How to learn German by reading

German has a reputation for long words and difficult grammar, and both are real. But German is also unusually kind to readers. Every noun starts with a capital letter, so you can see the skeleton of a sentence at a glance. Spelling is regular. And the long words come apart into pieces you already know: a Handschuh is a “hand shoe,” a glove; a Krankenhaus is a “sick house,” a hospital; a Haustürschlüssel is a house-door key.

German is also the language of the Brothers Grimm, of Kafka, and of Johanna Spyri, the Swiss author of Heidi. Reading it opens a literature, and it trains exactly the skills the grammar demands: holding a sentence in your head until the verb arrives, and reading the small words that tell you who did what to whom.

How German grammar looks on the page

• Cases. German has four, and they show up mostly on articles and adjective endings: der, den, dem, des. That’s what lets German move words around. Den Hund sieht der Mann still means “the man sees the dog,” because den marks the dog as the object. Reading trains you to treat the article as a signal, not decoration.
• Gender. Three of them, and not by meaning: spoon, fork and knife are der Löffel, die Gabel and das Messer. Das Mädchen, “the girl,” is neuter because of its -chen ending.
• The verb’s two positions. In a main clause the verb comes second; in a subordinate clause it goes to the end. Ich weiß, dass er morgen kommt: “I know that he’s coming tomorrow.” In long sentences you wait for the verb, and the meaning arrives with it.
• Separable verbs. Ankommen means “to arrive,” but in a main clause the prefix splits off and travels to the end: Der Zug kam um acht Uhr in Berlin an. Er hörte auf means “he stopped”; er hörte zu means “he listened.” Until you reach the last word, you don’t know the verb.
• The narrative past. Spoken German mostly uses the perfect (er ist gegangen), but written stories use the simple past: war, ging, sagte, kam. Many common verbs change their vowel: finden, fand; sprechen, sprach; ziehen, zog. You learn them fastest by meeting them in stories.
• Reported speech. Literary German often reports speech in the subjunctive: Er sagte, er sei müde, “he said he was tired.” It looks strange at first and soon becomes a useful signal that someone else’s words are being passed on.

German reading at each level

How the CEFR levels translate into German text (and CEFR levels explained for the scale itself):

• A2, elementary. Short main clauses in the present and the perfect, the simple past of sein, haben and the modal verbs, and the accusative and dative after common prepositions. Separable verbs appear early, because everyday German is full of them.
• B1, intermediate. Stories narrated in the simple past, subordinate clauses with weil, dass, als and wenn, relative clauses, and the dative and accusative used with confidence.
• B2, upper intermediate. The passive, the subjunctive in both its forms (wäre, hätte, er sei), sentences with clauses nested inside clauses, and some literary vocabulary.
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, lightly condensed, including the heavy noun phrases of written German: der im Garten spielende Junge, “the boy playing in the garden,” literally “the in-the-garden-playing boy.” C2 is the complete text.

Heidi at A2 and at B2

Two moments from Heidi, written for this page at two levels:

A2

Heidi ist fünf Jahre alt. Sie wohnt jetzt bei ihrem Großvater auf dem Berg. Oft geht sie mit Peter und den Ziegen hinauf auf die Weide.

Heidi is five years old. Now she lives with her grandfather on the mountain. She often goes up to the pasture with Peter and the goats.

B2

Als Heidi nach Frankfurt geschickt wurde, wo sie der kranken Klara Gesellschaft leisten sollte, vermisste sie die Berge so sehr, dass sie nachts im Schlaf durch das Haus wanderte.

When Heidi was sent to Frankfurt, where she was supposed to keep the sick Klara company, she missed the mountains so much that she wandered through the house in her sleep at night.

The A2 text already shows the case system at work. Bei ihrem Großvater is dative because bei always takes the dative; auf dem Berg is dative because it says where she is, and auf die Weide is accusative because it says where she’s going. And Oft geht sie puts the verb second, ahead of its subject. The B2 sentence nests three clauses: a passive with its verb at the end (geschickt wurde), a relative clause (wo sie… sollte) and a result clause (so sehr, dass). Der kranken Klara is dative with its adjective ending, because Gesellschaft leisten, “to keep company,” takes a dative.

Your daily German reading, in four steps

1. Read each sentence to the end before deciding what it means. German saves information for last. Resist translating word by word.
2. Then listen with the text highlighted. You’ll hear the stress fall on separable prefixes (ANkommen) and the melody that marks where one clause ends and the next begins.
3. Tap sparingly. Tap when a word blocks the sentence, not every time an ending surprises you. Endings become familiar through repetition, not lookup.
4. Reread one chapter a week. A second pass through familiar text is fast and pleasant, and it consolidates what the first pass taught you.

The principles of extensive reading, set out by Day and Bamford (1998, Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom), suit German well: easy material, a lot of it, chosen for pleasure and read at a steady pace. For German, “easy” mostly means sentences short enough that you can hold the whole clause in mind until the verb arrives. Our guides to comprehensible input, reading while listening and choosing your reading level go further.

Classics to start with

• Heidi is a simple, warm story with a clear setting, ideal at A2 and B1 and full of everyday words for food, weather and home.
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales were collected in German by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Each tale is short and complete, which makes one tale a perfect daily session.
• Journey to the Center of the Earth begins in Professor Lidenbrock’s house in Hamburg, and its narrator is his nephew Axel. Easy to follow at A2.
• The Swiss Family Robinson was written in German by Johann David Wyss, and it’s packed with practical vocabulary for building, cooking and exploring.
• The Metamorphosis is Kafka’s short masterpiece. Read an adapted edition at B2 before moving up to C1, which stays close to the original, and C2, the complete story.
• Treasure Island is a fine first novel at A2 or B1, with lots of dialogue and a plot that never stalls.

How Lexo helps with German

The word card is built for the questions German raises. Tap a word and you get its meaning in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech: sah leads to sehen, Häuser to Haus, ging to gehen. When a word belongs to a phrase or idiom, the card explains the whole phrase, which can help with separable verbs whose prefix has wandered to the end of the clause. And a translation of the whole sentence is one tap away, which is a relief at the end of a long one. Save the ones worth keeping to your Words list.

The whole book is narrated, with different voices for different characters and the text highlighted word by word, so you hear where one clause ends and the next begins. Any word can be played on its own, and sentence-by-sentence mode takes the long sentences of B2 and C1 one at a time, with audio and translation.

You choose the level for each book: Heidi at A2, The Metamorphosis at B2, the complete text at C2. If an edition hasn’t been written yet, Lexo writes it for you, starting with chapter 1, which takes a few minutes; the app can tell you when it’s ready, and the first reader keeps a dated “First edition” mark. Books are stored on your iPhone or iPad for offline reading, and there’s no sign-up.

German’s Germanic relatives make good second languages to read: see Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.

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