Hey folks, long time no see! These past few weeks have been a gong show, but here I am again.

Have you ever found a resource and go – wow, where do I even start?

That is the question I faced this week as I looked into the other ChatGPT recommendation. Today, we’re looking at the Goethe Institut. When I first reached this website, it was all in German. One of my first thoughts was “Oh no, what am I getting into?”. Once google translated the page and I created an account, I realized what this was. It is an organization that is dedicated to providing resources and courses about the German language and culture.

I then discovered their library system, Onleihe. And wow, where do I begin? It essentially is like a library in almost every way, except it is mostly German content, ranging from books, to audio, to videos to music. There was so much to go through, but I thought I could try to read an easy kid level book. I chose “Zippel macht Zirkus”, which translates to “Zippel makes a circus”. I tried to read this:

I was able to identify some words, but I clearly knew that I needed time to learn more vocabulary as a whole. 

I then moved on to the video section. I found a movie called “Welcome to Siegheilkirchen”. It was a German film with English subtitles. It was really cool to not only watch a German-based animation film (which is a completely different experience from North American animation story-wise) but also being able to learn certain words and phrases from it. 

As much as this resource is leagues above me in terms of language sophistication, I know that I will come back to it over time as my learning progresses. I might not be able to read a children’s story right now, but I hope I can get to that point in the next year.

Have you tried to read a book or watch a movie in a different language?