Dear Lotus, You can study on another webpage called livemocha. You can study here with the help of professional teachers. The levels you have to do are always short and easy to do. Just look it up and you will undertand how it works. You also can do parts of it together with other students. Also will have a message of your progress from the livemocha team. I think it will be just the thing you are looking for. Still German will always be a difficult language for Asian people, just as Chinese is very difficult for me to learn. All the best ! Jo Schlangen e-mail [email protected]

Hey Lotus, The correct pronunciation is difficult to learn. Here's an online dictionary that reads out loud to you every German word. So that you can learn it more easily: http://dict.leo.org And here the same software reads whole articles in German: http://www.diepresse.com Just click on the little loudspeaker symbol just aside the word/text. Both services are for free, as you wanted it. All the best for your leaning, Tommy

sorry, made some spelling mistakes. it´s too late and i´m tired :D IN german there are "Hauptsatz"... Nominativ: Der SCHÖNE Mann (first wanted to write "Ein schöner Mann" but i muddled it up^^)

self-teaching german would be hard i think because german is a difficult language. if you really want to do it, i would begin with simple sentences to get used to the vocab. learn the pronouns, the most important verbs, some nouns and adjectives e.g. "Ich trinke Kaffee" - "I drink coffee" "Er hat ein Auto" - "He has a car" then take a look on how to link two sentences. ist german there are "Hauptsatz" and "Nebensatz" in english the syntax of the "Nebensatz" is equivalent to the "Hauptsatz" but in german you need to put the predicate in the "Nebensatz" at the end. e.g. subject, predicate, object [because] subject predicate, object "I drink tea because i am thirsty" in german: Subjekt, Prädikat, Objekt [, weil] Subjekt, Objekt, Prädikat "Ich trinke Tee, weil ich durstig bin" practise writing some texts like letters or dialogues as often as possible to get used to the sytax and the vocab. after that learn the basics of the nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. you need to know this to choose the right suffixes of the adjectives. e.g. Nominativ: Der schöner Mann (Wer oder was/who or what) Genitiv: Des schönen Mannes (Wessen/whose) Dativ: Dem schönen Mann (Wem/whom) Akkusativ: Den schönen Mann (Wen oder was/who or what) always pay attention to pronounce words correctly. you may find some good dictionaries with the phonetic transcription of every word.