Pimsleur ESL for German Speakers (2023)

FAQs

What is the easiest language to learn for English and German speakers? ›

Dutch, another West-Germanic language, is undoubtedly one of the easiest languages to learn for German speakers. It's said to be the middle ground between English and German, as it shares linguistic features with both languages.

Sure, I do have a few minor grievances with their program (like the lessons being a little lengthy), but all in all, I think Pimsleur is a really effective program that should get the job done for pretty much anyone looking to learn German and speak fluently.

German speakers therefore find English easy to learn initially, and tend to make relatively rapid progress. The German and English phonological systems are broadly similar, and German speakers do not have serious difficulty in perceiving or pronouncing most English sounds.

Can you become fluent with Pimsleur? While you probably won't become completely fluent with Pimsleur, you will definitely become conversational. And quickly! Pimsleur is an excellent course that teaches you how to speak from your very first lesson.

German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish.

Languages similar to German. German is quite close to other Germanic languages such as Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. It is not so close to English, although both languages share some common vocabulary. Amongst important languages, Dutch is the closest.

Pimsleur Approach (Pimsleur.com and PimsleurApproach.com) This audio-only program, based on the language retention theories of the linguist Paul Pimsleur, has been used by the F.B.I. The company claims that students who use the CDs for 30 minutes a day will begin speaking the language in just 10 days — no textbooks ...

Which is better, Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone? After a thorough review of the language learning courses from both Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, our team gives the edge to Pimsleur as the better course. Compared to Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur offers a more robust course from top to bottom.

Babbel teaches more holistically, including grammar and written exercises – two areas mostly ignored by Pimsleur. Learners using Babbel would have a more well-rounded knowledge of the language, but lower speaking and listening skills compared with students using Pimsleur.

According to the statistical data, there are more than 45,400,000 people in Germany who speaks English on a daily basis. What percent of Germany speaks English? Over 56% of the population in Germany speaks English.

How many Germans are fluent in English? ›

In 2022, around 12.25 million people living in Germany had very good English language skills, based on their own estimation.

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.

The Intelligence Language Institute (ILI) is the premier language school in the Intelligence Community. The ILI supports CIA's intelligence mission by enabling and enhancing foreign language skills anytime, anywhere.

The overriding message is that anyone can learn a foreign language, but some people are quicker at it than others. Still, language learning is a serious commitment, and if one's aim is to speak it comfortably (say, 2+ on the FSI scale), this is likely to take the equivalent of six months of full-time study.

72 hours is an extremely short time to reach low or high intermediate. If we compare Cambridge estimate of 500-600 hours to reach level B2 in English, it's really hard to believe Pimsleur can get even close to that.

The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.

Germany – more than 80 million speakers. Austria – 8 million speakers. Switzerland – 4.6 million speakers. Belgium – 75.000 speakers.

English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek.

Closest Major Language: Dutch

Like Frisian and English, Dutch is another West Germanic language that developed from Proto-Germanic. Because of this, Dutch possesses many words and phrases similar to English and has a similar grammatical structure.

Some parts of German grammar are particularly tricky for English speakers to get to grips with, but German grammar is actually arguably easier to learn than English grammar because it follows set rules that are laid down by the three regional authorities, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (with small differences ...

Which language is more important than German? ›

If “useful” is about the sheer number of people you'll be able to converse with, French beats German easily. There are 267 million French speakers in the world, compared to 155 million German speakers. In terms of career opportunities, French and German are both very in-demand as business languages.

Pimsleur is one of the most accurate and effective programs for learning to speak and understand a new language. This audio-based system won't teach you reading or writing, however, nor does it have any games or interactive exercises for many of its languages. PCMag editors select and review products independently.

Across GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, we typically look for people who are experts in Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Korean, and - from time to time - South Asian and African languages. For graduates with European language skills, there may be the opportunity to retrain.

pimsleur teaches you formal French

Then, the vocabulary you learn is quite formal. This is the French spoken by people, but spoken by people in business situations or in formal environments. If you are a university student, this will be slightly too formal for you. This isn't really a problem.

There are many polyglots who love it and other ones who hate it, but you can rest assure that there are no language enthusiasts who have never heard of it. Pimsleur has been a famous course for several decades and other courses were created based on its original teaching principles.

The basic exercises featured in Duolingo are fun and simple to complete. Lessons focus on teaching vocabulary, reading, and listening, with the occasional opportunity for speaking practice. Pimsleur's lessons are a lot more thorough, and the platform is newer.

Pimsleur's Method® has been trusted for 50 Years by U.S. government agencies, diplomats, corporations, and anyone who wants or needs to learn to speak a language quickly and effectively.

Pimsleur Spanish Only Audio

The program offers five Spanish levels with 30 lessons each. That's a total of 150 complete lessons.

