Learn using modal verbs
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 18. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back. Thanks for joining us for another Beginner lesson. |
| Judith: I hope that you’re enjoying the lesson so far. Please leave a comment and join the discussions. |
| Chuck: Do you recall that last lesson? I believe Michaela discovered a young dog making a bit of a mess in her living room. So it seems her new neighbor had a dog sent to him by mail. |
| Judith: What do you think of that? How would you react in such as situation? I’m asking now because right now, it’s up to Michaela to react. Her neighbor is ringing at the door and probably wants to pick up his package. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Neighbor: Hallo, ich bin der neue Nachbar! Sie haben ein Paket für mich? |
| Michaela: Wie können Sie einen Hund als Paket bestellen! |
| Neighbor: Nun… |
| Michaela: Der arme Hund! |
| Neighbor: Ich will einen Hund haben, und ich habe keine Zeit, ihn irgendwo abzuholen. |
| Michaela: Sie können den Hund nicht abholen? Wie werden Sie dann Zeit für den Hund haben? |
| Neighbor: Geben Sie mir jetzt meinen Hund! |
| Michaela: Ich kann Ihnen den Hund nicht geben… |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| Neighbor: Hallo, ich bin der neue Nachbar! Sie haben ein Paket für mich? |
| Michaela: Wie können Sie einen Hund als Paket bestellen! |
| Neighbor: Nun… |
| Michaela: Der arme Hund! |
| Neighbor: Ich will einen Hund haben, und ich habe keine Zeit, ihn irgendwo abzuholen. |
| Michaela: Sie können den Hund nicht abholen? Wie werden Sie dann Zeit für den Hund haben? |
| Neighbor: Geben Sie mir jetzt meinen Hund! |
| Michaela: Ich kann Ihnen den Hund nicht geben… |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Hallo, ich bin der neue Nachbar! |
| Chuck: Hello, I am the new neighbour! |
| Judith: Sie haben ein Paket für mich? |
| Chuck: You have a package for me? |
| Michaela: Wie können Sie einen Hund als Paket bestellen! |
| Chuck: How can you order a dog as a package! |
| Judith: Nun… |
| Chuck: Well… |
| Judith: Der arme Hund! |
| Chuck: The poor dog! |
| Judith: Ich will einen Hund haben, und ich habe keine Zeit, ihn irgendwo abzuholen. |
| Chuck: I want to have a dog but I don’t have time to pick him up anywhere. |
| Judith: Sie können den Hund nicht abholen? |
| Chuck: You can’t pick up the dog? |
| Judith: Wie werden Sie dann Zeit für den Hund haben? |
| Chuck: How will you have time for the dog then? |
| Judith: Geben Sie mir jetzt meinen Hund! |
| Chuck: Give me my dog now! |
| Michaela: Ich kann Ihnen den Hund nicht geben… |
| Chuck: I can’t give you the dog… |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: So Chuck, what do you think of the situation? |
| Chuck: I think it’s pretty interesting. Nice way to meet the new neighbor, ey! What do you think of the situation? |
| Judith: Well, I think it’s pretty crazy. |
| Chuck: Yah. Those crazy Germans and their dogs. |
| Judith: Most Germans love their dogs. |
| Chuck: You always have someone interesting around. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: Let’s have a look at the vocabulary. The first word is Können [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Can, to be able to, or to be allowed to”. |
| Judith: Yeah, this can mean either. Können [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “To be able to or to be allowed to. |
| Judith: Next, Als [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “As”. |
| Judith: Als [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “As”. |
| Judith: Next, Bestellen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To order”. |
| Judith: Bestellen [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “To order”. |
| Judith: Nextx, Nun [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Now”. |
| Judith: Nun [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Now”. |
| Judith: And this dialogue was used in the sense of, well, as an interjection. Next, Arm [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Poor”, as in not having much money. |
| Judith: Or also poor as in pitiful, like “poor dog”. It’s not a dog that doesn’t have much money. |
| Chuck: Or you say “Arme du.”. |
| Judith: No, “Du arme.” |
| Chuck: “Du arme.”. Yeah, that’s right. I flip the word order stuff again. |
| Judith: Next, Wollen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To want”. |
| Judith: Wollen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To want”. |
| Judith: Note that the kids are told “Ich möchte” instead of “Ich will.” |
| Chuck: And notice also that you would use this in the restaurant. I mean, you would use this “möchte” in a restaurant. You wouldn’t say “Ich will.”. Maybe you ‘d say “Ich will einen Dönner.” |
| Judith: No. |
| Chuck: No, not even that. |
| Judith: It’s just polite to use “möchte”, but we’ll get to that later because it’s more complex grammar. |
| Chuck: Ooh. |
| Judith: If you want to learn it already, you can use the newbie series. You know, the newbie series focuses on giving you such really useful expressions without worrying about how difficult the grammar is, just keeping over the grammar part. |
| Chuck: I like that idea. Skip the grammar. |
| Judith: Not here. This is Beginner series. Here, we want to give you a solid foundation. |
| Chuck: All right. So get more solid for this with another word. |
| Judith: Yeah. Next word is Irgendwo [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Somewhere.” |
