In the intro to one of his songs, Bodo Wartke makes a kind of a joke based on a Frenchwoman saying "oui" and him hearing it as the German word "wie". It always seemed a bit of a stretch to me because, for me as a native English speaker, those two words don't really sound alike.

Only after the millionth view did it suddenly occur to me that they might sound similar to a native German speaker (because German doesn't have the sound written as /w/ in IPA, which is at the start of "oiu"). Is this the case?

Edit: Based on some of the answers, I don't think I made it clear enough what I'm asking. I'm not asking if those two words sound identical. I'm asking if they sound similar enough for the joke to work without seeming forced. If I could edit the title, I would change "like" to "similar to".

Hi all,

How do you learn new words and what is your routine?

I have been using Mochi cards for a year but feels so slow to upload my vocab and not so effective the learning.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I use “also” way too often and it’s not just me. Pretty much all the non native German speakers I know use it a lot too. Do native speakers notice this as well, and does it sound unnatural?

Hey everyone, when I was a little kid, I used to play Pokémon Yellow and Final Fantasy IX with a translation dictionary beside me so I could try to understand the games' stories while learning English. Fast forward a couple of decades, and now, much older, I find myself learning German. I've been studying it for some time now, but only through textbooks and apps, never with professionally guided or anything like that.

I feel like I've kind of hit a roadblock in my foreign language studies. It feels demotivating to keep going on using only these mediums, which made me think about returning to my roots: learning while having fun gaming, which's when Sacred came into the picture. I found out that this is a German-made game, and, upon first launching it, I tried comparing the German and English versions. While the English voice actors are good, the German ones are simply superb and feel much more alive. This sparked my interest in German all over again, although it required a lot of effort to understand what was being said, since my language level is only around A2, probably between A1 and A2.

With those points in mind, I tried playing the game in German, and... it took me over an hour just to get through the first few minutes. Yeah, it felt like a huge slog. That made me feel old, seeing as kid-me would've had the rock-solid patience to endure that painfully slow and momentum-breaking pace, but older-me... not so much.

Now I come to you, fellow redditors, to ask: do you think it is a good idea to keep pushing through the slog at a glacial pace to learn the language, or will I just burn out quickly and end up dropping both the game and my German studies?

Ich halte auch "In Stahlgewittern" von Ernst Jünger in bedenken.

Ich weiss, ich habe nicht erwaehnt, was mich dazu bewegt hat, mehrere Sprachen auf einmal zu lernen, oder gar ausgerechnet die Sprachen, die ich gelernt habe, also ich dachte mir ich schreib hier kurz was, um euch aufzuklaeren. Im Grunde habe ich mich einfach nur aus Langweile dazu entschieden, als Nebenprojekt/Hobby Sprachen zu lernen, und zwar hatte ich da nicht vor, jemals irgendeine der Sprachen wirklich fliessend sprechen zu koennen. Also, irgendwann waehrendessen habe ich festgestellt, dass ich sehr gerne Sprachen lerne. Ich habe aber nur weiter Deutsch und Spanisch gelernt, und hin und wieder auch Russisch (weil diese drei Sprachen fuer mich am meisten Spass gemacht haben). Duolingo war auch uebrigens nicht meine einzige Ressource, sondern ich habe im Internet auch diese Sprachen mit Videos und mit Uebersetzern weitergelernt. Lasst mich gerne wissen, ob ihr noch Fragen habt!

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Hey everyone. What is the difference between „fast“, „ungefähr“, „etwa“ und „circa“? I’m only slightly familiar with “fast” out of these words and I have mostly seen it in expressions like „fast immer” or „fast nie“.

I have 2 questions:

1: what is the main difference between them?

2: can I use them all interchangeably? (For example instead of saying „fast immer“, can I say „ungefähr immer“ and so on?

Hallo zusammen,
ich wohne seit 3 Jahren in Deutschland. Ich studiere hier und mein Bachelor ist auf Englisch. Mein Ziel ist es, mein Studium auf Deutsch weiterzumachen.
Am Anfang war Deutsch eigentlich schwierig für mich. Jetzt verstehe ich 80 % des Kontexts, ich spreche Deutsch mit Kunden bei der Arbeit und normalerweise sind meine Ergebnisse nicht schlecht, wenn ich Texte auf C1-Niveau lese oder Übungen mache. Trotzdem habe ich Angst vor der B2-Prüfung. Ich habe noch keinen Termin vereinbart, weil ich zu viel Angst habe. Hat jemand einen Ratschlag für mich?
Vielen Dank!

I was researching the word "fear" in different languages and came across a forum discussing different words for fear.

One of the users claimed that the German word for fear, angst, likely came from the indogermanic "angh", which meant (as I interpreted it) narrow, and "-st", which meant "belonging to". They ended by combining the two, saying "belonging to narrowness."

I'm essentially quoting what the user said in their post, but it's possible I misinterpreted some parts.

Is there any validity to these claims? And if so, why would the word "fear" come from those roots? As a monolingual English speaker, I don't quite understand this, but I find it very interesting and am curious to know more.

Edit: Thank you for the help everyone!

EN: I have been dating a German man for a few months and would like to tell him that I’m falling in love with him - but not quite ready to say “i love you.” What is the best way to say it? Is “Ich verliebe Mich in dich” correct, and something that Germans would normally say to each other?

Thank you!

