Learning German #
For some reason I got that question multiple times now from people that moved to Germany but work in companies where
English is the language to use for communication - how to best learn German (in addition finding people to talk
to).
When thinking about how I got started with English there were a few things that helped: As a child I got
some “made for learning English” crime stories to read. In 11th/12th grade we got a Newsweek subscription. When at
university I quickly learnt that translations of any man pages or help files to German were not really helpful so I
switched my Locale to English. In addition the dubbed versions of Futurama were no good - same for most movies you get
to see in cinema. Finally getting into open source meant that there was no other way for communication.
So what
sites are there that provide value to the average geek but are available only in German?
Blogs and online
resources
- Lawblog publishes
posts on legal related matters - despite the name mainly in German.
- Fefe’s blog
with all things IT
- Netzpolitik
- Digitale Gesellschaft
- Tim Pritlove’s blog - one of the first people who’s income is dominated by Flattr donations
Newspapers etc.
- Zeit
- Süddeutsche
- Heise
Newsticker
- Brand Eins (better to ignore the articles on copyright and
digital life though…)
Podcasts:
Some music and movies:
- Knorkator - if you are into fun metal.
- Ärzte - if you are into punk rock.
- Rainald Grebe - if you are into cabaret.
- Lola rennt
- 23
- Sonnenallee
- If you have children: At least in eastern Germany
the Sandmännchen famously helped generations of children to go to
sleep.
If you happen to live in Berlin - also take a look at local magazines pointing out current events and special exhibitions. There’s also quite a <a href=“ http://www.amazon.de/Berlin-literarisch-J%C3%BCrgen-Engler/dp/3746628105/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347351223&sr=8-2"
few books in and about Berlin. Make sure to safe some time to vist the Bundestag and book one of their lectures.
Update:
One hint from Thomas Koch: Die Deutsche Welle hat unglaublich viel Material, auch einen
kompletten mehrsemestrigen Deutschkurs als Podcast + begleitende PDFs.
Thomas, thanks! On a similar note - the archive of DRadio is also well worth a look.