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🇩🇪 Free course

Learn German — German for beginners (A1)

Hold a simple conversation in German: greet, introduce yourself, ask questions, shop, and understand everyday German.

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What you will learn

  1. German sounds: the alphabet, umlauts and pronunciation
    German is spelled the way it sounds: learn about a dozen rules this week and you can read a Munich train announcement aloud before you understand a word of it.
  2. Greetings and introducing yourself
    Four sentences — name, country, city, what you do — plus one choice between du and Sie get you through your first day in Germany.
  3. Sein and haben: the two verbs you need first
    Two irregular verbs — sein (to be) and haben (to have) — carry about a third of what you will say in your first month in Germany. Learn their twelve forms tonight.
  4. Nouns, gender and the articles der, die, das
    In German the spoon is masculine, the fork feminine and the knife neuter. You cannot reason your way to a noun's gender — but endings give it away more often than you think.
  5. Numbers, dates and telling the time
    German says 47 as 'seven-and-forty' and 8:30 as 'half nine'. Two reversals — and once you see them, every price, platform and appointment makes sense.
  6. Regular verbs in the present tense
    One set of six endings — e, st, t, en, t, en — conjugates hundreds of German verbs. And German has no '-ing': ich lerne means I learn, I am learning and, with a time word, I will learn.
  7. Word order: the verb comes second, and questions
    In a German statement the verb is always the second element — so 'Today I learn German' becomes Heute lerne ich Deutsch. One rule, and your sentences stop sounding translated.
  8. Food, shopping and everyday phrases
    Ich hätte gern einen Kaffee, zwei Brötchen und die Rechnung — with three phrases and one ending (einen), you can feed yourself in Germany from day one.

How the course works