I'll let other people answer on the language acquisition part of this, since I'm well into my second decade of learning German (and my fourth of learning English, for that matter) and I still haven't gotten to the point of deciding that it's good enough for my purposes. But there are a couple of points I think might help with later responses:

1. I assume English is your native language. If it's not, and you originally spoke, say, Danish before moving to an English-speaking country, do specify. Learning German will be easier if you have a basis in another Germanic language (besides English).

2. When you say "history course," do you mean a single class, or a whole program? In the latter case, you'll have time to develop your German skills while you're attending various classes. In the former, you need to be as ready as you're going to get by the first day.

3. Are you planning on actually taking a language class or doing some other formal language acquisition (tutoring, etc.), or on trying to get there through self-study? If you were planning on devoting 10 hours a week to formal classroom instruction, you might well achieve very different results than you would by studying on your own.

Thanks for the response.

My native language is English, and I haven't studied any Germanic languages besides. I'm fairly proficent in Latin though, which although obviously not in the same linguistic family, is a declined tongue. From what I understand, German is the same. So maybe that might stand to me?

I'm planning on starting a phd on Charlemagne. I don't necessarily need German, but a huge amount of the literature has been written by German historians so it would be a huge advantage.

Until I begin the course, it'll likely be entirely self-taught, as I live in a small town and I don't think there's anything in the way of German languahe support. Unless I'm willing to shell out a $$$ for private tutorials, which I would if I could afford them! Is there a German equivalent of Alliance Francaise?

At the moment I'm just looking for advice on basic grammar books and the like. I want to dip my toes a little before I take the plunge.

My questions would be,

1. How good are you at French? Can you use the right masculine and feminine pronouns? Conjugate regular and irregular verbs, in all tenses? Use the subjunctive, and know which verbs form the past tense with être instead of avoir (IIRC)? If so, all that will help you in German. The same things won't always be masculine and feminine, and the subjunctive rules will be somewhat different, but at least you will be familiar with the concept of grammar concepts that are different from English.

2. How good are you at English grammar? Can you easily identify subject, verb, object, indirect object? How good are you at Latin? Can you recognize masculine-feminine-neuter and nominative-accusative-dative-genitive, knowing which words are in which cases and why, not just sort of guessing? If so, that will help you a lot with German. If not, you will need to brush up grammar for both Latin and German. (But the good news is that German doesn't have the ablative or the vocative. Whew. (-; )

3. How good are you at noticing and remembering details? German is easier than French in some respects, mainly pronunciation and spelling -- but your English spelling leaves a bit to be desired, so you may find you need to do a little extra work to learn correct German, as opposed to just in-the-ballpark. Even for a reading exam, if you don't pay attention to spelling you risk mixing up both grammar and vocabulary; one letter here or there can make a big difference.

And who knows, you might want to speak German some day, for travel or singing or who knows what; or you might simply find out that you like German, sort of like a puzzle, a game, a mental challenge. We all did. (-: So if you can find what's interesting about it for you, you're likely to learn faster and have more fun doing it.

Maybe people can suggest a few interesting places to browse history in your period on a beginner level, or sources for vocabulary. You might like Asterix?

*edit*

Sorry, I had written part of this, went away and came back, and failed to F5 and see your earlier response.

>>that might stand to me?

I think I understand what you mean, but I wouldn't have expected that verb from a native English speaker, though your English is otherwise very good.

The German equivalent of Alliance Française is the Goethe-Institut, but I'm not sure they have any distance-learning offerings, only in cities, and they're not cheap.

Any grammar book or even travel phrasebook will get you started, and there are introductory materials online -- Deutsche Welle, a couple of universities with good German departments (Michigan? Exeter?), and for vocabulary, if you don't mind the cookies, About.com. A good intermediate reference is called 1001 Pitfalls, I think published by Barron's. I like the grammar books by Martin Durrell, which come in several levels. There are teachers in the forum who may have other suggestions; check back in a day or two.

Charlemagne sounds interesting. Good luck. (-:

or you might simply find out that you like German, sort of like a puzzle, a game, a mental challenge. We all did.


hm -- us, why don't you explain to Einhard how you learnt German?

