Lần đầu học tiếng Đức như thế nào? Wait, I need to actually translate that. Let me provide the correct output: How do you learn German for the first time?

German is becoming increasingly popular as more and more Vietnamese people are learning the language. And everyone inevitably feels a sense of bewilderment when first approaching it. That is why, to help people understand German better, below I will share a few general impressions when starting to learn this language:

1. Surprise! German letter pronunciation sounds quite similar to Vietnamese!

New learners will first be introduced to the alphabet. And everyone finds it interesting that the pronunciations are quite similar to Vietnamese. The sounds A, B, C, D, E, K, S, X … are all pronounced in a way that resembles Vietnamese. Therefore, memorizing the 30 letters of the German alphabet is not too difficult.

1. German seems to be related to English

Without even looking into how German and English are related at a deeper level, just learning a few words is enough to see that these 2 languages are related to each other.

There are words that are similar in both spelling and meaning: for example, photograph-fotografieren both mean to take a photo, and the pronunciation is also quite similar. Other examples: document-Dokument (document), social-sozial (society), garden-Garten (garden), …

1. German is spelled the way it sounds

Learners will find it encouraging that reading a German word aloud is not as difficult as in English. This is because German is generally pronounced the way it is written: for example, Kommunikation [kɔmunikaˈtsɪ̆oːn] (pronounced somewhat like kom-mu-ni-ca-xi-ôn), lokal [loˈkaːl] (pronounced somewhat like lô-kan-l), …

1. der-die-das: Which gender goes with which?German grammar is incredibly mind-blowing! Nouns even have to be declined by gender: which ones are der (masculine), which are die (feminine), and which are das (neuter). It's really a headache to tell them apart correctly! But don't worry too much, because there are already various tips and tricks to help us distinguish them.

2. You have to read the entire sentence to understand its meaning! Why is that?

Simply because in German, there are sentences where the main verb sits in the very last position, requiring us to listen to or read the whole sentence before we know what it means.

Anna kann morgen ausgehen. (Anna can go out tomorrow.)

The verb ausgehen sits at the end of the sentence. So only after hearing the whole sentence do we know what Anna can do tomorrow.

Short sentences are still manageable, but when you come across an endlessly long sentence with the verb running all the way to the end, listeners and readers will surely be left in suspense!

The above are some initial impressions of learning German. We hope these shared insights will help you better understand this language, considered to be complex and challenging.

Wishing you all a successful German learning journey!