Coffee Break German Lesson 09 Study Notes Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 1 of 17
LESSON NOTES ICH SPRECHE EIN BISSCHEN DEUTSCH In this lesson you will learn how to deal with language problems and to say which languages you speak. You will also start to learn about conjugating regular verbs in the present tense. INTRODUCTION Read the following conversation which begins the lesson: Thomas: Willkommen zurück. (Welcome back to Coffee Break German). Ich heiße Mark. Thomas: Ich heiße Thomas. Und wir sind hier um Deutsch zu lernen. willkommen zurück welcome back wir sind hier we are here...um Deutsch zu lernen (in order) to learn German Thomas also introduced an alternative expression to los geht s: Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 2 of 17
auf geht s let s go, let s get started REVIEW The review section of this lesson used three conversations which gave Mark the chance to review what was covered in lesson 8. Wo ist der Bahnhof? Thomas: Hmm, der Bahnhof... Gehen Sie über die Kreuzung, dann die zweite Straße links, und geradeaus über die Brücke. Dort finden Sie den Bahnhof. Noch einmal, bitte. Thomas: Gerne. Gehen Sie über die Kreuzung, dann die zweite Straße links, und geradeaus über die Brücke. Dort finden Sie den Bahnhof. gehen Sie über die Kreuzung go over the crossroads gehen to go dann... then dann die zweite Straße links then the second street on the left geradeaus über die Brücke straight on over the bridge Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 3 of 17
dort finden Sie den Bahnhof there you (will) find the station Note the use of the accusative form of the definite article in den Bahnhof. This is because the station is the object of the sentence. richtig right, correct Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. Wo ist das Kino? Thomas: Das Kino? Also, gehen Sie geradeaus und nehmen Sie die dritte Straße rechts. Dann gehen Sie über den Platz und das Kino ist auf der linken Seite. Langsamer, bitte... Thomas: Gehen Sie geradeaus und nehmen Sie die dritte Straße rechts. Dann gehen Sie über den Platz und das Kino ist auf der linken Seite. entschuldigen Sie, bitte excuse me, please also... well, so nehmen Sie die dritte Straße rechts take the third street on the right nehmen to take Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 4 of 17
gehen Sie über den Platz go over the square Note again the use of den for the accusative case of the definite article. This is due to the preposition über and is only visible with masculine words: the accusative form of the feminine and neuter articles remain the same, as in über die Kreuzung, etc. das Kino ist auf der linken Seite the cinema is on the left (hand side) auf der rechten Seite on the right (hand side) langsamer, bitte more slowly, please Thomas: Ich habe mich verlaufen. Wo ist die Schule? Nehmen Sie die erste Straße links. Dann geradeaus über die Kreuzung, und dann nehmen Sie die zweite Straße rechts. ich habe mich verlaufen I m lost (literally I ve gotten myself lost ) TALKING ABOUT LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE PROBLEMS We have already come across some language phrases such as: Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 5 of 17
noch einmal, bitte once more, please langsamer, bitte more slowly, please It s time to learn some more phrases which will allow you to talk about the languages you speak and how well you speak them. ich spreche Deutsch I speak German sprechen Sie Deutsch? do you speak German? (formal) sprichst du Deutsch? do you speak German? (informal) sprechen Sie Englisch? do you speak English (formal) sprichst du Englisch? do you speak English (informal) To answer this question positively, use: ja, ich spreche Deutsch yes, I speak German We have also come across the word for a little : ein bisschen a little Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 6 of 17
ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch I speak a little German To say I don t speak German, you must use the word kein meaning no or not any : ich spreche kein Deutsch I speak no German, I don t speak any German Until now we have used the word nicht to make a sentence negative, e.g. ich bin nicht von hier, I am not from here ; es ist nicht weit, it is not far. However nicht is used when you negate a verb - in the above examples ich bin and es ist are negated with nicht. When you say you don t speak any German it may help to imagine you are negating the noun Deutsch, so you use kein: ich spreche kein Deutsch, meaning I speak no German or I don t speak any German. Thomas offered another example which may make this clearer: ich habe zwei Brüder, aber ich habe keine Schwester I have two brothers, but I don t have a sister / I have no sister Note also that kein changes to keine when the gender of the noun changes. We will cover this in greater detail later in the course. Here is a list of some common languages: Französisch French Spanisch Spanish Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 7 of 17
