So I really want to learn German and I'm going to start teaching myself. I've already bought a book with a few CDs to help me. Does anyone have any like tips??
Get a really harsh tone of voice! loljk, if you're really serious about learning a new language, you have to stick to it. Add it into your daily schedule to practice for 30 mins - 2 hours daily or anytime you see fit. Make flash cards and test yourself, and what helped me when I was trying to learn Spanish, is to envision sentences, then pick them apart to see what each word means. I'm definitely not a spanish speaker, but I can piece together sentences based off a few key words I remember
I wanted to say "spend some time in Germany", then noticed your age... Hmm. I disagree with having to practice it every day, but try to make it a routine. Even if you just spend 15 minutes a day practicing it, it still works. What I did when I just moved to Germany was read articles on German news sites and webzines. Even though you might not get everything immediately, it will help you get an understanding of the language. And the more you read (and, of course, translate what you don't know), the easier it gets after a while.
Yep, reading will definitely help. You might also want to copy texts such as parts of a novel, story, or something you are reading online.
I know I probably shouldn't be giving advice on this since I failed German, but.... Although having said that I think the main reason I failed was because A) I didn't write enough and B) I didn't want to write much because we had to talk about our "ideal partner" and I was closeted at the time so I didn't like talking about such things even though I lied about the gender and sometimes just kept it neutral so it wasn't technically lying I still didn't like talking about it. It really depends how you learn best. I liked learning it by listening to German songs/watching films in German (with or without subtitles, depending on how much you want to challenge yourself) and basically just sticking with it. It's easy to lose a language so practice is essential. Good luck!
At my old school it was compulsory up till a certain point, I took it as an option though because I thought it would be useful to have at least one language. It was either that or French. And I'm not a big fan on learning French.
I second the reading. I'm an avid World War kind of girl, so I've picked up words and phrases, as well as name pronunciations, over the years, which has made speaking German a little easier. Of course, I'm still not able to have a casual conversation, but I know a few words and phrases. One of my favorite German names is 'Goebbels', which sounds like Gurr-bulls (rhymes with gerbils). It's so ridiculous...
I bought the Berlitz Basic German book and audio cd and I absolutely hate it. It's like the audio tells me to say a sentence but the actual sentence isn't written in the book and so I can't read what I'm saying! It pretty much focuses on speaking rather than reading and writing and that's not what I wanted. Uggghhhh... I like language books that is mostly book based and the audio is just to help with pronounciation and stuff but the Berlitz one is very audio based and the book is just like a little helper.... Uggghhh
It's too bad that the book and audio CD you have bought isn't as good as you thought it would be. Routledge might have something worthwhile looking into and to start with. Their Colloquial German series looks to be pretty good. You might be able to find it in a library as well.
You could also try a website like https://www.duolingo.com/ ! I didn't have the discipline to keep up with it, but it might be useful
Duolingo is incredibly useful for language learning, I've found. Apparently it only teaches you to the level a six-year-old child would speak, but I think that's inaccurate. I'm learning Spanish & French on it at the moment and think it's great. It uses spaced repetition to help you remember and the level of intensity increases as you improve, etc.
Going over verb tables to remember irregular verbs, sentence structure (especially the V2 structure and how and when to subordinate clauses and with which conjunctions you must do so) and learning the case system perfectly are absolutely necessary to be even moderately proficient in German. Also, try to speak German gently. It can be spoken very clearly and softly while sounding natural and quite German. To be honest, I don't think it's a good idea to learn without having a real teacher. German is a language whose rules are easy to break without constant corrections and supervision and it's ridiculously hard to understand some fairly essential filler words that come up in German a lot (using "doch", "gar" etc. correctly can be surprisingly hard to manage naturally) without a native or otherwise highly proficient teacher to guide you.
Is there any way you can talk to some native speakers of the language, either IRL, or perhaps via Skype? This can be a huge help. Also, you may want to find some German authors you like, and then try to read them in the original German.
Deutsch is a hard language to learn. I took German for 2 years in high school. (I didnt want to learn Spanish, and French wasnt offered.) "Der", "Die", and "Das" was always confusing for me. I dont remember much except letters, numbers, a few random words. I can also say important phrases such as "I am a baked potato." and "The Chicken is finger licking good." A couple of years ago I did teach myself the national anthem of Germany so all is not lost.
