German Crash Course Part One
Alright, this is like part one of part one. The original first post I'd had planned was a lot of information to throw at you at the first go, so I've cut it down a bit...here's the first five sections (they're short though.)
I've started from the very very beginning, so anyone who's taken German in school can probably skip this one xD
Hallo und Herzlich Wilkommen in das Deutschesprache Crash Course von sicher_sieger.
The German Alphabet and You
Alright, German shares the vast majority of its letters with English (luckily)
But, German has 4 extra characters that I'll go over now; these are ö ä ü and ß.
You probably recognize the first three from rock band names. I'm not actually sure if these count as separate letters but they all have an umlaut (that's the real name for the two dots on top of the letter)
The umlaut changes the sound the letter makes, but since I'm not teaching you how to speak German, I'm not gonna go into that.
An umlaut is added when certain singular nouns become plural:
Apfel (apple) --> Äpfeln (apples)
It also goes with certain verbs:
möchten (would like)
Uh, there's no real rules to this; it's just a spelling thing.
However, umlauts aren't completely necessary; one can also type ae, oe, or ue instead since that imitates the sound the letter makes.
((http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/umlaut.htm Here are the ALT codes for letters with umlauts if you'd like to use them))
Now, on to this little friend ß ((ALT code 0223, if you'd like to know)). This is an eszett and all it does is replace two s's beside each other.
So, rather than writing Ich weiss (I know) you'd put Ich weiß.
But you would not say Jeß rather than Jess (although that looks rather badass :P)
Evidently, the rule on when to use ß versus ss changes every now and again. Since I've been learning German (I started in grade 7 and I'm a high school senior now), it's already changed, now it's got something to do with vowel sounds or something.
Anyway, don't worry so much about this one, just use two s's.
Two You's
The German language has two ways to say you, that is du and Sie (always capitalized by the way.)
Sie is used to speak to teachers, allies (I suppose), elders, just everyone you respect. It's a polite term, sort of the equivalent of adding -san on to the end of someone's name in Japanese.
Du is the informal, or casual, term. You would use this one when addressing close friends and family, or those who are younger than you. It's considered rude to speak to someone above you (or in a formal setting) using this word.
I'll illustrate with some character examples:
I (as Germany) would address Japan with Sie, but Prussia (and probably Italy) with du.
Leichtenstein (and I'm not trying to tell you how to do things by the way) would refer to everyone (except for maybe Sealand) using Sie.
I suppose, just use your best judgment.
Word Order
There is only one thing you need to know about word order right now and that is that the verb in a sentence always is in the second position. "Well, Jess, what does that mean?"
Example:
I'm going home.
Ich gehe nach Hause. (simple enough, right?)
I'm going home later.
Später gehe ich nach Hause.
In both exampled, the verb (gehe) is in what we call the second position. You could also say Ich gehe später nach Hause.or Ich gehen nack Hause später. The word order for later isn't fixed.
TO ASK A QUESTION:
One must merely put the verb in the first position, just like English.
Example:
You are my brother.
Du bist meinen Bruder.
Are you my brother?
Bist du meinen Bruder?
There are some questions that can't be asked in this format, but they're not incredibly important for the causes of this RP.
Nouns
Okay, firstly, in German: Nouns are always capitalized. ALWAYS! (not pronouns though unless they start a sentence)
Example:
I am a man.
Ich bin ein Mann.
(Side note: two n's make the word man; if you only have one 'man', then that's like the English 'one' in a statement like: One might think...if you don't understand this, that's alright; I don't foresee you needing to use it much here.)
Secondly, German nouns have genders (If you've taken Italian, French, or Spanish, this'll be no surprise to you.)
There are:
definite articles (That's THE in English)
Masculine--Der/Den/Dem [this is about cases; we'll get into it in the next section]
Feminine--Die/Die/Der
Neutral (or Neuter)--Das/Das/Den (I think that's right, I'm not sure)
indefinite articles (A or AN in English)
Masculine--ein/einen/einem
Feminine--eine/eine/einer
Neutral (or Neuter)--ein/ein/einen (once again, I'm not totally sure)
"Oh, well, Jess, how do I know what noun has what article?"
Sadly you don't. There are very few patterns in gender assignment (and I can't really recall the ones that there are...I'm pretty sure one is that words ending in -keit are all Fem.)
Gender assignments are just about completely arbitrary...
a television (Fernseher) is feminine (Die Fernseher)
a table/desk (Tisch) is masculine (Der Tisch)
a house (Haus) is neutral (Das Haus)
HOWEVER!
