A German Language Cours on Historical and Linguistic Principles. 2nd Edition

The people of England and Germany share a common origin from the times of their settlement in Europe and they derive their culture and civilisation from the same sources in the antique and medieval world of Graeco-Roman learning. This course in basic German is built on these foundations; it is designed for speakers of English and others with a good grasp of the English language and draws particular attention to the vocabulary shared by both English and German. Word pairs of similar meaning and form are presented in groups according to the sound laws which determine their relationship, for instance English t corresponds to German z (pronounce /ts/) in tame zahm, tongue Zunge, tin Zinn, twelve zwölf and other words. Learners can take advantage of this similarity, which occurs with vowels as well as consonants, to help them learn vocabulary more quickly as well as to guess the meaning of an unknown word. There are longer pieces covering a variety of text types at the end of the course as examples of suitable study material for the learner. The grammar, too, has been selected carefully for this course. It should show how these closely related languages have many points of general agreement and fine disagreement in phonetics, phonology, semantics and syntax. The course is not structured for gradual progress, from easy to difficult; therefore one can cover the units in almost any order one prefers. The second edition makes the structure more easily accessible for the reader. A few notes on the relation between both Germanic peoples have been added. Texts and examples have been revised. A short chapter on how to "read" a text has been added.