Improve your German: a guide for grad students and scholars

Reading knowledge of a language is a low standard to content oneself with. Furthermore, reading knowledge of a language is vastly improved if one is able to understand the same language when spoken. Where to begin? With audio recordings of the Bible, I suggest.

Perhaps you know long passages of the Bible very well, in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek; if not, in your mother tongue. If so, a great way to work on comprehension of spoken German is to listen to an audio recording of a biblical passage you know well. For example, go here for chapter-by-chapter audio recordings of the Luther Übersetzung NT 1956/AT 1964. It pays to listen to the tapes with and without accompanying written text, which one can open up in another window on one’s browser, from this site. One may also listen to an audio stream of a news flash while reading the equivalent in print on this site. Click on the image for access to the audio of the news clip.

Two other sites I recommend to those who wish to keep their biblical and theological German alive in a non-germanophone environment:

Mark Alterman      Theological German/Theologisches Deutsch

Die Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft  WiBiLex - Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet.

I am thankful that, while a student in Bielefeld at the Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel, I had the opportunity to hear a number of excellent scholars lecture in German. My comprehension of spoken German was weak at first, so I found it easiest to follow François Vouga lecture in German, precisely because German is not his first language. It was somewhat harder to understand the German of faculty members native to Switzerland. Hochdeutsch is not the first language of the Swiss, either. By the end of a year in Germany, however, I could follow most of what native German speakers said in in their Muttersprache. Practice makes perfect.

A full set of links for learning and keeping up one’s German is available here.

Practice your languages series

Improve your Italian: a Guide for grad students and scholars
Improve your German: a Guide  for grad students and scholars
Improve your French: a Guide for grad students and scholars

 

Comments

[Joshua Stewart]

Thanks