German group

[Elexi]

For those who can stomach kids' programmes - great beginners' level comprehensive input German can be found in the old Augsburger Puppenkiste productions - I picked up lots watching Jim Knopf und Lukas (which is great but not particularly pc by today's standards, if that bothers you) or Urmel aus dem Eis when my (bilingual) son was a toddler:

Jim Knopf und Lukas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpdgZaSNcrs
Jim Knopf und die Wilde 13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXdfMMmZ8yI
Urmel aus dem Eis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO-04vjeNrk

I aslo love Der Räuber Hotzenplotz series of books - the 1974 film is also easy-ish German:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btnVbV9zwTg

[M23]

Das Hotel ist in der Schillingstrasse. - Location
in die Straße einbiegen - Direction

It's even more complicated than just "in der Straße" and "in die Straße", since there is also "auf der Straße" (https://forum.wordreference.com/threads ... Fe.413628/)

Thank you for replying. I have had little to no experience with "auf der Straße" just yet, so I will have to check out the link you posted to prepare for it a little.

For me auf vs in is largely intuitive and I find it difficult to explain. Usually this sort of thing is sorted out by lots and lots of exposure. And Germans would definitely sometimes make mistakes with this too, because this is a sort of fleeting distinction where you can sometimes use both and other times one of the two will sound weird. This might also depend on regional dialects.

That is fair. I can certainly think of examples in my native language and in Spanish where I would be hard pressed to explain something, but just know that it sounds right through exposure. I'll just have to mentally prepare to keep my ears open and listen to how people say things.

[M23]

M23, it is about the difference between location and direction, as blaurebell said. The difference is similar to Latin grammar, there the difference lies between akkusativ and ablativ, if I remember correctly.

I recommend doing another course as well, not just Pimsleur. Themen Aktuell is really good, and the arbeitsbuch (the grammar explanations are there) is bilingual.

Exposure helps too, that is good news. But it takes time, as usual.

Thank you for the reply. I do have other materials that I would like to be utilizing, but life has been pretty hectic and actually finding the time to sit down with them has been a bit of a challenge. I have been focusing primarily on Pimsleur because I can do it while I am on the cardio equipment at the gym or commuting to work.

[Speakeasy]

M23, in the off-chance that you have not yet used the FSI German Basic course, you might be interested in reviewing and practicing the Unit 7, Part III, Substitution drills which deal with the “two-way prepositions" and the "verbs of location/movement" liegen/legen, stehen/stellen, as well as with the subsequent Variation and Vocabulary drills. In my experience, most course materials and grammars provide an adequate description of the proper use of these verbs and prepositions; however, I have yet to come across a course that provides as much practice material as does the aforementioned one.

EDITED: correction to text

[Speakeasy]

M23, as a continuation of my comments above, the thought occurred to me that you might enjoy the experience of working through the exercises of the DLI German Gateway course of which Module V deals specifically with prepositions (accusative, dative, two-way). (http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5584)

Whenever ericounet finds the time in his very busy schedule, he will host these materials on the FSI-Yojik.eu website. In the meantime, if you would like, I can send you the DLI German Gateway files via the SPREND file-transfer website. If you’re interested, please respond via the Private Message function and, in doing so, provide me with your Email address so that I SPREND can send you the link.

[Teango]

I was just checking out Cooljugator a moment ago and noticed that they suggest "Ich lern" for "I learn" in their conjugation table for lernen. As far as I'm aware, "lern" denotes the imperative mood, and the entry should read ich lerne instead. I also thought that the colloquial version (although not really appropriate for a formal conjugation table) ends in an apostrophe, i.e., ich lern'. When I type "ich lern" into Google, I currently get 77,600 results and don't see many apostrophes, so perhaps I was originally mistaken about the apostrophe or there's a new trend to omit the apostrophe in colloquial writing, or I'm missing something else here?

[Speakeasy]

... I also thought that the colloquial version (although not really appropriate for a formal conjugation table) ends in an apostrophe, i.e., ich lern'. When I type "ich lern" into Google, I currently get 77,600 results and don't see many apostrophes, so perhaps I was originally mistaken about the apostrophe or there's a new trend to omit the apostrophe in colloquial writing, or I'm missing something else here?

Thank you for the news flash. While I have no reason for expressing dismay or even surprise at this evolution, I must admit that it evokes in me a deep, wearied sigh.

[aokoye]

I was just checking out Cooljugator a moment ago and noticed that they suggest "Ich lern" for "I learn" in their conjugation table for lernen. As far as I'm aware, "lern" denotes the imperative mood, and the entry should read ich lerne instead. I also thought that the colloquial version (although not really appropriate for a formal conjugation table) ends in an apostrophe, i.e., ich lern'. When I type "ich lern" into Google, I currently get 77,600 results and don't see many apostrophes, so perhaps I was originally mistaken about the apostrophe or there's a new trend to omit the apostrophe in colloquial writing, or I'm missing something else here?

I just googled "ich lern" and skimmed the first ten pages of results. A number of them were about a book called "Ich lern einfach", some of them were using "lern" as a prefix (which is appropriate, some were lyrics of songs (which also seems logical given that lyrics are poetry), some were in grammar books showing "lern" as the stem, one was Yiddish, and then I got to this wikitionary page. It appears to say that "lern" is an appropriate (though likely not super common) first person singular conjugation of lernen.

