German is the most widely-spoken language in Europe, and is one of the most important languages to learn for business or travel. We’ve put together this collection of free German lessons to help you get started.
These free lessons are aimed at beginner and intermediate learners. They use simple, practical exercises and have clear explanations to make it easy to understand. You can sign up for a free trial and then decide whether to pay for the full subscription.
Rosetta Stone focuses on building vocabulary and pronunciation, using foundational lessons before introducing more advanced concepts. It also breaks down complex words into simpler parts, making it easier to remember and recall. This site encourages you to pronounce German words the way they are spelt, so that you can hear how the sounds fit together. This helps you understand how German is more phonetically consistent than English, so you can make sense of longer words, like ‘der Hirsch’ (deer) and ‘dem Jungen gab ich einen Ball’ (I gave the boy a ball).
Duolingo uses interactive lessons to teach you all sorts of aspects of the language. It has lots of cultural content, and a great podcast that teaches conversational phrases. It’s a fun introduction, but you’ll likely need to supplement it with another language course or textbook once you reach a certain level.
The lingo app is great for practicing on the go, and has a cool feature that reads your answers out loud to check your pronunciation. It can also help you learn new words by connecting them to existing ones, and provides a useful dictionary. It’s easy to use and can be downloaded onto your smartphone or tablet.