hallo - basic german, kap. 1

8/13/2019 Hallo - Basic German, Kap. 1

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Hallo! Ich heisse ...

Read, what Niels and Katrin tell you about themselves.

Hallo! Ich heie Niels

Ich komme aus Deutschland

Ich mag Fuball und Skifahren.

Aber ich mag Tennis nicht.

Hi! Mein Name ist Katrin

Ich komme aus Berlin

Ich mag Musik und Tanzen.

Und ich mag besonders gerne klassische Musik.

Aber ich mag Singen nicht.


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Exercise

Which person could have made the following statements? Niels, Katrin or both?

Example: Ich mag Tennis nicht. - Niels

1) Ich komme aus Berlin.

2) Ich mag Singen nicht.

3) Ich mag Fuball.

4) Ich komme aus Deutschland.

5) Ich mag klassische Musik.

Ich m ag ' and ' Ich mag nic ht '

In this lesson, you will learn a lot of new words. The pictures and sound examples thatcome with most of the new vocabularies will help you memorizing those words.

Study the following activities:

Click on the blue arrows to hear the words in German.

Volleyball(volleyball)

Fernsehen(television) Skifahren

(skiing)

Baseball(baseball)

Tanzen(dancing)

Basketball(basketball)

Tennis(tennis)

Fuball(soccer)

Schwimmen

(swimming)

Singen

(singing) Musik(music) Studieren(studying)


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swimming

Anne, a friend of Katrin is a very active person. She does not like to be quiet and sit still for longhours. She is happiest doing vocal, active things. What would she say about the activities above?

Example: Tennis -> Ich mag (besonders gerne) Tennis.

1) Singen ?

2) Fernsehen ?

3) Schwimmen ?

4) Basketball ?

5) Studieren ?

6) Volleyball ?

7) Tanzen ?

The following table lists all German pronouns in the singular and plural together with their Englishcounterpart.

Person Singular Plural

1st ich (I)

wir (we)

2nd du (you)

ihr (you (plural))

3rd er, sie, es (he, she, it)

sie, Sie (they, you (formal))

- You noticed that the German word for she is exactly the same as the German word for they (both'sie').

- Also, you can distinguish in German between 'sie' meaning they/she and 'Sie' as the formal addressby the way these pronouns are spelled: The formal address 'Sie' is always capitalized!

- Lastly, the German 'ich' is not capitalized, unlike the English 'I'.


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William Shakespeare: 'thou' or 'you'?

Did you know that English used to make a distinction between formal and informal addresses, too?During the transition from Middle English to the early Modern English around 1600 (Shakespeare'stime), the English language still had both forms of address: the formal thou (sing.) and ye (pl.) as wellas the informal you. Later, it became fashionable to use the you in any situation (formal orinformal). When you go to Germany or any other country with a distinction between formal andinformal address (France, Spain, Italy, etc...), be aware of the fact that this distinction is veryimportant and using it the wrong way might make others feel uncomfortable.

Ich bin in Frankfurt geboren

Now you will get to know two German verbs and their conjugations. In English, conjugations arequite easy, since only the third person singular has a verb-form different from the infinitive (we addthe 's' to the infinitive e.g. 'he comes'). However, in German as well as in many other Europeanlanguages, every pronoun has its own ending. Thus, you need to change a verb accordingly, whenyou use different pronouns with this verb.

Let's go back to Niels, Katrin and Anne, who we have got to know on the previous pages of thislesson. Niels is attending a party at his University in Karlsruhe and meets Katrin and Anne, whointroduce themselves to him. Read the following dialog aloud and try to understand what everyonesays.


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Katrin: Hi. Ich heie Katrin.

Und wie heit du?

Niels: Ich heie Niels. (to Anne) Und du?

Anne: Anne.

Niels: Sehr angenehm. Woher kommt ihr?

Katrin: Wir kommen aus Berlin. Und du?

Niels: Ich komme hier aus Karlsruhe. Aber ich bin in Frankfurt geboren.

Anne: Ach so! Ich bin auch in Frankfurt geboren.

Anne (talking about Katrin): Aber sie ist in Mnchen geboren.

The previous dialog uses some forms of the verb 'kommen'. Look at the following table, which shows,how 'kommen' (to come) is conjugated in German. A conjugation of a verb defines how this verbchanges, when used with different pronouns.


