How to Choose Authentic Songs to Help You Learn German

You want to learn German, but you do not want to study a grammar book. Perhaps you can try to learn from a song in German? This article will show you how to choose authentic songs to help you learn German. Authentic songs are created for native speakers of a language by native speakers of the language. In this case that language is German. Learning grammatical concepts in authentic songs allows you to see the grammar in a natural context rather than a context manufactured for language learners. Learning grammar in naturally occurring contexts will help your language develop more organically rather than mechanically.

As you look for songs to help you learn German, there are a few criteria you should use to choose which songs will be best for you. First, you need to find a song that has a good rate of speech. You do not want the singer to be firing off long threads of sound of which you only manage to catch one or two intelligible words due how fast the artist is singing. If you really like a fast song that you would like to analyze, YouTube does have a solution for the speed. When you open the song’s video, you will click on the settings to change the playback speed to be .75, .5, or even .25 of the normal speed. I would suggest slowing the speed down by either .75 or .5 because .25 starts to get into the realm of creepy horror film, unless, of course, you are into that sort of thing. Once you are able to decipher the words and meaning at the slower speeds, you can then speed them up and eventually reach the original speed of the song.

The next thing you need to consider when choosing an authentic song to help you learn German is the pronunciation of the singer. When you first start listening to music in German, you may think, I cannot understand a single one of these singers. Your problem might be that you have chosen singers with hard accents for beginners. Accents that are considered more standard German are found in the Northern part of Germany. This pronunciation and form of German is sometimes called High German. Some say that those from Hannover speak with accents closest to dictionary pronunciation as you can find. That is highly debated among Germans. Although they may sing with neutral pronunciation, they may not enunciate well, so just realize that this is just a generalization to help you in your search for authentic songs to help you learn German.

The last thing you need to do when choosing songs to learn German is to decide what concept in German you are trying to work on learning. Is it present tense verbs? Is it gender of nouns? Try searching for whatever grammatical concept you want to cement plus “song in German.” So “Song in German with present tense verbs. You may find a lot of songs created by teachers, but if you scroll through your search results, you might just find a song that has just what you need. A website that may help is Lyricstraining.com. You will find many songs on here to practice your listening skills. The software removes certain words and phrases, and you must type what you hear. It may be slightly advanced if you are very new to the German language.

Need additional help in your language studies? Why not get the aid of one of our expert teachers?