Anyone have any recommendations or can point me in the direction of some quality, advanced german content? Anything other than straight news. I have been mostly just copying and pasting news briefs from Deutschland funk and die zeit, but I am tired of straight up news bulletin type speech or text.
Anything else of interest would be great, as I mentioned. Even political discussions about the news. However, I would ideally love to find interesting history books… or advanced reading. I haven’t found much advanced stuff of interest in the lesson library.
I tried to buy some ebooks from a german online book store, but it wouldn’t let me order since I had a USA billing address. I want to find a source that isn’t amazon because of kindle dmr protection. Can anyone help me navigate the internet and find good content and how to access the text if possible?
Also local libraries sometimes have multilingual sections (or at least they do in England but can’t see why not in the US). Mine has a section for German books which I sometimes take out and sit reading very slowly with a dictionary.
Speaking of audiobooks! I can’t recommend audible.com enough! They have a really large German section. I think they had an offer on where you get your first book free (they probably still do). They’re customer service is very flexible, if you don’t like something you can just contact them and return it (I do that a lot when I get a bit bored which is probably slightly unorthodox…)
Amazon has a ton of German ebooks with whisper sync audio, meaning if you buy the Kindle book first, you can get the audio for like $4. (Though it’s actually better to search for titles on the Audible website first, because Audible has a lot better search interface when it comes to foreign language books.)
If you are interested in History, you can write ‘Geschichte’ in your searching box in Google and you receive thousands of links of History books in German.
But don’t neglect a very rich German library in lingq.com - it contains hundreds of podcasts for the levels Intermediate 2 or Advanced here, for example some Vera’s podcasts and her shared podcasts GEO Audio which are interesting also for Greman native speakers and some Science collections.
You can also try reading and listening some podcasts about Russian History and other from my collection “Geschichte und Kultur”: Login - LingQ
My interviews with German netave speakers can also be interesting for you “Gespräche mit Evgueny”: Login - LingQ
I’ve shared also some German books into lingq.com, for example the famous novel -
Theodor Fontane ‘Effi Briest’: Login - LingQ
or the German translation of the Conan Doyle’s novel-
Arthur C. Doyle “Späte Rache”: Login - LingQ
You can also find a lot of new for you in my collection in the cooperation with Fasulye -
“Deutsche Redewendungen”: Login - LingQ
Good luck! - Viel Erfolg!
I am desperate for transcripts of dialogues/podcasts/media of natural german conversation speed. There is a big difference between the speed and sort of verbiage to two german people conversing or debating … and the newscasters, news podcasts, audiobook narrators.
I want to be able study and listen to the level of german that I hear my german friends speak at the dinner table or hanging out.
I hope I don’t sound toooo arrogant when I say this but I just don’t think it works that way, usablefiber. Have you ever tried to transcribe a “normal” human conversation in any language? It’s a harrowing exercise. When two native speakers talk, let alone argue, they talk in half thoughts, incomplete sentences, colloquialisms and non sequiturs. Yes, it’s harder to understand, and yes you need a lot of practice for it, but transcripts are not necessarily the way to do it. Instead, think of it this way:
1.) Work actively with audio/books to build up vocab and listening comprehension.
2.) Do a lot of passive listening to podcasts, movies, etc. to challenge and practice your vocab and listening comprehension of faster speech.
3.) Engage in conversation to bring everything together.
There is really no other way to understand a dinner table conversation than to engage in a dinner table conversation. Political podcasts and “debate style” shows are great for practicing listening to fast conversations. No one is gonna transcribe those word for word. But if you wanna understand political talk, all you have to do is find a book with audio about politics – the original British book, House of Cards is available in German on Amazon / Audible, for example. Read it, learn the words, listen to some podcasts and then find a stammtisch. It’s really the only way to do it.
I believe that we first of all have to learn Standard German, Standard Russian, Standard English and only after that we can add some sleng materials and some regional words.
It looks awfully when some American students come to our school and speak only in a slang manner.
We use sleng, but the foreigners must be very careful with its using because unproper using of slang is worse than not using it.
В каким учебникам американцы учиться сленг? Или они только смотрт видео? В университете, мы изучали старый советскый учебник ‘Russian for Everybody’. Немножко скучно, а полезно.
Я не знаю, по каким учебникам учили этих студентов в Америке.
Но если вы любите сленг, вы можете найти много примеров в учебнике “Окно в Россию” (в трех частях).
Лично я не люблю учить студентов по этому учебнику, потому что сленгом в такой пропорции говорят только подростки, которые затем - к 25-30 годам- переходят на более литературный язык.
but I just don’t think it works that way, usablefiber. Have you ever tried to transcribe a “normal” human conversation in any language? It’s a harrowing exercise. When two native speakers talk, let alone argue, they talk in half thoughts, incomplete sentences, colloquialisms and non sequiturs. Yes, it’s harder to understand, and yes you need a lot of practice for it, but transcripts are not necessarily the way to do it. Instead, think of it this way: