Anyone studying German here?

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

Just wondering.

After having done Japanese for (blush ) 10 years and using anki for the last few, I am ready to take on a new langague using the ladder method idea.

Why German? Not really sure, I just wanted to try my hand and something completely differnt that I have ZERO back ground in.

Here is a list of resources I have collected so far and my plan of attack. I hope to get some feedback and gereate an exchange of ideas:

For Anki:
1. book2 website
http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/JA/JADE/JADE002.HTM

Japanese-German (E-G also) example words and VERY short sentences with sound files sorted by theme. I grabed the sound files with the downloadthemall plug in for firefox and copy and paste to anki. Since I NO idea how to read or pornounce german, this seems like a good and simple start.

100 themes with about 20 examples per theme so about 3 months to go thru this.

2. Basic-German-Vocabulary-Langenscheidt

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-German-Voca … 3468494009

The KO of german! 4000 sentences grouped choosen by frequency of use and grouped by themes. I did a bit of searching and found a text version avaible for download and will use this to copy and paste into anki after finishing the above. No sound files though....

20 a day will get me thru it in about 6 months

For Listening:

1. FSI course

Ypu know, the free course that is like very old but lots of audio and such? You can find it for free (legal) with a little serching. I think its a bit boring so I just kind of burned the cds and threw them in the car to listen a bit while driving.

2. Pimsleur German

I know its not perfect, but I think its not bad if you no NOTHING about the langague before getting started. I'm doing a lesson a day.

3. streming radio from germany

http://www.live-radio.net/info.shtml

lots of good streaming radio here. good to turn on in the day time.

I also got a book in Japanese for learning german. It has all the grammar explanations.

What do you think and what do you recomend?

mentat_kgs Member

From: Brasil Registered: 2008-04-18 Posts: 1671 Website

Ah, I have this same dictionary for Portuguese/German!

frlmarty Member

From: EC Registered: 2009-01-25 Posts: 123

maybe this streaming works as well where you live:

tagesthemen.de

news in german, presented by trained speakers. :-)

JapanesePod101 Sponsor

kame3 Member

From: Netherlands Registered: 2009-09-01 Posts: 133

Yeah, I am just beginning (again) to study German aswell. I have bigger advantages than you though: my native tongue is Dutch, which is quite similar to German, and I already studied German for 3 years in high school. However in spite of these things, my German ability is pretty poor, especially my speaking ability (listening/understanding is ok).

I found this website:
http://www.german-grammar.de/grammar/co … ontent.htm

An extensive grammar site (maybe German's Tae Kim ) and sound files.

Are you already making the German Anki deck with sound files? If so, I would love it if you share it

Evil_Dragon Member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-08-21 Posts: 683

For those who are interested in German literature there's Projekt Gutenberg:
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/

Well, most stuff would be too advanced for beginners, but it might be a great motivator.

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

For listening, don't forget Germanpod101.com.

zazen666 wrote:
2. Basic-German-Vocabulary-Langenscheidt

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-German-Voca … 3468494009

The KO of german! 4000 sentences grouped choosen by frequency of use and grouped by themes. I did a bit of searching and found a text version avaible for download and will use this to copy and paste into anki after finishing the above. No sound files though....

Yes, this book is the equivalent of KO2001 for German. I like it very much. As for audio, I recommend you to use TTS using Klaus voice from Acapela. It's better than many English voices. I don't knwo why, maybe because German is more phonetic than English.

1. book2 website
http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/JA/JADE/JADE002.HTM

Not very good. The only thing I like in this website is that you can download the audio files in any pair of the 42 languages they offer (e.g. Finnish <> Vietnames, or Hindi <> Croatian.) I wish there are more websites that offer similar options.

Last edited by ahibba (2009 December 03, 9:16 pm)

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

kame3 wrote:
Are you already making the German Anki deck with sound files? If so, I would love it if you share it

Sure, I'll sure the deck when Im done with it, but that is like 3 months from now.

