English–German Conversation Guide

Speak German from your first day — not your first year.

Most German courses start with grammar tables. This one starts with a conversation.

The English–German Conversation Guide is built for complete beginners who need to actually use German: travellers, students, business visitors, expatriates, and anyone who works or lives alongside German speakers. Seventy short chapters take you from your first Guten Tag to real conversations at a hotel desk, a ticket counter, a doctor's surgery and a dinner table.

Everything is presented the same way, so you always know where to look:

English → German → plain-English pronunciation → a short note on when to use it.

No phonetic symbols. Stressed syllables are simply printed in capitals, and the same system is used consistently from the first page to the last.

Inside you'll find:

A complete pronunciation guide covering vowels, the umlauts ä, ö and ü, the letter ß, and every consonant cluster that trips up English speakers
The formal/informal system — Sie, du and ihr — explained clearly, with the same phrases shown in all three registers
Practical grammar delivered in small, usable pieces: gender, the four cases, word order, modal verbs, separable verbs and the past tense — explained through examples, not tables
Over 70 original dialogues covering greetings, small talk, directions, trains, taxis, airports, hotels, restaurants, markets, shopping, work, banks, offices, renting a flat, doctors, pharmacies, emergencies and social life
Exercises and role-plays in every chapter, with a complete answer key at the back
Cultural and regional notes covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland — including where the vocabulary genuinely differs
Extensive quick-reference sections: Survival German, 100 Essential Phrases, 250 Essential Words, two-way glossaries, a grammar summary, common mistakes, and English–German false friends

The German throughout is Modern Standard German, the variety taught in schools and understood everywhere German is spoken — from Hamburg to Vienna to Zürich.

Fully reflowable and accessible: resize the text, switch to night mode, and navigate by chapter on any phone, tablet, e-reader or computer. Every German word is properly encoded and marked up so it stays searchable, selectable and readable by screen readers.

Viel Erfolg — and enjoy it.