[TrioLinguist]

Hey everyone, I'm pretty new on the forum and I'd like to join the German group. Since this is my first post, I suppose I'll give an outline of my German adventure thus far and give my opinions on what I've used so far, although I'll inevitably leave things out.

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In late 2014 I began by working through Duolingo's German course, and at first I never really thought I'd get as far as I have, since my previous attempts at learning a language had failed. However, Duolingo became a fun hobby and I committed to it, and quickly also Memrise (including their Duolingo vocab course) for a couple hours a day.

I also soon made use of Deutsche Welle's beginner learning resources, but unfortunately the ones I tried were disappointments. Mission Berlin, as engaging as it may have been, was pedagogically useless and I don't think I retained a thing from the little German that was to be heard amidst all the English. Radio D was just plain dreadful; the stories were mostly boring, for some reason dialects were introduced in at episode thirteen (If I'd started with this course, that's be less than two weeks in!) yet many other vital grammatical concepts were delayed or ignored entirely, and I don't think the talking computer's voice could be more traumatizingly unbearable. I still hear it now: BEEP! ACHTUNG! RECHERCHE! RECHERCHE!

That was a general demotivator, but I was also finding it more and more difficult to keep up with my targets on Duolingo and Memrise and learning became a chore. I was also distracted at the time by other things, so I burned out perhaps five months in. After three months of slacking and doing little in the way of learning German, I picked myself up and got back into the game. This time I was even more motivated, so I set out to finish up Duolingo, and improve my German beyond that as well. I discovered the free Deutsch - warum nicht? audio course on Deutsche Welle, and boy am I glad I did. This was probably the single best resource I've ever used for German, I simply loved everything about it. I don't want to write too much, but it's basically the opposite of Radio D so that should tell you a lot. I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone learning German. Except for the fact that translations of the dialogues (as well as an overview of all the vocabulary and grammar taught) are found in the appendices, which is made up for by the host guiding you through the lesson, it's quite similar to Assimil, which I also used for a while.

I also liked the followup Deutsch - wieso nicht? (that's wieso), which is not so much a course, but was valuable for its more extensive German-only content and helped me further with listening comprehension. It's apparently been taken down from the website and I really don't know why, I emailed them but didn't get a very satisfying response. In any case, I was lucky enough to have downloaded the mp3s and pdfs for it on my computer before that, so if anyone's still interested in the podcast, feel free to contact me about it. Another podcast I found valuable was the (also all-German) Grüße aus Deutschland, which was pretty entertaining, and included authentic German.

After that I moved on to the more advanced resources on Deutsche Welle like Sprachbar, Alltagsdeutsch and Top-Thema, which I used as intensive input. I should mention that for just about all the resources I used up to this point, I had been entering new vocabulary in my personalized Memrise courses similar to how people use Anki. However, at this level I felt like I was being held back by that, I spent hours a day putting together the courses , and then on top of that there was so much review to be done that I had to give it up, so to make up for that I resorted to repetition of content, which I much preferred. This went on a while until I started getting bored with it so I moved on to more authentic content: fiction. I set up a goal to read 1,000,000 words out of German fiction novels, which I keep track of in my signature, and I've been reading intensively for several months, although I intend to start reading extensively soon which will allow me reach my target a lot quicker.

I also acquired a lot of input from all the non-fiction content available at Planet Wissen, with programs and articles on all sorts of topics from archeology to bananas, although I've been using this less recently. All the while, I've also been following the German television drama Lindenstraße which has all episodes from 2015, 2016 and 2017 up on YouTube, and while the show isn't exactly 5 stars, it's been a great resource for spoken German, and the subtitles available often make it easier to look up unknown words.

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This post ended up longer than I intended, but congratulations/thanks for making it all the way here. I look forward to being part of the group and getting to know my fellow German enthusiasts.

[Finolia]

[...] As far as I'm aware, "lern" denotes the imperative mood, and the entry should read ich lerne instead. I also thought that the colloquial version (although not really appropriate for a formal conjugation table) ends in an apostrophe, i.e., ich lern'. When I type "ich lern" into Google, I currently get 77,600 results and don't see many apostrophes, so perhaps I was originally mistaken about the apostrophe or there's a new trend to omit the apostrophe in colloquial writing, or I'm missing something else here?

[...] and then I got to this wikitionary page. It appears to say that "lern" is an appropriate (though likely not super common) first person singular conjugation of lernen.

Hello I hope it's ok for a native speaker to butt in.
As you said "ich lern" is colloquial (or the imperative) and "ich lerne" would be the correct form. We just use it in spoken German or while chatting which is more or less speaking. As you said, you should never ever use it in a formal (in fact in any) text.
We often drop the final -e when we speak ("ich hab", "ich komm", ...) and since it's used to shorten words it wouldn't change anything if you would use an ' instead of the -e. That's why we don't use it in written German. In fact, the apostrophe is more work than simply writing the -e!
But I think you can use it if you want. Since it is "wrong" (colloquial) anyway there is no rule (as far as I know).

And since we drop it very very often (in spoken German!) it kind of IS "super common"