When you are talking about things in the plural, the definite article (that's what these are called btw) is always 'die.' and the indefinite is the number of things you're talking about (I'll give you numbers later)
So one dog is Der Hund
But many dogs is Die Hunde
(I'll talk more about plurals some other time)
Cases
Alright, I really didn't want to get into this at the first part, but I guess it's unavoidable.
In German there are four cases (I'm only going to talk about three though since I don't actually know much about the fourth) ((Finnish has like 11 so thank your lucky stars your not learning Finnish right now *wants to learn Finnish*))
Alright, first is the subjective case. This is the subject of the sentence.
He goes.
Er geht. (Simple enough.)
Second is the accusative case. This is the direct object. Here articles start to change!
She has a cat
Sie hat eine Katze. (Cat is feminine and therefore does not change here; neither do neutral nouns)
however, if the object was masculine...
My car has one headlight. (For like life of me, I couldn't think of any masculine nouns so I looked one up)
Mein Auto hat einen Scheinwerfer.
Notice the change from ein to einen. This is because the headlight (der Scheinwerfer) is the object of the sentence.
"Jess, you lost me."
Don't worry, you'll pick it up in time.
Lastly is the dative case. This is for indirect objects. "Jess, what the hell is an indirect object?"
Just watch:
I open the door for the woman.
Ich öffne die Tür für der Frau.
The woman is the indirect object; it is what "receives" the direct object.
Some verbs automatically call for the dative case like schenken--to give a gift
I give the boy the ball.
Ich schenke dem Junge den Ball.
This actually makes a very good example of accusative and dative cases working together.
"Jess, I'm still lost."
Once again, don't worry. If you're still confused, say so and I can go over this better again next time. Even if you're someone like Lizzie following along for your own enjoyment and you don't understand something, leave me a comment, shoot me an email, what have you.
Coming up next time:
I'll start giving you guys some vocabulary words and useful phrases. orz
We'll also have a little chat about prepositions (though that may become a lesson all to itself because they're complicated.)
and...whatever else I feel like putting in
and...Whatever you guys have questions on.
Since I have an obscene 4 day weekend, the next part'll be soon.
Hopefully, it won't be as useless as this first section...
Bis dann!
Tschüss, meine Schätze <3
I've started from the very very beginning, so anyone who's taken German in school can probably skip this one xD
Hallo und Herzlich Wilkommen in das Deutschesprache Crash Course von sicher_sieger.
The German Alphabet and You
Alright, German shares the vast majority of its letters with English (luckily)
But, German has 4 extra characters that I'll go over now; these are ö ä ü and ß.
You probably recognize the first three from rock band names. I'm not actually sure if these count as separate letters but they all have an umlaut (that's the real name for the two dots on top of the letter)
The umlaut changes the sound the letter makes, but since I'm not teaching you how to speak German, I'm not gonna go into that.
An umlaut is added when certain singular nouns become plural:
Apfel (apple) --> Äpfeln (apples)
It also goes with certain verbs:
möchten (would like)
Uh, there's no real rules to this; it's just a spelling thing.
However, umlauts aren't completely necessary; one can also type ae, oe, or ue instead since that imitates the sound the letter makes.
((http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/umlaut.htm Here are the ALT codes for letters with umlauts if you'd like to use them))
Now, on to this little friend ß ((ALT code 0223, if you'd like to know)). This is an eszett and all it does is replace two s's beside each other.
So, rather than writing Ich weiss (I know) you'd put Ich weiß.
But you would not say Jeß rather than Jess (although that looks rather badass :P)
Evidently, the rule on when to use ß versus ss changes every now and again. Since I've been learning German (I started in grade 7 and I'm a high school senior now), it's already changed, now it's got something to do with vowel sounds or something.
Anyway, don't worry so much about this one, just use two s's.
Two You's
The German language has two ways to say you, that is du and Sie (always capitalized by the way.)
Sie is used to speak to teachers, allies (I suppose), elders, just everyone you respect. It's a polite term, sort of the equivalent of adding -san on to the end of someone's name in Japanese.
Du is the informal, or casual, term. You would use this one when addressing close friends and family, or those who are younger than you. It's considered rude to speak to someone above you (or in a formal setting) using this word.
I'll illustrate with some character examples:
I (as Germany) would address Japan with Sie, but Prussia (and probably Italy) with du.
