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Willkommen

This is the new Deutsch thread. Those of you wanting to know what Deutsch is (history and all that blah) can read it here.

I would like to ask that NO posting in this forum with grammar questions or comments. Any of these (and general conversation) should be posted in this thread.

I and Henneth Annun are the teachers for this thread.

If you have requests of what you'd like to see in these lessons, please PM me.

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Das Alphabet
video with audio

A ah ------------B beh ------------ C tseh
D deh ------------ E eh ------------ F eff
G geh ------------ H hah ------------ I ih
J jot ------------K kah ------------ L ell
M emm ------------ N enn ------------ O oh
P peh ------------ Q kuh ------------ R err
S ess ------------T teh ------------ U uh
V fau ------------ W weh ------------ X iks
Y üppsilon ------------ Z tsett
Ä äh (a-Umlaut)
Ö öh (o-Umlaut)
Ü üh (u-Umlaut)
ß ess-tsett

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die Begrüßung und der Abschied

Greetings

Guten Morgen / Morgen
Guten Tag / Tag
Hallo informal
Hi informal
Guten Abend / n'Abend only in the evenings

Good-byes

(Auf) Wiedersehen
(Auf) Wiederschauen
Tschüss informal
Adieu
Ciao informal
Bis Bald
Bis dann
Gute Nacht said at bed time

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Starter phrases

Wie heißt du?
What is your name? (informal)
Wie heißen Sie?
What is your name? (formal)
Ich bin _________.
I am _________.
Ich heiße __________.
I am called _________.
Wie geht es Ihnen?
How are you? (formal)
Wie geht's?
How are you? (informal)
Ich bin....
gut.good
sehr gut. very good
nicht so gut. not so good
krank. sick
müde. tired
Miserabel.
Fantastisch.
Schlecht. crappy

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Pronouns

ich i ------------wir we
du you (informal)------------ ihr you (informal plural)
er he
sie she ------------Sie formal you (can also be formal plural)
es it ------------sie they

If you didn't notice, there's three sies.

she=sie has a different conjugation than Sie/sie. she=sie is also singular. Sie/sie have the same conjugation. The only way to tell these two apart is by context. One (Sie) is when you are talking directly to someone, face-to-face, and the other (sie) is when you are talking about someone , as in they are not there.

Verb conjugation

while we're on the topic...
I'll use the verb 'gehen' (to go) as an example.

ich gehe------------wir gehen
du gehst------------ ihr geht
er/sie/es geht------------Sie/sie gehen

Each pronoun has it's own ending that you add to the verb stem...

ich is -e
du is -st
er/sie/es is -t
wir is the unconjugated form
ihr is -t
Sie/sie is the unconjugated form.

Substantive - Nouns

In English, proper nouns are capitalized; things like “England”, “Sunday”, and “Angelina.” However in German, all nouns are capitalized. German nouns also have grammatical genders, which English nouns do not.

There are three genders:
1) Masculine (männlich)
2) Feminine (weiblich)
3) Neuter (sächlich)

The definite and indefinite articles of nouns can tell you which gender they are. (Definite articles point to specific things, like the word “the” in English. Indefinite articles point to more general things, like “a/an” in English.)

Masculine nouns:
- definite article = der
- indefinite article = ein
Feminine nouns:
- definite article = die
- indefinite article = eine
Neuter nouns:
- definite article = das
- indefinite article = ein

You may have noticed that the indefinite articles for masculine and neuter nouns are both “ein.” Good.

Nouns also have plural versions of the articles for when you have more than one of something. All nouns have the definite article “die” for plural, and the indefinite article “eine” for plural. (We will come to plurals later…)

There are also indefinite articles for describing that there’s none of something, however we will get into that later.

So German nouns have 3 genders, great….but how do you know what gender they are if you haven’t memorized them?

Well you’ll just have to memorize them, because which gender nouns are is pretty arbitrary for most nouns. There’s no real reason for “bridge” (die Brücke) to be feminine and for “honey” (der Honig) to be masculine is there? So some genders make sense, and some don’t. For example:

Die Frau = woman
Der Mann = man

That seems to make sense doesn’t it? Woman is feminine and man is masculine. However the word for “girl” is neuter, and not feminine as you might expect it to be! Oddly enough, the word for “boy” gets to be masculine.

Das Mädchen = girl
Der Junge = boy

Now that you’ve gotten that, let’s go on to some ways that you can tell what gender nouns are.

