For those wanting to learn a little theological German, I’ve pulled together several German lists and created a master list of 4,334 words that you can put in a flash card program. The words are in these columns: German, English, Difficulty, Chapter, Other, Part of Speech. The words are listed roughly in this order:
- Chapters 1-17 (I think): Manton’s Theological German textbook, in order of chapter appearance and then all the rest from the dictionary in the back, with a few others mixed in.
- Chapters 18-57 (or so): A list from a Goethe book that has around 2000 of the most frequent words in academic journals (not just humanities).
- Chapters 58-64: Additional words that I’ve accumulated from reading theological works.
- Chapters 65-75: Words from a generic list of modern conversational German.
Files to Download*:
German-English Vocabulary (txt) (comma delimited text file)
German-English Vocabulary (xls) (excel)
*Wordpress won’t let me upload .txt and .xls files, so I’ve added a .doc extension to each. When you go to save them, just take off the .doc ending and put back in the .txt or .xls extension.
For German-English definition help, LEO is the best online site.
Also, here’s a free German training course online. It’s a little dated, but I did a similar one for French many moons ago and found it helpful: FSI German
Dunelm Road 
Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 7:23 am
[…] on Theological German. Again PDA Scholar is a must for vocab. Here is an extensive list of German-English Vocab that I pulled […]
Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 11:39 am
Ben,
Thank you so very much for this listing. It will certainly beef up the list I already have from reading April Wilson’s book.
Also, I found a valuable tool (for Mac users) for memorization without the use of paper:
http://www.loopware.com/iflash/
It comes at a small price, but it’s proved itself to be worth it.
-carl
Friday, 27 June 2008 at 12:27 pm
I got a blank file when opening the .doc file. Something might have happened when you changed the extension. Can you save the original as a .doc?
Carl — since you brought up flash-card progs, Genius, among others, is one choice. It’s freeware, with donations appreciated: http://web.mac.com/jrc/Genius/
Friday, 27 June 2008 at 3:20 pm
Jeremy, Not sure what the trouble is. I tried downloading them on a separate computer and they worked just fine. They’re either .txt or .xls. Here’s the process: Right-click, save as, ‘german-vocab.txt’ or ‘german-vocab.xls’. Hope that helps.
My favorite phone flashcard program is Pocket Scholar.
Ben
Friday, 27 June 2008 at 4:50 pm
Jeremy,
I had not seen that one before; I’ll certainly give it a shot. Thanks for the tip.
Friday, 27 June 2008 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for the resource. I’m just getting started on German myself, so I have a couple of questions about this.
Should the level of difficulty be “5” on all of the words, as you have them labeled? If so, how should I determine which words are most important to learn now (I’d like to go a few hundred words beyond the vocabulary used in Wilson’s chapter lessons)?
Also what flash card program do you recommend, and where could I obtain it? Thanks!
Friday, 27 June 2008 at 10:53 pm
The Chapter determine order of importance, though beyond the Manton section they are just randomly sorted.
Difficulty is how well you know that word. With PocketScholar it will increase/decrease the number as you get it wrong/right.
Flashcard programs:
For a phone/pda: http://www.pdascholar.com/ (I use it daily)
For pc: http://www.teknia.com/free_flashworks (I used an earlier version of this several years ago)
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 at 2:59 am
Ben,
Any advice on how to access this database through Teknia?
Thanks!
Saturday, 30 August 2008 at 7:11 am
I had hoped that the .txt file would be compatible with Teknia since PocketScholar was built off of it. Unfortunately, I haven’t used Teknia in several years so I’m not sure what the process would be now. If you find out, would you post it here?
Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 4:37 pm
Wieland Willker has a Greek-German vocabulary list: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/Basic-Vocabulary.html
that would be helpful for Neutestamentlers.
Friday, 30 January 2009 at 12:24 am
Besides Leo I highly recommend dict.cc for German translation.
http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/a.php
It often works better than Leo for theology because it is not so business orientated.
