Post on 19-Jul-2015
transcript
Don't worry, it's nothing that will leave your brain numb, and you might even find some of it
interesting!
1. The weird letters in the German alphabet
2. Things to know about the parts of speech (the kinds of words) in the German language
3. Verbs in the present form and personal pronouns
4. How to ask a question
5. Negation
In emails or urls, or whenever these letters don't exist on the keyboard, they are written differently:
ä → ae Bäcker, Baecker = baker
ö → oe schön, schoen = beautiful
ü → ue Brühe, Bruehe = broth
ß → ss Grüße, Gruesse = greetings
Here are a few pronunciation comparisons with English, so that you remember what these weird letters sound like:
ö is like the “o” sound in “gorilla”, or the “u” in “burn”.
Imagine a burning gorilla, a börning görilla.
NOUNS
In German, ALL NOUNS start with a CAPITAL LETTER, no matter what they are describing. Even objects as mundane as a table have to be honoured with a capital letter:
der Tisch
Well, in German, all nouns have a gender.
And just to be different, there is a choice of three:
Feminine
Masculine
Neuter
And it's not as straight forward as you would think. Nouns that seem feminine to you might well be masculine or neuter in German, or vice-versa...
To make matters worse, there are no rules which you can learn which will tell you what gender a noun has...
So when you learn a noun, it is important to learn it along with its gender. And to do so, you learn the noun along with the definite article preceding it:
die → feminineder → masculinedas → neuter
Ok, so for nouns, two important things to remember:
- Capital Letters
- learn them along with their definite article (die, der or das)
Right, next part of speech:
ARTICLES and PRONOUNS
Indefinite article: ein Tisch → a table
Definite article: der Tisch → the table
Demonstrative pronoun: dieser Tisch → this table
VERBS
When you learn a verb, you learn it in the infinitive. In English, the infinitive of a verb is preceded by “to”.
to learnto be...
In German the infinitives are also easy to
recognise, they (pretty much) always end in -en.
heißen → to be called
laufen → to run, to walk
haben → to have
sein → to be (oh come on, it's pretty much -en, just without
the -e...!)
ich I
du you
sie, er, es she, he, it
wir we
ihr you (plural)
Sie, sie you (polite form), they
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
If you are interested (but you can skip these next slides if you aren't!), here are a few conjugation tables:
haben to have
ich habe I have
du hast you have
sie, er, es hat she, he, it has
wir haben we have
ihr habt you have
Sie, sie haben
they have
sein to be
ich bin I am
du bist you are
sie, er, es ist she, he, it is
wir sind we are
ihr seid you are
Sie, sie sind they are
If you only have the patience to look at two verbs, make it these two:
gehen to go
ich gehe I go
du gehst you go
sie, er, es geht she, he, it goes
wir gehen we go
ihr geht you go
Sie, sie gehen they go
heißen to be called
ich heiße I am called
du heißt you are called
sie, er, es heißt she, he, it is called
wir heißen we are called
ihr heißt you are called
Sie, sie heißen they are called
wohnen to live
ich wohne I live
du wohnst you live
sie, er, es wohnt she, he, it lives
wir wohnen we live
ihr wohnt you live
Sie, sie wohnen they live
The detectives among you will havespotted the pattern:
habenich - e ich habe
du -st du hast
sie, er, es -t sie, er, es hat
wir -en wir haben
ihr -t ihr habt
Sie, sie -en Sie, sie haben
and you will also have noticed that the 1st person plural and 3rd person plural are the same as the infinitive. This is always the case in the present.
Similarly to many languages, you have to inverse the subject and verb:
Du kommst. → Kommst du?
You are coming. → Are you coming?
You can also add a question word in front...
wo → where
wann → when
wie → how
was → what
warum → why
...still remembering to keep the subject and verb inverted:
Was ist das? → What is that?
Wann kommst du? → When are you coming?
“nicht” means something like “not”
and “kein” something like “not...any”
Ich bin nicht müde. – I am not tired.
Ich will keinen Kaffee. – I don't want any coffee.
But “kein” is used in a broader sense than theEnglish “not...any” and it can be tricky at the start to get it right.
A good way to see whether you should be using “nicht” or “kein”, is to think of the sentence in the affirmative.
If you can use the indefinite article “ein” in the affirmative, then in the negative you should be using “kein”, and not “nicht”.
You know how to recognise the different words in a sentence:
you know for example that if a word has a capital, it is noun
And last but not least, you are now no longer scared of the weird letters
ä ö ü ß
because you know what they are!
ä ö ü ß
You don't säy!!!
A börning görilla?!
No, it's a cüte flüte
And ssso now you are sssso going to massster German!