Language Basics (Sept 28-Oct 4)

German music for the week:  Marathonmann (post-hardcore-ish)


For general information, the software I am using to learn the German language is Rosetta Stone.  It is a great program (if a little overpriced) for people who learn more by doing and less by reading.  The way that this program works is this:  It shows a bunch of pictures, then says a phrase in German, and you click on the picture that you think the phrase is talking about.  Or the other way around, it shows a picture and shows a bunch of different phrases, and you click the appropriate phrase.  It is very cool and very useful, there is no English in the learning program at all, so you learn to think of words in German, instead of learning how to translate German words into your native language (which is what I used to do when listening to another language, “Oh, that word means this in English, so that is what this is talking about).  However, Rosetta Stone severely lacks in teaching about grammar and things like that, it hopes that you can pick up on it as you go.  So as I am going through these courses I get extremely confused as to when I should use Der or Dem, Die or Das, Ihr or ihm, Sie or sie, etc.  So for that I use a couple of other resources.  This first website is a German language learning site, and it has been pretty useful for me.  It has grammar rules and dictionaries in it, downloadable worksheets, etc., but you have to log in and make an account and stuff.  This next website is just a blog by some guy named Tom.  I mainly use it for help in identifying cases and stuff like that, and he has good things scattered throughout.  I also use Reddit (/r/german) because I like that website, but I often get too distracted by other things.  Anyway, my point is, since I am using Rosetta Stone as my main course of progress, I am going to follow that framework with my notes.  Here we go.

I am making a list of each noun with gender for each level and unit, so I will link to that periodically. If you don't know the word, just go there and use the search function.  Fancy.

I began my learning by making simple sentences (present tense): Der Mann trinkt.  Das Mädchen liest.  Der Junge isst.  Die Frau schwimmt.
 This was fairly easy for me, except I often want to add the word "is" in my sentences: Der Mann ist trinkt (the man is drinking), but I think that is more my problem than a general one.

Then present tense plural.

Die Frauen schwimmen.  Die Männer kochen.  Die Jungen rennen. Die Mädchen lesen.

A quick grammar thing, der=Maskulin, die=Femininum, das=Neuter, this is singular in the Nominativ Fall (nominative case).  When using plural, everything is "die" (as far as I know now) and the verb goes back to the infinitiv (the -en ending like wir und sie in the table below). And there is often a slight stem change - Mann -> Männer, Apfel -> Äpfel

This next bit is basic for speaking German correctly: Verb conjugation.  We don't really have this in English, because we can say, "I am running," or, "you are running," or, "he is running," and use "running" in every sentence.  But in German it would be, "Ich renne." "Sie rennen." "Er rennt." So you can't just use the same conjugation for each subject, it changes.  If you have any Spanish language background in you, this should be familiar.

A conjugation table for different subjects, using kochen und rennen:

ich	koche	renne
du	kochst	rennst
er/sie/es	kocht	rennt
wir	kochen	rennen
ihr	kocht	rennt
sie	kochen	rennen

Then, using conjunctions (und=and, aber=but), practice making a little longer sentences:

Der Mann und die Frau essen Reis.

Die Frau und das Mädchen lesen.
Die Männer lesen, aber die Frauen lesen nicht.

In order to speak the language correctly, you need to pay close attention to the way that you structure your sentences and questions.  The way that sentences and questions are structured in German is quite different from how it is done in English, I think, and this will take some good studying to be able to really be able to speak the language.  This is the site that I use to familiarize myself with sentence structure, it will probably be more helpful than me.

Starting out with structuring simple questions, it gets much more complicated, but I will try to keep it a little simple.
A yes or no question: Isst er einen Apfel?

A probing question: Was ist das?

When asking yes/no question, the question generally begins with the conjugated verb (the Main Verb, if you will).  This particular yes/no question is structured like this:

Main verb/subject/direct object.

Isst             er         einen Apfel?

Yes/no questions in general have that same structure, with a few variations.  The Main verb is generally first, the subject is generally second, and the direct object generally ends the question.

The probing question begins with a question-word, (which generally begins with “w," similar to English- Wohin, Was, Warum, etc) followed by the Main verb.

Like this:

Question word/Main verb/subject.

Wo                  wohnst          du?

So you can take that structure to ask people what they are doing, then.

Was machen Sie? oder Was macht der Mann? oder Was macht das Kind? etc.

Ich esse Brot.         Der Mann kocht in der Kuche.       Das Kind rennt.

We also require a quick introduction to der Akkusativ Fall (accusative case).

Here is a quick table of articles in der Akkusativ Fall for the different genders and plural:

	Akkusativ
Maskulin	den
Feminin	die
Neuter	das
Plural	die

The only thing that changes in der Akkusativ Fall is when saying Maskulin verbs, Den instead of Der.

Tom’s DeutschKurse has a good explanation of the different Fälle.  According to him, der Akkusativ Fall is used when talking about the direct object, the noun follows a preposition in the accusative case, the noun follows a “two-way” preposition, or in expressions.  I don’t really know what any of those mean right now except for the direct object, but check out Tom’s lesson if you want to know more.  For now, it is probably good enough to just know the direct object.  An example of using der Akkusativ Fall:
Die Frau trägt dem Hut.

So "Die Frau" is in der Nominativ Fall, because she is the subject, but "dem Hut" is in der Akkusativ Fall, because it is the direct object.
That's all I have for this week.

I cringe at the thought of all the mistakes I make in this.

If you can correct me or add some great insight, please do, I beg of you.