In English, the progressive tenses are used quite a lot. We say sentences such as: “I am eating.” Or “I am cooking.” However, in German such a tense does not exist. In German, we express what people are doing by using the present tense.

It’s pretty simple. The present tense is used to express many things in German. It can also be used to express something that you are going to do in the future. In English, we would say something like: “I am going to eat.” Or: “ I am going to cook.” In German, you would use the present tense for this situation also.

“Ich esse” (I will eat/I am eating)

“Ich koche” (I will cook/ I am cooking)

So how can we tell what someone means? The answer to that is context. However, there are other techniques you can use to indicate whether you are talking about what we’re doing currently or what we are going to do in the future. This can be done by using adverbs of time. You can use the word “tomorrow”, or the word “later.” This will signify that you are going to do something later. If you want to signify that you’re doing something now, you can use the adverb „gerade“ which means “just” or “currently” in the meaning of: “I am eating currently.”

We can use these if we think it won’t be clear, however you don’t have to. Most of time it’s obvious. If you’re friend tells you. “I fly to Berlin.” They probably don’t mean right now because they’re clearly standing right in front of you. If you’re on the phone, and they tell you in the beginning of he conversation that they’re at home, and then they say, “I fly to Berlin.” You can assume they are not talking about right now, but rather are talking about the future. It’s really all about the context. The present tense is probably the first tense you have learned, if you have learned this already, great! If you haven’t, you’re welcome! 🙂

One of my favorite ways of learning German, is by watching youtube videos. There are two different ways I go about youtube with learning German. The first way is watching videos that are meant for German learners. The second way is watching videos in German that are not meant for German learners and are rather made for entertainment.

    Which method is better? They are both essential. I find them both with the same amount of importance. However, I tend to sometimes get bored with the German learning videos on youtube. I simply just turn to the entertainment videos. There are videos that are in German that have nothing to do with German learning at all. It is important that you find a channel that has a substantial amount of content that you enjoy.

    Since I enjoy learning about animals and wildlife. I can search up stuff about wildlife in the search bar of youtube (in German of course). Then, I can watch them.

    You don’t need to understand every word or even single sentence that the video is saying. As long as you are listening and giving the effort of understanding. If you look up every word you don’t understand, you are going to frustrate yourself. It destroys the purpose of watching for entertainment.

       However, I do recommend looking up the words that were frequent in the video that you didn’t understand. That way, you can learn words that are important, when you need to talk about a certain topic that you’re interested in. After looking up the most frequent words, then watch the video again. You will notice that you can understand the video a lot more than the first time around. Repetition would also help maintain the new words in your memory. Above all, you will then have the ability to have conversations that you are interested in.

I made the mistake of not learning the definite articles to nouns when I initially started to learn German. In English there is only one definite article, “the”. In German, there are three of them “der die and das”. “der” being masculine, “die” being feminine, and “das” being neutral. All nouns in German have a definite articles associated with the noun. Since there is only one in English, we tend to think it’s not important in German. This mindset will end up biting you later on. We must learn nouns with the articles!

To make matters more confusing, some nouns in German can have more than one definite article, which can, but not always, give a different meaning depending on the article used. However, most nouns only have one definite article, so don’t worry too much about this. Keep it in mind.

Ex/Words of the day:

Der Band – volume

Die Band – a music band

Das Band – 1. ribbon 2. measuring tape 3. belt

Definite articles are also important to learn because of the 4 cases in German: Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive. English used to have cases as well. It eventually lost its case system. There are still a few markers we can see from the case system in modern English with personal pronouns. For example, the word “me”. Why don’t we simply say “I”? When someone asks, “Who wants to go to the store with me?” we respond with “me” and not “I”. Why did the question end with “with me” and not “with I” This sort of thing with “me” and “I” happens in German with not only pronouns, but it also with all nouns. If you have not yet learn the case system in German, I highly recommend learning one case at a time and master the 1st case (nominative) before moving onto the next one (accusative).

Reminder: All nouns in German are capitalized (makes things much easier, I know!)

The definite articles that dictionaries give, are all in the nominative case. The nominative case acts as a home base. The subject of a sentence in German is always in the nominative case. However, direct and indirect objects take different cases. Direct objects are in the accusative case in German. “Der Hund” (The dog, wuld turn into “Den Hund” in the accusative case.

Ex: Ich mag den Hund.

Here, the subject is”Ich”, and the direct object is “den Hund”. Since the dog is a direct object, we use the accusative case. “Ich” is in the nominative case (home base case) because it is the subject of the sentence. “mag” is a verb (to like).  This is only an example of many cases endings, just so you can get a grasp of what the case system is, if you have not yet learned them.

 

 

I know what you’re thinking. “What? There’s a wrong way to learn a language?!” I guess I should clarify myself.

One of the reasons a lot of people give up learning a language is because they are working too hard. What does this mean exactly? It can be many things. One of the biggest ones I’ve heard of is: trying to learn 100 words a day every other week. Basically, it’s learning too much at an inconsistent rate. You’re setting yourself up for frustration, if you do this! You’ll find yourself not actually learning any words at all. You might remember them for a few days, but then you won’t be able to recall them a week later. This can bring serious frustration, and it may cause you to give up!

