Hi all,
Will keep this brief as I'm not sure this is the proper place. I'm attending grad school (in the US, I'm from the US) next fall and plan to learn German to satisfy my language proficiency. I want to get a head start and am exploring the best avenues for learning in the year leading up to graduate studies. There are private language-learning schools as well as local community colleges and universities, with tuition/reputation varying. I'm also exploring self-taught avenues like books, CDs, apps, etc (but I tend to do better in a structured environment). I wonder if anyone might be able to point me towards some resources that could help guide me in the right direction (or, the right thread if this isn't it) as well as to offer any first-hand experience as far as how you learned and what you'd recommend as first steps for a beginner?
Thanks (danke...?) in advance!
English speaker here, learning German for a few years now....
Have you ever learned a second language before? It's very useful to become acquainted with grammatical concepts so that you can see parallels between the languages.
This little book is pretty good for that
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0934034311/?tag=neogaf0e-20
You will need lots and lots of vocabulary to play with.
When I first started I used this site
https://www.memrise.com/
It's like a flash-card site for vocabulary.
Search for German.
There is one course that is for beginners that includes 1000 of the most common words.
Also, there is a person who says the word whenever you type it in, so that will help you start to understand the pronunciation.
You need to start listening to German sooner rather than later. Even though you can't understand it now, you have to "immerse" (be prepared to hear this word a lot) yourself in it so that you start training your ear to hear the rhythm of the language.
http://dradiowissen.de/ is online streaming radio you could listen to with a lot of talking.
Since you are on NeoGAF I guess you like video games, so something more interesting for you might be to watch German Let's Plays.
Just search "German (or Deutsch) Let's Play..." whatever game you like.
The player will usually be commenting on what is happening on the screen, which gives you some visual cues to help you understand what they are saying.
Also if you have questions or want to talk you can message me about German. I have no one to talk about German with so I'd find it interesting
(sorry for mega-English post in Deutsch thread, lulz, yolo)