You may have heard of the Brothers Grimm and you may even have read some of their excellent collected folk tales of lore and superstition, but did you know that it was the Brothers Grimm who first published a dictionary of the German language? At the time it came out, what we know today as German (or the German language, Deutsch) was almost exclusively a written language, with the German-speaking peoples of Europe talking in any of the other local German dialects of the day, most of which could NOT be understood by any of the rest of the folk a few cities away.
But you're probably not really interested in studying Grimm's Tales in their original German, or being able to converse with the folks in Namibia, a former German colony in southwest Africa, known for its diamonds.
No, you probably want the German of today, as spoken by the 100 million native speakers around the world and another 80 million German-second-language speakers with them. You want to get some German under your lederhosen so you can better grasp the beauties and commercial potential of German technology, long some of the best engineering in the world.
You want to dig deep into chemistry, optics, mathematics, physics and the Earth sciences, all pioneered by Germans well-known to most educated people, names like Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Hahn, Carl Bosch, Daimler, Zeppelin, Benz, Diesel, Wankel and Braun. If those last few seem VERY familiar, it could be because their names were associated with some of the modern world's most successful and cutting-edge technological advancements. Some still are.
Technology fades into the background, however, when you want German for the sake of German culture... what Germans DO! Because what Germans DO includes skiing some of the world's finest slopes on high-tech carbon-fiber skis, sail-planing and hang-gliding with some of the best designs in the history of aviation, and joyously celebrating Oktoberfest with a tremendous range of German wurst, sausage, roasts and sandwiches, all washed down with the pride of German culinary technology, German BEER! Now there's a subject worth learning German for, all by itself!
Or maybe it's the Swiss-German optics of the photographic and telescopic fields that catch your eye? Or the excellent, high-craftsmanship of German watch-making for which you yearn, hour after hour? And you only want a fine, jeweled German watch in order to watch your favorite German soccer team or fencing champion or time the German toboggan team as it luges downhill at stomach-churning speeds?
From sauerkraut to steam engines, diesels to diamonds, German has some appeal for anybody wanting to learn a valuable, widely-spoken European language. An added bonus for English-speakers is learning many of the cognates and roots and similarities between English and Deutsch (and Dutch).
So make up your mind. Find a German club or German teacher in your neighborhood, get one of the commercially-available CD study programs or tape-cassette studies previously only available through Berlitz © or Inlingua ©, but now easily available in almost any shopping mall across America or Europe, for a reasonable price. Set your sights on modern, spoken German and embark on your chance to learn German!
For online help pronouncing German words, try LEO, a German translator with pronunciation. Just type in the word you want to hear, and click on the speaker.