1st ich komme (I come) wir kommen (we come)

2nd du kommst (you come)

ihr kommt (you come)

3rd er kommt (he comes)

sie kommen (they come)

'Kommen' is completely regular. Regular verbs have the following features in German. The 'ich'-form

ends with an 'e'. The du form ends with an 'st'. The 'er' and 'ihr' forms end with a 't' and aretherefore the same. And finally, the 'wir' and 'sie/Sie' forms end with 'en' and thus are also the same.


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You also got to know the expression 'ich bin in ... geboren'. This is a construction that uses the verb'sein' (to be) plus the German 'geboren' (born). Unfortunately, 'sein' is completely irregular andthere are no rules like for 'kommen' or other regular verbs.


1st ich bin (I am)

wir sind (we are)

2nd du bist (you are)

ihr seid (you are)

3rd sie ist (she is)

sie sind (they are)

Now let's do some exercises to further strengthen the newly learned grammar.

Exercise Using the given English pronouns and the pictures showing famous places in differentcountries, construct the according German sentence.

Example: we + -> Wir kommen aus Deutschland.

1) I + China

2) you (pl.) + UK

3) they + USA


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4) you (sing.) + Italy

5) she + Mexico

6) you (formal) +

7) he + France

Note: When we talk about the US in German, we say 'Ich komme aus denUSA' . The reasonfor this is still beyond what you know about German. But, later in this course it will become

clear why we have to put 'den' in front of USA.

Now we do the same thing with a form of 'sein' + 'geboren'. Can you say in German, in whichcities the following people were born? Exercise Using the given English pronouns and the pictures showing famous places in differentcountries, construct the according German sentence.

Example: Niels (Frankfurt) -> Niels ist in Frankfurt geboren.

1) Katrin (Mnchen)

2) we (Wien/Vienna)

3) they (Dsseldorf)

4) you (sing.) (Zrich)

5) I (Mainz)

6) he (Essen)

7) you (pl.) (Genf/Geneva)8) Anne (Frankfurt)


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kommen (to come)

Exercise Fill into the table the correct pronouns and forms of the German verbs 'kommen' and 'sein'.Utilize the fact that the 1st person plural and the 3rd person plural always have the sameendings. The 3rd person singular and the 2nd person plural have the same endings for allregular verbs (e.g. kommen, but NOT sein).

Example:ich komme

singular plural

1st person ich komme

2nd person ihr kommt

3rd person

sein (to be)singular plural

1st person sind

2nd person ihr

3rd person

Exercise During his time as a student in Germany, Niels meets many people from other countriesor other German cities. Use the given pronouns, a form of 'kommen' and the correctGerman name for the given country to state, where these people come from.

Example: Fernando (he; Spain)Er kommt aus Spanien

Marco (I; Italy) Ich komme aus Italien

Bernadette (she; France)

Dave & Christie (we; USA)


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Jinfeng (he; China)

Marlene (she; Peru)

John & Jaquie (we; Australia)

Jose (I; Argentina)

Talking about th ing s; Def ini te ar t ic les

You already now from the previous lesson, that in German, all nouns and Names(people or places) have to be spelled with upper case letters.

Another thing about German nouns that is different from what you know from English, isthe fact that every German noun has a gender, which means that it is either 'masculine','feminine', or 'neuter'. This is also partly true for English, where you could say that allthings have a neuter gender, but in German, there are barely any rules about how tomemorize, which noun has what gender.

For example, the word 'Buch' (book) is neuter, but the word 'Lampe' (lamp) is feminineand the word 'Arm' (arm) is masculine. It doesn't make sense, does it? The genderspecificity of German nouns makes German a difficult language, but one could also saythat this makes German richer, more diverse and more sophisticated than otherlanguages.

The gender in German can be indicated by the definite articles, which always precedetheir nouns. Since there are three genders, there are also three different definitearticles:

masculine feminine neuter der die das

Study the following things and memorize the German gender of each of those things:

das Auto(the car)

das Geld(the money) der Lehrer

(the teacher)

die Ferien(the vacation)


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Exercise Put the correct definite article in front of the following nouns. Click on the radio-buttonsto check-in your answer.

Example: Spiel

das Spiel

der !

die !

das !

Lehrerin

der !

die ! das !

Tier

der !

die !

das !

Konzert

der !

die !

das !

Mdchen

der !

die !

das !

Kuli

der !

die ! das !

Klasse

der !

die !

das !

Telefon

der !

die !

das !

Auto


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der !

die !

das !

Sport

der ! die !

das !

Radio

Using adject ives to descr ibe th ings

On this page, you will continue exercising the gender of the new words that you learned. Additionally, you will review the different forms of the verb 'sein' (to be) and learn how to

use this verb with adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe people and things. The simplest way to use anadjective in German is with the verb 'sein' (to be).For example, to say "he is tall", you simply use 'er' plus 'ist' plus the German adjective'gro', which means tall: "Er ist gro."