This site was recommended to me by Erika Baker who is an excellent biblical studies translator if your own German is not up to the whole translation http://www.words4you.co.uk/translat.htm. Discounts for PhD students.
Friday, 13 February 2009 at 8:05 am
[…] a link back to a German vocab list that I pulled together based on a few sources: German Vocabulary. One note though, after doing a bit of German over the past three years, I’ve decided that […]
Tuesday, 24 March 2009 at 5:56 pm
Just wanted to say thank you for putting this file together! I’m more than happy to exchange a variety of files for Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Greek, and a developing list of modern Hebrew if any of those interest you. Do you happen to know of any good resources for German vocab that are specific to Hebrew Bible rather than New Testament?
Wednesday, 25 March 2009 at 8:15 am
Eric, Thanks for the offer. I think I’m in the stage where I just need to read to increase proficiency rather than flash cards. The vocab here is generally theological and academic, so it doesn’t pertain specifically to the NT, except for some of the way later stuff. Hope it helps.
Thursday, 24 June 2010 at 5:17 pm
Hey Ben,
This is a great tool for Theological German Vocab. Your site has been quite helpful not only due to your tips for German but also on account of your UK PhD section. I’m starting at St. Andrews in the Fall coming from US and so sites like yours and a few others have proven most helpful. I’m finishing up an intensive German course in the next two weeks and was searching for some more primarily ‘theological’ word groupings for vocab and reading.
I loaded these cards into flash works and they work perfect. Saved me hours of prep. Much gratitude.
Thanks,
John Frederick
Tuesday, 28 June 2011 at 7:59 pm
Thank you!!
Friday, 23 March 2012 at 2:13 pm
Hey Ben, thanks for putting all this together! I’ve copied-and-pasted the vocab list into my own MS Excel-based flashcard program. Just wanted to check you’re OK for me to post this flashcard program up on my own website (with appropriate acknowledgements, etc.) for people to download for free ?
Friday, 23 March 2012 at 3:47 pm
Hey Lionel, Hope all is well. Yeah, you’re more than free to take it and share the wealth. Hope it does someone good. How’s things your way?
Friday, 18 May 2012 at 2:27 pm
[…] word list came from Ben Blackwell (h/t), and is top notch. It’s graded and very comprehensive (4,335 words […]
Monday, 18 May 2015 at 12:23 pm
[…] some people have cards for “theological German,” so search for those too. (I found this website that has a document with lots of theological German vocabulary on it. I started to adapt it […]
Monday, 18 May 2015 at 4:26 pm
Great suggestions in the link here. I love the mix of practical (stories) as well as theological (Luther’s Catechism).
Tuesday, 23 June 2015 at 9:27 pm
[…] I’ve put together a deck for the Anki memory system designed to help English speakers with a special interest in theological vocabulary to learn and practise their German language vocab and basic paradigms. The original list came from Ben Blackwell. […]
Wednesday, 6 April 2016 at 5:17 pm
Hello.
“LingoBrain” is a new game for learning German vocabulary (currently available for Android, but probably iOS soon too). It also includes a list of about 4000 words sorted by difficulty. It keeps track of your progress as you play and remembers which words you have difficulty and allows you to focus more on them.
There’s also a companion game for learning the Gender of German nouns.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silverglint.lingoaze.free_myvocab
http://silverglint.com/lingobrain/german/
Thanks for your list. Wish I had found it before I created mine 🙂
Thursday, 7 April 2016 at 2:35 pm
For some reason, the files are corrupted. Can you upload again?
Friday, 8 April 2016 at 10:17 am
Sorry. WordPress won’t let me upload .txt and .xls files, so I’ve added a .doc extension to each. When you go to save them, just take off the .doc ending and put back in the .txt or .xls extension.
Sunday, 13 August 2017 at 11:44 pm
Reblogged this on A New Journey of Faith.