Shouldn’t I Learn the Alphabet First?

Sure, here you go: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÜß. Done! Not what you had in mind? Well, then let’s take a closer look at the real issue here, shall we?

Until today, almost every bloody textbook tells you: “First, learn your ABCs.” Because obviously, one needs to know the alphabet in order to learn a language, right? Sure, but luckily, you’ve already covered 90% of the work required here. Let’s cut through the nonsense, shall we? In real adult language learning—especially for English speakers who already write in Latin script – that’s what you are looking at here right now – teaching the alphabet as the first lesson is a textbook-level time sink. It’s not necessarily harmful, just pointless at that point in the learning process and therefore pretty boring. Here’s why you shouldn’t worry too much when you don’t see such a lesson in my A1 course right away. “Practice, practice and all is coming” ^^

1. Letter Names Don’t Teach Pronunciation

German letter names—“A” (/aː/), “Be” (/beː/), “Ge” (/ɡeː/), “Es” (/ɛs/), and so on—are categorically not how letters are pronounced within words. You don’t say Eff‑ater for Vater, nor Iks‑tra for Extra. Teaching letter names before learners internalize the language specific sounds and syllables actually used in context creates a misleading mental map. Linguistics research distinguishes between two areas:

1. The individual sounds that make up words. Think of the sounds you hear when you slowly say “Haus” – /h/ – /aʊ/ – /s/. This area is called segmental phonology and covers the basic building blocks of spoken language and

2: Things that go over those individual sounds—like pitch, stress, or intonation. For example, whether your voice goes up at the end of a question, or which part of the word you stress. —blurring them confuses learners, not clarifies. Those are called supra.segmental aspects. No need to remember the jargon.

2. You Already Know the Script

SmarterGerman learners already write and read English more or less fluently, so the “Latin alphabet” part is already in their toolkit. The only new characters are the Umlauts (Ä, Ö, Ü) and the ß. That’s a tiny subset easily picked up in context, once learners start encountering real words like Straße or Überraschung. You don’t need an hour of letter drills for that. I mean take a look at

• Georgian ვაუ, რა კარგი შვებაა, რომ მხოლოდ გერმანულის სწავლა მჭირდება or
• Thai โอโห โชคดีจริง ๆ ที่แค่ต้องเรียนภาษาเยอรมัน or
• Burmese ဝုန်းတယ်၊ ဂျာမန်ဘာသာစကားတစ်ခုတည်းပဲ သင်ဖို့လိုတာက ငါအတွက်ကောင်းတာပဲ။
• or the mistress of all languages Chinese: 哇，幸好我只需要学德语。

Aren’t you a bit relieved that the German script is so simple?

Scientists found that once you’ve learned how to read and write in one language, your brain automatically uses that knowledge when you learn to read in another—even if the writing system looks completely different. You don’t have to start from scratch; you’re just adjusting a small part of how reading works.

3. Focus on Real Communication, Not On Individual Letter Pronunciation

What beginners actually need is functional language—high-frequency words, phrases, pronunciation patterns, understanding, producing—and phonological awareness, the skill of hearing and manipulating actual sounds (not letter names). Professional language acquisition models (Krashen, Bygate, Ehri) all confirm: phoneme-level awareness and mapping these to real words (orthographic mapping) fuels reading and pronunciation—not isolated letter recitation  .

4. Dictation Doesn’t Require Knowing how to Pronounce the Alphabet

In my courses, dictation starts in Lesson 01. Students write words as they hear them—chunking phonemes and syllables, not naming letters. They learn to recognize sounds as they’re spoken and spelled in context—what Ehri defines as orthographic mapping. That method directly strengthens vocabulary, fluency, spelling and pronunciation. Far more potent than revisiting A‑B‑C. And of course most SG students curse the German language when they realize that they struggle with putting down what they hear into writing. But it doesn’t take long and most of them realize how powerful and how much fun those dictations actually are. Will you be one of them?

5. Knowing the Alphabet Is Useful—But Later and With Purpose

Let’s face it, you won’t need “the alphabet” anytime soon. Think about it. When do you need the English alphabet? Right, when you need to spell your name or your address and that’s it. There’s no other need for the alphabet. You don’t need it to pronounce anything, you don’t need it to write anything. Well, of course you need to be able to read and write in German but as you are already reading these words, you already know all you need to know about the German alphabet. You can read German already. That doesn’t mean you can understand it, duh. Nor does it mean you can pronounce it properly but whether in your mind you think out loud “Butter” with a thick English accent or not doesn’t matter for your understanding, right? You get that that word very likely means the same as in English, right? If not, you got more serious problems to focus on.

So when will you need the alphabet? When you are able to make a phone call or have to visit a place where nobody speaks English. And you hopefully wouldn’t visit such a place without a friend or family member that could translate to begin with. But if I had to name a point in your learning career when that is likely to become relevant I’d say near the end of A2. Maybe even later. Because before that you very likely won’t make any phone call in German on your own.