The table below contains some adjectives that are useful to describe people and things:

German English German English

gro tall kurz short

gut good schlecht bad

sympathisch likable/nice unsympathisch dislikable/unappealing

schn beautiful hsslich ugly

neu new alt old

spannend exciting langweilig boring

freundlich friendly unfreundlich unfriendly

emotional emotional exzellent excellentwunderbar wonderful furchtbar terrible

wichtig important unwichtig unimportant

intelligent intelligent interessant interesting

geduldig patient ungeduldig impatient

verantwortungsvoll responsible verantwortungslos irresponsible

leicht easy schwer difficult/heavy

populr popular jung young


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Exercise Anne and her friend Petra are talking about things and some people they know. Can youtranslate the following sentences into German, using a pronoun or noun (article!), a form

of the verb 'sein', and the just learned adjectives?Example:Watching TV is boring.Fernsehen ist langweilig.

move mouse over ?-fieldsfor correct answers 1) The CD is bad.

2) The guitar is old.

3) Money is unimportant.

4) Mr. Bartsch is friendly.

5) They are tall.6) The student (female) isintelligent.7) The teacher is boring.

8) She is beautiful.

9) The car is new.

10) We are patient.11) He is ugly.

Exercise Fill in the missing German words in the following text. For each answer (input-field), theEnglish cues are given in parentheses.

Example: Bernd __________ (is) in Bremen __________ (born)Bernd ist in Bremen geboren.


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2) Guten Tag Herr Peters. Wie ____ es Ihnen?

Na ja, es geht __ . Und Ihnen?Mir geht es gut, _____ .

3) Guten Abend Maike. ___ geht's?Sehr ___ , danke. ___ dir?Auch gut, danke.

4) Hallo Anne! _____ Katrin. Wie ____ es dir?

Exercise

Using, what you have learned in this lesson and utilizing the similarity between German andEnglish words, try to guess the meaning of the following German sentences.

Example:Berlin ist eine groe Stadt.

Berlin is a big city.

Niels studiert Biologie undMathematik.

Katrin ist Annes Freundin.

Katrin lebt und studiert inKarlsruhe.Karlsruhe ist im Sden vonDeutschland.


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VocabularyGerman Engl ish

Adjectives:

gro tallkurz shortgut goodschlecht badsympathisch likable/niceunsympathisch dislikable/unappealingschn beautifulhsslich uglyneu newalt oldspannend excitinglangweilig boringfreundlich friendlyunfreundlich unfriendlyemotional emotionalexzellent excellentwunderbar wonderful

furchtbar terriblewichtig importantunwichtig unimportantintelligent intelligentinteressant interestinggeduldig patientungeduldig impatientverantwortungsvoll responsible

verantwortungslos irresponsibleleicht easyschwer difficult/heavypopulr popular

jung young

Verbs: sein to bekommen to come


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Nouns / Activities: Basketball basketballBaseball baseballFuball soccerSkifahren skiingMusik musicSingen singingTanzen dancingSchwimmen swimmingStudieren studyingFernsehen televisionTennis tennis

Volleyball volleyball

Countries: Australien AustraliaSdafrika South AfricaMexiko MexicoHolland HollandSchweiz SwitzerlandPortugal Portugal

Deutschland GermanyNeuseeland New Zealand

Argentinien ArgentinaIndien IndiaPeru PeruJapan JapanRussland RussiaItalien Italy

USA USAsterreich AustriaPolen PolandBrasilien BrasilChina ChinaFrankreich FranceSpanien SpainGrobritannien Great BritainIrland IrelandKanada Canada


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Nouns:

das Auto the cardas Geld the money

der Lehrer the teacherdie Ferien the vacationdas Konzert the concertder Kuli the pendas Radio the radiodas Tier the animalder Fernseher the TVder Student the studentdie Klasse the classdie Gitarre the guitardie CD the CDdas Telefon the telephoneder Junge the boydas Mdchen the girlder Sport the sportdas Spiel the game

der the (masc.)die the (fem.)das the (neut.)ich I (me)du you (sing.)Sie you (formal address)ich mag I likewir we

ihr you (pl.)er hesie she/theyes itund andaber butauch also, tooWoher kommst du? Where are you from?Ich komme aus ... I am from ...Ich bin in Berlin geboren. I was born in Berlin.


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hallo - basic german, kap. 1

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