If you're a native English speaker, or even if you simply know English well enough to be reading and understanding this article, learning German should prove to be a lot easier than for people speaking a different language. The reason for this is that German and English are closely related, they both have a Germanic, Anglo-Saxon background, with inherent touches of ancient roman glossary and some small Greek influences. The fact that English and German languages have a common root can be proven by the many cognate words (cognates are words that are closely similar in two or more languages) that they have in common. For example: haus and house (similar pronunciation), braun and brown (similar pronunciation) or garten and garden (slightly different pronunciation).



The most important thing to understand when you're trying to learn German (regardless if your mother tongue is English or some other) is that it is an "organic" language, one whose vocabulary is harder to assimilate because of the way words are combined. You need to be extremely flexible in your learning process and think out of the box, a box that most other languages (including English) imply, since they are more "stable" than German in what regards spelling, pronunciation and grammar.

It's also worth mentioning that you shouldn't expect instant active language skills (such as speaking and writing) when you're in the first stages of your German language learning process. Active language skills require a solid base of passive skills, namely listening and reading. That's the natural way to learn a language, by first listening to it and reading it and then try to reproduce what you've learnt, actively. It's how we learn our mother tongue as children and the process should be relatively similar with adults too.

Once you've established a solid foothold with your German learning, the best way to perfect your skills is to try and get some direct contact with a native German speaker. If you can afford even 1 week of vacation spent in Germany, it's guaranteed to produce wonders in learning and perfecting your German language. Seeing yourself actually managing to pull off a conversation with a native German speaker will also boost your confidence and loosen up your tongue on further occasions. But visiting Germany is not always that handy, so you might want to start looking for alternatives. One would be to find a friend that has a strong hold of the German language and ask him if he could spare at least half an hour each day, for about 2 weeks and simply converse with you in German and nothing but German. If he's willing to help, he might even be of more use to you than a native German speaker, since he'll pronounce words clearer, probably without any sort of regional accent.

So if you're starting from scratch in learning the German language, you might as well do it from the comfort of your seat, for free. There are plenty of sites out there that offer free online German language courses, some better than other of course. Most of the lessons found on these free sites are user posted ones and if you're not content with learning German this way, you can also look for some paid online courses that will take you step by step through the learning process.