Consistency is key, when learning a language. learning 10 words per day for 10 minutes is much more efficient! Of course, this is just my preference. There really isn’t an exact number of words that we should learn everyday. My rule of thumb: Don’t go over 20 words a day and don’t spend any more than half of an hour learning them. Afterwards, build sentences with them and then try to bring them up in your conversations. Remember: if you don’t use it, you lose it! This is more efficient, than cramming 100 words per day. Don’t bite more than you can chew.

Use the words you learn in your conversations in target language! In my experience, the words I remember the most are the the ones I have memories with. Especially if the conversation was a funny one. Your mind will start to make connections with the words you’ve learned to the memories you’ve lived in.

Word of the day: die Abkürzung (noun, feminine) – 1. shortcut 2. abbreviation

Example: Ich nehme die Abkürzung. I am taking the shortcut.

Example 2: es gibt viele Abküzungen in dem Text. There are a lot of abbreviations in the text.

schönen Tag noch!

 

 

Learning a verb in German might not be as easy as you think. There are pitfalls one might fall into. This article will help you avoid some of them. The only things you need for this tutorial are a quality dictionary, such as the one by Duden or Pons, and something to take notes on.

The first thing the we want to pay attention to is the concept. Be aware that some verbs in German can have one really good translation to English, and some German verbs can also have more than one translation to English. This is where your dictionary comes in. Keep this in mind.

Just like in English, many German verbs come with specific prepositions in order to express a certain meaning. Here is the pitfall one might fall into: if you don’t learn a verb correctly, you will likely not use the right prepositions, when they are needed. This can make your everyday speech sound unnatural. If an English learner were to say, “I am flying on the air,” you would know they meant “in the air.” This sort of thing can also happen, when we speak in German.

The word “für” in German can be translated in many cases as the word “for” in English. Heck, they even look and sound similar. The verb “to wait” in English takes the preposition “for”. We always wait for something. Let’s take a look at how one can form a sentence using the verb “to wait” in English.

Ex: I always wait for my princess.

When learning a German verb, many people look up the word and only learn the verb translation and think those are the only steps! Allow me to share better steps with you:

Step 1: Pull out that dictionary and look for the verb you want to translate from German to English.

Step 2: Examine it for a minute and grasp its translation. Write it down in your notes.

Step 3: If there are no prepositions, continue to step 4. If there are prepositions, jot the preposition(s) and the verb in your notes and then continue to step 4..

Step 4: Build a sentence using the verb and the preposition (if there is one) and write them into your notes.

Step 5: Study your notes, and apply what you’ve learned to your own German.

Use these steps for the verb “warten” really quick. Let’s see how one builds a sentence using the verb “warten” in German.

Ex: ich warte immer auf meine Prinzessin.

audio supplement:  https://youtu.be/O8XxvIuM6wg

“warten” is the German translation for ”to wait”. However, although “für” can usually be translated with “for”. “Für” is not the right preposition for the verb “warten”. The correct preposition is actually “auf”. Someone who skips step 3 will probably come up with something like this:

Wrong: Ich warte immer für meine Prinzessin

This is a common mistake made by many native English speakers when speaking German. A native German speaker will most likely know what you are saying, but they will know it is wrong. A quality dictionary will give you the right prepositions for the verbs they belong to. This is just as important as learning the correct article (der, die and das) that belongs to a noun. Sometimes the preposition that makes sense to you will be the correct way to express something in German. In some cases you will be wrong. Unfortunately, you will have to memorize the correct prepositions. There is really no way around it other than to guess, but that won’t get us very far.

“Warten” was only one example. There is an unimaginable amount of more verbs that also have prepositions with them. Keep in mind that some might have more than one. Changing the preposition can change a sentence’s meaning completely. Be sure to keep practicing your German and watch those prepositions!

So, you want to learn a foreign language, huh? I’ve been there. You start learning, everything is cool, you’re making great progress, life seems great, everything feels possible and suddenly, progress comes to a screeching halt. Sound familiar? If you’re new to learning a foreign language, I hope you also find this helpful. Through my experiences with learning languages and how they work, I have learned many different techniques and useful methods of learning that I will gladly share on the internet (since my real-life friends have had enough of it).

My first language is Spanish, learned English by living in the US and I have been learning German for about three years of my life. I know very basic Portuguese and French. In this blog, I will be referring a lot to German, Spanish and English. However, the tips I give, could help with other foreign languages as well.

I hear too many excuses such as, “you know, I’ve been learning French for years and I finally realized that learning languages just isn’t for me.” or, “I just don’t have time for it. It takes too much dedication”. Only to find out they usually aren’t staying consistent and or working “too hard” (this will be explained on my next post). Learning a language has gotten so much easier in recent years. The internet is our savior. I don’t know how people used to do it before the internet (Generation Z here), but now, we have the internet. This means, we have access to many resources we can use for language learning. Use this to your advantage! My favorite tool is YouTube. You like cooking? Great! Go look up “how to cook healthy food” in the language you are learning and boom! You will find many videos that will: 1. Help you learn new words/phrases 2. Teach you how to cook a healthy meal. You’d be killing two birds with one stone. You like makeup? Go and look it up on YouTube. Explore the internet and see what you can find.