Hello, my dear friends,
I am interested in learning German, but don't know how to get started. I am from Taiwan, a native Chinese teacher, can speak English and Spanish, is that easy for me to learn German? Looking for someone who can kindly give me some instruction for German learning and I will be glad to practice Chinese Mandarin with him or her in return. I can also help him or her find the beauty of Chinese literature, Confucius Classics, and the Wisdom of Lao-Tse. Wish to find someone who can help me learn polite German language and enjoys Chinese Mandarin speaking. Hopefully we can be friends and share one another's culture. Please email me or come on line to see and talk to me on Skype.
My Email:commonwealth_language@hotmail.com
Skype:lovechineseforever
Sincerely,
Julia

ni hao Julia?
Also chinese but born overseas. I actually speak other languages better than mandarin which I find a shame. Would glad to exchange mail with you if you could improve my mandarin....
Well, english and german as languages come from the same root. But it doesn't necessarily mean that knowing english would make learning german easier. But consider this, since you know spanish and in spanish you have to conjugate verbs, that's already a plus. The grammatical structure is the tough part in german. Its not as easy as spanish but it's learnable.... just needs patience and effort.
To learn german, I would recommend a good language school. Maybe you have a Goethe Institute in Taiwan, for example? I learned german in this School in Frankfurt and after 2 months I'm up to a level where I can at least work in German which is really great. Only down side to it is that its expensive.... On the other hand if you want, there are online german courses for free here are some sites that you can check out.

http://german.about.com/library/anfa...ang_inhalt.htm
http://webgerman.com/germlinks/

give me a feedback on how you find the sites and welcome to the forum.

This is a very funny essay about how much fun learning German is, written by Mark Twain after he attempted to learn German while living in the area many years ago.

http://www.single-serving.com/German/awful.php

Interesting article!! I was nodding in agreement the whole time while reading.

Someone said once to me, learning basic german is not difficult, but polishing that up and being fluent in it would require a lot more work than in the initial beginners' phase.

I so agree.

Aye, it's funny because it's true.

"Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected."

True ... true

There's a fast learning method called 'Pimsleur', but it really depends on your aim. If you want to speak the language, Pimsleur appears to be the shortcut to build up at least a base vocabulary for conversation. However, to understand structure and read/write German takes quite a bit longer. I never really learned formal German but it's part of my home dialect (I grew up in the south of the Netherlands) so I have a reasonable vocabulary grasp of the structure by sheer exposure. Also note that German is not Swiss German.

My theory is that getting to a conversational standard will get you much quicker into a position where you can USE the language and thus assimilate structure (grammar, syntax) and more vocabulary on the fly which must be better than just cramming it from a book and CDs.

I'm going to use that theory as I have need to lean Spanish. I'll probably try and start with Pimsleur, so I can at least start listening to TV/radio in that language, then work my way through a Berlitz pack for vocab, reading and writing. From my few years in Belgium I know I have little talent for languages so I need all the help I can get :-). Oh, BTW, aim for CD based courses as you can copy them into an iPod and listen to them while travelling..

/// P ///