Italienisch Italian Chinesisch Chinese Japanisch Japanese Mark asked Thomas a number of questions about the languages he speaks. Here is a transcript of this conversation: Sprichst du Englisch? Thomas: Ja, ich spreche Englisch. Gut. Sprichst du Spanisch? Thomas: Nein, ich spreche kein Spanisch, aber ein bisschen Französisch. Ah. Also, du sprichst ein bisschen Französisch. Thomas: Ja, richtig. Aber kein Spanisch? Thomas: Kein Spanisch. Sprichst du Italienisch? Thomas: Nein, leider nicht. Sprichst du Japanisch? Thomas: Nein, gar nicht. Und sprichst du Chinesisch? Thomas: Auch nicht. leider nicht unfortunately not Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 8 of 17
gar nicht not at all auch nicht neither, also not Thomas then asked Mark a similar series of questions: Thomas: Mark, sprichst du Spanisch? Ja, ich spreche Spanisch. Thomas: Französisch auch? Ja, ich spreche auch Französisch. Thomas: Ah, sehr gut. Sprichst du Japanisch oder Chinesisch? Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Chinesisch, aber nur ein bisschen. Nur wenige Worte. ich spreche nur ein bisschen... I only speak a little... nur wenige Worte only a few words So far we have come across ich spreche, du sprichst and Sie sprechen, so we can see that the verbs change depending on who is doing the particular action. It s time for our Grammar Guru to explain more about this process. GRAMMAR GURU You ll have noticed that the verb forms change depending on who your talking to or about. We had ich spreche Deutsch but Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 9 of 17
sprechen Sie Englisch? These two verbs have different endings. We do the same in English actually: we say I speak but he/she speaks. The process of changing the endings for different people is called conjugation and today I m going to teach you some verb endings so that you can start conjugating your own verbs. Sprechen is actually not the easiest verb to start with, so to make it a bit simpler, we ll use another verb for now and we ll come back to sprechen in a future lesson. Let s take a verb you already know: kommen, meaning to come. As we heard back in lesson 6, kommen is what we call the infinitive form of the verb, the form you d find in the dictionary. Now the first step in forming a verb is to take the -en ending off the infinitive, leaving us with what we call the stem of the verb, in this case komm-. You may like to think of it like the stem of a plant, or the trunk of a tree on which leaves or branches grow, a different leaf or branch for different people. So we re going to add our endings to that stem, or the branches to our tree. The ending for the ich form, which is called the first person singular is -e. So when we add that on to the stem we have ich komme - I come. We ve seen this already in the phrase ich komme aus Deutschland. You ve also used the second person singular, the you form. Indeed, you ll remember that there are two different forms of you : the informal du, and the ending for this is -st. Add this to the stem and we get du kommst, you come (informal). Then the formal version Sie has the ending -en which gives us Sie kommen, you come (formal). This form looks and sounds exactly the same as the infinitive, just as you find it in the dictionary. The other forms we ve come across briefly are the forms of the third person singular: er, sie and es, meaning he, she and it. The ending for this person is -t, giving er kommt, he comes, sie kommt, she comes and es kommt, it comes. Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 10 of 17
So, let s some up those singular forms: SINGULAR PLURAL I ich komme YOU (INFORMAL) du kommst YOU (FORMAL) Sie kommen HE/SHE/IT er/sie/es kommt So now you know all the singular person verb endings in the present tense and you ll be able to apply these rules to almost every German verb. Now there are some exceptions, like sprechen, but we ll come back to these in another lesson, along with the plural forms. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? In addition to the verb sprechen, another then another very useful verb is verstehen: verstehen to understand ich verstehe I understand Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 11 of 17
