Is there any chance that you will be creating a German course?
Hello @Meaganh first and welcome to the forum.
Here are plans of many things but Iām not sure if German is in these plans too. Iād be very happy if it would be also as I have to revise my already long gained knowledge of the language. Iām sure when @aran comes back from Monte Carlo, heād be glad to answer your question or here might be @iestyn able to say some words about this also if his busy schedule allows him come here at one point.
Oh, and, are you learning any other language with SSi, like Welsh for example?
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We will definitely be bringing out a German course in the future, however, I canāt give a date, as it is not in the planning stage yet.
We plan to bring out as many languages as we can put courses together for, over the coming years, so that we can replicate the success of our Welsh course, and get as many people speaking additional languages as possible, but course production is a long process, even though we are developing ways of accelerating the process.
So keep watching for news, but donāt hold your breathā¦!
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Hi Maeganh,
In the mean time, maybe try www.youspeakgerman.com. Iāve only tried the first two so far. The lessons are uncannily similar to the SSIW lessons in their approach. Not as good as SSIW (no forum for a start!), but it might fill in while you wait!
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ā¦ and used to include a āthank youā to the SSiW course from a now-pretty-fluent Welsh speaker who learnt with us.
I know a few people who have used the course with great success, and I used to recommend it to people, but Iād forgotten all about it. Diolch Warren!
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I subscribe to that, but I wasnāt sure if it was ok to mention on here! But now the genie is out of the bottle, I guess. 
Itās certainly worth trying for anyone who likes the SSi approach, and until the SSiG is available.
It has a bit more explicit grammar than SSiW, but if you know any German, you sort of know why.
I didnāt try it yet but since I once spoke German quite well I might dig in a bit to see how it goes. My German fell into beauty sleep a while ago so it needs to be awaken. However even if I would have a chance to speak German with @brigitte every week since sheās native speaker, I nowdays donāt even start to use my German as all what comes out at the end is Cymraeg.
To be honest, I was a little disappointed that Mark removed the acknowledgement for SSiW - he chose not to work with us to produce a German course because he felt that our approach to giving so much away for free wouldnāt make it possible for him to make a living from it (and itās certainly true that we donāt have much spare cash sloshing around!) - but he was originally very open about the fact that his experiences learning Welsh with us had lead to his German course. He didnāt have access to the framework we were using at that point, but as he said, heād gone through the course and could reverse-engineer it himself (Iām not sure how well that actually works, but thatās a different matter). So it seemed fitting and honest that he had the thank-you note for that on his site.
But we donāt censor discussion of alternatives to SSi on here - as long as posts are friendly and polite to others (and donāt make other people feel uncomfortable or threatened) weāre happy
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Yah ā¦ but no SSi or you mentioned anywhere anymore. Not want to be rude but people many times forget too quickly those who helped them no matter what way ā¦
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Hi Iestyn,
If you need help with German voice overs I can help. Iām a native speaker as well as trained actor/speaker of the language.
Dan
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Sounds like a great offer Dan. I guess the effort will be writing a script and actually recording a series.
Iām struggling to enjoy the YouSpeakGerman course as much as SSiW. Various reasons for this. I imagine a SSi version would solve them.
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Thatās a very interesting comment - and if you felt like sharing the reasons (either here or in a PM) it would potentially be helpful for us as well - Iām always particularly keen to get insights into what doesnāt work for people - itās often more educational than hearing that things are working wellā¦
It is unfortunate that he doesnāt give a mention of SSi. I did the first YSG course, and the similarities to SSi were very very strong. Without going back to check, Iād say that the course scripts were in many cases taken directly from SSiW. Thatās not to say that Mark didnāt put in considerable effort, and indeed the course diverges from SSi in the later lessons.
I finished the YSG course 1 but had thought that the project was abandoned. I see that after a two year break Mark has finished the second lesson of Course 2. I do hope he keeps up with it, though I would be more enthusiastic about SSiG.