GermanPod101 and Pimsleur both use audio-based lessons. Pimsleur offers more practice exercises after the lesson to help you really understand what you heard. Depending on your subscription, Pimsleur may be more expensive than GermanPod101. You'll become conversational a lot more quickly though.

Which German city speaks most English? ›

These are the German cities with best English skills. If you're an international looking to move to Germany, you'll want to find a city where English is spoken a lot. Which cities are these in Germany? A study shows: The German cities with best English are Karlsruhe, Munich, Dresden, Bremen and Düsseldorf.

The United States and India have the most total English speakers, with 306 million and 265 million, respectively. These are followed by Pakistan (104 million), the United Kingdom (68 million), and Nigeria (60 million). As of 2022, there were about 373 million native speakers of English.

How many German language levels are there? The German language has 6 CEFR levels – starting with A1 (absolute beginner), and ending with C2 (completely fluent).

According to the latest census data, over 91% of people in the US speak English very well. 8.2% of people do not speak English “very well”, though this statistic doesn't mean that they are completely non-English speakers.

English is the most common language spoken in the United States with approximately 239 million speakers. Spanish is spoken by approximately 35 million people.

Arabic is the queen of poetic languages, the 6th official language of the UN and second on our list of toughest languages to learn.

According to the research, the ideal amount of daily study time for rapid language learning is around 1 to 2 hours per day. This may seem like a small amount of time, but it's important to remember that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to language learning.

Language skills and cultural knowledge, specifically in Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Somali, Uzbek, Korean or another language are highly sought after by the FBI.

What language is most valuable to CIA? ›

The needed positions run the gamut; elected officials in Washington, D.C., all branches of the military, and diplomats within the State Department either need to use Farsi or have administrators and translators to help them carry out their duties. Listed as “mission critical” by the CIA.

In Level 5 the pace and conversation move quite rapidly, accelerating exposure to new vocabulary and structures, approaching native speed and comprehension. You'll learn to speak more in-depth about your personal life and emotional state, and be able to create complex sentences using a mix of tenses and moods.

Pimsleur and Rocket French are comparable because they both feature a conversation/dialogue between native speakers in each lesson. Pimsleur has a much stronger focus on pronunciation and helps you focus on learning how to speak correctly. Rocket is good because it focuses more on conversation and cultural topics.

You learn about 5-10 words in each session (closer to 5 for Pimsleur 1-2, closer to 10 for Pimsleur 3). After 3 courses (the standard set for many Pimsleur languages), you end up with at least 5-600 words, and you learn how to use them (sentence structure, grammar, etc).

It takes about 450 to 600 hours to learn the German B2 level. With B2, speakers can converse fluently with native speakers without speaking slowly or using simple words.

Get Conversational Quickly with Pimsleur

30-minute lessons you can take anywhere, or do at home with Alexa. Learn to read your new language – effortlessly. Voice Coach NEW! Voice recognition provides pronunciation feedback.

For most people, around 30 minutes of active study and 1 hour of language exposure a day is a schedule that will give you great results. It's a model that's sustainable over a long period to help you reach fluency.

The easiest languages for English speakers to learn are: Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and French. The US State Department lists these languages as Category I languages. This means they are similar to English culturally and/or linguistically.

1. Norwegian. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English!

Both Dutch and German have their challenges, but Dutch is generally considered easier to learn than German.

Is German or Spanish easier for English speakers? ›

On Babbel's internal ranking of easiest languages for English speakers to learn, Spanish was number three, and German didn't even make the list. Don't get too concerned, though, because German didn't make the cut for hardest languages to learn, either.

Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.

Riau Indonesian is different from most other languages in how simple it is. There are no endings of any substance, no tones, no articles, and no word order. There is only a little bit of indicating things in time.

#1 Easiest Germanic language: Norwegian

The Norwegian alphabet is very similar to the English alphabet, it just has three additional letters (æ, ø, å) . In terms of conjugating verbs, Norwegian is one of the easiest Germanic languages.

The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.

Dutch, German, English, Swedish and Danish are all Germanic languages but the degree of mutual intelligibility between these languages differs. Danish and Swedish are the most mutually comprehensible, but German and Dutch are also mutually intelligible.

French tends to be easier for beginners, though it gets harder as you get into its intermediate and advanced layers. German has a tougher on-ramp for beginners, but gets easier as you go along.

If you're wondering whether or not people in Germany speak English, the answer is yes. The majority of Germans can understand and speak English. About 56% of Germans speak fluent English! But there are some who may not be able to understand it.

In short, Spanish is a popular language among learners in terms of the number of speakers. In contrast, German has only around 150 million speakers compared to Spanish. About 100 million are natives; the rest are L2, L3, and learners.

Is English based more on German or Latin? ›

German is widely considered among the easier languages for native English speakers to pick up. That's because these languages are true linguistic siblings—originating from the exact same mother tongue. In fact, eighty of the hundred most used words in English are of Germanic origin.