Customer Reviews

1001 Pitfalls in German

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A girl down the hall in college had this book, and I found myself borrowing it probably once a day. Finally, she ended up giving it to me. The reason it is so helpful is that it lists the mistakes you are likely to make as a native English speaker learning German and then tells you how to correct them. It goes through all the parts of speech in a very clear and engaging way. It really had me exclaiming "Ah ha!!" at a rate of something like 3 times per page. Great as a supplement for a German course and for someone trying to learn on their own. If you are looking to buy the essentials for learning German, I would recommend this, "Teach yourself German Vocabulary" of the Teach Yourself series, a good dictionary, a verb book, and a good intermediate short story reader. Then you can feel confident enough to move on to primary texts!

After being out of school for quite awhile, you start to forget a lot of things about the constructions of sentences in your own language that you really have to know to begin learning another language. This book quickly refreshes your memory and then dives right into the German language. Just what I needed.

Then come the language pitfalls. I found this book very good in giving you condensed rules of thumb for every topic that a native English speaker tends to have problems with. I particularly like the way that they gave about 5 different examples and their English equivalent to highlight the points they are trying to make.

The book also alerts you easier ways to recognize the meaning of German words to help build your vocabulary. Like German "d" is English "th". Or German b is English "f". So, German "dieb" is English "thief". If I had to say something bad about the book it would be that the books contents are lay! ed out a bit messy, but not enough to get you to toss it in a corner.

Table of contents:

Parts of speech

1 Adjectives and Adverbs

2 Cases, Articles, Der- and Ein- Words

3 Conjunctions

4 Nouns

5 Prepositions

6 Pronouns

7 Verbs

Sentence Structure

8 Word order and Sentence Structure

9 Punctuation and Division into Syllables

Special Aids

10 Numbers, Measurements, Time Expressions

11 Pronunciation

12 Vocabulary Building, Confusions, Regional

Variations

Bibliography

Index

I've noted that a few of the reviews for this book are doubtful as to whether or not it's sufficient enough to learn German with. I can answer that question: no, it's not. What's more is, it's not supposed to be!

This book is geared towards going over all of the most common mistakes and problems that an English speaker who is learning German will encounter in their studies. All of the questionable points of German grammar, word order, etc., that an English learner will have, is most likely covered in this book.

I generally look over something in this book *every* day, and it's helped me a great deal. Definitely 5 stars from me.

Not really geared to the beginner, this book is handy for someone trying to get back into the German language from an absence of some time. The one drawback is that there sometimes isn't quite enough explanation. It's not meant to be an exhaustive reference work like Hammer's German Grammer, though. As long as you accept it as just something to jog your memory and give you a little help, it's a good book.

I bought this book a few days ago and i really like it. Grammar rules are well explained and there are many funny examples to illustrate those rules, which is very useful. There are also many other things here which can be very useful to people who want to learn any foreign language - paying attention to texts, songs etc in a given language is just one of many pieces of advice you can find here. I'm also really thrilled about small pieces of history of both German and English in this book (where the word "Mittwoch" comes from, for example)as it gives an additional flavor to learning German.
All in all, this isn't a book which you can use as your only resource to master German grammar but it definitely can help you to understand this language and avoid serious mistakes in using it.

As someone who is incredibly picky about language (even how I misuse it!), I found myself to be just about the worst German-learner out there. I knew enough about grammar to constantly have questions and doubts but I could not get the answers I needed. Even German friends who were interested in grammar just didn't have explanations for the things I wanted to know, and it was making me less and less sure about using the German I was learning.

This book changed everything!

Use this book at about the B1 certificate level and you will suddenly see the clouds part. Once you feel more sure about the differences between English and German, you'll finally be able to stop translating in your head and speak/write. You'll make more sense of the things Germans say. And of course, you'll be able to explain to the Germans why they say those things!

It's a book I carry around and read (reread!) every day on the U-bahn. It's actually a fun read, with snarky examples now and then and a lot of amusing complaints about the Americanization of Deutsch.

It's not a German grammar but it fills gaps that even really good teachers often don't. I cought 7 highly recommended German books on Amazon, but this is the one that made the difference!

This book is like having 8 years of German lecture notes all in one book. This book amazes me every time I open it up. Notes and rules, pitfalls and mistakes, tips and charts and tables, plus more! I would recommend this book to anyone studying German!

-Dr. Kenneth

The author assumes that you know what certain things mean (declining an adjective, dative nouns, etc) which makes it a bit difficult for someone like me who doesn't remember the little sentence structure/parts of speech that I WAS taught in high school.

BUT: the book is still VERY useful, going over pronouns, multi-gendered nouns (as in many languages, German assigns masculine, feminine, or neuter articles to a noun)--nouns that have more than one gender article, which changes the meaning, and pronunciations (my favorite section thus far).

DEFINITELY worth the price if you're learning German!

I recommend this book only for advanced students of German. The details are far too tedious and specific for anyone at any lower level. If you are ready for this book, however, I consider it to be brilliant. I have carefully read, marked up, and reread this book in order to move my German vastly forward. The author can seem stuffy and pedantic (his unceasing references to high German art become tedious), but he has done us a tremendous service and I compliment him with utmost praise for his incredibly practical choices for making sure that your German is always perfect. Because there are no practice exercises, I recommend underlining everything that you wish to remember and going over that material several times so that it sticks. It's worth it.

This is a great resource for those who wish to improve their knowledge of German. This is not for beginners, in my opinion, but for those who have at least some background with the language. It explains the "why's" and provides plenty of examples to back them up. Easy to read and follow. I could not put it down, as I wanted to learn more and more. Not only do we learn the "why's" with easy to follow explanations but also plenty of vocab. After going through this, I was able to better understand sentence structure and the difficult workings of the German adjective, and the dreaded "ein." A must for a fella serious about learning and improving his German. AAA+++