Learning German
 

Well, I figured since I half-assed the Russian thread. We should at least have a half-assed German thread!

Is anyone interested!? I'd be happy to teach you some things to navigate your way through the various "Städte" (Shtete) a.k.a. cities of Deutschland!


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LINKS TO POSTS CONTAINING GERMAN COURSES

Verb Conjugation: Kommen

Learning German Articles: Der, Die and Das!

German Articles: Der, Die and Das | Re-Explained & Easier to Understand

Los Geht's: Wer bist du? | Erste Stufe

Los Geht's & Erste Stufe Study Guide

YAY. :D

Haha! I love you Queenie.

Woot - I pick up French next year as well! Yay Language <333

You totally knew I was gonna be soooo happy about this :gigi:

I love you too!

Maybe you can teach us :p French is so beautiful, but unfortunately I think I've sort of given up on my dream of learning French... it just seems so difficult. :(

Okay I'm gonna get my German notebook ready!

Ohh I'm interested. Couldn't hurt. :p -bookmarks thread-

Offtop:
Is there a "Learning Spanish" thread too? I looked a while back and got nothing. :confused:

TreIsCool32, as far as I remember, there's not... maybe a Spanish speaking member can help us out? :) I took Spanish for 4,5 years but I can only say "Hola" :p The only thing I could help with would be exercises, I've got a lot of those...

I'm learniing german! :p

haha, really? I don't believe you.

Alright, so lets start with the basics of verb conjugation for Nominative Case.

The imporant thing to remember when learning a foreign language - is that they do not operate like New Age English does. Your verbs in English have no definate ending to them. You can say "I Come From" and "You Come From" and it's correct both ways, because in Modern English - you do not change the ending of the verb you are using. If you did not understand that - please re-read until you do. It's crucial to understanding what is below. However - saying "Ich Komme Aus" (I come from) and "Du Komme Aus" (You come from) - is incorrect in German, because each verb has to have a different ending depending on if you use He, She, It, etc". If you are familiar with Russian or any other Slavic languages, this concept will be easy for you. Any time you use a Pro-noun (I, Me, You, etc) you will need to change the case ending on the verb (Run, dance, sing, etc) that you use. Here is a chart to help break it down, just ask if you have questions. I will bold the way you change the endings on verbs below so you have a visual image of how to format verbs so that they agree with their pronouns.


All of these are ways to say "____ Comes (From)"

As you can see, the endings that are bolded show how you change the pronouns and the verbs so that they match each other to form a correct German sentence! You're well on your way to mastering German if you can understand this concept, so study and memorize it!

This is important becuase - any verb you use in German will function this way, with the exact same case endings, unless it is an irregular verb. And even irreular verbs have only small changes like removing an "e" from the forms of "Ich" and removing the t from "Er, Sie, Es"

Now - this may sound like a big jumble of random German words, but you really really will find this very simple after you memorize that chart and can plug in your knolwedge of German pronouns into all of this that I've typed!

If any of you are familiar with Shakespeare you'll recognize how English and German are similar.
Example: I know not = I don't know
Thou knowest not = You do not know

Do you see how the verb's ending changes when you use either "I" or "You" in Old English? - This is because English is a language that has many roots in German. So many things will be similar!

Please let me know if you've got any questions! I'll be happy to further explain!

Actually, we also must conjugate verbs. It's just not noticed so much as we are used to speaking it so often.

FOR EXAMPLE:

"to be"
I am
You are
He/She is
It is
We are
They are

"to do"
I do
You do
He/She does
It does
We do
They do

...as can be shown with many other verbs in the English language.

Haha, I should have been more specific. I meant that in English - you don't change how your verb is conjuaged for EVERY pronoun, as you do in German. Also - when you conjugate in English - you don't have the same ending on each different verb for every time you use the same pronoun.


But my dear Lisa, you are indeed correctomundo on that example.

