Figured I share part of my study routine for any other gamers here. Papers Please is one of my favorite games, you play as a guard at a border checkpoint processing people’s papers. It has an endless mode where you have infinite time, but can only make one mistake. I found that I could switch the games language to German and play this mode, since most of the text is travel centric and that’s what many early learners focus on. Plus, since there’s no timer, you can take as long as you need to read everything and make sure you understood it correctly.

I know lots of people recommend games like Stardew Valley or Pokemon for learning, but I find the vocabulary in Papers Please is much more applicable to daily life and easier to pick up on as a beginner. If anyone has any other game recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

I have tried duolingo and completed some basic lessons but going through that is painful and slow, requiring premium plan to learn continuously.

Is there any better app or online course that is recommended for an absolute beginner?

Danke.

I'm wondering about 'scheiß' as a predicative descriptor of nouns.

a) Mein scheiß Ausschlag geht einfach nicht weg.
b) Mein Scheißausschlag geht einfach nicht weg.
c) Mein Scheiß-Ausschlag geht einfach nicht weg.

I was wondering how to best spell this. What I found was that it should be b).
However, I would pronounce that without a pause then and the main stress on "scheiß", whereas when I say the sentence naturally, I make a pause between scheiß and Ausschlag and "Aus" carries the main stress in the cluster.

Are there any formalized 'rules' that account for this? Is it just me that feels like spelling it as a compound doesn't really capture what it feels like when we say it?

the ones that are supported by JobCenter/ArbeitsAmt.

Do you get a chance to redo the exam? Does it cause any issues with the JobCenter if you attended all lessons and studied hard but simply failed due to skill issue especially at sprechen part of the exam?

I am from America and I travelled through once from Frankfurt to Venice and am looking to go again, my last name is Wichser should that be a worry

Someone posted here about playing Papers Please in German. What are some other interesting mobile games with regular vocab and good german translation?

Hii Im 19F from Mozambique, und Im moving to Germany soon for Uni. I got Duolingo plus which is helpful but i feel like having human interaction would help more.

Preferably if your comfortable with me asking a lot of questions and sending voice notes to practice would be nice bc Im starting from scratch lol😭👍🏽

If you could tell your previous self to change one thing (or a few things), what would you say?

I’m self studying German and currently an around high A1 - low A2 level and I can basically understand 95% of what’s written in netzwerk neu A1 and even the words I don’t know, I can infer the meaning from the context usually. I can even compose sentences fairly well (given that AI feedback is accurate), but I really struggle to speak. It takes so much time for me to gather my thoughts i.e retrieval speed.

My current resources:
- Netzwerk Kursbuch
- Easy german videos (is it normal to not understand a lot of the words they say, or sometimes feel like they’re speaking too fast even in their beginner videos?)
- Grammatik Aktiv
- Your german teacher (to learn grammar)
- podcasts/beginner youtube stories shadowing and listening
- Occasionally diary writing (1-2x a week)

Of course I have a notebook where I write down new nouns (color coded by artikel), new verbs, trennbare verbs, adjectives + adverbs together. Currently I don’t pay too much attention to the plural form of nouns; will this be a major issue later on? Similarly, I don’t memorise all of the unregelmäßige verb conjugation.

I tried nicos weg on DW but I found it too fast for me to understand and I just felt completely lost; although their exercises did seem quite helpful. I’m not sure if I should try picking it up again.

Please advise me in the place of your inexperienced, past self. How can I optimise my leaning?

Hi everyone! I’m taking my B1 exam in two weeks and i’m starting to get really anxious.

I understand grammar well, and I’m pretty comfortable with reading and writing. My biggest problem is Sprechen. Because of some chaos in my personal life, I still haven’t properly consolidated some basic vocabulary. I’m afraid I’ll suddenly forget simple words during the speaking exam.

I honestly feel like I’ll probably be fine once I’m there, but I still have this insane fear of freezing up.

Is this normal? Did anyone else feel like this before their B1 exam? How did it go?

Also, what did y’all do during the last two weeks before the exam that turned out to be really useful?

Getting this certificate is really important to me, so I think that’s making me even more nervous.

Hey there,

I am a 22-year-old guy who is interested in learning German and reaching C1-proficiency. From what I read and heard from other people, it seems like a realistic goal to reach strong B2 level proficiency within a year.

But without living in German or being surrounded by native German speakers, is it still possible to reach C1-level? If so, how?

