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 repeated 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.

This e-book comes with indispensable audio and video material as well as a special freebie: a set of three posters (in printable pdf format) that capture the sound landscape of Standard High German.

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.

If you are interested in purchasing the spiral-bound paperback version of this book as well as the study cards and/or the card deck (matching pair cards), please send me an email at friderike@joy-of-syntax.com.

Course plan

01 Introduction
02 German Consonants
03 Vowels part I
04 Vowels part II and Diphthongs
05 Deep-Schwa Diphthongs and Addendum
Here is your e-book. Enjoy!
A set of three posters as Printable PDFs
Just the words: Audio and video
Three useful YouTube links to videos about the German R