Common Mistakes When Learning German and How To Avoid Them

Common Mistakes When Learning German and How To Avoid Them How to Learn German Fast Free of Mistakes ChaptersWhy is Learning German So Hard?Common Spelling Mistakes in GermanCommon Mispronunciations When Speaking GermanHow To Avoid Some Common German Grammar MistakesExceptions to Rules in German GrammarLearning a language is hard. Generally, you assume the beginning is the hardest, but there comes a point where you can build sentences without looking up words in the dictionary and your online language course is starting to actually be fun.Then, a few months in and you’re frustrated. You feel you are stagnating. You are making the same mistakes over and over, even though you know better. Sound familiar? Don’t worry! You have reached a learning plateau, a time where your brain is taking some time off to process everything you have already learned.To free yourself from this stagnation stage, you can try new methods of learning, or really sitting down and looking at your mistakes in a cool and logical fashion.Then there are other letters that are not pronounced exactly as they are i n English - “c” and “z”, for example - while some sounds don’t even exist in English, like “ch”.How To Avoid Some Common German Grammar MistakesGrammar is never easy, and German has many pitfalls for the unwary student. Photo credit: Internet Archive Book Images via VisualHuntUsing the right gender is possibly the most common challenge for anyone learning German; using the right case, the second. The third, of course, is where to put the verb.Where to put the verbIn normal sentences, within a main clause, the verb always comes second, no matter what comes first. In a subordinate clause, it comes at the end. When the verb form includes an auxiliary verb, the auxiliary comes second and the participle at the end in a main clause and at the very end after the participle in a subordinate clause. Infinitives in an infinitive clause come at the end as well, but if you are asking a question without using a question word, the verb comes first.Little mistakes that are easy to ma keBut little things can trip you up just as well - whether to use “wenn” or “wann” when you mean “when” (it’s complicated), “will” or “werde” when you mean “will” (”werde”), and whether to negate with “kein” or with “nicht” (”Kein” is for negating nouns while “nicht” negates verbs.)Exceptions to Rules in German GrammarGerman would not be a proper language if it didn’t have exceptions.The “weaker” sex: second-declension masculinesThough German has the decency to only decline the articles, and not the nouns themselves (with the exception of the genitive, of course). But then comes the so-called “second declension” or “weak masculines” (and one neuter, “das Herz”), in which the masculine in question gets an “-n” or “-en” at every case except the nominative. The fascinating thing is that there are exceptions to these exceptions, with second declensions that follow a different pattern.Every language has exceptions to its rules of grammar and spelling. German simply has less than most. Photo credit: Anne-Marie Yee via Visualhunt.comGerman verbs with an inseparable prefixWhile in most marriages between a verb and a prefix the two have an open relationship, with the prefix often wandering off on its own to the end of a sentence, there is a group of verbs where the two are as inseparable as lovebirds. Specific prefixes that remain attached are: Be-, Emp-, Ent-, Er-, Ge-, Miss-, Ver-, Voll- and Zer-.German prepositions using the genitive caseWhile most prepositions we learn about take either the accusative or the dative, there is a small, rather elitist group that takes the genitive. These are words that are often considered as belonging to a more elegant language and so do not appear that often in everyday speech. The more common ones, such as “wegen”, “während”, “trotz” and “dank”, are regularly used with the dative when speaking, a practice that is gaining more and more acceptanc e among grammarians.At home in GermanWhen speaking of home, the German language has a few oddities. While you otherwise go “zur Apotheke” or “zu Lidl”, you go “nach Hause”, but once you’re there, you are “zu Hause”. The little “e” at the end is a fossil, left over from a time when the noun was also declined.Despite these difficulties, learning German is very rewarding - don’t let your mistakes keep you down. Remember, even German native speakers make mistakes, and they speak it every day! Learn German online  with Superprof tutors. We have thousands of tutors across the world teaching german via webcam. You can also get face to face tutors wherever you are. Whether it be german courses London, Glasgow, Belfast or Cardiff.