Welcome to Gaia! ::

Go to ielanguages.com. The site has multiple languages to learn for free, and german is one of the best ones on the site.

No single program is going to make you fluent, but there are plenty of good starting points. The BBC has a free online program for German (and several other languages), there's also BYKI, which has some free flashcards, and sites like Livemocha (the German program is fairly good. Some of the others are sketchy). Additionally, you should try watching German TV or listening to German radio online (zdf.de, ard.de, B5, or just look things up on youtube).

You don't need to run around using a bazillion online programs, but you'll need to look at a few to find the ones that suit you and are appropriate to your level. You'll probably also outgrow some and need to look for new programs to expand your knowledge. At least in my experience, I didn't find one program that was enough on its own.

The absolute simplest advice I can give you is to build your vocabulary as much as possible - look up random words, or go to sites like about.com where they have vocab lists available for use. Then expose yourself to German as much as possible in an organic context (radio, TV, German comics, newspapers, magazines or books) as opposed to formulaic things like what you'll find in Rosetta Stone (The boy jumps. The girl jumps. The boy swims. The girl swims. The boy has jumped. The girl has jumped. The boy and the girl swim. The boy and the girl jump. The boy is in the airplane. The boy is in the airplane. The girl is on the table. The girl is next to the table. - it gets old)

If you're looking for a magic bullet, you're out of luck, because as much as most language-learning programs try to tout themselves as being the key to learning a new language, there's no real shortcut other than being immersed in the language (surrounded by speakers/in a country where it's spoken). Short of going to Germany or Austria to study, the best you can do is to try to immerse yourself in what's available to you at home. Yes, you can spend your time with Rosetta Stone if that's how you'd like to do it, but there are much more enjoyable ways.

Listen to German music and try to understand the lyrics - it will be a while before you understand whole songs, but you can start with recognizing words and phrases or looking at the lyrics printed out and looking up the unfamiliar words. Look up comics if you like that sort of thing - whether it's traditional strips, web comics or comic books, that's a start and fairly simple. If you can find books for children or young teens, you can try to read those, as full novels are probably still a few years off. Try to talk with your classmates in German sometimes, or find some of the students who are a year or two ahead of you and see if they're willing to practice with you. See if you can find Germans online to talk to - there's a German guild on Gaia and they're pretty friendly.

And like I said, talk to your teacher. He or she probably has books/games/flashcards that you can borrow (or maybe just use during free time at school if you're willing to give up your lunch/break/study hour), and will definitely be able to make suggestions appropriate to your level.

As far as websites and online programs, you said you're in high school, so I assume your German is somewhat basic at this point.
BYKI has some good basic flashcards to work on your vocabulary, but isn't much help with grammar (at least the free version). Deutsche Welle has many articles and radio clips with vocabulary words (designed for German learners), but that's probably too advanced for now. BBC has some good stuff for beginning and intermediate level students. There's a kids website called Neopets with games and a virtual world - you can play in any of several languages, including German and switch pages back and forth if you don't understand all of the German - it's for kids, so it's usually pretty simple German, but it's also got lots of made-up words, so you have to be careful what you take from it. If you're having a hard time with pronunciation, the Pimsleur program breaks it down pretty well in the early lessons - if your local library has it available, I'd recommend checking that out.

Hallo buggsie, fröhliche Weihnachten! Es geht mir gut, obwohl ich leider nicht so viel Deutsch heutzutage spreche (Sommerferien, wuhu! Aber gibt's jetzt keine deutschsprachige Freunde)...

Warum fühlst du dich wieder krank? Schade! Und man sagt "Ich wohne jetzt mit meinem Vater"...
(I'll write the explanation in English seeing as it might be confuzzling in German.)

We use the accusative case, which is
den - die - das - die
when we refer to movement. For example, I could say:
Ich stelle die Banane auf den Tisch
stellen means "to put", which implies movement, so we put "der Tisch" into the accusative case, which makes it "den Tisch".

However, when we talk about the location of something, we use the dative case, which is
dem - der - dem - den
For example, if I now say:
Die Banane sitzt auf dem Tisch
The banana is stationary on the table, so "der Tisch" is in the dative case, making it "dem Tisch".


Basically, what you want to do when you are talking about location is always ask yourself whether your verb implies movement or not. If it does, accusative; if it doesn't, dative.

(Anybody is free to correct me if I've messed this up!)

Oops, sorry, I should have applied my little grammatik lesson to your sentence! So, possessive pronouns like 'mein', 'dein', etc. also change in a similar way to articles ('der', 'ein', etc), depending on their case. To apply this to your sentence:
"Ich wohne jetzt mit meinem Vater" is correct because 'wohnen' does not imply movement (and also because 'mit' takes the dative case), so we put "der Vater" in the dative form. 'Der' becomes 'dem', 'ein' becomes 'einem' and thus 'mein' becomes 'meinem'.

That's correct, you can also use the dative case to show that something is being given. For example,
"Ich gebe ihm den Apfel"
I give him the apple
'Ich' is nominative, I am the one doing the action.
'Den Apfel' is accusative (you can tell this because of 'den'), it is the thing that is being given.
'ihm' is dative, it is the person/thing to whom the apple is being given.

(Phew, this is a workout!)

Is anyone still here? Are we a dead guild now?

gonk

We are 3 alive!!