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

ahibba wrote:
For listening, don't forget Germanpod101.com.

zazen666 wrote:
2. Basic-German-Vocabulary-Langenscheidt

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-German-Voca … 3468494009

The KO of german! 4000 sentences grouped choosen by frequency of use and grouped by themes. I did a bit of searching and found a text version avaible for download and will use this to copy and paste into anki after finishing the above. No sound files though....
Yes, this book is the equivalent of KO2001 for German. I like it very much. As for audio, I recommend you to use TTS using Klaus voice from Acapela. It's better than many English voices. I don't knwo why, maybe because German is more phonetic than English.

1. book2 website
http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/JA/JADE/JADE002.HTM
Not very good. The only thing I like in this website is that you can download the audio files in any pair of the 42 languages they offer (e.g. Finnish <> Vietnames, or Hindi <> Croatian.) I wish there are more websites that offer similar options.

I wish I could figure out how to add the voice to the GermanKO, it is just beyond me how that works, what software to use, how to get it to work with MAC, etc. I hope that by going thru book2 first i'll get some reading down by then.

By the way, why do you think the book2 is not good. Unnatural?

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

kame3 wrote:
Yeah, I am just beginning (again) to study German aswell. I have bigger advantages than you though: my native tongue is Dutch, which is quite similar to German, and I already studied German for 3 years in high school. However in spite of these things, my German ability is pretty poor, especially my speaking ability (listening/understanding is ok).

I found this website:
http://www.german-grammar.de/grammar/co … ontent.htm

An extensive grammar site (maybe German's Tae Kim ) and sound files.

Are you already making the German Anki deck with sound files? If so, I would love it if you share it

This site looks decent.

Last edited by zazen666 (2009 December 03, 10:32 pm)

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

Found this site with example sentences, some texts to read, other stuff as well.

http://www.german-flashcards.com/

and some good grammar stuff w/ fairy tales

http://tltc.la.utexas.edu/gg/

Proxx Member

From: ドイツ Registered: 2007-01-26 Posts: 149 Website

Here you can find clips from German television:

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/#/hauptn … tartseite/
http://www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/

I prefer the first one. Search for Japan and you will find some intersting stuff about it!

kame3 Member

From: Netherlands Registered: 2009-09-01 Posts: 133

zazen666 wrote:
kame3 wrote:
Are you already making the German Anki deck with sound files? If so, I would love it if you share it
Sure, I'll sure the deck when Im done with it, but that is like 3 months from now.

I think there is an option on the Anki website, where you share the deck and if you add things, it is also added on my deck. I think it is called 'Subscriptions'. Maybe you want to share it there?

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

zazen666 wrote:
I wish I could figure out how to add the voice to the GermanKO, it is

just beyond me how that works, what software to use, how to get it to work with MAC,

etc. I hope that by going thru book2 first i'll get some reading down by then.

By the way, why do you think the book2 is not good. Unnatural?

Use the official software of Acapela, Infovox Desktop, or get the German voice only (I

recommend Klaus or Sarah voices) and use it with any text-to-speech software (e.g.

TextAloud.) There is a version of Acapela software for Mac called Infovox iVox. TextAloud is available for Windows only, but there are many alternatives to it for Mac users. You can find some of them in this link:

http://www.nextup.com/mac.html

Regarding book2, I think it is no more than a phrasebook or close to it.

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

So If I buy this Ghostreader for mac which seems to include a german voice, that will be all I need to start making sound files out of any text for anki?

http://sites.fastspring.com/nextup/prod … rthamerica

Am I right with this?

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

kame3 wrote:
zazen666 wrote:
kame3 wrote:
Are you already making the German Anki deck with sound files? If so, I would love it if you share it
Sure, I'll sure the deck when Im done with it, but that is like 3 months from now.
I think there is an option on the Anki website, where you share the deck and if you add things, it is also added on my deck. I think it is called 'Subscriptions'. Maybe you want to share it there?

