Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Diese Kommentarsektion ist fortan Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

c/ich_iel

I'd only recommend Duolingo to dip a toe in. If after awhile you're wanting a bit more, I've had a good experience with Deutsch Welle's german course - https://learngerman.dw.com/en/learn-german/s-9528

Also Babel is excellent but pricey.

A man named Michel Thomas created a series of audio lessons to teach a number of languages, including German. He does it in a simulated classroom type of environment where one "student" makes common mistakes and he corrects them, so you get to hear someone else make the mistake first.

He also teaches you the necessary words to enable you to start understanding others speaking he language quickly. I found combining this with Duolingo and the super cheesy Extr@s TV series (once you have the basics) allowed me to go from 0 to speaking to people within 6 weeks and understanding 95% within 6 months.

I learnt Spanish and German from his audiobooks. They are worth the money if you can afford it and/or cannot pirate it.

Easy German on YT

Sendung mit der Maus

Seesam Straße

I can't say anything about it's quality, but Wikibooks has German.

Looks like it may be worthwhile as a or an additional starting resource, but maybe not more.

there was a study saying that there is not "the" best way of learning, but it is best to combine multiple ways, like with an app, by book, listening to audio only (i listened to radio stations via internet and got some exercise for free), a bit of talking, visiting a country that only speaks that language and so on. trying everything a bit in parallel.

that is because of our brain learns better when given more different types of "connections" to learn.

i started with duolingo (website only, not the app and only the free parts) 4 years ago and now i speak quite fluently. but i also partly read a book about grammatics, visited a spanish speaking country (more than once), viewed movies with only subtitle in my language and did lots of phone calls in spanish only.

my advice is:

look at free apps, whatever pleases you, take chances, listen to the sound (movies, radio), try to speak, and read easy books or go through exercise books.

duolingo is good to keep on going while not really motivated as the shortest thing that counts are really only minutes and one can choose to do something that is already easy. this way at least continuation is kept even if pace is down for a while. and it is much easier to go on with pace when not having really stopped.

Someone told me once they used ChatGPT as a tool to practice a language. I thought it was quite invovative

I second Duolingo and Drops for mostly vocabulary learning, and then I'd supplement with a textbook for grammar and a more structured learning experience. I keep seeing the everything learning german book recommended, but really, just choose whatever looks reasonable and go through it doing all the exercises