Beautiful conjuation -Adruz-

:coctail:

Thanks Tim and Lisa for the information. :D

Offtop:
I know a fair bit of Spanish. :p I just want to further it a lot more. Someone (or I can) should start the thread! :)

Ouu.. I deleted it, cuz I thought it would bother you. You're the teacher here :p

Haha! Of course not!

I know I'm a bitch but I'm not THAT much of a bitch lol!

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Is everyone finding what I wrote up there understandable though?

I agree

OMG! this thread reminds me that I've studied german for 5 years ... hmmm maybe 7 haha! I don't even remember it
my remaining is this beautiful sentence : Ich bin ein Ameisenbär :p

Good luck for german :rose:
interesting thread anyway

Technically speaking both English and German as Germanic languages derive their roots from ancient Proto-Germanic language (which in itself was only a derivative of Proto-Indo-European).


Me too. Four years for me. And I still can't speak for shit. Goes to show you we're bound to forget just about everything we learn at school. :p

Is it supposed to be "Ich Komme" or can it be "Ich komme"? I thought only nouns had capital letters in the beginning?

...and you are right! :done:

It's "Ich komme" - as Argos said.

And you're also correct - only nouns have capital letters :) -

Is anyone else ready to learn some sentences and how to format them?

First explain to me why a table is male. I never understood that. It's so clearly female when you look at it. :p

Spaaaaartan! you have a fetish with the "sex" of the words! seriously
that reminds me when you asked me about french words haha! you rock
I totally spoil this thread, sorry

so all that I can say, if I'm not wrong, is that the verb is always in second in a sentence (maybe there's exceptions, but I don't know them lol)

Haha mein Deutsch ist überslecht, aber ich habe es studiert for 5 Jahre. Mann. Aber es ist eine schöne Sprache.
Blegh I suck at German these days.. :roll: Think I'm gonna follow this thread, to get my German back on. And about the Spanish thread, Spanish rocks so please :D I really wanna improve my Spanish.

Haha, I guess this would be a good time to introduce the articles of the German Language.

The word "The" in English can be translated to either "Der, Die or Das" in German.

There are more Der words than Die words, and more Die words than Das words - my meaning by "Der/Die/Das words is because - every object in German has a "The" before it. When referring to somthing in formal German you refer to it as "The ____"

Here is a chart to memorize the genders for each "The"

Der - (Male) The (Only use Den when you are not beginning a sentence, otherwise use "Der")
Die - (She or Plural) The
Das - (She) - The/That

In response to somthing being a "The", it also has to be an "it" So - here is the reason why a table is a HE!

The German word table (Tisch) uses the word "Der" or "Den" - which translates to the HE form of The.

The "it" form for any German word will be just like the chart on the last page "Er, Sie, or Es" - He/She/it.


Der - Er | The (Male) - He
Die - Sie | The (Female) - It
Das - Es | The (Neuter) - She

So if a table is a Der (Male) word - then the IT form if it would be "er" since that is also the male form of He/she/it.


If you have questions from this point on - please re-read this or ask me about it. This is crucial to understand


Examples

Der Tisch ist alt, und sehr gross. - The table is old, and very big!

Das Madchen ist schon sechzehn, aber es nicht zu alt! - The girl is already 16, but she's not to old!

Die schule ist gross und sie ist neu! - The school is big and it is new!



So - have you grasped the concept of using the German "The" and the German "Its" together - if so, make up some sentences of your own in English - but replacing the words "It" and "The" with either Der/Die/Das and Er/Sie/Es

Beautiful sentence :)

See - it's easy for me to do! In a few weeks you guys can do all this too! :)

:none:.

lmao @ Queenie come on girl!

Talyubittu, are you fluent in german?

I wrote it down, but... dude.

No, I haven't even had a year of it yet. I'm just finishing my first year of German now :)

Queenie - I'll explain more to help you through it ok. I typed that in a very unorganized fashion.

