Learn German: How to Get Started and Make Progress Fast

German is one of the most useful languages in Europe. Whether you're thinking of learning a new language for work, study, or travel, German will open up new opportunities for you.

Once you've decided to learn, there's another important question: where to get started. Here, we've compiled a guide to your most common questions, as well as a step-by-step manual to tackling the language for beginners.

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• Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide to German

• Is German Hard to Learn?

• The Best Resources To Learn German

• How Long Does It Take To Learn German?

• Our Best German Tips

German has a reputation for being one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. While it's true that it's a challenge, it's certainly not the hardest. English, after all, is a Germanic language, and so there are many parts of the language that should come naturally to you. Let's break down the trickiest and easiest parts of the German language.

What Makes German Hard To Learn

• Grammatical Gender — every noun in German is masculine, feminine, or neuter, which doesn't happen at all in English (unless you're counting pronouns).

• Cases — in English, a word doesn't usually change if its role in the sentence changes. German, however, takes into account whether a word is nominative (the subject of a sentence), accusative (the object of a sentence), dative (the indirect object of a sentence), or genitive (the possessor of something, which in English is shown with apostrophe s).

• Word Order — while English follows a pretty constant Subject-Verb-Object word order, German is a little more complicated. The most common order is still Subject-Verb-Object, but it can also be Object-Verb-Subject. This goes back to the Cases mentioned above, which allow you to move where nouns are in a sentence without changing the meaning. The only fixed rule is that the main verb is in the second position of the sentence, and auxiliary verbs go at the very end. This may all sound complex, but take the rules one at a time and you'll be able to make larger and larger sentences.

• Long, Long Words — if you've never studied German before, you probably still know that the language is famous for its long words. And they can certainly be intimidating, especially when you're trying to pronounce them. That said, these long words break down into easily digestible pieces. Take Schreibtischlampe, which can be broken down into Schreib ("writing") + Tisch ("table" or "desk") + Lampe ("lamp"). Learning basic words will help you build up to these more complicated compounds.

What Makes German Easy To Learn

• Similar Alphabet — with the exception of the umlauts that appear on letters like Ä, Ö and Ü, you're starting off pretty much knowing the entire German alphabet. Its pronunciation rules are also pretty simple, so all you need is a bit of practice to get speaking.

• Shared Vocabulary — as already mentioned, German and English are related, and so share over half of their vocabulary. While you'll still need to be careful of false friends, you're likely to recognize quite a few words.

• Present Tense — English has four different present tenses, depending on whether the action is ongoing, habitual, etc. German, on the other hand, has only one. For a beginner learner mostly using the present tense, that makes things much easier. This present tense can also be used for the future, so that's two time periods checked off.

• Past Tense — German does have three past tenses, but in conversation you really only use the Perfekt tense. If your goal is just being able to talk to other German speakers, focussing on this tense alone will get you there pretty quickly.

While this may sound like a simple enough question, the answer depends on a number of different factors. To give you a straightforward answer, the United States Foreign Language Training service puts an exact number: 828 class hours, or about 36 weeks of intensive study. If you're planning on taking an intensive job where you need to be very advanced in the language, that's a pretty good estimate. Here's a rough estimate based on some other, common goals for the language:

Vacation to Germany (or another German-speaking country)
Roughly: 15 to 30 minutes a day for three weeks
If you're just interested in getting some basics down before a trip, then you can get there pretty quickly. Focus on the topics you'll need the most: saying hello to people, ordering food, checking into your hotel, and so on.

Simple Conversations
Roughly: 30 minutes a day for three months
Want to try making real connections with people? We'd recommend at least a few months of study, though once again you don't need to make a big commitment every day. You might be surprised just how quickly you'll be able to have quick conversations with people.

Move to Germany
Roughly: 9 months of 30-45 minutes a day
For the record, this recommendation is more a starting point, with the idea that once you move to the country you'll be in a new kind of immersion course. If you're regularly practicing for nine months or more, though, you should be able to get a solid grounding in the language.

Start a New Career
Roughly: 2 years of 30-45 minutes a day
If you want to get a job where you're using German, things are of course a bit more serious. While technically you could stick to a daily schedule like the one above, we'd recommend trying more intensive options, like immersion courses, which will help you speed up your progress.

Brain Training
Roughly: however much you want!
Studies have shown that learning a language is great exercise for the brain. If you're learning a language for the cognitive benefits, then there's really no set deadline. Just make sure you're working on it regularly — even for just 10 minutes a day — and after a few weeks you'll hopefully see good progress.