Others say..."Good stuff"This book is a must have if you are serious about devloping your German.
"If only you spoke french!"This is a great book to keep near your desk to leaf through when that pesky verb comes up (preterit of "werden" - third person plural... can't remember??) pick up this book and leaf through it to find what you need. This being said, I still don't feel that it is a complete survey of the entire german verb system. While it does a good job picking many indicative and model verb forms, it still leaves something to be desired.
If you are lucky and can speak, read or understand French, or are of French origin, buy the "Bescherelle - Verbes Allemands". It covers the entire verb system with 54 model verbs and a complete index. If you are familiar with the famous "Bescherelle - L'art de conjuger" you won't go wrong with this book. Check it out!!
Si vouse êtes lecteur ou étudiant francophone, laisse-tomber ce livre et allez acheter le Bescherelle des verbes allemands! CENT fois mieux que celui vendu ici!
"The Best German Verb Guide on the Market"My first encounter with the 501 Verbs series was as a graduate student in foreign languages at the University of Illinois. I found then and I confirm now that these amazing verb references are by far the best of their kind on the market and will simplify your learning of German verbs, how they are conjugated in all tenses and how they are used correctly in sentences.
Just a word about my qualifications, I am the founder of Language Dynamics and the author of the `Behind the Wheel' and `Driving Towards Fluency' CD series in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. I hold degrees from and have taught foreign languages at major universities including the University of Illinois (where I was rated as an excellent instructor by my students), Illinois State University and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In addition to teaching foreign languages at all levels and authoring over 70 books and courses in a number of foreign languages, I have also had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker for the Illinois Foreign Language Teachers Association at their workshops in Rockford and at the Naperville Illinois Hilton (near Chicago) where I received high marks for my presentations on simplifying foreign language teaching. I daily purchase and review nearly every foreign language title on the market and have dedicated my life to helping people of all ages and backgrounds to learn foreign languages quickly and easily. That said, I now move on to the review.
Please bear in mind that foreign language learning is a journey as much as it is a destination. Along your journey to fluency you will hopefully encounter a number of sources that will be reasonably priced and effective in teaching you some aspect of a foreign language.
'501 German Verbs' accomplishes the following:
1. It simplifies verb conjugation for both regular and irregular verbs.
2. It provides the best 'verb chart' or 'template' of different verb conjugations that I have ever seen. This 'snapshot' of all the conjugations of a given German verb in all possible tenses on a single page is a magnificent way to understand their structure at a glance.
3. It is very easy to understand and easy to use. The verb infinitive appears in large print at the right or left corner of the page along with the English translation.
4. The correct use of the target verb is then made crystal clear by sentences at the bottom of each verb page where the verb is used in a natural context.
5. There is a convenient and easy-to-use English-German and German-English Glossary found at the back of the book.
6. Verbs also appear idiomatically and are included in a section covering specific high frequency topics such as shopping, hotel and so forth.
7. All verbs are listed alphabetically for easy reference.
BOTTOM LINE: A superb guide and reference of German verbs. The best in its category. A must buy.
TIP: Use this reference with a good dictionary and one or two solid CD courses which will teach you how to pronounce authentically spoken German in a native context. In these courses you will actually hear and learn to speak the verbs found in 501 German Verbs.
Happy language learning,
Mark Frobose/Author
' Behind the Wheel German I ' / '123 Speed German ' / ' Conversational German in Nothing Flat '
"good, but not great"I've been taking an intensive German translation course this summer and because I haven't taken any German before this, I didn't have any vocabulary coming into it. I bought this book as a supplement because I wanted to have as many resources as possible to get through class.
My problem with it has been that most of the verbs I've tried to look up haven't been in it. I've only found a few of the verbs I've tried to look up. Part of this, however, has to do with the compound nature of German, and another part has to do with the fact that 501 really isn't that many verbs in the grand scheme of linguistics.
If you're learning German for fun or to travel, this book would probably be pretty helpful, but if you're learning the language for academics or for a field of work with a specialized vocabulary, you won't find everything you need in it.
"Achtung!"Henry Strutz was an associate professor of languages at State University of New York in Alfred, New York, when he put this book together. The volume I have has a publication date of 1972 - this is, however, the kind of book that doesn't really go out of date. Language does change, but the basics of languages remain steady over several generations in general, and German is no exception. The basic core of the language remains constant, so this book holds up over time. Subsequent printings of this book may add a verb here and drop a verb there (given the title, it will always try to stay at 501 verbs), but the vast majority will remain the same.
I studied German at university almost 25 years ago, and first purchased this book to go along with my studies. While German is fairly standard in the patterns of conjugations for most verbs, German like most languages has exceptions to many rules, including exceptions to some of the most frequently used verbs, such as the verb constructions for to be (English is the same, with this being one of the most difficult verb constructions for non-English speakers to learn). The verb sein (bin, bist, ist, sind, seid, sind) is one of the most important verbs; haben is another important verb, given its `helping verb' status (true also in English), as it occurs in constructions with other verbs.
There are 501 verbs here, one each to a page, arranged in alphabetical order. From achten (to pay attention to) to zwingen (to force, compel), most of the verbs found in eighty percent or more of regular conversation and general writing are to be found here. Each page is laid out in a logical order, with indicative forms (the most common and simple forms) on the left, and subjunctive forms (primary and secondary, as appropriate) on the right. It steps through the various verb tenses: present, past (imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect), future and future perfect. Rare is the verb that doesn't follow these patterns - some verbs, such as geschehen (to happen, to take place, to come to pass) have simplified patterns given the use in parts of speech (rare is the sentence in English or in German where someone would say, `I have come to pass...').
Strutz has an introduction of 45 pages (not numbered along with the verbs, but rather using Roman numerals, so that the 501 verbs can correspond to 501 text pages). This introduces a very basic grammar, a discussion of the verb tenses and their uses, different kinds of conjugations, and sets out a pattern page in English to aid users in following the German pages of verbs.
In discussing word order, Strutz quotes Mark Twain, who once said of the German language, `The German goes to bed with his subject and wakes up with his verb.' According to Strutz, Twain is once supposed to have refused to leave a play, despite its being dreadful, because he was waiting for the verb. Strutz injects humour into the serious aspect of language study such as he can (how much can one do with a simple listing of verbs?), particularly in the early pages with grammar discussion. He also addresses pronunciation issues, and looks at particular forms that are regionally different. Knowing his audience is largely academic/student readers, he draws examples from literature, philosophy (Nietzsche), and music.
Despite this good introduction, this book should not be confused with being a German grammar or language study. This introductory material is but the briefest of introductions, intended primarily as a refresher for those who have studied German before, or are studying German concurrently with using this text.
Strutz has several indexes. There is an English-to-German index of words represented in the text; there is a German-to-English index in the same pattern. Many `prefix verbs' are conjugated on the primary pages - words like ankommen (to arrive) and bekommen (to receive); however, there are others for which only the basic verb is conjugated - prefix formations are included in the index in parenthetical form. Finally, there is a brief index of verbs identified by infinitive form, given that some verbs change sufficiently in various conjugate forms to not be intuitively obvious for the beginner to understand which word it is.
I'm trying to recapture my reading German this summer, so that I can do some theological research using various German texts in the coming academic year. I find this book invaluable - it is perhaps of more value when one is trying to write than when one is trying to read, but it is still very useful, so much so that the binding on my copy has cracked from use.
