German is gradually becoming popular today as more and more Vietnamese people learn this language. And everyone inevitably feels a bit bewildered when first encountering it. So that everyone can understand German better, below I will share a few general impressions of starting to learn this language:

1) What a surprise! The pronunciation of German letters is quite similar to Vietnamese!

Beginners start with the alphabet. And everyone finds it interesting that the pronunciation is quite similar to Vietnamese. The sounds A, B, C, D, E, K, S, X … are all pronounced similarly to Vietnamese. Therefore, memorizing the 30 letters of the German alphabet is not too difficult.

2) German seems to be related to English

Without even looking into how exactly German and English are connected, just learning a few words is enough to see that these 2 languages are related.

Some words are very similar in spelling and meaning: for example, photograph-fotografieren both mean to take photographs, and they are pronounced similarly too. Other examples: document-Dokument (document), social-sozial (social), garden-Garten (garden), …

3) German is pronounced the way it is written

Learners will find it exciting because reading a German word is not as hard as in English. German is usually pronounced just as it is written: for example Kommunikation [kɔmunikaˈtsɪ̆oːn] (pronounced roughly like kom-mu-ni-ca-tsi-on), lokal [loˈkaːl] (pronounced roughly like lo-kahl), …

4) der-die-das: Which gender goes with which?

German grammar is really mind-bending! Nouns also have genders: which one is der (masculine), which one is die (feminine) and which one is das (neuter). It's a headache to tell them apart correctly! But don't worry too much, because there are various tips and methods to help us tell them apart.

5) You have to read the whole sentence to know its meaning! Why is that?

Simply because in German, in some sentences the main verb is in the final position, so we have to listen to or read the entire sentence before we know what it says.

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

The verb ausgehen is 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 fine, but when you come across an endlessly long sentence whose verb keeps running to the very end, the listener or reader will surely be rather dismayed!

These are some first impressions of learning German. I hope the above sharing will help you understand better this language that is considered complex and tough.

Wishing you a successful journey in learning German!