Ta-da! German lessons at last!

At last long awaited German lessons has been completed and loaded to Internet Polyglot!

This was a true collaborative effort which involved , except your humble servant Misha, four people. All of them worked very hard and did their best to make it possible today for people of the world to learn German on Internet Polyglot.

These heroes are:

Baggeroli
wagnerm
Introscop
Ralf

The story with German lessons is quite adventurous. First we talked with Introscop in December and he started the translation to German in the winter. Baggeroli has joined later. Both of them did a great job. Unfortunately neither of them is native German speaker and one of the main strategies of Internet Polyglot is to verify and double-verify what we are going to present our users. So after a while wagnerm volunteered to do the verification of a hefty part of the translation and Introscop found a guy from his work Ralf who also verified the rest.

And now please visit German lessons at Internet Polyglot and start practicing it right away.

Willkommen!


Things worth knowing about the German language before you start learning it




As with any learning process, it’s good to set up a base ground and find out more information about what you’re trying to assimilate. For that reason, we’re going to start with a short lesson in German language history in order to understand why learning it is important and also why it’s considered one of the easiest languages to learn once you’re familiar with English.



German is considered one of the World’s major languages, although it cannot compete to other languages such as Spanish, French, English, Chinese or Hindu in what regards the number of its speakers, German is important due to the economical and political power of German speaking countries. Most German speakers are concentrated in Central Europe, in the following countries: Germany, Austria, Poland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and some parts of Switzerland, Belgium, Romania and Italy.



So why is learning German considered easy?



If you simply start a “Learn German” course or take up on a few free German lessons online, you’ll beg to differ the fact that German is an easy language to learn. The famous “long words”, the extra 3 umlaut vowels used by the German language as well as a certain roughness to its phonology might scare you off at first. However, if you take your time to study it you’ll notice that it’s actually quite easy once you’ve mastered English (even easier if you’re a native English speaker).



The two languages have been in a constant “collaboration” throughout time, influencing one another. The fact that they share the same West Germanic layer and Latin influences makes them even closer to one another. A lot of words look alike in English and German, which makes it easier for English speakers to memorize words and improve vocabulary in German. These words are called cognates and there are three major categories of such words that you can identify:




True cognates – these words have exactly the same form and the same meaning in both English and German, making them extremely easy to use from both sides. True cognates also sound alike and are spelled alike in both languages. They make up for a good starting point in the learning process and can help you build up your German vocabulary increase. Examples of such true cognates include: butter, finger or winter.



Close cognates – this group of cognates includes words that share the same meaning but have slightly different phonology or spelling. This particular group is the biggest of all cognates, containing hundreds of words such as (German version – English version): Bett – Bed, Bier – Beer, Gott – God, Haus – House, Maus – Mouse, Katze – Cat, Lachen – Laugh, Sommer – Summer, Wetter – Wheather and so forth.



Fake cognates – the last group of cognates can give people that are fresh to learning German a hard time. A lot of “Learn German” courses and free German lessons online will have special, focused chapters dedicated to fake (or false) cognates due to the ease with which a fresh student can get confused. Fake cognates are words that look and/or sound alike in both languages but their meaning is totally different. Examples include (German word – English word – English meaning): baum – beam – tree, gift – gift – poison, knabe – knave – boy, kopf – cup – head, stadt – stead – city. It’s extremely important to memorize words that are tagged as fake cognates as to not use them loosely in conversations, placing them in the wrong context.



Articles about German in different languages:

The German Language (in English)
El de lengua alemana (in Spanish)
De langue allemande (in French)
Deutschsprachig (in German)
Di lingua tedesca (in Italian)
Duitse Taal (in Dutch)
Língua alemão (in Portuguese)
Limba Germana (in Romanian)
Что хорошо было бы знать о немецком языке (in Russian)
أشياء مهمة يجب معرفتها حول اللغة الألمانية قبل البدء بتعلّمها (in Arabic)