German for beginners
If you are starting from zero, you do not need an overview but an order. This page gives you one — six steps, each with its grammar topic, the matching words and a reason why it sits where it does.
Why an order and not a list
This site has 131 grammar topics. For someone just starting out, that is not an offer but a wall: everything looks equally important, and the obvious way in — starting at the top — leads into the tense system before a single sentence is in place.
So the order below is not a sorting of the material but a recommendation, and it follows one rule: every step must make one more sentence possible that you could not say before. Anything that does not — however correct it may be — comes later.
Three things first
- Twenty minutes on six days beats two hours on one. That is not a lecture but the reason this site has a daily goal: revision works through intervals, and you need more than one interval.
- You will not learn pronunciation here. This site explains and tests, both in writing. Speaking and listening are learnt with people or with recordings — the site is no substitute for that and does not try to be.
- Mistakes are the point of practice, not its failure. Whatever you get wrong comes back tomorrow; whatever sticks, only in five weeks. If you only practise what you already know, you do not move forward.
The first six steps
German conjugates in every person, not just the third: ich komme, du kommst, er kommt. Six endings look like more work than English asks for, and they are — but they are also what lets German move the words around later without losing track of who is doing what.
To go with it: Greetings and introductions — 49 words.
Every German noun is der, die or das, and the article is not a detail attached to the word — it is part of it. Learn a noun without its article and you will have to learn it again the first time it takes a case ending.
To go with it: People and family — 48 words.
The accusative is where German stops behaving like English. Der Mann becomes den Mann when he is the one being seen, and that single ending carries what English carries with word order. Everything later in this list assumes it.
To go with it: Food and drink — 43 words.
The conjugated verb is the second element of a German main clause — not the second word, the second element. That one rule explains most of what looks like free word order, and it is the rule English speakers break most often.
To go with it: The flat and the household — 48 words.
Spoken German tells the past with haben or sein plus a participle, not with a simple past. The participle goes to the end and waits there, which is the first time a sentence asks you to hold something open.
To go with it: Numbers, time and dates — 40 words.
The dative marks the person something is given, said or shown to — and it is what most prepositions demand. With the accusative already in place, this is the second half of one system rather than a second system.
To go with it: The town and getting around — 53 words.
And after that?
After these six steps you can manage simple sentences in the present and the past, questions and the first few hundred words. That is the point at which an order is no longer needed: from here, the way forward depends on what you need the language for.
All 31 topics of level A1 are on the A1 page; if you would rather practise straight away than read, start with the daily dose — it decides for itself what comes up today.