Generally curious about the differences in tone/implication/meaning. I know „ich habe dich lieb“ is a way of expressing fondness/love platonically. Does “Ich habe dich gern” have the same connotation, or does it imply liking someone in a more romantic way? Vielen Dank!

A) Ich habe das geschafft, weil ich ruhig geblieben bin und versucht habe, logisch zu denken.

B) Ich habe das geschafft, weil ich ruhig geblieben bin und ich habe versucht, logisch zu denken.

Are they both correct or not? If both correct, is there a difference in meaning?

Hi! Since we can prepare for T1 at home, I prepared the following text. Before I learn it by heart, I wanted to ask you guys, if it's good enough to pass B2. I'd appreciate any feedback since I study alone & this will be my first exam experience! Also would love to hear, what questions you would ask me, if you were my partner during the exam!

Ich komme aus der Türkei. Natürlich feiern wir Silvester, aber Weihnachten selbst feiern wir nicht. Deshalb war mein erstes richtiges Weihnachten etwas ganz Besonderes.

Ich lebe alleine in XX und habe hier keine Verwandten. Daher hat mich mein Freund YY zu seiner Familie nach ZZ eingeladen, wo wir eine ganze Woche verbracht haben.

Dort habe ich seine Mutter kennengelernt. Sie war unglaublich lieb und hat mich sofort wie ein Familienmitglied behandelt. Obwohl ich anfangs etwas nervös war, habe ich viel Deutsch mit ihr gesprochen und konnte dadurch meine Sprachkenntnisse verbessern.

Besonders interessant fand ich, den Ort kennenzulernen, an dem YY aufgewachsen ist. Ich komme aus Istanbul mit ungefähr 17 Millionen Einwohnern, während ZZ nur etwa 17.000 hat. Dieser Unterschied hat mir eine ganz neue Perspektive gegeben.

Ein anderer Teil der Reise, den ich sehr genossen habe, war, so viele neue deutsche Gerichte auszuprobieren.

An Weihnachten selbst waren wir zu Hause, haben zusammen gegessen und Geschenke ausgetauscht. Was mir besonders gefallen hat, war, dass ich mich bei seiner Familie nicht nur willkommen, sondern wirklich geliebt gefühlt habe.

Insgesamt war es eine wunderschöne Erfahrung, und ich freue mich schon darauf, noch viele weitere Weihnachten mit ihnen zu verbringen.

I had roughly one month to prepare intensively for the exam (had to leave my job and sit my ass down and try to study the whole day) and today I got my results:

Schreiben 72 out of 100

Lesen 90 out of 100

Sprechen 89 out of 100

Hören 83 out of 100

I was so nervous the whole month while I waited for my results cause my whole visa application is hanging on this exam but i actually did it!!

But yeah,I guess everything is possible if you actually decide to do it,no matter what:)

So I live in the French part of Switzerland and just started gymnasium. I’m just now realising that my old teacher practically skipped half of the curriculum , and that I’m completely behind on everything (especially grammar). My current teacher told me that I’d either have to take separate lessons or just change languages all together (Italian) which I can’t do.
How can i catch up as fast as possible? Does anyone know any decent apps? (I’d be ready to pay)

Today I had an exam for a job that requires German. I wanted this job so badly, and I studied really hard, but when I saw the questions, I just froze. I felt like I was done. I'm so disappointed and down right now. I really wanted this opportunity. What should I do? Please give me some advice. Anything.

Suggest me some discord server link for A2 level speaking practice also some german learning 🥲🥲

Hi everyone! I’m looking for an affordable exam center in Berlin where I can take the telc B1 exam in computer-based mode.

If you know any cheap and reliable centers, please share the name and location. Thanks!

Hi guys, I find different resources on the Telc C1 Beruf mündlich.

Are there 2 or 3 parts?

I know about a short presentation and questions and a discussion on another topic.

Some Handbuch mentions a third part though, an official meeting or sth.

Has anyone recently taken it and could tell me about it?

Thank you!

It's a bit of a classic question, but I'm currently at a b1 level (not solid b1) and since finding easy german content is hard, I decided to watch Tsubasa in deutsch. I'm enjoying it, feels like childhood and generally understanding the conversations but I wonder whether I should continue with subtitles or not? Sometimes it's hard to follow the conversations without subtitles and on the other hand they are not correct all the time since its youtube's automatic translation tool.