Learn Japanese from German at PBC Languages
Free Japanese practice for German speakers at PBC Languages: small native-led classes plus 1-to-1 exchanges, half the time in each language.
Create your free accountNo card needed. Exchanges between members are always free.
Pitch accent is what trips up most German speakers first. German uses stress accent, so a word like hashi can mean chopsticks, bridge or edge depending on a melody your ear isn't trained to hear yet. Vowel length is the other quiet troublemaker: obasan (aunt) and obaasan (grandmother) differ only by one extra beat, and German doesn't force you to track duration that closely. The Japanese R also needs retraining, since it's a quick flap closer to a soft D than the uvular R German speakers already use.
German happens to have supplied Japanese with a decent stack of loanwords, mostly through medicine and mountaineering in the Meiji era, and they're a trap if you assume the meaning carried over untouched. Arbeit became arubaito, but it only means a part-time job, not work in general. Karte became karute, and now it exclusively means a patient's medical chart. On the grammar side, German speakers often overestimate how much their du/Sie instinct prepares them for keigo: Japanese politeness runs on more layers than a simple formal/informal switch, and plain adjective conjugation (takai becoming takakatta) has no German equivalent to lean on.
What moves fast: German pushes the verb to the end in subordinate clauses (weil ich das Buch kaufe), so the instinct for verb-final order in Japanese main clauses isn't foreign at all. German's love of compound nouns (Handschuh, Krankenhaus) also maps naturally onto how kanji compounds get built, so vocabulary that looks intimidating on paper often clicks quickly once you see the logic. The counting system helps too, since Japanese numbers stay regular and don't fuse the way German does with numbers like einundzwanzig.
Words you will actually hear
| Here | Elsewhere | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| アルバイト (arubaito) | Arbeit | Arbeit means work in general in German; arubaito narrowed down to mean specifically a part-time or side job. |
| カルテ (karute) | Karte | Karte is a card or map in German; karute now only refers to a patient's medical chart. |
| ギプス (gipusu) | Gips | Gips means gypsum/plaster in German; gipusu kept the medical sense and means a plaster cast. |
| リュックサック (ryukkusakku) | Rucksack | Same word, same meaning: a backpack, borrowed whole from German. |
| エネルギー (enerugii) | Energie | Energie and enerugii line up closely, both meaning energy in the physical or everyday sense. |
| アレルギー (arerugii) | Allergie | Allergie and arerugii match directly, both meaning allergy. |
| ノイローゼ (noiroze) | Neurose | Neurose is a clinical term for neurosis in German; noiroze drifted into casual use meaning stressed out or burned out. |
| テーマ (teema) | Thema | Thema and teema both mean the theme or topic of something, whether it's an essay or a TV show. |
| ゲレンデ (gerende) | Gelände | Gelände means terrain in general in German; gerende narrowed to specifically mean a ski slope. |
| ザイル (zairu) | Seil | Seil is any rope in German; zairu kept only the mountaineering sense, a climbing rope. |
How it works here
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Sign up and say your level
Two minutes. If you do not know your level, we place you in the first class.
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Pick a class or an exchange
Classes are led by a native teacher. An exchange is with another member: half the time in their language, half in yours.
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Join by video, nothing to install
From your phone or your computer. If you cannot make it, cancel and get your place back.
Questions about this
How long does it take a German speaker to hold a real conversation in Japanese?
There's no fixed number we can honestly give you, it depends on hours put in per week. What tends to happen is that hiragana and katakana come first and take real practice before kanji starts making sense, and pitch accent takes longer to sound natural than the grammar does. Regular 1-to-1 exchanges speed up listening and rhythm faster than classes alone, because you're hearing natural speed early.
Is the 1-to-1 exchange actually free?
Yes. You're not paying your partner and they're not paying you, you're trading half an hour of your German for half an hour of their Japanese. PBC Languages organizes the matching and scheduling, but the exchange itself is just time swapped between members.
What level do I need before I can join an exchange?
You need enough Japanese to build simple sentences and follow basic questions, since half an hour with a native speaker moves fast if you're starting from zero. Most people learn hiragana, katakana and a small set of phrases first, either on their own or in the small-group classes with native teachers, then move into exchanges once conversation is possible.
How exactly is the half hour split during an exchange?
Thirty minutes in Japanese, thirty minutes in German, with a clear switch in the middle so neither language dominates the session. There's no fixed script: most pairs pick a topic, correct each other's pronunciation as they go, and swap roles halfway through.
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