April 2009
23 posts
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Noun genders - how you recognize them
#grammar
Now we know that there are three different noun genders in German. Do you remember which ones?!
masuline, feminine and neuter. Ok. Cool.
It’s very important to know the correct genders of German nouns. You have to learn them mostly by heart. However, some nouns have endings (suffixes) that usually apply to a certain gender and can therefore help you out a bit.
(m): -ich, -ling, -ist,...
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A nice quote - ein nettes Zitat :)
#quote
Sometimes I enjoy reading quotes. Here’s a really good one I think:
Zwei Dinge sind unendlich: das Universum und die menschliche Dummheit, aber bei dem Universum bin ich mir noch nicht ganz sicher.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
(Albert Einstein)
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German noun genders
#grammar
English has “the”. Just one word for everything. When I learned that in school I was like “woot - only one” ;) Why? Well…3 genders have “survived” in the German language - and learners consider that to be a difficulty. So I wanna dedicate one or two posts to them:
maskulin / männlich (masculine) (m) - DER
feminin / weiblich (feminine) (f) -...
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Grammatical terms 5: Words about nouns
#definition
Of course we need to understand some important terms about nouns, now that we can understand the ones about verbs, right? ;)
Declension (die Deklination) = groupings that nouns fall into according to the way they make their forms (see “case”)
Gender (der Genus/die Gattung) = don’t confuse this with the sex; in German, there are three different genders (more about them soon) that are...
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Conjugation (present tense): sein
#conjugation
Today’s conjugation:
(to) be = sein (irregular) in the present tense (Präsens/Gegenwart)
ich bin
du bist
er / sie / es ist
wir sind
ihr seid
sie sind
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Grammatical terms 4: words about verbs
#definition
Well, verbs are an essential part of every language, right? So having heard of the following terms will definitely help you understanding grammar better:
Conjugation (die Konjugation) = the groupings that verbs in many languages fall into according to the way they make their forms e.g. Ich lache, du lachst, er/sie/es lacht etc. = I laugh, you laugh, he/she/it laughs etc.
Infinitive...
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Heroes - Helden by David Bowie →
Dio you know the German movie “Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” (famous story about young heroin addicts in Berlin during the late 70s and one of my favourite books/movies)?
Well… the soundtrack is basically just Bowie songs. Heroes is one of them. And while I was listening to it I remembered that Bowie, who lived in Berlin from 1976-1978 by the way, recorded Heroes in...
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Grammatical terms 3: clauses
#definition
Clauses make up sentences. In classical grammar, each clause has it’s own subject and verb.
The following types of clauses exist:
Main clause = can stand alone as a complete and logical sentence
Subordinate clause = it cannot stand alone, so it must have another clause with it to complete it
Relative clause = begins with a relative pronoun: who, whom, that, which
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10 reasons to learn German
#list
#German is….:
1.) … the most spoken language in the European Union.
2.) … spoken by over 120million native speakers.
3.) … the most spoken language in the European Union - you can communicate with German in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg as well as in other parts of the EU.
4.) … spoken by over 80million non-native speakers and the 3rd most popular foreign...
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Grammatical terms 2: sentence elements
#definition
Something I have to talk about as well is - the parts of a sentence. EVERY complete sentence (grammatically) contains two basic parts:
Subject = noun/pronoun; the active element of the sentence that does something or is talked about [in complex sentences each part may have its own subject!]
Verb / predicate = talks about the subject, the action of the sentence
But sentences can...
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German greetings 2: bye, bye
#phrases
This is how we say “goodbye” in German:
The formal and mega polite way is “Auf Wiedersehen” = goodbye.*
“Tschüß” = “bye” - is very common and used among people who know each other well (e.g. friends, colleagues, relatives, neighbours etc.)
Other common possibilites are:
Bis bald / Mach’s gut = see you soon
* On the phone you...
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Grammatical terms 1: words
#definition
It would be unfair for me to assume that all of you are familiar with the grammatical terms I’m using on GermanHeit. So I figured some definitions might help those of you who are new to the language learning field :) Look them up whenever you need to! :)
Today: different kinds of words!
noun = signifies a person, place, thing, action, idea, condition or quality e.g. My DOG is...
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German greetings
#phrases
Ok, so when you start learning a language, one of the first things you’ll learn is how to say hello and goodbye, right? So how do we say hello in German?
Hallo! / Hi! = wow… ok, no need for translation here I guess ;)
Guten Morgen! = Good morning!
Guten Tag! = Good day!*
Guten Abend! = Good evening!
Gute Nacht! = Good night!
* “Good afternoon” doesn’t exist in German! Use “Guten...
Welcome to GermanHeit!
Oh Hallo! You found my tumblelog! How nice.
I’m Babsi from Germany. And being the huge language nerd I am, I’ve started GermanHeit as a way to teach you a bit about my native tongue… as well as share the many things I love about my country.
From short grammar lessons, to recipes, to fun German media, this tumblelog should offer you a variety of ways to experience my language...