You might be the exception but then you simply practice the ten letters that you need to spell your name and street and be done with it. M I C H A E L J S T Z F R D B N <– That’s 16 letters (out of 30) to spell my full name – incl. 3 first names – my street and my city. Done. Sure, if you come from South America you probably will have to invent a few letters to fit in your name the length of the German constitution but that’s just bad luck. Next time peek when asked to put the finger on the globe blindly by some weird long bearded somewhat father like figure.

But What Should You Learn First?

Here’s the pragmatic alternative:

• High-frequency words and chunks—“Ich bin …”, “Kannst du…”, “Siehst du…” question structures.
• Phonological awareness drills—syllable splitting, minimal pair distinction, sound manipulation.
• Pronunciation-in-context—especially for Umlauts, final devoicing (like the -er in Vater), linkings that matter in conversation (e.g. “Wie geht’s”, “Was machst’n so?”).
• Orthographic mapping—connecting spoken words to written forms via meaningful text, not letter drills.

This way, you first train your ear to notice the sounds in speech – so called, phonological awareness. Then, once that’s clear, you connect those sounds to real words and written text—building up your reading and spelling skills naturally.

“Old” Teachers vs New Teachers

Let me put it gently: if a teacher’s idea of “introducing the alphabet” is teaching students to chant ABCs like preschoolers—why not. If they like it and enjoy singing, I’m all for it. If you are anything like me, I rather crave efficiency and functionality. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy singing something silly or funny if it losens me up a bit and possibly teaches me something but let me finish my breakfast beer first please. If you really MUST learn the alphabet here’s a catchy pop song for adults (SFW) that you might enjoy. Masterfully created by my dear friend Harry Bum Tschak, a gifted musician from berlin.

But I want to spell my name now. Teach me the alphabet please

Okay, okay. But let me do that in a more appropriate manner which is in a well structured course with more space and less distraction. Sign up to my A1 course and search for “alphabet” and you’ll be covered. There’s more to the alphabet than the 30 letters by the way. You have to actually consider all 44 so called “phonemes” (basically “sounds”) and you have to consider the differences to the English language which I cover sufficiently in all my courses. So if you are really interested in learning “the alphabet” my courses are the right place to do so, not a simple blog post. What are you waiting for? Do I have to spell it out for you? Okay, here an overview over all phonemes:

FAQ

Q: But don’t students need to know the alphabet to read and write?

A: Only when they meet new words in independent contexts—like forms, phone calls, or spelling. Until then, dictation + chunk learning + pronunciation produces practical literacy without ABC recitation.

Q: What about phonics? Don’t we need letter ‑ sound knowledge?

A: Yes—but as part of pronunciation drills as you encounter words. Not as a separate “learn A = /a/” step. That’s scaffolding, not babysitting. And as an adult you can skip the whole phonics vs whole language battle. You are not a child anymore therefore you will never learn German like a child again. That ship has sailed. And lucky for you, SmarterGerman already takes care of all your needs.

Q: So when and how do we teach Umlauts and ß?

A: As soon as they appear in texts students read—preferably in chunks or words they already know. No formal lecture—just focused pronunciation practice within context. You’ll quickly pick up that ß is basically the English “s” like in “bus”. The Umlauts are a bit more of a challenge but will be covered in pronunciation lessons and not isolated. And as to when to use an ß, that’s something you’ll learn quickly when it’s time e.g. when you write your address for the first time: Lindenstraße 38.

I did some math for you, well ChatGPT did but it seems about right what it spit out. According to my “research”, you don’t really have to worry about the ß too much as there are likely only 5 words with ß in the 1000 most frequently used words (A2) and a max of 30 in the top 5000 (B2). You’ll figure that out as you go.

Q: Isn’t spelling words and names part of reading training 101?

A: That rather applies to small kids learning to read for the first time. But most adult learners already know how to read. What they need is help connecting sounds to written words—not necessarily pre-mature letter drills. If you are struggling with reading in your own language you don’t need a German course but rather help of a different sort which I can’t provide at this point in time. There’s courses for alphabetization that take care of that. Maybe one day I’ll consider that but it’s not on top of my to-do list.

Further Reading

1. Cook & Bassetti (2005):

Second Language Writing Systems — demonstrates orthographic transfer across scripts 

• Publisher: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.21832/9781853597954/html
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317003613

2. Bassetti (2005) Chapter:

“Effects of Writing Systems on Second Language Awareness” — on word awareness and literacy in L2 

• Publisher: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.21832/9781853597954-015/html
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/36725778

3. Ehri (2014):

Research on orthographic mapping — forming letter‑sound‑meaning connections is key to reading fluency

• Taylor & Francis: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356
• ERIC: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1027413

No Need To Become A Researcher

Simply use ChatGPT or another ML bot to summarize these studies for you. I haven’t read those studies in detail either but the abstracts and conclusions usually do the job for laymen like us. I used to read stuff like this in more detail for my master thesis back in 2009 but today that’d be overkill. I just use these studies to underline the scientific basis of the information that I share with you. I can confirm everything I wrote above from my more than 25+ years of practical experience on both sides of the classroom.