Your advice is sound, as always, and since it is so much easier today to listen to German radio and TV / films online, this might be another good source as an alternative to actually travelling to the Germany and immersing yourself in the language.

Friends of mine have taught themselves French with Rosetta Stone and swear by it, but it is very expensive:

http://www.rosettastone.com/learn-german

And I apologise to my previous posters who stress grammatical rules and genders and the like: I think that if you want to learn German primarily because you want to be able to understand scholarly articles, you actually don't need to bother so much about grammatical niceties, perfect spelling and good pronunciation. :-)

Good luck.

I definitely agree with hm -- us that a sound grammar basis in other languages, be it English or French or Latin or whatever, will help a great deal. But just because of the differentiated thinking structures this enables..., and for the English grammar because English is a Germanic language.
But French—the masculine/feminine thing is completely different, you could as well toss a coin instead of deducing from French to German. And the subjunctive does not even really exist in German. There is the Konjunktiv, which is a form of a Subjunctive, true. But in fact, Swiss (I don't know about Germans) Students don't even learn in school that our Konjunktiv is about what the subjunctive is in other languages until maturity (if at all). And there is no optative character to it whatsoever.

So, when learning German you can forget about French genders and subjunctive, 100%.

I agree though that for the decision whether être or avoir is the proper aux verb, French might help. But don't rely on it.

And, as far as I understand you want to learn German so you can (double) check historical sources in the original language.. For that you don't need to know about genders and moods, vocab will be the crux.

My suggestion as always, if you already have a little bit of experience with German, go to Amazon and buy a season Tatort.

I think that with your French and Latin, and that you are starting a PhD on Charlemagne, you sound reasonably self-motivated. Go to your university's bookstore and pick up the textbook that they use for the German for Reading Knowledge course. 8-10 hours a week would be just fine for finishing it in 9 months. With your French and Latin, you won't find any ugly surprises in German. (I'm not saying they're identical, but you will be prepared to expect the typical weird stuff that happens in other languages, as other commenters have alluded to already.)

I am currently doing the opposite as you--with a German background, trying to learn to read French. I have a book called French for Reading. The intro says you can finish it in 2 semesters and be on the level to read scholarly articles. These types of books are aimed at self-learners.

You can do it, good luck!

Do you mean Charlemagne in Liège, Belgium?
Are you currently studying at a university? Maybe you can find other (history) students from Germany who will be able to help you or tutor you (for a small fee). (There are lots of Germans in Liège.) Some universities also offer all sorts of language courses for your study needs, so you might check that out.

If you need to read historic texts, keep in mind that German (like any other language) has undergone some changes, such as grammatical structures or words which simply don't exist any more. So I assume you need a rather special vocabulary.
Maybe you can start with a text you already know in English and then try to read and understand the German version, to get a feeling for the language.

(I remember there was someone in the Leo Language Lab who read an 18th century travel book (? or something similar) and we tried to help him understand the sentence structure... )

But I also think that with French and Latin you won't find any suprises in German. A friend of mine who is doing a PhD in philosophy learned German, because he thought he would understand Heidegger better - only to find out that his texts are even worse in the original ;) (Heidegger's language is very special)

I think he means Charlemagne, Charles I King of the Franks. :-)

Oh.. my mistake.. I misread the on Charlemagne for at Charlemagne.
But there still might be language classes or German speakers at the university Einhard is studying at.

*lol* Learning German for Heidegger... das ist natürlich frustrierend. Dann will man im Wörterbuch nachsehen und findet prompt den ganzen Kram wieder nicht, das Sein und das So-Sein und das Dings und das Bums... *kicher*
Immerhin besser als der Typ, der Tschechisch gelernt hat, um Kafka im Original zu lesen.

Es hat in der Geschichte schon einmal einen Einhard gegeben, den Einhard, der die Vita Caroli Magni ("Leben Karls des Großen") geschrieben hat.

And I think that's the reason why "our" Einhard calls himself Einhard. :-)

tigger, ...oder Englisch um Glenkill im Original zu lesen. *grins*

Gnagnagna, lyri...

