A Beginner's Guide to
Following the News in German

Part 2

STRATEGIES > Part 1 | Part 2 | German News Links

Here are some helpful strategies and techniques that even beginners can use to read German in the media:

• Don't try to understand everything word-for-word. Try to get the gist of the story (the overall meaning, a summary).
• Use the context to help you understand the overall meaning and the main topics. Words are rarely used in isolation. Use the words around a word you don't know to help you guess its meaning. Be a word detective! (It's elementary, my dear Watson.)
• Take advantage of photos and illustrations. They can tell you a lot, even if you don't completely understand the captions.
• Don't even attempt to look up everything in a dictionary. You may want to look up a few key words or headlines (Schlagzeilen), but concentrate on the overall meaning and don't worry about the details.
• Use cognates to your advantage. Many German words are identical or very close to English. (See the examples below.)
• Use our news vocabulary glossaries (German-English and English-German) if you need more help.
• Relax! Don't get frustrated! The more you read authentic German, the less of a struggle it becomes. If you're a perfectionist or a detail person, learn not to be in this situation.

Before you read the answers, make sure you have tried to guess the English meaning of the German cognates in the chart above. If you couldn't figure all of them out, you need to become a better word detective! The answers (in the same order as in the chart, left-to-right): affair, to block, typical/typically, ecosystem, the topic is taboo, in Spain, dictator, began, problematic, opposition party.

Now, was that so difficult? Of course not! Fortunately, there are many of these cognate words in German. But you need to look for and notice them when they're surrounded by lots of German words you may not know. (But learn to avoid the false cognates!) The cognates can help you figure out the more difficult German words.

Of course, not all German words are cognates. To help you with the many words that are not so easy to figure out, we have provided two "news glossaries" with vocabulary that is typically found in the Nachrichten, plus some terms that are not likely to be found in a dictionary—either because they are too new, or they're just hard to find. You may wish to open the German-English version or the English-German version of the news glossary in a separate browser window when you use our links to online news, weather and sports in German.

You'll also find our other English-German glossaries helpful. They cover topics from "Aerospace" to "Travel"—and a lot of other subjects in between. We have many links to online German media (print, radio, TV), including these news-link pages: News - Nachrichten 1, News/Nachrichten 2, and Nachrichten (links to German news sources and specific topics). Enjoy your surfing!

NEXT > News Links | Guide 1 > Guide 2 > News Links

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