Hiyo,
I want to learn German. Here's what I think would be amazing.

A children's story book, dual language, left side in German, right side in English, along with an audio book recording.

Is such thing available? I would be so glad to have something like that.

--evan

Lucumo

6850 Posts

September 01 2011 05:15 GMT

Hm...something like this?

http://www.languagelizard.com/German-s/2729.htm

But it looks like the audio cds lack German =/

wherebugsgo

Japan10647 Posts

September 01 2011 05:22 GMT

As a student of German/Spanish I'm not sure that would be at all useful in actually learning German.

Full translations generally handicap your ability to learn a language because they do the work for you. Whatever floats your boat though, I guess. EDIT: Not to mention, a translation of a story/entire passage tells you very little, if anything, about the grammar and structure of a sentence, because German word order is drastically different from English. Indeed, a lot of German grammar (the case system, for example) is completely nonexistent in English, so a translation does you no good. There are multiple different words for "the" alone which you could never hope to learn the rules for simply through a translation.

If you're serious about learning German and becoming conversational in it/being able to read/write it, you should get a good German->English dictionary (with at LEAST 40,000 entries) and a decent textbook such as Kontakte. Then all you need are conversational partners and the Internet for practice. wordreference.com is great, and also once you get up to speed you can start reading Google News in German, set your facebook to German, read wikipedia in German, etc.

nepeta

1872 Posts

September 01 2011 07:43 GMT

I second the motion to buy a good dictionary, if you are serious about learning a language, it is well worth the investment. Buy a Duden (not the 100 part edition, there should be a 1 book as well

) www.sharedtalk.com could also be an option, it's a website where people are teaching languages to eachother over skype and chat. Other than that, as you apparently already know english and have acces to the internet, there are wikipedia, youtube and a lot of sites which offer online quizzes and whatnot. You could also buy some German films with subtitles, or listen to German music (Wir sind Helden, Rammstein :p).

RubiksCube

Germany259 Posts

September 01 2011 08:28 GMT

Actually there are quiete a lot of books like you mention:

I'm sure you can find them on American websites, too.

Sufficiency

Canada23833 Posts

September 01 2011 09:02 GMT

Shouldn't you find out the textbook they use for the intro German courses at Berkeley? Do they offer such a thing?

Velr

Switzerland10698 Posts

September 01 2011 09:53 GMT

I doubt this is a good method to learn a language.

When learning a language you should be as much "into" the language as possible, you should "think" in the language you learn, non stop searching 100% translations isn't good and does you no good because you constantly fall back into your mothertongue.

If you have some basic skills you should just look up sentences/words you did not understand at all, i would advise you to look for explanations in the language you want to learn.
If you do not understand enough to at least read simple texts, well you need to learn "words" not translate texts...

RubiksCube

Germany259 Posts

September 01 2011 10:08 GMT

They way I actually learned english was by watching a movie I had seen in German for like a hundred times in English instead then starting to read books and watch movies in English.

But I also had English in school so I had something to built up upon.

Yanami

Germany49 Posts

September 01 2011 10:24 GMT

On September 01 2011 19:08 RubiksCube wrote:
They way I actually learned english was by watching a movie I had seen in German for like a hundred times in English instead then starting to read books and watch movies in English.

But I also had English in school so I had something to built up upon.

What he said, basically.
Yeah, if you have some basics it's kind of easy.
I learned English by playing games on Engish most of the time. :D

I guess the easiest way is to join some German course for beginners.
But such thngs as bilingual books might only teach you certain sentences, but not the language.

Sleight

2471 Posts

September 01 2011 15:07 GMT

#10

German is interesting for a couple ways. I would recommend learning German in German (aka watching, reading, listening to German stuff). That's how I learned and compared to most English speakers I know, I have bit more of a subtle grasp on the language. There are a lot of colloquialism, definitions, and phrasings that make less sense in English and if you get hung up on trying to understand them "verbatim" right away, it will impede your ability to speak like a born and raised German speaker.

Number 1 thing you should do is work on pronouncing German words EXACTLY like the German of your choice. Bad accents make the German Baby Jesus cry. The German R is a pretty unique sound to the language in the Western world (shared with an Arabic letter called the "gayn"). It is NOT an English or French R if you say it correctly. Things like this I feel are very important.

Number 2 thing is you need to speak a lot and have someone there to correct you as necessary. German has infinite rules and cases that are specific or require just learning by rote (re: all the articles). The more you speak, the easier it is.

Cheers!

wherebugsgo

Japan10647 Posts

September 01 2011 18:48 GMT

#11

Berkeley uses Kontakte, I have it and it's a great book.

gurrpp

United States437 Posts

September 01 2011 20:57 GMT

#12

On September 01 2011 14:05 evanthebouncy! wrote:
Hiyo,
I want to learn German. Here's what I think would be amazing.

A children's story book, dual language, left side in German, right side in English, along with an audio book recording.

Is such thing available? I would be so glad to have something like that.

--evan

Not exactly a children's book, but I have a dual language faust lying around. I may also have die Nibelungen as well, but I'd have to go check. Also used to have two copies of some halo book (1 in english 1 in german). Overall reading dual language books is a bad way to learn new languages, but they're better for picking up new vocab than reading a thesaurus or dictionary.