Learn to speak German

1. 1

   Week 1: sounds and greetings

   Say hello (Hallo) and thank you (Danke) until they feel natural. Learn the sounds that differ from English, and say ten short sentences about yourself. In German the verb sits in second place in a simple sentence and jumps to the end of many others. Building sentences from a word bank, then saying them aloud, makes that pattern automatic instead of something you work out each time.

2. 2

   Week 2: everyday requests

   Learn to order, ask the price, ask where things are and say you do not understand. Build each as a full sentence and say it three times.

3. 3

   Week 3: questions and answers

   Practise question words and the answers to them. Listen to each German sentence first, then say it, then compare.

4. 4

   Week 4: short exchanges

   Chain sentences into a mini conversation: greet, introduce yourself, ask a question, answer one. Record yourself and listen back.

German uses the Latin alphabet, so you can read and sound out words from day one.

Pronunciation is fairly regular and many words are close to English. Cases, genders and verb position are the real work, and they are easier to absorb as whole sentences than as rules.

A good first target sentence: Wie spät ist es? (What time is it?).

• Ten to twenty minutes, same time every day.
• Say everything out loud, even when alone.
• Learn whole sentences, not isolated words.
• Repeat yesterday's sentences before learning new ones.
• After a couple of weeks, find a conversation partner or tutor and use what you have practised. At 30 minutes a day, German reaches working proficiency in roughly 4.9 years, and you will be speaking well before that.

Go deeper with most common German words, useful German phrases, and German verb conjugations.