I am a philologist and English language consultant and facilitator by training and experience and I am, and forever will be, totally in love with English in all its shapes and forms. However, in 2017, after 37 years of avidly and joyfully immersing myself in the English language and its literatures and after enthusiastically teaching English for 18 years, I coincidentally discovered that I am also good at teaching German to immigrants and that I love doing so. My own English-learning journey, which took me from a severe dislike of English to a very deep love of it, and those 18 years of teaching English, where much of my work consisted in trying to turn German students’ “Denglisch” (Deutsches Englisch, i.e., German English) into English, have wonderfully prepared me for the reverse activity of using English to teach German to people who need it.
In addition to creating a pronunciation guide plus fun study material (see below), I have also launched a playlist on my YouTube channel, where I started to help learners of German cope with the tricky aspects of this language. I have also started to write a little book on basic German syntax and another one on comparative English-German syntax. So stay tuned for news, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and follow me on Instagram.
I wish you joy and success on your learning journey. May you feel at ease, be in flow, and quickly find your groove.
If you are a student or teacher of German, then my “High German Sound Alphabet” is for you. Here is some info about it:
Pronunciation is the gateway to a language and part of its essence. We learn our mother tongue first through full-body immersion in its sounds and rhythms while we are in the womb and then by continued immersion as well as by patient imitation and joyful repetition of its basic sounds and structures when we are small children. But in-depth, joyful, and continuous pronunciation practice is missing in the foreign language classroom. This book is one of the missing links. It offers the basic building blocks of German (i.e., its sounds) in a systematic, memorable, and fun way. It is both a sort of language gym, in which you can develop your German language muscles, as well as a sort of reference map that will help you navigate unknown territory. The book is also an introduction to the IPA and to the art of sound-spelling words.
Learning a language is a lot of work and seems like an overwhelming task, an insurmountable obstacle. The trick is to break this obstacle down into yummy bite-size study units, so that the actual process of learning becomes not only doable but also rewarding and joyful. This book offers the first round of installments of such yummy bite-size study units.
So – get out of overwhelm and into joyful ease and flow one yummy sound bite at a time.
I offer the book as a paperback and as an ebook.
I am very grateful to Jen Barbato for making the beautiful book cover for the paperback version.
I am very grateful to Manuel Seiss for making the beautiful book cover for the ebook version.
Thank you, dear Jen and dear Manuel.
I designed very cool tangible sound alphabet study materials that I successfully use with my own clients and that I sell to DaF teachers and institutions as well as to students. I offer a paperback version of my e-book, spiral-bound study cards, two different decks of study cards, a bingo game, memory game cards, and posters (Din A4-A0).
I also offer teacher training workshops.
Contact me for details via the contact form below.
This PDF is a simple, systematic, and quick overview of all the consonants, vowels, and diphthongs that Standard High German has along with their standard IPA notation. It is the quick and summarizing version of my very colorful and detailed “High German Sound Alphabet” and thus nicely complements it.
If you buy it, you will get free access to an audio and a video file offering my pronunciation of each main-entry word and of all the additional example words.
Sign up for my German in Color News at the very bottom of my German in Color Page HERE.
Contact
Please send me a message if you want more information about my offerings or if you want to receive my newsletter (which I send out very rarely).
friderike(at)joy-of-syntax.com