I'll look into that a bit. I have already started adding other stuff to the deck including persona grammar notes which may or may not be helpfull to someone.

thorstenu Member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-12-22 Posts: 99

ahibba wrote:
[...]
zazen666 wrote:
2. Basic-German-Vocabulary-Langenscheidt

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-German-Voca … 3468494009

The KO of german![...]
Yes, this book is the equivalent of KO2001 for German.

I don't want to disappoint you, but we don't use Kanjis or any similar writing system in Germany.

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

thorstenu wrote:
ahibba wrote:
[...]
zazen666 wrote:
2. Basic-German-Vocabulary-Langenscheidt

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-German-Voca … 3468494009

The KO of german![...]
Yes, this book is the equivalent of KO2001 for German.
I don't want to disappoint you, but we don't use Kanjis or any similar writing system in Germany.

Um...was that a joke or did you not understand the reference/ see the link?

If you were trying to be helpfull, (or if I just dont get the humor, totaly possible) then yes, I do understand that kanji does not (unfortuntaly) exsist in the german langauge. Well except the "ten ten" possibly......

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

I don't know about the German voice of GhostReader, but Klaus voice of Acapela sounds like this:

http://dsa7.fileflyer.com/d/2c6ae2b8-fc … german.mp3

http://www.fileflyer.com/view/1ezmRBT

The sentences are taken from page 1 of Basic German Vocabulary.

***

thorstenu, you were used to use a writing system that looks like kanjis , although it was not a logographic system.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … nrunes.JPG

http://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/asrunes.gif

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … nicus.jpeg

but does it mean that the current German orthography make it harder to learn German than Japanese?

Evil_Dragon Member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-08-21 Posts: 683

ahibba wrote:
I don't know about the German voice of GhostReader, but Klaus voice of Acapela sounds like this:

http://dsa7.fileflyer.com/d/2c6ae2b8-fc … german.mp3

The first three examples sound quite natural to me. Pretty impressive.

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

So ahibba, if I get that particular voice from one place, then ALSO the ghost reader software, I'll be able to use it with anki, copying text from different sources and output to mp3 or other sound file?

I'm a newbie to the whole text to speech so i'm not sure if Im clear on how it works.

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

And I wonder if anyone know a good site to search sentences from english to german for stuff to paste into anki? (smart fm sucks)

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

i downloaded a trail version of this and it looks pretty decent. ill play with it a bit and update later

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

zazen666 wrote:
And I wonder if anyone know a good site to search sentences from english to german for stuff to paste into anki? (smart fm sucks)

This site has more than 1000 good sentences in German with the English translations and audio (real audio), but it will cost you about 9 euro for 6 months subscription. They don't have subscriptions for 1 month or less:

http://comprehencia.com/en/wordlist/c_german

Tatoeba is another good site, and it's free. It has about 1800 sentences without audio:

http://tatoeba.fr

zazen666 Member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-09 Posts: 667

thank you very much. I'll check them out.

update about ghost reader-have been using it all day and works well. very east to use, make mp3 and put into anki. thanks for the info all.

now if I could just find a text transcrip of the pimselure tapes to thow into anki.....

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

zazen666 wrote:
now if I could just find a text transcrip of the pimselure tapes to thow into anki.....

This is the complete trancscript of Pimsleur German Unit 1 (30 lessons):

http://www.fileflyer.com/view/WlagkB6

and this is the complete transcript of Pimsleur German Unit 2 (except the last 6 lessons):

http://www.fileflyer.com/view/3PI2gAr

(you cannot find these transcripts elsewhere on the internet and the links are temporary, so download them as soon as possible.)

You will not need the transcript of Unit 3, because when you reach this level, you will have good command in German and you will be familiarized with its sounds.

BTW, if you subscribe to comprehencia.com, please share the 1200 example sentences in German (and the other languages, since the 9 euro subscription is for all of them.)

Also please share any Anki deck you make, and don't be.....

Last edited by ahibba (2009 December 05, 10:10 am)

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kame3 wrote:

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ahibba wrote:

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thorstenu wrote:

ahibba wrote:

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ahibba wrote:

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