German Vocabulary
The core to learning German is of course the German vocabulary. Without a good knowledge of German vocabulary, you will struggle to effectively communicate and understand German conversations.
There are obviously many words in the German language with the major German dictionary Duden containing nearly 150,000 words. That is a lot of German vocabulary to learn but don’t worry, you do not need to learn all of them to be effective in understanding the majority of the German language.
A lot of German vocabulary is very specific to a certain subjects and would not often come up in general conversation. A good knowledge of just a few thousand words will help you to join in and understand day to day discusisons.
There are a lot of gems in German vocabulary called “true friends”. These are words that are the same in German as they are in English. A few examples of these are:
AlphabetBand
Blind
Cousin
Film
Gold
Illusion
Museum
Pilot
Radio
Singer
Taxi
Video
Winter
Zebra
There are many more “true friends” in the German vocabulary, however you also have to watch out for “false friends”. These are words that look the same but have a completely different meaning. Some of these false friends are:
German Vocabulary – English meaningDer Mist – dung
Der Rock – skirt
Aktuell – up-to-date, current
Das Gift – poison
Billion – Trillion
Winken – to wave
Bald – soon
As you can see, there are some words in the German vocabulary that can catch you out. These are important to learn so you don’t get caught out. You don’t want to be giving das Gift (poison) to someone on their birthday!
There are some great resources on the internet for learning German vocabulary. Double Translate provides various ways for you to increase your German skills and improve your vocabulary on a daily basis.
You can subscribe to the Double Translate YouTube channel where you can find a series of videos to help you improve your German. Some of the videos you can find on our YouTube channel are:
- How to Pronounce the German Alphabet
- German Numbers – How to count in German
- How to tell the time in German
More videos are being added on a regular basis so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to know when new videos are uploaded. Watching these regularly will help you improve your German vocabulary.
You can also join our growing community of people learning German on our dedicated Learn German Facebook and Twitter pages. New words and exercises are posted on a daily basis to help you grow your German vocabulary.