@Einhard18: I guess you meant Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus, Charles the Great, Karl der Große (Imperator Romanorum - from 800 to his death in 814).

I normally don’t write in English because it not my mother language: Even if Jools was mistaken in which king you meant, Jools was right to indicate that the German language did not exist in those days, there were many languages spoken in the Carolus empire (most of them do not exist anymore). The only written language was Latin. So why do you want to learn German?

Uri³ I guess Einhard refers to historians who wrote about Charlemagne, not necessary from the days of Charlemagne, more recent but of German origin
(Charlemagne=Karl der Große)
And as I am commenting:
If you want to read German history texts, I would not go for Rosettastone - or at least test it extensively before you purchase it
(I was using it for a while and did not like it)

@Dixie: „Uri³ I guess Einhard refers to historians who wrote about Charlemagne, not necessary from the days of Charlemagne, more recent but of German origin.”
Dann würde man aber nicht über Karl den Großen recherchieren, sondern über dessen Rezeptionsgeschichte. Für diesen Zweck wären Französisch und Deutsch hilfreich.

Einhards Aussage “I'm planning on starting a phd on Charlemagne” lässt viel Raum für Interpretation. Man könnte sich diesem Sinn auch über Geflogenheiten in Sachen Ernährung, Körperhygiene, ehelichen Umgang, Gepflogenheiten auf Reisen oder Kinderziehung äußern.

Ich denke, Einhard sollte uns sagen, um was es ihm geht – sofern er das schon weiß.

huge amount of the literature has been written by German historians

I would never have interpreted this as anything other than literature on Charlemagne by modern historians (or at least not much earlier than 19th century).

German is my native language so I cannot really give advice on how to learn it as a foreign language but I would have thought that 9 months are plenty to achieve a reasonable reading comprehension. Something you might want to try out is reading German wikipedia articles on your topic and find out how much you understand. That costs nothing and it would be close to the skills you will actually need for your research. At some point you will want a grammar book to look things up and also to get a more coherent picture but working through some articles would be a more interesting starting point I believe.

I (German) would second what Beel is writing :-) (Hope you don't mind ;-)

When you study Theology in Germany, you got to learn Hebrew, Greek and Latin to read the scriptures. These reading skills are much easier acquired than speaking or oral comprehension skills. German is pretty logical (at least compared to French...) so I would right dive into the library for some German textbooks and get started ;-)

rosettastone is fine, but mainly for learning a language with the objective of communicating, not for reading. With good Latin skills you can read and understand e.g. Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portugese (Brazilian) etc. Reading skills are much easier acquired than speaking skills, let alone oral comprehension skills.

Wikipedia is a great suggestion, because some of the articles are at least partly translations, while others are written from scratch by separate authors. It could be fun just to compare articles in German and English (and French) -- armed with a textbook on German for reading knowledge, with lists of prefixes and suffixes and so on.

There might even be some cute add-in you could download (does LEO even have one?) that would translate a word when you click on it or mouse over it.

#15: I guess you meant Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus, Charles the Great, Karl der Große...

Normally known as Charlemagne in English, though, AFAIK (and as indicated in #16).

OT
... and pronounced to rhyme with 'champagne,' just in case that's also a surprise. (-:

Since Einhard18 has a good command of Latin, I would recommend to read Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni in a German translation with the Latin original beside it.

(Reclam Paperback, ISBN-10: 3150019966, EUR 3,40)

Einhard, I take it that your primary motivation is to develop skill in reading German. In that case, you will find the grammar significantly easier than Latin. I think that the main difficulty in developing a significant proficiency in a short time will be learning vocabulary. For us native English speakers, developing reading proficiency in French is made easy because so very many words are similar to English. In German, once you get beyond the simple everyday vocabulary (words like hand, finger, house, mother, and hundreds more), you'll find the technical vocabulary to be different, and to require study.

A couple of illustrative examples:
History - histoire - Geschichte
Independence - indépendance - Unabhängigkeit
reason (2 senses) - raison (both senses) - Grund / Vernunft
rebellion - rébellion - Aufstand

... and thousands more. Be prepared for long hours of studying words, words, and more words.

Guten Tag, Einhard18!