Reasons I am not enjoying YSG as much as SSiWā¦
- There is no forum. Meaning there isnāt anywhere to ask questions, or feel like you are part of a community of learners.
- After 3 months of learning, probably on average 20 minutes a day, I still donāt feel like I can say anything useful.
- The gap in which you repeat in German is never long enough. I think this is by design, you are supposed to use the pause button, but I really like a chance to get it right without always having to pause.
- Too much grammatical explanation.
- Variable lesson length.
- I find the āTarget language exercisesā useless and tend to just glaze over during this part of any lesson.
- Iād prefer the listening exercises to be a separate mp3.
- Once Iād signed up I found there was a download limit per week. They donāt want people signing up for a month and downloading everything then leaving. Fair enough, but I like to make one mp3 disk with everything on, not use 20 disks loading lessons as Iām allowed to download them.
All of this said, this course is still the closest thing to SSi that I can find. And perhaps part of the problem is that I donāt have the same level of committment to German as Welsh, and could have done with a German tourist course instead.
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Hugely interesting, Warren, diolch yn fawr iawn! The bits that I can compare to the SSi Method from that definitely ring a bell - and your preferences coincide with mineā¦
Itāll be even more interesting to hear your thoughts on the comparisons when we have some SSi Method stuff available for German - shouldnāt be all that much longer now - maybe in the new yearā¦
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Hardly wait. Iām just curious how much I would be able to renew my knowledge. I said I would try YSG, but I just (sorry but thatās how it is) donāt have a heart to do it. SSiW(hatever language) is a law for me ā¦
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We were early subscribers to youspeakgerman and eagerly waited for each new lesson as Mark wrote them. Having attempted to learn German over many years I have to say that the content was excellent and each and every lession helped me fill the gaps in my understanding that the years of conventional study had left. By the time I finished the first course my german had improved enormously. I even had the confidence to give a āfather of the brideā speech bi-lingually at my daughterās wedding in Austria. It was well received by native speakers and I was complemented on the natural feel of the words and grammer that I used.
If I were to give constructive critisism of the course, it would have to be that the lessons were too long. I addressed this by splitting each of mp3 files I downloaded into 2-3 sections each of around 20 mins (about as much as we could cope with in a single sitting). I also agree with Warren that splitting the listening exercises out into separate files would be a good idea.
German is a different beast to Welsh and the emphasis on grammar is essential to anyone wanting to speak german. I think Mark got the balance just about right. (Just my personal opinion).
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Yah, German grammar is āa beastā itself as taugh as Slovene comparring their definite articles with Slovene duality.
Iāve learnt German with quite different aproach learning by audio course āGerman 2000ā which taught learners everything in one go - grammar, reading, listening, understanding and speaking and it included exercises for each part of learning in course itself too. However there was not many special listening exercises or podcast in the time being as computering was still developing and Internet was not even near as developed and accessible to everyone then nowdays but Iāve learnt a lot as course was offeret āstep by stepā way. And it was in 3 steps so plenty of ātimeā to learn popeth (uh sorry ā¦ everything). However it didnāt teach conversational German but rather āhoch Deutschā and I still had to put a lot of effort to understand my motherās friendās husband who came from Schwabeland. Their dialect is more āawfulā then any Iāve heard before and usually they eat half of the words or they are spoken totally different way.
So, to come back on YSG topic ā¦ whatever is offered nowdays is in a way better then what we had earlier without Internet and surely there are many ways to listen to the speach now. I didnāt try YSG yet. To be honest - as Iāve written here once already - Iām waiting for SSiG to appear. The mentioned above course taught me German well, but Iām curious to know if it was well enough though.
Ah ā¦ and donāt ask @brigitte how I speak German since sheās native German speaker, because I just canāt speak. Cymraeg prevailed all languages so whenever I try to speak German (or any other language apart from my own and maybe Croatian) what comes to my mind are Cymraeg words. After being on bootcamp this happens with English many times also.
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