Learn German Online for Free! A Review of the German Pictorial Vocabulary Guide
Learning German Is Easy!
Would you like to learn German for free? The free online resource, German Pictorial Vocabulary Guide, is an excellent resource that will help you learn the proper pronunciation and spelling of literally hundreds of German vocabulary words. The website has a simple layout that is easy to navigate; it also associates the German words with pictures rather than with English words (in most cases), so that you are learning German without the interference of another language (the best way to learn a second language!).
The German Pictorial Vocabulary Guide homepage lists fifty-four groups of German vocabulary; the groups are distributed among seven “Gruppen” (Groups). The format couldn’t be simpler. As you move your cursor over the various topics (all listed in German), a popup appears telling the category in English: so even if you don’t know any German yet, you can see the topic names in English without even having to click on the links to the various lists.
The Topics It Covers
Here is a quick list of the various domains of vocabulary you can listen to, see pictures of, and read the words for on the German Pictorial Vocabulary Guide:
Alphabet, numbers, punctuation, body parts, colors, family, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, vegetables, fruits, farm animals, pets, insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, sea animals, African animals, the house, the den, the dining room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, landscapes, plants, weather, space, the sea, jobs, school, the farm, the city, business, electronics, computers, communication, science, the car, land travel, travel, music, fantasy, children, babies, games, and miscellaneous.
As you can see, this German vocabulary website covers an amazing array of topics—from the everyday to the less common—making it a great resource for systematic study as well as a good reference if you want to find out a German word from a particular domain along with the proper pronunciation of that word.
Using It to Learn German!
Each of the fifty-four categories listed on the Vocabulary Guide home page represent another page of the website: When the word for any one category is clicked, the learner is brought to a new page that gives a bunch of pictures of various objects. When you move the mouse over one of the pictures of an object, you will hear a native German speaker pronouncing the vocabulary item, and you will see a pop-up box that gives you the spelling of the word in German.
Suppose you want to learn the German word for farm animals. When you go to this particular list, you will see colored pictures of a number of different farm animals as well as specially designations as either male or female animals, since the words for male and female animals are often different in German.
As you use your computer’s mouse to move the cursor over the images you see on the page, you will hear these words in German and see the words in German at the same time: sheep, lamp, shepherd, cow, goat, chicken, chick, pig, snout, horse, pony, horseshoe, and so on.
How will this format of language learning be helpful to you as a learner? Hearing and seeing the German words and pictures of the objects, with no interference from English or another second language, is an extremely effective way of learning the German vocabulary words. If you were to only read a book in German, you would not have the benefit of hearing a native German speaker pronouncing all the vocabulary words. Hearing the spoken language is the only surefire way to become a fluent speaker of the language yourself.
The German Pictorial Vocabulary Guide is not a complete German language learning course in itself: rather, it is one resource that, when combined with other language learning resources, can help you gain proficiency in the German language.
Use this free online German language learning resource to store up vocabulary in your German word arsenal, so that as you learn grammar and conversation skills from other resources, you’ll have hundreds of perfectly-pronounced German words at your disposal that you have already memorized with the help of this great free website!