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Feminine noun endings

Noun endings that have been bolded in this list here are always going to be found in feminine nouns.
die Freiheit - freedom
die Ewigkeit - eternity
die Wissenschaft - science
die Universität - university
die Entdeckung - discovery
die Industrie - industry

Nouns ending in -ik are usually feminine as well.
die Musik - music
die Logik - logic

Nouns that end in -in that pertain to feminine people/jobs/nationalities are also usually feminine.
die Studentin - (female) student
die Schwedin - (female) Swede

Nouns that end in -e are also feminine a lot of the time, but don’t always count on it!
die Brücke - bridge
die Ecke - corner
die Pistole - pistol

Masculine Nouns Endings

Nouns ending in -ner and -ismus are always masculine.
der Schaffner - (male) train conducter
der Kommunismus - communism

Days, months, and seasons are also masculine. So are nouns that are names of cars and trains and points on the compass.
der Sommer - summer
der Juli - July
der Mercedes - Mercedes
der Süden - south

Nouns that end in -er have a good chance of being masculine.
der Computer - computer
der Richter - judge

Neuter Nouns Endings

Nouns that end in -chen or -lein are always neuter. (These suffixes are diminutive terms by the way.)
das Mädchen - girl
das Fräulein - young/unmarried woman

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It's always a good idea to learn a noun with its grammatical gender. Don't worry, as long as you practice your German and don't make it a chore for yourself, the genders shouldn't be that tough to remember. Once you use a word enough, its gender will come naturally to mind. Just don't blow off learning them, because they are very important for conveying grammatical information! If you don't know your genders, for an extreme example, you might say "dog bites man" in a way that means "man bites dog!" (Yes, this has to do with grammatical cases, which we shall get to another day.)

Now, it’s time for plurals!

You shall be pleased to learn that there are 12 ways to make a noun plural in German. Also, there’s no real rule about what gets pluralized how. (You just died a little inside, didn’t you?)

Here's a chart of the ways to pluralize your nouns:

Telling Time

Wie viel Uhr ist es?
How much clock is it? (what time is it?)
Wie spät ist es?
How late is it?

There are two methods of telling time in German. They are very similar to English, so they shouldn't be any trouble to you. The only thing to remember is that for most occasions/situations, Germans use military or the 24 hour system. That' means that there is not an AM or a PM.. Midnight is zero hours, noon is 12 hours, 1 PM is 13 hours, ect.

Method one of telling time:

Method one uses words like vor (before) and nach (after) to describe the time.
Here's some examples:

Es ist elf Uhr.
It is 13 hour.
Es ist zehn (Minuten) nach elf.
It is 10 (minutes) after eleven.
(the minutes can be said or left out)
Es ist halb zwölf.
Is is half of 12. (meaning 11.30)
Germans say it is half of an hour as in you're trying to add up to the next hour, not half past an hour like it is in English.
Es ist Viertel vor zwölf
It is quarter before 12.

Anything from the full hour (say, 11 o' clock) up to the half hour (11.30) is before (nach) the hour. Anything from the 31st minute (11.31) to the 59th minute (11.59) is before (vor) the next hour.

Method two for telling time:

Method two is the one that most people find to be easier. It follows a simple formula without deviation.

Es ist ____ Uhr ____ .

First, you say the number of the hour, then the word for hour, then the number of minutes.

Some examples:

1.30
Es ist ein Uhr dreißig.

2.05
Es ist zwei Uhr fünf.

3.45
Es ist drei Uhr fünfundvierzig.

This even works when there is nothing for the minutes..

2.00
Es ist zwei Uhr.

Present Tense Verbs and Sentences

smile

Now the infinitive of most German verbs that you will encounter end in “-en,” with the others ending in “-eln” or “-ern.” (An exception is the only completely irregular verb “sein,” which means “to be.”)

Before you go off making sentences, I should warn you that there are verbs that cause the nouns they affect to change; this is part of the German case system. Cases in German are the different ways in which words change to convey specific grammatical information, like what belongs to what, and who is doing what to whom. (This is where grammatical gender becomes important, so don’t think the gender system is all for nothing!) For example, a verb that activates a case is the verb “haben” which means “to have.”

Oh, I’d like to take this space to point out a helpful pattern to you all!

This is something that can help you remember how to conjugate your verbs. Remember how the infinitive has “-en” at the end? Good. That means that the rest of the verb that comes before that is the stem. So if we have “sprechen” (which means “to speak”), “sprech-” is the stem and “-en” is the infinitive ending bit. Regular verbs will conjugate in predictable ways through different endings that you attach to the stem.

