also a slow but free online version. I will see, wether I can find it later on.
Regards
Vielen Dank! A free online version sounds ideal.
http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/wbgui?lemid=GA00001
Seien Sie willkommen! Ich hab’s gefunden.