Leichtenstein (and I'm not trying to tell you how to do things by the way) would refer to everyone (except for maybe Sealand) using Sie.
I suppose, just use your best judgment.
Word Order
There is only one thing you need to know about word order right now and that is that the verb in a sentence always is in the second position. "Well, Jess, what does that mean?"
Example:
I'm going home.
Ich gehe nach Hause. (simple enough, right?)
I'm going home later.
Später gehe ich nach Hause.
In both exampled, the verb (gehe) is in what we call the second position. You could also say Ich gehe später nach Hause.or Ich gehen nack Hause später. The word order for later isn't fixed.
TO ASK A QUESTION:
One must merely put the verb in the first position, just like English.
Example:
You are my brother.
Du bist meinen Bruder.
Are you my brother?
Bist du meinen Bruder?
There are some questions that can't be asked in this format, but they're not incredibly important for the causes of this RP.
Nouns
Okay, firstly, in German: Nouns are always capitalized. ALWAYS! (not pronouns though unless they start a sentence)
Example:
I am a man.
Ich bin ein Mann.
(Side note: two n's make the word man; if you only have one 'man', then that's like the English 'one' in a statement like: One might think...if you don't understand this, that's alright; I don't foresee you needing to use it much here.)
Secondly, German nouns have genders (If you've taken Italian, French, or Spanish, this'll be no surprise to you.)
There are:
definite articles (That's THE in English)
Masculine--Der/Den/Dem [this is about cases; we'll get into it in the next section]
Feminine--Die/Die/Der
Neutral (or Neuter)--Das/Das/Den (I think that's right, I'm not sure)
indefinite articles (A or AN in English)
Masculine--ein/einen/einem
Feminine--eine/eine/einer
Neutral (or Neuter)--ein/ein/einen (once again, I'm not totally sure)
"Oh, well, Jess, how do I know what noun has what article?"
Sadly you don't. There are very few patterns in gender assignment (and I can't really recall the ones that there are...I'm pretty sure one is that words ending in -keit are all Fem.)
Gender assignments are just about completely arbitrary...
a television (Fernseher) is feminine (Die Fernseher)
a table/desk (Tisch) is masculine (Der Tisch)
a house (Haus) is neutral (Das Haus)
HOWEVER!
When you are talking about things in the plural, the definite article (that's what these are called btw) is always 'die.' and the indefinite is the number of things you're talking about (I'll give you numbers later)
So one dog is Der Hund
But many dogs is Die Hunde
(I'll talk more about plurals some other time)
Cases
Alright, I really didn't want to get into this at the first part, but I guess it's unavoidable.
In German there are four cases (I'm only going to talk about three though since I don't actually know much about the fourth) ((Finnish has like 11 so thank your lucky stars your not learning Finnish right now *wants to learn Finnish*))
Alright, first is the subjective case. This is the subject of the sentence.
He goes.
Er geht. (Simple enough.)
Second is the accusative case. This is the direct object. Here articles start to change!
She has a cat
Sie hat eine Katze. (Cat is feminine and therefore does not change here; neither do neutral nouns)
however, if the object was masculine...
My car has one headlight. (For like life of me, I couldn't think of any masculine nouns so I looked one up)
Mein Auto hat einen Scheinwerfer.
Notice the change from ein to einen. This is because the headlight (der Scheinwerfer) is the object of the sentence.
"Jess, you lost me."
Don't worry, you'll pick it up in time.
Lastly is the dative case. This is for indirect objects. "Jess, what the hell is an indirect object?"
Just watch:
I open the door for the woman.
Ich öffne die Tür für der Frau.
The woman is the indirect object; it is what "receives" the direct object.
Some verbs automatically call for the dative case like schenken--to give a gift
I give the boy the ball.
Ich schenke dem Junge den Ball.
This actually makes a very good example of accusative and dative cases working together.
"Jess, I'm still lost."
Once again, don't worry. If you're still confused, say so and I can go over this better again next time. Even if you're someone like Lizzie following along for your own enjoyment and you don't understand something, leave me a comment, shoot me an email, what have you.
Coming up next time:
I'll start giving you guys some vocabulary words and useful phrases. orz
We'll also have a little chat about prepositions (though that may become a lesson all to itself because they're complicated.)
and...whatever else I feel like putting in
and...Whatever you guys have questions on.
Since I have an obscene 4 day weekend, the next part'll be soon.
Hopefully, it won't be as useless as this first section...
Bis dann!
Tschüss, meine Schätze <3