ich verstehe nicht I don t understand Applying what we learned about the word kein earlier, we can see that it is also possible to say, I don t understand any German : ich verstehe kein Deutsch I don t understand any German ich verstehe ein bisschen Deutsch, aber ich spreche kein Deutsch I understand a little German, but I don t speak any (German) CULTURAL CORRESPONDENT In this lesson s Cultural Correspondent feature, Julia tells us about language-learning in Germany, and the interesting language situation in Switzerland. Hallo Mark, servus, Thomas, und guten Tag an alle unsere Coffee Break German Zuhörer. Ich bin s wieder, Julia, eure Kulturreporterin. Today you ve been learning to talk about which languages you can speak, so I thought it would be interesting to tell you a bit about language learning here in Germany. For the most part English is the first foreign language for German schoolchildren: next to German and Maths, English is one of the main subjects in school and it s compulsory, so this means that every student has had at least 8-10 years of English by the time they leave school. In addition to this first foreign language, English, children have to study a second language for at least four years, and some may Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 12 of 17
choose a third one, which is what I did back in my school time. Popular second foreign languages in German schools are French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, bu this may differ from region to region, also depending on which of the nine neighbouring countries is close. So, for example, there are schools teaching Danish or Polish as well. Twenty-three years ago, back in the GDR or East Germany, every child had to learn Russian. It goes without saying that English is quite a popular subject for German teenagers because it s a language that surrounds them in many ways. Of course, there s also a certain pressure, as it s very hard to get a job in Germany if you can t speak English. There are also more motivating factors: many of the teenagers favourite singers sing in English and they play computer games and watch TV series and films in English, so they really are surrounded by the language every day. In cinemas here in Germany, most of the films are dubbed, but more and more young people tend to prefer watching the original versions with subtitles in order to improve their language skills. Germans are very open towards foreign languages and eager to learn them, so don t be offended when they start speaking English to you right away, just because they are so happy actually to meet a native speaker and practise their English. They will be just as impressed by your efforts to learn their language. Of course, for Germans, language learning doesn t finish when they leave school. Many people decide to pick up a new language in order to communicate in other countries on holiday or to increase their chances of getting an interesting job, so language schools for adults are booming in every bigger city. While we are talking about languages, of course it s important to mention that in Switzerland there are actually four official languages in different parts of the country. In addition to the German-speaking area, there is a large French-speaking part of the country which includes the cities of Lausanne and Geneva. Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 13 of 17
There is an Italian-speaking area called the Ticino, and there s also a part of the country where Romansch is spoken. We could say so much more about languages, but I ll finish my report for now. Danke schön und bis zum nächsten Mal! eure Kulturreporterin your cultural reporter danke fürs zuhören thanks for listening DAS REICHT FÜR HEUTE Ready for more? Turn the page to continue with the bonus materials for this lesson. Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 14 of 17
CORE VOCABULARY noch einmal, bitte once more, please langsamer, bitte more slowly, please ich spreche Deutsch I speak German sprechen Sie Deutsch? do you speak German? (formal) sprichst du Deutsch? do you speak German? (informal) sprechen Sie Englisch? do you speak English (formal) sprichst du Englisch? do you speak English (informal) ja, ich spreche Deutsch yes, I speak German ein bisschen a little ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch I speak a little German Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 15 of 17
ich spreche kein Deutsch I speak no German, I don t speak any German Französisch French Spanisch Spanish Italienisch Italian Chinesisch Chinese Japanisch Japanese leider nicht unfortunately not gar nicht not at all auch nicht neither, also not ich spreche nur ein bisschen... I only speak a little... nur wenige Worte only a few words Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 16 of 17
BONUS VOCABULARY wie, bitte? pardon? können Sie bitte langsamer sprechen? can you please speak more slowly? können Sie das aufschreiben? can you write that down? können Sie das buchstabieren? can you spell that? ich möchte gern mehr Deutsch lernen I d like to learn more German Coffee Break German: Lesson 09 - Notes page 17 of 17