How to Understand Fast Spoken German Effortlessly | Understand German quickly

Speaking German with native speakers is tough. It can be incredibly frustrating when you can’t understand everything they are saying, they speak too quickly for you to understand and you don’t know how to answer their questions properly. So today I’m going to teach you a few tips that can help you improve your fluency in German and most of these you can do right now today and use them in the next conversation you have in German.

One thing that I wish more people would talk about when it comes to listening comprehension is

YOU DON’T NEED TO UNDERSTAND EVERY WORD.

There have been countless times I didn’t understand this word or that word in a conversation. That happens all of the time in conversations I have in English. I’m old and my hearing isn’t as good as it once was.

When I was young and my hearing was good, I didn’t listen as well, because I was usually distracted by something else. The point is that you don’t need to understand everything.

Start by learning to pay attention to places where the verb goes.

The beginning of sentences near the subject. Usually this is within the first few words of the sentence. If you pay close attention here, you can learn who or what we are talking about and the main idea, which is the verb.

If you hear a form of “haben”, “sein” or “werden”, be on the lookout for a secondary verb at the end of the sentence or clause. These words are trigger words for the Perfekt tense (used to talk about the past) and the future tenses.

Once you know what the subject and verb are, context will probably play a pretty big role in the parts you need to understand. If you don’t understand a word, listen carefully to the words and sentences used around it. Maybe you can figure it out based on context. Maybe you can use one thing to infer the other.

Generally when listening you can safely ignore articles, possessives and a whole host of other words.

Yes, these words have meaning and change the meaning and intent of the sentences, but if you know the word order, you don’t really need to pay attention to the case system and all of that other stuff.

Again, this is when listening. Not when speaking.

It is for figuring out what someone said so you can respond. This is terrible advice, if you are trying to learn the intricacies of the language or pass some exam.

This advice is simply for when you are in the middle of a conversation and you are trying to survive the encounter without embarrassing yourself.

Hey, Tim. Was hast du nach der POIUSDF gemacht? Wir haben lange nach dir gesucht, aber du warst schon weg. Maria und ich sind essen gegangen. -
Hey, Tim. What did you do after the POIUDF? We looked for you for a long time, but you were already gone. Maria and I went out to eat.

This is a simplistic example, but if you didn’t know the word that I made up for the purposes of making sure that no one knew what it was, you should be able to infer that it was a party or a gathering that the recipient of this sentence was also at.

Internalize some basic sentence components that you can use to spice up your sentences.

Short prepositional phrases like: mit dem Bus, im Sommer, nach Hause, or in die Ferien gehen.

Time components like: heute Morgen, morgen früh, am Donnerstag and general time telling phrases.

Verb and preposition combinations like: auf etwas warten, an etwas liegen, sich an etwas gewöhnen, an etwas glauben, sich auf etwas freuen, sich für etwas interessieren, über etwas (nach)denken, and a whole lot more.

If you want a giant list of these, I made my own list that includes over 150 verb and preposition pairings that will come in handy in a whole host of situations.

This is the tip that takes the most preparation and memorization, but it really boils down to frequency of vocabulary and phrases. Don’t learn just one word at a time. That is incredibly inefficient. Start learning phrases that you can use in a whole host of situations.

Im Sommer bin ich nach Deutschland gereist. -
In the summer I traveled to Germany.

Im Sommer habe ich Fußball gespielt. -
In the summer I played soccer.

Er hat im Sommer ein neues Auto gekauft. -
He bought a new car in the summer.

Vary the way your sentences start.

In the first two examples I use “im Sommer” at the beginning. In the last example I started with the subject, which is what you are probably more used to. This variation can make you sound more conversational and generally less boring.

Conjunctions and relative clauses can really expand the way you express yourself in German.

These are basically ways to connect one sentence to another or words that allow you to combine thoughts into one sentence. Start by learning the coordinating conjunctions, which don’t make you learn any new word order.

Then move on to the subordinating conjunctions. Once you figure out how to use these, your sentence length will expand exponentially and you will be amazed at how well you can communicate using them.

Meine Mutter geht gerne ins Kino, aber mein Vater bleibt lieber zu Hause. -
My mother likes to go to the movie theater, but my father prefers to stay at home.

Ich kann heute nicht mitkommen, denn ich habe schon einen Termin. -
I can’t come along today, because I already have a meeting.

Als ich ein Kind war, hatte ich einen sehr süßen Hund namens Cookie. -
When I was a child, I had a very cute dog named Cookie.

Da der Professor nicht zum Unterricht gekommen ist, müssen die Studenten nicht zum Unterricht kommen. -
Because the professor didn’t come to class, the students don’t have to go to class.

Die schöne Frau, die ich gestern im Geschäft getroffen habe, möchte mit mir ins Restaurant gehen. -
The beautiful woman whom I met yesterday in the store would like to go to a restaurant with me.

Use the question to answer the question.

Most questions that people ask you will include a lot of the wording that you need in order to answer them.

Prepositional phrases will already use the correct case, so when you answer the question and you need to use the same prepositional phrase, just say what they said, but in a statement instead.

It is also super easy with yes/no style questions to simply switch the subject and verb (change out du for ich, if needed) and say it as a statement.

Hast du einen Hund? -
Do you have a dog?

Ja, ich habe einen Hund. -
Yes, I have a dog.

Gibt es ein Kino in dieser Stadt? -
Is there a movie theater in this city?

Ja, es gibt ein Kino in dieser Stadt. -
Yes, there is a movie theater in this city.

Warum kommst du nicht mit? -
Why aren’t you coming along? (Could also be “Why don’t you come along?”)

Ich komme nicht mit, weil ich kein Geld habe. -
I’m not coming along, because I don’t have any money.

While most of the tips in this post so far have focused on what you can do as a listener to improve your speaking skills, there is one big thing that you can add to your sentences to make yourself sound a lot more fluent.

Learning how to use modal particles can make people think you really know your stuff.

The best part is, you don’t actually need to know all that much German in order to make use of these little words.

Modal particles are words like ja, doch, halt, eben, or einmal. They are thrown into sentences to make things more conversational. They change the intonation in similar ways that we English speakers do with our inflection and tone. For example:

Er ist ja ein Junge, weißt du? -
He is a boy, you know?

Wir sind doch ins Kino gegangen. -
We did (in fact) go to the movies.

Hör mal zu! Ich mache das nicht. -
Listen up. I’m not doing that.

Ich wollte nur einmal sagen, dass deine Haare wunderschön sind. -
I just wanted to say that your hair is wonderfully beautiful.

If you want to learn more about these little words, I made a whole lesson about modal particles and how you can use them in sentences linked here.