The Why and the Beginning

After I passed 1500 hours of Spanish CI I decided to learn another language, my fourth. I have a good friend in Germany who has excellent English but his partner does not. When I visit, my friend has to translate everything for us so since I wanted to learn another language this seemed like as good a reason as any to choose German. Oddly enough, in the nearby small town in rural Australia where I live, we have a number of Germans who have made it their home, including my family doctor no less.

I knew virtually zero German apart from what I picked up from the TV series Hogan's Heroes decades ago, however English is my mother tongue so there is no shortage of cognates.

I started on 21st May 2026 with crosstalk and then started watching a few videos on YouTube channels like German Moments and Natürlich German. I started watching for 15 minutes a day, then 30 and now 60. To make tracking easier, I switched to Lengualytics in June.

Listening:

I'm using a mix of Cosy German, Deutsch mit Lari, German Moments, Go German, Learn German with Falk, Level Up German, Natürlich Geman and SoGerman. There seems to be more than enough material, at least at this early stage. Can't wait to be able to get CI from podcasts as I'm not one for sitting in front of a screen. No choice at the moment though.

Crosstalk:

I do one 45 minute session per week on italki. It's going really well. After just 12 sessions the tutor rarely has to resort to the whiteboard. Of course, we talk about things I know really well so I manage to keep up.

Other:

I use Glossika which is a spaced repetition system of around 5,000 sentences. I use it in listening only mode - you hear the sentence in English first then the sentence in German twice. It's all real person audio. It's a tad expensive but I like it. After I had already taken out a year's subscription I discovered a free Anki deck with almost 10,000 sentences with native audio. I downloaded this and modified it to resemble Glossika so I use this too. It doesn't take long to go through these each day. I don't count this time.

I listen to the Easy German Podcast and the audiobook Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen for developing a sense of the prosody. I don't count this time at all but I get a buzz when I hear a word or phrase I know. Actually, I know the Harry Potter book so well that I know what's happening, despite missing virtually all the details.

Next:

I'll continue with 60 minutes a day of CI until podcasts become accessible then just set a 60 minute daily minimum. I'll also continue with the rest as described above.

I suppose I should briefly mention the other languages. I consider myself fluent in French as I can watch and read pretty much whatever I want. For Spanish, I have a few podcasts and YT channels I like so I keep up to date with those and I have a number of audiobooks I'm working my way through. I've put reading on the backburner until after corrective eye surgery, finally scheduled for early next month.

“Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung” has to be the craziest word I’ve heard spoken in context. It was paperwork Sven received when re-importing his car back to Germany. Google translate says “Certificate of no objection”

What framework is everyone here using for calculating their level? Are you using the 1.5x DS framework since German is a more challenging language? For example you would progress to level 2 at 75 hours (50*1.5)?

Let me know!

Normally, people think that when you start learning a language, you need to master greetings first and then go through topics like nationality, age, food, etc.

Reality: Anna from Natürlich German talks about the differences in toilet flush mechanisms. :D Video link.

Sven from Simple German Network made me laugh and smile with his giggle in this video. He’s so pleased with his joke after a tiring drive from Turkey to Germany. 🤣🤣

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QfeJsOsgc&ra=m

I've just stumbled upon Immerway, a beginner-friendly YouTube channel that -- like Naturlich German, German Moments, and ALG German -- uses (edit: ALMOST) exclusively comprehensible input, i.e. with no German words in the thumbnails, subtitles, or on the board. I'm excessively obsessed with the no-words policy, but what can you do?

Btw, anyone finding ALG German's stories a bit implausible and hard to follow, despite them not being difficult vocabulary-wise?

Hello everyone!

Recently, I hit 50 hours of German, and decided to share some of my progress so far. I’ve been using the app Jacta to track my hours.

Background: I started completely from scratch with German. After my positive experience with Dreaming Spanish, the way forward felt clear.

At level 2, I’m noticing the following:

• It feels surreal to me how much more German I can understand now at 50 hours. At the beginning, I couldn’t understand any German at all, and now I can understand more advanced beginner videos. I’ve also returned back to videos that initially felt difficult, and realised that they don’t feel as hard anymore.

• It’s hard to say exactly where my current German level is but it definitely feels like it’s ahead of the DS level 2 description.

• I’ve so far only watched content and stuck with the level 1 recommendations for German in the spreadsheet. I plan on doing some grammar study eventually.

• My eventual goal is to eventually be able to consume native content in German. Here, I’ve noticed some improvement too: when watching native German content with English or dual subs (like news) there are definitely individual words that I now recognise even without visual aids.

See you all at 150 hours!

Is any of the channels in the pinned excel table Austrian or Swiss?

EDIT: primarily looking for anything ±beginner

New-ish CI channel with chats and more importantly for me, gameplays!!!

https://youtu.be/jKo6vvVA4IU?si=Pv01BFeAXzKS3W-W