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Coffee Break German: Lesson 03 - Notes page 1 of 15

Coffee Break German Lesson 03

Study Notes

LESSON NOTES

ICH KOMME AUS DEUTSCHLAND. UND SIE?In this lesson of Coffee Break German we will learn to talk about where we come from, and ask other people where they come from. We’ll cover the names for a number of countries, and learn greetings used in different parts of the German-speaking world.

INTRODUCTIONFollowing a brief review of the question wie heißen Sie? Thomas and Mark began the lesson with a short conversation:

Mark: Bist du fertig?Thomas: Ja...Mark: Dann lass uns anfangen!

We have encountered the phrases bist du fertig? (are you ready?) and lass uns anfangen (let’s begin) before. The additional word to consider here is dann:

dannthen, so


dann lass uns anfangenthen let’s begin / so let’s begin

SIE AND DUIn lesson 2 we learned the question wie heißen Sie? meaning “what is your name?” This is the formal version of this sentence: as we learned last time there are two forms for “you” in German, just as there are in many other languages. Our Grammar Guru Kirsten will tell us more about this later in the lesson.

For now, let’s consider the informal way of asking the question, “what is your name?”:

wie heißt du?what is your name? (informal)

Note that heißen becomes heißt when using the informal form. We will study this pattern later.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?If you are asked a question in German, you can direct the same question back to the person who asked you the question by using the phrase:

und Sie?and you? (formal)

Here is an example of this phrase in a conversation:


Mark: Wie heißen Sie?Thomas: Ich heiße Thomas. Und Sie?Mark: Ich heiße Mark.

Of course, if you are using the informal form, you can replace the Sie with du:

und du?and you? (informal)

Mark: Wie heißt du?Thomas: Ich heiße Thomas. Und du?Mark: Ich heiße Mark.

TALKING ABOUT WHERE YOU’RE FROMUsing the formal form, to ask someone “where do you come from?” or “where are you from?” you use the following phrase:

woher kommen Sie?where do you come from?

The word wo means “where”, and woher means “where from” or “from where”, so the sentence literally means “where from come you?”

To answer the question, Thomas says:


ich komme aus DeutschlandI come from Germany

Since Mark is from Scotland, he has to say:

ich komme aus SchottlandI come from Scotland

Thomas and Mark have a role-play conversation in which they meet each other in a business context and introduce themselves. This conversation uses a number of phrases we have covered so far in our lessons.

Mark: Guten Tag.Thomas: Guten Tag. Wie heißen Sie?Mark: Ich heiße Mark. Und Sie?Thomas: Mein Name ist Thomas. Woher kommen Sie?Mark: Ich komme aus Schottland. Woher kommen Sie?Thomas: Ich komme aus Deutschland.Mark: Sehr gut. Auf Wiedersehen.Thomas: Danke, tschüss.

Another phrase which could be useful in this context is the German for “it’s nice to meet you” or “pleased to meet you”:

es freut michit’s nice to meet you

Note that you can shorten this expression to freut mich. It literally means “it’s a joy to me”. Es freut mich is already a shortened form of this longer phrase:


es freut mich Sie kennenzulernenit’s a pleasure to get to know you

We can add this phrase to another sample conversation:

Thomas: Guten Morgen.Mark: Guten Morgen. Wie geht’s?Thomas: Gut, danke. Wie geht’s Ihnen?Mark: Mir geht’s ausgezeichnet. Woher kommen Sie?Thomas: Ich komme aus Deutschland. Und Sie?Mark: Ich komme aus Schottland. Ich heiße Mark. Wie heißen

Sie?Thomas: Ich heiße Thomas.Mark: Es freut mich.Thomas: Es freut mich auch.

Note the word auch used by Thomas in this conversation:

es freut mich auchI’m also pleased to meet you

The word auch can be used with a subject pronoun (e.g. ich, du, Sie, etc.):

ich auchme too

du auchyou too (informal)

Sie auchyou too (formal)


Note in particular with ich auch, the literal translation is “I too”, rather than “me too”. It’s important to note little nuances of this to avoid mistranslating in the future.

Note also the word order in this sentence:

ich komme auch aus SchottlandI also come from Scotland

mir geht’s auch gutI’m also well / things are also good for me

ICH KOMME AUS ...Listed below are some other countries within the context of the phrase “I come from...”:

ich komme aus EnglandI come from England

ich komme aus IrlandI come from Ireland

ich komme aus WalesI come from Wales

ich komme aus AmerikaI come from “America”

ich komme aus den U.S.A.I come from the U.S.A.