Let's look at "sprechen" now.

Sprechen - to speak
ich spreche
du sprichst
er spricht
wir sprechen
ihr sprecht
sie; Sie sprechen

See the blue text? That is how many verbs in German end for each subject. Examples of those verbs are "schreiben" (to write), "spielen" (to play), and "verstehen" (to understand.)

However, we also have some variations within the more regular verbs.

Bedeuten - to mean/signify
ich bedeute
du bedeutest
er bedeutet
wir bedeuten
ihr bedeutet
sie; Sie bedeuten

Some verbs are irregular, like "sein" as we mentioned above. Another example of an irregular verb is "werden", which means "to become."

Notice how it breaks the pattern.

Werden - to become
ich werde
du wirst
er wird
wir werden
ihr werdet
sie; Sie werden

I'd just like you to be aware that there are many verbs that do this, and you're just going to have to learn them. (Don't worry though, they're not too complicated or anything.)

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Okay, let’s talk about how to make simple one-verb sentences in German!

As you may have guessed, your basic sentence goes Subject-Verb-Object. In simple terms, the subject is who/what the sentence about, the verb is what it's 'doing', and the object is what the subject is doing the verb to. (This is just like English, and many other languages as well.)


Example:

The dog sees Sara.

In German, it’s the same structure. The subject is the dog, and what it's doing is the verb, which is seeing, and what it's seeing is Sara, who is the object. (You don't really need to worry about the terminology though, so don't fret over it. ^^)

Der Hund sieht Sara.

That sentence means the same thing in English, “the dog sees Sara.”



If we wanted to say that the dog does not see Sarah, we would do this:

Der Hund sieht Sara nicht.
“Nicht” means “not” and you use it to negate verbs.

In a simple subject-verb sentence, “nicht” often comes at the end.

Examples:

Wir rauchen nicht. We don’t smoke.
Ich treffe ihn nicht.. I’m not meeting him.
Liebst du mich nicht.? Don’t you love me? (Literally, “love you me not?”)


To make these sentences positive again, we simply remove “nicht,” much like how we remove "not" in English.
 
Wir rauchen. We smoke/are smoking.
Ich treffe ihn. I’m meeting him.
Liebst du mich? Do you love me?

“Nicht” can also come in different places in the sentence though. For example, if you are using “sein” (to be) with an adjective, "nicht" comes after the conjugated version of “sein.” It also comes directly before the adverbial phrase you’re trying to negate, (which basically means it comes after the part of the sentence where you describe a verb.)


Examples:

Er ist nicht zufrieden. He is not pleased.
Ich bin nichtreich. I am not rich.
Dein Anwalt ist nichtsehr freundlich. Your lawyer isn’t very friendly.
Das Schild hängt nichtdort, sondern hier. The sign doesn’t hang there, but here.
Er spricht nichtfließend Koreanisch. He doesn’t speak fluent Korean.



Let's look at our last two sentences again and analyze their parts....


Das Schild hängt nicht dort, sondern hier. The sign doesn’t hang there, but here.

Now "hängt" is a conjugated form of the verb "hängen", which means "to hang," and "dort" is a way of saying "there." We put "nicht" after "hängt" because the sign is hanging (or in this case, not hanging) in a certain way; it is not hanging there. "Dort" tells us how the sign is hanging, and "nicht" tell us that this isn't so, and the sign isn't hanging like that at all.

Time for the second sentence:

Er spricht nicht fließend Koreanisch. He doesn’t speak fluent Korean.

Whoever this person is, he does not speak Korean fluently, and somebody felt that was important to mention. "Nicht" goes after "spricht" because it will help us describe how the man is speaking Korean; it's not that he doesn't or isn't speaking Korean, it's that he isn't speaking it fluently.


Okay, so that was your introduction of how to make simple one verb sentences in German! Just order it Subject-Verb-Object, and we’ve gone over how to make a sentence negative.


Here's some practice if you like. Translate the following into German, and PM me with your answers for corrections or help. The vocabulary to help you finish these can be found in the various lesson posts, and in dictionaries of course. Good luck! ^^

1. The computer is blue.
2. The computer is not red.
3. The man understands.
4. The man does not speak.
5. It is 10:20 (a.m.)
6. It is not 8:30 (a.m.)
7. The bridge is old.
8. The bridge is not small.
9. Kat does not speak Korean.
10. They speak fluent Korean.

Fixed.