Hallo und Auf Wiedersehen (und zwischen)

Only two weeks late for this one...


German music for this post: Turbostaat

Here is a one-sided beginning of a conversation:

Hallo, guten Tag!

Ich heiße Tyler, wie heißen Sie?

Nett Sie kennenzulernen.

Woher kommen Sie aus?

Ich komme aus Michigan, und meine Frau kommt aus Illinois, und wir wohnen im Virginia. Was machen Sie für beruflich?

Ich arbeite mit ein Laster Gesellschaft in der Buchhaltung, aber ich möchte fahre ein Laster.

Haben Sie eine Kinder?

Ich habe kein Kinder, haben Sie eine Geschwister?

Ich habe ein bruder, und zwei schwestern.

Blah blah blah German German German Blah

Tchüs!

Auf Wiedersehen!

A normal greeting in the German language is, "Guten Tag!" (Good day).

One thing that may not be natural at first is the necessity to conjugate "heißen." However, heißen isn't "name" like you may think, but it is actually a verb, "to be called." So you have to conjugate it according to the subject, like the table we had in the last post. But if you would say something like, "Mein Name ist Tyler," then Name (nahmuh)=name.  So, "Mein Vorname ist Tyler und mein Nachname ist Yoder." Vorname= first name (vor=before/in front)(nach=after).

An important point to make here is the difference between Sie and du. When conjugating verbs, when you use Sie you use the -en ending (the infinitiv), but when you use du, you use the -st ending. Both of these words mean "you," however.  Sie is more formal, du is informal.  So if you were talking to a business colleague that you don't know super well, you would use Sie, but if you were talking to your lover, or your business colleague's young child, you would use du.  So, in the second sentence above, "Nett Sie kennenzulernen" (Nice to meet you) would be talking in a formal setting (so when you are meeting a new business colleague, or you were networking or whatnot). If you were talking to a child, though, you would use the "du" form of you, and it would turn into this- "Nett dich kennenzulernen." I'm not sure yet why du takes the "dich" form sometimes, (like "Ich liebe dich" or I love you), but it does.  I just looked it up a little bit, going back to Tom's Deutschseite, there is a declension of personal pronouns.  The reason is because pronouns are in the flektiebar (flectional) word group, meaning they change with cases and gender (there are also inflectional words, meaning they don't change, God bless inflectional words).  Other types of words in this word group include - Nouns, Verbs, Articles, Adjectives. Katja has a good little thing going on Youtube, and she might help you out in learning about these word groups.

Here is a list of the pronouns for the different Fälle.

Nominitiv pronouns (the initial subject):

Ich - I
du - informal you
Sie - formal you
er/sie - he/she (or male gender noun/female gender noun)
es - it (neutral gender)
Sie - formal y'all
ihr - informal y'all
wir - we
sie - they

Genetiv pronouns (possesive-like):

mein - my
dein - your (informal)
sein/ihr - his/her
sein - its (neutral gender)
unser - our
euer - your (formal)
ihr - their
Ihr - your (formal)

Dativ pronouns (indirect objects):

mir - me
dir - you (informal)
ihm/ihr - him/her
ihm - it (neuter)
uns - us
euch - you (formal)
ihnen - them
Ihnen - you (formal)

Akkusativ pronouns (direct objects):

mich - me
dich - you (informal)
ihn/sie - he/she
es - it (neuter)
uns - us
euch - you (formal)
sie - them
Sie - you (formal)

So, some examples of these different cases and pronouns,
Ich liebe dich - I love you.  Ich - infinitiv because I am the subject.  dich - akkusativ because you are the direct object.  That's really all I have for now on that.

Anyway, I think that is all for now.  My motivation isn't super high, mainly because there are other really important things going on in my life, and I can only study in the parking lot of Panera or in Panera since we don't have internet at home.

Again, any corrections or help, I would much appreciate.  Also, anyone interested in speaking German with me, let me know.

Substantive mit Geschlecht (Nouns with Gender)

One of the biggest frustrations with my German is I never know which gender a noun is. It doesn't help that us English speakers hardly know what gender is in grammar, and that German genders are just a random, hodgepodge of rules. Just kidding, there are no rules to it. But there are some "Almost Rules," in that they can be generally true. When nouns have these endings, they tend to be associated with a certain gender, and knowing this can make life a lot easier. If you can get gender correct at least half the time, I think you are doing pretty good.  (link to Deutsch für Euch video where I learned this)
Male endings: -ig -ich -ling -s
Female endings: -ei -in -heit -keit -ung -schaft -a -ie
Neuter endings: -chen -lein -le -icht -tum -ing -um -ment

Another "Almost Rule" would be that endings with -e are often female, but this is less consistent than the other rules.

der (ein)		die (eine)		das (ein)
Mann	Man	Frau	Woman	Mädchen	Girl
Junge	Boy	Milch	Milk	Ei	Egg
Apfel	Apple	Katze	Cat	belegte Brot	Sandwich
Tee	Tea	Sonne	Sun	Brot	Bread
Hund	Dog	Blume	Flower	Kind	Kid (Child)
Erwachsene	Adult	Schuhe	Shoes	Gras	Grass
Mond	Moon	Tasse	Cup	Telefon	Telephone
Himmel	Sky	Bluse	Blouse	Hemd	Shirt
Schlüssel	Key	Schüssel	Bowl	Kleid	Dress
Ball	Ball	Zeitung	Newspaper	T-Shirt	T-shirt
Tisch	Table	Geschwister	Siblings	Buch	Book
Stuhl	Chair			Bett	Bed
Mantel	Coat			Handy	Cellphone
Rock	Skirt			Pferd	Horse
Hose	Pants			Auto	Car
Hut	Hat			Fahrrad	Bicycle
Fisch	Fish
Stift	Pen

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.