—-

DE: Ich bin seit einigen Monaten mit einem Deutschen zusammen und möchte ihm sagen, dass ich mich in ihn verliebe – bin aber noch nicht ganz bereit, „Ich liebe dich“ zu sagen. Wie sage ich es ihm am besten? “Ich verliebe Mich in dich”?

Vielen dank!!

I'm working on progressing towards B2 and made some Blookets using a few of these wordlists; I thought I'd share them just in case anyone else wanted to use them, though do keep in mind that, as I mostly made them for myself, I did leave out a couple words which I already knew well. I am likely going to make some more over the next few days, but right now I have ones for academic words, urban words, and politics-related words. All of the questions are in typing mode. Hope someone finds this helpful!

Also, if there is anyone who has not used Blooket before, I would recommend either clicking "play solo" and then going to the study mode and checking the "mastery mode" box, which will make the words you don't get right repeat, or, if you want to go through all the words once, hosting the game and then joining it in a separate window.

I apologize if this quesion sounds ignorant im still pretty new to german.

I understand that certain separable verbs have the "an" and does mean something different (ex: kommen vs ankommen, fangen vs anfangen). However, I feel there are some verbs where the "an" does not really change the meaning from the original. Examples I can think of include gucken vs angucken (both meaning "to look at/watch") and sich fühlen vs sich anfühlen. From my understanding, the "an" does not add anything to the meaning. Would someone let me know if I'm mistaken and these are actually meaningfully different or are they really interchangeable?

So guys, I didn't pay enough attention in class during B1 courses, nor in B2.1 courses, and I've never studied B2.2 anyway. I reviewed B1 on my own for now, and now I'm going to take the B2 telc exam at the beginning of 2027 or in December 2026, and I feel like the model tests are too hard for me! I mean, I recently started doing the model tests, and I usually get 10/25 points in the Leseverstehen section. The texts feel too hard to understand, especially since they are full of long, difficult words. The Hören section feels cursed because I don't understand the audio (and the quality is trash, btw). Probably, for now, the best I'm doing is Teil 1 in Sprachbausteine, where I usually get 9/15, and to be honest, I haven't seen all the parts yet! As for the Mündlich section, it doesn't feel that hard, even if I make some primitive mistakes—like one day I said 'ich habe nicht kein...' Well, any advice, strategy, or whatever? Because I really don't want to spend too much money redoing that exam over and over

hello , i have a doubt .. in Goethe if i have passed three sections reading speaking and listening but failed in writing , will the other certificates be of no use. I gave my exams in india, and i will be moving to germnay in few days .. can i give the schreiben exam in germany , and can they give me the full certificate if i give schreiben in Germany , If no, will the other sections certificate.. that i have passed in be of use.

i live in germany for 6 months now, sep 11 i will hvae my prufüng on telc b2 and i am pretty afraid of not doing good. almost all exercises fom lesenvertehen i can only 3/5 and i am not sure if i can do the hörenteil so good, the only thing i think i can do a little better is the schreftlicher teil and mündlicher teil. i am getting anxious cuz no matter what i do i still feel i cant do it. does someone also felt like that before doing this prufüng? what made yall calm down and do good? i know i only have around 3 chances to do it and it makes me a way worse. i did a sprachkurs since i got here in germany but it doesnt make me feel any better about this exam cuz all i see is people saying this is hard af 😭😭😭 i am studying everyday what i have difficulties since last week, that was when my sprachkurs ended and that week until friday i will do some exercise from telc site.

Is the another alternative to "Das ist deine/Ihre Entscheidung"?

Hi I’ve just recently started trying to learn German, I’ve been using a lot of Duolingo and have been reading a 15 minute German book in my free time which has been very helpful but was just wondering if anyone has any advice on improving German grammar since I find it quite difficult.

I'm having trouble getting the slot for my remaining Goethe exam for Listening and Reading. It's been twice now that I tried to get exam slot position for my remaining modules, I've even stayed up all night to make sure I was on the dot when registration is opened but the exam slot is gone in a second.

I've heard the B1 modules are modular and Goethe and ÖSD works together to develop the exam. So is it possible to combine my Goethe's B1 Speaking and Writing modules with ÖSD's Listening and Reading modules and how may I do that?

I'm not sure if it matter but I live in Indonesia :)

We used to have HiNative but now it's locked behind a paywall, what other similar free alternatives would you recommend? (other than hellotalk)

Hey all! Thank you so much for the interest you showed to https://tja.progapanda.org that I shared here recently. Since the last version I have added more verbs, separable and insaparable prefixes are now highlighted differently and the stressing is clearly shown. The website has also been ported to French and Russian. Thank you for your support and please send me in more verbs to add and report any mistakes in translations.

You can also add the website to your Home Screen on iOS and Android to use it offline a separate app.

The project remains open source and completely free, with no sign up, and will remain so for the future.

I signed-up for MHz Choice specifically in order to watch shows in German in order to expand vocabulary and sentence structure. Unfortunately, I just discovered that I can’t switch between English and German closed captioning to verify what I think I heard in German.

Is this a problem for anyone else? Anyone have a workaround? Or possibly some advice I haven’t thought of?

Thanks!

Hallo everyone,

I’m was about to sign up for a A2.2 semester class in Paris. It’s 1.5hr in person + 1.5hr online per week. But aside from the 725€ tuition, they add another 250€ for « administrative fees » which I find quite excessive, and another 120€ for the mandatory CLOE exam at the end. So that’s a total of 1095€ just for one semester. Is Goethe-Institut really worth it? I’m becoming quite hesitant.

Thank you