Free C2 German course: mastery

At C2 you understand virtually everything you hear and read, and can express fine shades of meaning. What remains is refinement in literary tenses, complex sentences, compound words, legal and academic register, wordplay and dialects.

10 grammar lessons, 3 graded stories, 2 classic books, flashcards and an AI conversation partner, all free. Plan on roughly 200 hours of study for this level (1100 in total from zero, by an approximate CEFR estimate that isn't specific to German).

What you'll be able to do

• Listening: I can understand any kind of spoken German at native speed, and follow the gist of strong regional accents such as Bavarian, Saxon or Swiss German.
• Reading: I can read virtually all forms of written German, including abstract, legal and literary texts and, with some support, classics such as Kafka or Thomas Mann.
• Reading: I can pick up irony, understatement and what a text implies without saying.
• Speaking: I can take part effortlessly in any conversation, with a good command of idioms and proverbs.
• Speaking: I can express fine shades of meaning precisely and rephrase smoothly when I hit a difficulty.
• Writing: I can write complex letters, reports and essays with an effective, logical structure.
• Writing: I can write summaries and reviews of professional or literary works.

What you'll learn

Learning C2 German with AI

At C2 the AI partner works as a demanding conversation partner and editor: it discusses anything with you and comments on style, not just correctness. The AI also explains any wrong answer in a lesson, in plain English. It's included free, with a daily allowance; like any AI it can make mistakes, so the lessons remain the reference. More about learning German with AI.

All 10 C2 grammar lessons

Free to read here. In the app, each one is taught in short steps with audio, practised, and brought back for review.

1. The literary Präteritum and old Konjunktiv II forms
2. Advanced concession: wenngleich, wiewohl, so … auch, mag … auch
3. Konjunktiv II for hedging, irony and politeness
4. Long sentences: nested clauses and the verb cluster
5. Long compounds: building, reading and splitting them
6. Wordplay, irony and understatement in German humour
7. Legal and academic German: gemäß, zwecks, nominal chains
8. Recognising dialects: Bavarian, Swabian, Saxon, Berlin, Swiss German
9. Persuasive German: speeches, essays and commentary
10. Meaning carried by stress and particles

Reading at C2

• Aus dem Protokoll: Satire in the form of minutes: an appointment committee for a professorship, reported in Konjunktiv I by a student representative who notices more than she should.
• Über das Wort Heimat: Essay on the history and misuse of the German word Heimat, ending with Ernst Bloch's idea of Heimat as a promise.
• Eine Sitzgelegenheit: An exchange of letters: a Berlin district office refuses to replace a bench in impeccable official German, and an 83-year-old resident answers in kind.
• Die Leiden des jungen Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774): Young Werther writes to his friend about nature, books and his hopeless love for Lotte, who is engaged to another man. The novel in letters that made Goethe famous; 18th-century prose, old spelling (daß).
• Der goldne Topf by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1814): The clumsy student Anselmus falls in love with a little green-gold snake in an elder bush in Dresden and is drawn into a world of salamanders and witches. Hoffmann's fairy tale of modern times, in twelve night-watches; old spelling.

Questions