Reddit reviews Duden 06 Das Aussprachewörterbuch: Betonung und Aussprache von über 132.000 Wörtern und Namen

I took private classes at my local language school. We used Menschen by Hueber for A1-B1 and Sicher! B2 from the same publisher afterwards.

When I got to B1, I had a good enough understanding of the language to start using German->German dictionaries, which was hard at the beginning, but imho the best way to learn a language is by using the language. Never rely on translations for longer than what is absolutely necessary. My favorite German->German dicts are DWDS, Duden and Wiktionary. As an absolute beginner, Linguee, Reverso Context and PONS are your friends for English<->German + context and usage.

Also never, ever skimp on learning your genders, plurals and irregular verbs. Anki / Cram are good apps to help you with those.

The end of A2 - start of B1 is a good time to take your entertainment to German. Try German TV Shows/Movies with German subtitles until you are comfortable enough to turn them off. It's okay if you don't understand everything in the start. German Youtube and German music are also highly recommended.

Moreover, read, read as much as you can. Read the news, articles, books, blogs, food labels, anything, as long as it's in German. B1 is a good place to start doing this.

Focus on correct pronunciation right from the start, or spend a lifetime correcting it. There's speech samples on Wiktionary, you can try shadowing, or learn the German subset of the IPA and literally read the pronunciation online or in an Aussprachewörterbuch. In my opinion, the IPA is one of the mightiest tools to have under your belt. You don't need to know how to transcribe stuff in it, just how to read it. Nevertheless, the best way to practice is to go and find someone to talk with.

Last but not least, if you feel tired, demotivated, burnt out, take a break. A hiatus of 7-30 days should fix it.

EDIT: Added links + Check the sub's wiki for content recommendations. For series, Netflix's Babylon Berlin and Dark are good starting points.

I mean, I consulted this book a lot when writing my BA thesis and I felt obliged to provide citations for things that were obvious to me.

But this is not even close to a foreign language textbook. It won't teach you to speak German. It's literally just a summary of certain linguistic features, like an extended Wikipedia article.

I actually didn't love some of this author's IPA transcriptions, but the holy grail for these is the Duden anyway.

But it sounds like you're coming at this from scratch, thinking that knowing basic linguistics will make standard pedagogical materials too easy for you. It won't.

It's great to know "what a subject or verb tenses are," but that doesn't tell you anything about how to use them properly in a language you haven't started learning yet. You still need to know how to form the plusquamperfekt even if you think you theoretically understand what the plusquamperfekt is. Some tenses are also used differently from language to language despite having the same general label. And surprise, textbooks and paradigm charts are still your best resource for that.

My concrete advice, as a linguist and a teacher? Get something standard like Themen Aktuell and supplement with Die neue Gelbe. Don't assume that books alone are sufficient. Practice.