A quick and painless rerun of....

...the grammar you have learned so far!

Don't worry, it's nothing that will leave your brain numb, and you might even find some of it

interesting!

These are the things you have already come across:

1. The weird letters in the German alphabet

2. Things to know about the parts of speech (the kinds of words) in the German language

3. Verbs in the present form and personal pronouns

4. How to ask a question

5. Negation

1

So, lets start with the weird letters:

Ä

Ö

Ü

ß

In emails or urls, or whenever these letters don't exist on the keyboard, they are written differently:

ä → ae Bäcker, Baecker = baker

ö → oe schön, schoen = beautiful

ü → ue Brühe, Bruehe = broth

ß → ss Grüße, Gruesse = greetings

And what are these weird letters called?

The twö döts äböve the vöwels are called

an “Umlaut”

The ß letter which is like two ss, is called an “s-z”, pronounced something like “s-tzet”

Here are a few pronunciation comparisons with English, so that you remember what these weird letters sound like:

ä like the “a” sound in “to pay”, “to say”

ö is like the “o” sound in “gorilla”, or the “u” in “burn”.

Imagine a burning gorilla, a börning görilla.

ü sounds like the “u” in “cute”, or “flute”.

So think of a cute flute, a cüte flüte.

ß is Sssuper Sssimple: it sounds like lots of ssss...

2

Things to know about the parts of speech (the kinds of words) in German

NOUNS

In German, ALL NOUNS start with a CAPITAL LETTER, no matter what they are describing. Even objects as mundane as a table have to be honoured with a capital letter:

der Tisch

der Tisch

But what is this “der” doing in front of “Tisch”?

Well, in German, all nouns have a gender.

And just to be different, there is a choice of three:

Feminine

Masculine

Neuter

And it's not as straight forward as you would think. Nouns that seem feminine to you might well be masculine or neuter in German, or vice-versa...

To make matters worse, there are no rules which you can learn which will tell you what gender a noun has...

(there are a few rules, which we will see later on, but they don't cover every possibility)

So when you learn a noun, it is important to learn it along with its gender. And to do so, you learn the noun along with the definite article preceding it:

die → feminineder → masculinedas → neuter

Ok, so for nouns, two important things to remember:

- Capital Letters

- learn them along with their definite article (die, der or das)

Right, next part of speech:

ARTICLES and PRONOUNS

Indefinite article: ein Tisch → a table

Definite article: der Tisch → the table

Demonstrative pronoun: dieser Tisch → this table

VERBS

When you learn a verb, you learn it in the infinitive. In English, the infinitive of a verb is preceded by “to”.

to learnto be...

In German the infinitives are also easy to

recognise, they (pretty much) always end in -en.

heißen → to be called

laufen → to run, to walk

haben → to have

sein → to be (oh come on, it's pretty much -en, just without

the -e...!)

ich I

du you

sie, er, es she, he, it

wir we

ihr you (plural)

Sie, sie you (polite form), they

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

3

If you are interested (but you can skip these next slides if you aren't!), here are a few conjugation tables:

haben to have

ich habe I have

du hast you have

sie, er, es hat she, he, it has

wir haben we have

ihr habt you have

Sie, sie haben

they have

sein to be

ich bin I am

du bist you are

sie, er, es ist she, he, it is

wir sind we are

ihr seid you are

Sie, sie sind they are

If you only have the patience to look at two verbs, make it these two:

gehen to go

ich gehe I go

du gehst you go

sie, er, es geht she, he, it goes

wir gehen we go

ihr geht you go

Sie, sie gehen they go

heißen to be called

ich heiße I am called

du heißt you are called

sie, er, es heißt she, he, it is called

wir heißen we are called

ihr heißt you are called

Sie, sie heißen they are called

wohnen to live

ich wohne I live

du wohnst you live

sie, er, es wohnt she, he, it lives

wir wohnen we live

ihr wohnt you live

Sie, sie wohnen they live

The detectives among you will havespotted the pattern:

habenich - e ich habe

du -st du hast

sie, er, es -t sie, er, es hat

wir -en wir haben

ihr -t ihr habt

Sie, sie -en Sie, sie haben

and you will also have noticed that the 1st person plural and 3rd person plural are the same as the infinitive. This is always the case in the present.

4

How do you order the words in a question?

Similarly to many languages, you have to inverse the subject and verb:

Du kommst. → Kommst du?

You are coming. → Are you coming?

You can also add a question word in front...

wo → where

wann → when

wie → how

was → what

warum → why

...still remembering to keep the subject and verb inverted:

Was ist das? → What is that?

Wann kommst du? → When are you coming?

5

How do you formulate a sentence in the

negative?

There are two words which express negation:

nicht

kein

“nicht” means something like “not”

and “kein” something like “not...any”

Ich bin nicht müde. – I am not tired.

Ich will keinen Kaffee. – I don't want any coffee.

But “kein” is used in a broader sense than theEnglish “not...any” and it can be tricky at the start to get it right.

A good way to see whether you should be using “nicht” or “kein”, is to think of the sentence in the affirmative.

If you can use the indefinite article “ein” in the affirmative, then in the negative you should be using “kein”, and not “nicht”.

So how would you say:

I am not a student

???

Ich bin nicht Studentin

or

Ich bin keine Studentin

???

Say the same sentence in the affirmative:

I am a student

Ich bin eine Studentin

And so now you have your answer:

Ich bin keine Studentin

Ich bin k + eine Studentin

And now you know how to use the negative!

And not only that, you also know how to ask a question

You can use verbs in the present

You know how to recognise the different words in a sentence:

you know for example that if a word has a capital, it is noun

And last but not least, you are now no longer scared of the weird letters

ä ö ü ß

because you know what they are!

ä ö ü ß

You don't säy!!!

A börning görilla?!

No, it's a cüte flüte

And ssso now you are sssso going to massster German!

So well done, and keep the good work up!