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auf A1 — in 28 Tagen.

Five rules that decide whether four weeks works

A1 rewards preparation, not talent. The Goethe-Institut estimates 80–200 lessons of 45 minutes to reach this level; at 60–90 focused minutes a day, 28 days lands you inside that band — but only if you spend the time the way below.

German is read exactly as written — once you know eleven traps

This is the one chapter that pays back on every later page. German spelling is almost perfectly phonetic: no silent letters, no English guesswork. Learn these eleven rules and you can pronounce any word you meet, including ones you have never seen.

The umlauts: three sounds English does not have

Each one is a mouth trick, not a new letter. Get them in five minutes and stop sounding foreign in three words.

Das Alphabet

You need this for one reason: in the exam and at every counter in Germany you will be asked Wie schreibt man das? and you will have to spell your name. Learn the letter names, not just the sounds.

24 phrases that carry you through your first week

Memorise these as whole blocks before you understand a single rule. The middle column is how it sounds, not how it is spelled. Tap any line to hear it.

Germans say the units first — and it costs candidates the listening module

21 is einundzwanzig: one-and-twenty. So when you hear siebenundvierzig, the seven arrives before the forty and your brain must hold it. This is a reflex, not knowledge — drill it aloud daily.

Die Uhrzeit — two systems, both examined

The one trap: halb zwei = 1:30. German counts toward the coming hour. Say it fifty times until it stops feeling wrong.

der, die, das — guessable about 80% of the time

Every German noun is capitalised and carries a gender that has nothing to do with meaning (das Mädchen, the girl, is neuter). You do not have to memorise blindly: word endings give the gender away. This colour code runs through the whole book.

sein and haben carry half of everything you will say

They are irregular, they appear in every conversation, and later they build the past tense. These two tables are the highest-value memorisation in the whole course.

One ending set runs almost every German verb

German has no continuous tense. Ich lerne is “I learn”, “I am learning” and “I do learn”. Chop the -en off the infinitive to get the stem, then add five endings.

Two spelling helpers, not new rules: a stem ending in -t, -d, -m, -n inserts an e before -st/-t so you can pronounce it (du arbeitest, er findet); a stem ending in -s, -ß, -z, -x drops the extra s in du (du heißt, du tanzt).

The stem-changing verbs — only in du and er/sie/es

German irregulars are gentler than English ones: the endings never change, only the vowel inside, and only in two persons. Four groups cover A1.

The conjugated verb lives in position 2. Everything else negotiates around it.

This single law explains most German word order at A1. “Position” means a block of meaning, not a word: mein kleiner Bruder is one position.

Notice what happened in row 2: putting the time first did not add a subject slot — the subject simply moved behind the verb. Never Jeden Morgen ich trinke. And rows 3–4 show the German bracket: the second verb, or a separable prefix, waits at the very end of the sentence.

Two question shapes, and one of them is free

nicht or kein — one question decides it

Ask: am I saying no to a noun? Then kein. Anything else — a verb, an adjective, a time, a place, a name with an article — takes nicht.

Three cases at A1, and only masculine really changes

A case is the job a noun does in the sentence, and German marks that job on the article rather than by position. Learn the grid below as a picture, not a list: the whole of A1 case grammar is der → den → dem plus die → der in the dative.

Read the shaded cells only. Everything unshaded is identical to the nominative you already know. The plural dative adds an -n to the noun itself if it has not got one: die Kinder → mit den Kindern.

Personal pronouns in all three cases

mein, dein, sein — they all wear the ein endings

There is nothing new to learn here. Take the stem (mein-), then bolt on exactly the ending ein or kein would take in that slot. Learn one word, get eight.

The bracket: modal in position 2, real verb parked at the end

Modals are the single biggest jump in what you can say. They also introduce the structure that governs the rest of German: the sentence opens with the conjugated verb in slot 2 and closes with an infinitive. Everything else sits inside the bracket.

Note the shape shared by all six: ich and er are identical and end in nothing — never ich kanne, never er musst. That single observation removes most modal errors.

Some verbs split in half and throw the front to the back

In aufstehen, the stress falls on AUF — and stressed prefixes detach. The prefix travels to the end of the clause and waits there. When the verb is not conjugated (after a modal, or in the infinitive) it stays glued together.

Spoken German has one past tense, and it needs two words

Forget the Präteritum for now — Germans speak the Perfekt. Take haben or sein in position 2, and send the participle to the end. Only sein, haben and the modals prefer their simple past forms in speech: ich war, ich hatte, ich musste.

The 30 participles A1 actually asks for

Small words, fixed cases — learn them in phrases

Do not learn mit = with. Learn mit dem Bus. Prepositions carry a case with them permanently, and the only reliable way to store that is as a phrase you have said fifty times.

At A1 you get the easy half: adjectives after the verb take no ending

Die Wohnung ist klein. No ending, ever. Endings only appear when the adjective stands in front of its noun (eine kleine Wohnung) — that is A2 territory. Build your A1 sentences the first way and you cannot be wrong.

Comparison — three forms, one irregular handful

The review system: four days that decide what you keep

New material read once is gone within a week. The fix is cheap: meet each word again just as you are about to forget it. This course spaces reviews at roughly day 1, 3, 7 and 21 — which is why the plan has no new grammar on review days.

Twenty minutes, fifteen points, two predictable tasks

The writing module never surprises anyone. Part 1 is a form with five gaps. Part 2 is a short message of about thirty words with three bullet points you must all cover. Miss one bullet and you lose the marks for it, however good the German is.

What the exam room actually looks like

Start Deutsch 1 is four modules: listening, reading, writing, speaking. The written parts run about 65 minutes in one block; speaking is a short group session, usually after a break. You need 60% overall to pass — and the speaking module is the easiest place to bank it.

Life in Germany, in the words you now have

A1 is not a conversation level — it is a transaction level. That is more useful than it sounds: almost everything a newcomer must do in the first six months is a transaction at a counter.