Maybe I'm being too pedantic, but I found some errors on the first few pages and am wondering about the accuracy of the rest.<p><a href="https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/introduction/" rel="nofollow">https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/introduction/</a>: "Einfluß" and "Zusammenfluß" have officially been spelled "Einfluss" and "Zusammenfluss" since the reform of 1996, i.e., since before much of this book's audience was born. "beeinflüssen" should be "beeinflussen".<p><a href="https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/noun-gender-nominative-case/" rel="nofollow">https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/noun-gender-no...</a>: Not an error of German per se, but I find "memorizing the gender of every noun is not particularly important" and "It is recommended that, as you learn the nouns you choose to memorize, you learn each noun with its definite article" contradictory and confusing.<p>On the same page: "All nouns that end in –ei, –heit, –ie, –in, –keit, –schaft, –tät, –ung are feminine." Counterexamples I came up with in a minute or so: <i>der</i> Brei, <i>das</i> Allerlei, <i>das</i> Benzin. The reason is that in these cases -ei and -in are not suffixes in the same sense as they are in the common case illustrated by the authors' examples, but a beginner would not be able to tell.<p>This feels like it could be a better resource with more attention to small details.
I've found that the main difficulty in learning a new language is not so much in picking up structure, but vocabulary! This book seems to address the first, but not so much the second.<p>I happen to be learning German and Latvian right now. The way I'm approaching them is to find easy-level texts (<a href="https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de" rel="nofollow">https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de</a> for German, children's books for Latvian), and reading a couple of paragraphs. Whenever I find a word I don't know, I use Google Translate, and add it to a custom Anki deck. Then I practice vocabulary every day.<p>This is a slightly more structured way of how I learned English back in the day (my English improved tremendously by playing Monkey Island, especially trying to understand the pirate insults).
I'd love to see this sort of thing in many languages. I have no interest in conversational language learning or being able to write in any language. My primary interest in any foreign language is to be able to read and comprehend literature in that language (both ancient and modern).
I wish German was the language of international communication (rather than English; I love English but I don’t like it, and I am yet to meet a non-native speaker who wouldn’t have a horrible accent and who wouldn’t make a lot of mistakes). German is the modern Latin.
> If you need help with English grammar while working through this textbook, we recommend, for example, English Grammar for Students of German<p>I find this surprisingly specific. A help book on the source language specific to the target language... What part of English grammar is only important to students of German but not students of Dutch or Polish?<p>I'm a French native speaker trying to improve my Spanish at the moment. Should I brush up on French shenanigans (yes even native speakers make mistakes and need reference material) from a Romance language point of view?
This technical approach is how I tried and failed to learn German. In the end what worked was exposure/absorption and getting a feel for what sounds right - the same way I learnt my native language.
As a native speaker I find it fascinating to read through the course.<p>OT: is there a good source for interlinear translations of texts on the Internet? In whatever languages? I‘ve never come across such a source.
Just as a tip to those who find the text somewhat light (too light grey, perhaps also a little thin): there are add-ons that can turn off CSS and make it easier on the eyes. For me, turning off CSS and making the browser window a little less wide makes the "book" (website) a lot nicer to read.<p>Screenshot without CSS: <a href="https://snipboard.io/tkyu9Z.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://snipboard.io/tkyu9Z.jpg</a><p>Add-on that I used: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/css-toggler/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/css-toggler/</a>
I would recommend the Duolingo German from English course instead. It has an app, so you can practice wherever you are, it has grammar, audio, speech recognition, spaced repitition (how ever much you want of that) and gameification. Duolingo courses and exercises are also improved through data-based methods.<p>I have completed Spanish, Mandarin and Norwegian. The Spanish and Norwegian ones are very comprehensive, the Mandarin tops off at around 1000 words. German also seems to be one of their most polished languages, contrasted with courses in Hawaiian and Navajo.
I'd just like to point out that University of Wisconsin's German department has been putting out great German learning material for about 100 years now. If you're lucky enough to live in a university town with used book stores and a foreign language section, you may find old primers there. There's even a dialect of German called Wisconsin High German:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_German" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_German</a>