30 Days of German

What this is, and who wrote it

We make langNote, a paid app that turns your own study material into practice. This course is free, complete, and works on paper or on a screen with nothing installed — the lessons below are the whole thing, not a sample with the good parts removed.

The reason it exists is that it was written for a real 30-day attempt at German, and material written to actually be used is different from material written to rank. Every lesson ends with a note on how to run that day's page through the app, because that is how the author studied it. Ignore those boxes and the course still works.

The daily routine (20–30 minutes)

One rule: never read silently. German word order puts the meaning at the END of the sentence — the prefix, the infinitive, the participle — and reading with your eyes lets you skip exactly the part that a listener is waiting for.

Why English speakers get a head start — and where German charges for it

English is a Germanic language, and the consonants drifted apart in a regular, predictable way about 1,500 years ago. Learn six swaps — t↔ss/z, d↔t, th↔d, p↔f/pf, k↔ch, v↔b — and you can decode German words you have never met: water/Wasser, make/machen, ship/Schiff, night/Nacht. Day 1 hands you that table, which is why day 1 ends with you reading unfamiliar words rather than memorising familiar ones.

The tax is falsche Freunde. Gift means poison. Bekommen means to receive, not to become. Also means so, not also. Handy means mobile phone. Every lesson that contains one marks it.

The real cost is grammatical, and it arrives on schedule: three genders on day 6, the accusative on day 11, the dative on day 15, and the verb travelling to the end of the sentence on days 19, 20 and 26. That is the honest shape of German — cheap to start, expensive in the middle — and it is why week 1 here is deliberately lighter than week 3.

The 30 lessons

Each lesson is a full page: tables, dialogues, pronunciation notes, exercises and answers. Start at day 1 — the later lessons assume the earlier ones.

Questions

Is the whole course really free?

Yes. All 30 lessons are on this site with nothing to sign up for. We sell langNote, a separate paid app, and every lesson suggests using it — that suggestion is the only thing being sold here.

Can you actually learn German in 30 days?

You can complete A1 and reach into A2: a real conversation about yourself, your week and what you did yesterday. You cannot become fluent or follow native-speed speech. The box at the top lists both halves.

Are German cases really that hard?

They are the main cost of the language, and they are smaller than their reputation. The accusative changes exactly one column — der becomes den, ein becomes einen — and everything else stays as it was. Day 11 opens with that fact because it is the thing that makes the rest survivable.

How much time does it take each day?

25–35 minutes. Days 6, 11, 15 and 19 are the heavy ones, and days 7, 14, 21 and 30 are review days that run closer to 40 minutes because they are tests rather than new material.

Do I need anything to start?

No. A way to hear German helps — any text-to-speech will do — mainly for the two ch sounds and for hearing where a sentence actually ends.

What comes after day 30?

Day 30 names the order: adjective endings first (the biggest single gap you will have), then the genitive, Konjunktiv II, relative clauses and the passive.