![]() ![]() ![]() IMO, this is especially important in German, where word order can be confusing at first. After all, you can always use a dictionary. If you know the grammar, you can construct any sentence (even if your vocabulary is too limited to convey exactly what you want to say) and understand what is going on in sentences spoken by others (even if you do not know what they are saying). I found that prioritizing grammar works quite well. Note: this is just my personal opinion and may not apply to everyone. In such cases the phrasebook commonly exchanges hands, with the user pointing a finger at the printed question and its target language translation, the listener looking for (and perhaps finding) an answer in the target language, then with his/her finger pointing to the answer hands the phrasebook back to the user - with a smile. You can even look into the contents of some of Amazon's German phrasebook offerings, such as the one titled 1001 Easy German Phrases.įinally, I'd like to point out that the disadvantage of using a phrasebook is that even if the the user speaks the foreign language word, phrase, or sentence very correctly, the user will most likely not be able to understand the spoken return answer in the foreign language. They can also be ordered on under the category "Books", where you will find a number of phrasebooks for the German language there. Language phrasebooks are available in major bookstores for most major languages e.g., French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The advantage of using a language phrasebook is that one can learn to speak a target language without having to learn the grammar of the target language. Kellogg-Smith) is easily pronounced by Russian speakers, whereas the English translation is not so easily pronounced the Russian language does not have the English "th" sound. For example, my user name in this forum, "К. Like any phrasebook, it uses the source language's Cyrillic alphabet and it's sounds for the transliterated pronunciation of English words and phrases. It's a copy of a Russian-to-English phrasebook, one intended for the use of Russians travelling to England or other English-speaking countries. I have in my hand right now an example of such a phrasebook. Phrasebooks are collections of words and phrases in the source language that are translated into the target language, and then using the alphabet of the source language, that translation is then transliterated into the sounds of the foreign language. That answer lies in the use of what are called "phrasebooks". However, all that being said a more direct answer to your question is that one can easily enough be able to speak a foreign language without having to learn the grammar of that language. For less tourist-oriented students, students who are interested in both learning and using the German language and its grammar, then I believe that Intermediate German for Dummies is a much more useful text. The Berlitz book German for Dummies is a tourist-oriented book that takes the beginning student gently by the hand in teaching German vocabulary and grammar rules needed for travel in Germany. If you are a beginning student I would suggest that initially you should look forward to spending up to 30% of your study time in vocabulary building, but then the remainder of your available study time should be spent in learning more and more of the German grammar rules. Knowing German grammar rules is absolutely essential to the study of the German language. But, by so doing you will be able learn to speak, read, and write coherent, grammatically correct, basic German sentences with a vocabulary of as little as 500-600 words, including basic nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and adjectives. If you follow standard curriculums, as a beginning German language student you would find yourself spending much more time initially learning German grammar rules than you will learning German nouns, verbs, and other grammatical parts of speech in vocabulary building. German vocabulary and grammar are tightly related, which makes it quite impossible to learn a basic German vocabulary without at the same time also learning and understanding the basic rules of German grammar. ![]()
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