Talyubittu, that's okay, I think I got it!

I think we're gonna have some fun in this thread! hehe

Ok, since a few of you are having trouble with the chart above, I'm going to make a new one for you guys, and explain it in a bit more simple fashion.

All nouns in German have a "The" in front of them. Where English only has one word for "The", Germans have three. Each one of these three indicates a different gender. The German words for "The" are listed below.



Der - Male
Die - Female - Plural
Das - It

The word "Der" - indicates that whatever object you are talking about, is Male. It can be a person, a table or a book or anything else under the sun. But remember - anytime you are using Der - your word will be male. The word "Der" can also be used as "Den". The only time you will replace the word "Der" with "Den" is when you are beginning a sentence with the word "The".

For Example:

Der Tisch ist alt! - The table is old.

Alt, ist der Tisch! - Old, is the table.


Both of these examples above are ways to use "The" - notice when the word "The" is beginning the sentence it is "Den". The 2nd sentence, uses "Der" because it's not starting the sentence.


Now - the thing is - you can't just randomly add Der, Die or Das to any word you want. Every noun in German is either Der, Die or Das - millions of words with either Der, Die or Das, but don't worry, you don't have to memorize them. You just need to remember what I'm saying now, and familiarize yourself with these articles.

The same rules as above apply to ANY German noun, you just have to know whether it's a Der, Die, or Das word :)

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Remember from yesterday, learning the Er/Sie/Es (He/She/It)?

Well if you've memorized that, you're on your way to learning German! This is probably the most complicated thing in German, but it's actually very easy!

If Der, Die and Das are used as "The", and either one of them means He, She or It, all you have to know to finnish a sentence using them is Er, Sie and Es!

Because German uses either He, She or It, for "The", wouldn't it make sense for them also to use He, She and It for the word "it"? Because they do! There are three ways to say It essentially in German, just like The! - See thats not that hard of a concept to grasp!

For Example

Der Tisch ist alt, aber er ist gross! - The table is old, but it is big!

See how Den/Der is the male word for The? - When referring to the table as "It" later in the sentence you will use the male word for it, which is "Er" or "He"



For Der - You will use ER - Because they are both male.
For Die - You will use SIE - Because they are bot Female
For Das - You will use ES - Because they are both Neutral


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Hopefully this makes it a little more clear! Just let me know if you have any questions after this :).

Haha - why is that



MODERATORS - Please don't merge my posts. After awhile I'm going to link to the post containing the lessons in the first post in the topic - I don't want the lesson posts merged with the "talking" posts. Thank you! :)

because german is not easy to learn and I guess if you just learn it for one year, after the basics we will encounter some problems lol and it's gonna be fun
see my point?
and no offence, I really think it's gonna be fun to try to fing solutions to our problems haha!

btw, I just realise that I don't have any ß on my keyboard hehe! my bad :p

Ach !
Wunderbar !

Ein deutsches topic um diese tolle fremdsprache zu lernen !

Dar interessiert mich sehr !

Dankesch?n Talyubittu ! :D

"Ich was nicht was soll es bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin..."

Kennen sie ? :)

Das war ein bischen schwer zu lernen aber das war ein Erfolg ^^


Talyubittu, it's "der Tisch", because it's nominative, not accusative ;)

And
Der is for Male
Die is for Female
Das is for a thing.

After it will depends on the grammar, on the gender, on the number etc...

So schlecht ist es gar nicht.:D

Sorry for correction, but ...
der - er - male - (the - he)
die - sie - female (the - she)
das - es - neutre (the - it)
die (plural, all genders) - sie (the - they)
REM: den is the Accusative form of der, the text in brackets above is incorrect.


correct:
Der Tisch ist alt und sehr gross.
Das Maedchen(*) ist schon sechzehn, aber es ist nicht zu alt. //(*)if you can read german umlaut correct in your browser, then: Mädchen
Die Schule ist gross und sie ist neu.