Good and Bad Ways to Study German

Comedian Trevor Noah has some advice for how not to study German at the end of  this video clip. For people who are currently studying German, this could be dangerously hilarious. I actually laughed so hard that I cried.

For people who are interested in studying German without accidentally listening to Hitler's speeches, here are some better ways to access German listening (and other) activities on Youtube:

1. Easy German: Easy German offers a variety of listening exercises involving subtitled interviews with Germans on the street. In the clip below, an interviewer asks interesting questions, such as "What is typical of Germany?" The answers to "Are you proud to be German?" were most interesting to me, because most of the older interviewees seemed very cognizant of Germany's national socialist past when answering the question. Find more by searching for "Easy German" on youtube.

2. GermanPod101 - There are a lot of free listening and vocabulary lessons from this site available on Youtube, which I'm really getting a kick out of. It seems to be a pay site which offers a lot of content free to lure people in. Who knows - maybe at some point when I'm done with all the levels on Duolingo I'll bite. Here's one example; many others are available at various levels:

3. Get Germanized - Wow. This guy is funny! A mixture of  vocabulary lessons and cultural tidbits, Meister Lehnsherr's Youtube channel is so entertaining that it will likely capture your attention, whether you're studying German or not. Granted, he's not for everyone. His lessons - including the  one below - can contain crude humor or language. However, I very much appreciate his down-to-earth tone and inclusion of everyday language, as in this slang lesson:

So there you have it, three ways to study German on-line without being called "black Hitler"! :) Happy studying!