Note that since you’re talking about “the United States” you need the definite article den here. We’ll explain more about definite articles in future lessons. The actual translation of “the United States” is die Vereinigte Staaten. It’s probably easier to stick to ich komme aus den U.S.A. for now!

ich komme aus KanadaI come from Canada

ich komme aus AutralienI come from Australia

ich komme aus ÖsterreichI come from Austria

ich komme aus der SchweizI come from Switzerland

CULTURAL CORRESPONDENT

“Hello from me, Julia, your Cultural Correspondent. Last time I told you about the different parts of the world where German is spoken. It’s also important to know that even within Germany itself there are different cultures. There are some things which are associated with the country as a whole, but you’ll find that there are other aspects, whether that be food or architecture, or traditions which are very different from one place to another.

Historically Germany was like a patchwork of different kingdoms, so if I explain to you that, for example, we have sixteen different


school systems in the different federal states of our country, I think you’ll understand what I mean!

The other big difference is the accent and dialects used. I’m sure you know by now that Thomas is from the south and he pronounces some words a bit differently from me. That’s ok, I understand him perfectly, but I thought it would be nice to teach you some greetings you’ll come across in the different parts of the German-speaking world.

Let’s start in the north: near the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts, you’ll hear moin or moin, moin, meaning Morgen, or “good morning”, but you can use this at other times of the day too.

In the south of Germany and throughout Austria you’ll often hear servus, a greeting both for saying “hello” and “goodbye”.

Another southern German and Austria expression for “hello” is Grüß Gott. This literally means, “greet God”, which might sound a bit strange, but these areas are traditionally Catholic, so it


Greetings in different parts of the German-speaking world: Moin in the north, Servus or Grüß Gott in the south and in Austria, and

Grüezi in Switzerland.

makes sense. In fact, I guarantee that you’ll hear Grüß Gott when you walk into a shop anywhere in Austria!

One last greeting, this time from Switzerland, is Grüezi, and like Grüß Gott, it’s only used when you meet someone, not when you’re saying your goodbyes.

So you’re now fully equipped to greet native German speakers anywhere you go.”

GRAMMAR GURU

“Today we’ve introduced you to the two forms of the word “you” in German. As Thomas explained, du is the informal form, and it’s used for talking to someone you know. Sie is the formal form, and that’s used for talking to someone you don’t know. If you’re a school pupil, for example, you’d use this when talking to your teacher. If you’ve ever studied French, it’s the same idea as “tu” and “vous”, and it’s like “tú” and “usted” in Spanish.

Although we only use one form of “you” in English nowadays, we actually used to have two: we used “thou” for informal situations, and “you” for formal ones. In fact this usage still exists in parts of the English-speaking world today.

Anyway, two forms for “you”: du and Sie. So far, so good! But we’ve also learned that these different forms cause changes to the verbs which follow them. We learned du heißt, but Sie heißen, so you can see that the verb has a different ending after each one. We can see the same endings if we use those formal and informal forms with the other verb you’ve learned today, kommen, which means “to come”. We had the formal question woher kommen


Sie? and then the informal version of that sentence would be woher kommst du? Does that make sense?

So that you can see these changes more clearly, let’s consider these verbs side by side: informal first, followed by formal.

I’ll be explaining exactly how to make these changes later in the course. For now, try to focus on the pattern of the formal Sie heißen changing to du heißt for the informal form; and Sie kommen becoming du kommst.

Hopefully this makes sense, and you’ll learn more about verbs in future lessons.”

Ready for more? Turn the page to continue with the bonus materials for this lesson.


INFORMAL FORMAL

du heißt Sie heißen

du kommst Sie kommen

BONUS MATERIALSIn each edition of Coffee Break German we cover the basic language you need to communicate. As part of the study pack we provide some additional vocabulary to help you increase your range of expression. This section of bonus materials provides additional content to help you master the words and phrases contained in the lesson.

✤ Start with the Bonus audio lesson, our “review podcast”

✤ Review the Core Vocabulary and learn the Bonus Vocabulary

CORE VOCABULARYgrüß Gott

greeting in the south of Germany and Austria, literally meaning “greet God”

wie heißt du?what is your name? (informal)

und Sie?and you? what about you? (formal)

und du?and you? what about you? (informal)

woher kommen Sie?where do you come from? (formal)


woher kommst du?where do you come from (informal)

ich komme aus...I come from

DeutschlandGermany

SchottlandScotland

EnglandEngland

IrlandIreland

WalesWales

AmerikaAmerica

ich komme aus den U.S.A.I come from the USA

AustralienAustralia

ÖsterreichAustria


der SchweizSwitzerland

ich komme aus der SchweizI come from Switzerland

es freut michI’m pleased to meet you (shortened form)

es freut mich Sie kennenzulernenI’m pleased to meet you (full phrase)

Sie auch?you too? (formal)

du auch?you too? (informal)

ich auchme too

BONUS VOCABULARYJapan

Japan

SüdafrikaSouth Africa


ChinaChina

ItalienItaly

FrankreichFrance

SpanienSpain

Niederlandethe Netherlands

BelgienBelgium

NorwegenNorway

DänemarkDenmark

IndienIndia

SchwedenSweden


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