| Judith: Irgendwo [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “Somewhere”. |
| Judith: The irgend part of it corresponds to the sum part of somewhere. For example also, “irgendjemand”. |
| Chuck: Or “irgendwann”. |
| Judith: Yeah. You should translate though. “irgendjemand” is somebody and “irgendwann” is some time. |
| Chuck: But notice it doesn’t work with all the words like that, if you can’t say “irgendwarum”. |
| Judith: Well, in English there’s no word for that either, somewhy. |
| Chuck: Yeah, for some reason. But just note that this doesn’t work all the way across the board though it just sound kind of silly, but you’ll probably be understood. |
| Judith: In Esperento, it works perfectly. |
| Chuck: The beginner ad for Esperento. I guess last week, I got my ad for iPhone. |
| Judith: Yeah. Okay. The last word for today is Abholen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To pick up”. |
| Judith: Abholen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To pick up”. You’ll usually see this for the airport, for example. |
| Judith: Yeah. And it’s a spilling verb. For example, “Ich hole ab.”. |
| Chuck: “I pick up”. |
| Judith: Yeah. So it’s a very, very standard regular splitting verb and that it is phrasal verb in English. |
| Chuck: So how would you say, “I picked you up from the airport”. |
| Judith: “Ich hole dich von Flügplatz ab.” |
| Chuck: And notice the “ab” goes all the way to the end. |
| Judith: Or possibly “Ich hole dich von Flughafen ab.”. Flugplatz, that’s something smaller. |
| Chuck: It depends on where you’re flying into. Yeah. I still can’t believe that time I went to the airport and the first thing I saw a lady with her dog. |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Judith: Well, we talked about dogs last lesson. Today, we will talk about other animals in Germany. |
| Chuck: Like what? |
| Judith: Well, like cats and other pets. There are 5 million dogs but 7.2 million cats; so the dogs are actually minority. Everybody thinks that dogs are the most common, but actually cats are. Of course, there’s 4.7 million pet birds and 5.8 million small pets like rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and of course, fish. I think if fish is figured by number, we would have more than 5 million even. |
| Chuck: But you have to hear how funny the word guinea pig is German. |
| Judith: It’s Meerschweinchen. |
| Chuck: Yeah. |
| Judith: It’s like I see a little piggy. |
| Chuck: That was the weirdest thing I ever heard the first time, because here when I saw a guinea pig and someone told me what it was, I’m like “what did you say?” |
| Judith: Well, guinea pig is not a good name either because they don’t come from Guinea. |
| Chuck: True. |
| Judith: And they’re not pigs either. Statistically, every other household has a pet. It’s really amazing. But in terms of wild animals, they’re not that many in Germany, not nearly as many as in the states. I guess it’s because of the longer civilization. Europe has been civilized for a longer time and there are a lot more animals that have become extinct or that are only found in national parks anymore. Also, Germany is just very urban. With 80 million people in a country, that’s more like one of the American states. It’s bad, of course, that there is less variety but there’s also a good side to it, like there’s a very slim chance of encountering dangerous animals. |
| Chuck: I guess, unless you go the zoo, right? |
| Judith: Yeah. Well, they are not dangerous, so I’m not counting that. But I mean, for example, poisonous snakes. I hear that in the States, in some regions, you have to be really careful about what snakes you cross. Here, if you see a snake, if ever you see a snake…. I think I’ve seen two in my life… then, it’s very probably not a poisonous one. There are only two kinds of poisonous snakes here. Both are rare. Both are not usually aggressive and the bites are not even lethal. |
| Chuck: I don’t know if I’ve seen that many snakes either but then again, I think it depends on much you’re into hiking and such. |
| Judith: Yeah. Or what part of the States. I think up there in the north, there’s not that many. |
| Chuck: Yeah. That’s true as well. |
| Judith: And as for other dangerous wildlife, well, if there is, for example, an aggressive bear somewhere, then it will be on national news for several weeks all over Germany. |
| Chuck: Yeah. And Judith is very disappointed that many of the cute little animals that she sees in North America aren’t very common at all here. |
| Judith: Yeah, like squirrels and chipmunks and raccoons, especially. I love raccoons. I don’t think there’s any raccoons in wildlife here except in some parts of the Thuringian woods or something. |
| Chuck: So if you like… |
| Judith: Probably left by accident. Of course, quite a few squirrels but usually the red kind, which is cuter, anyway. |
| Chuck: So if you like GermanPod101.com, send Judith a squirrel. |
| Judith: No. But you know, I hear that in America, squirrels are a plague, as in gardeners really don’t like them, here there they are not enough to even make the gardeners annoyed. |
| Chuck: So if you like GermanPod101.com, send Judith a squirrel. |
| Judith: Yey. How about raccoon? I don’t think you can send that. |
| Chuck: Yeah. It would be more fun if the neighbor pick up your squirrel though. |
| Judith: Can you imagine that? A friend of mine actually had a squirrel living under her dresser. |
| Chuck: Yeah. |
| Judith: It came in through the window once. |
| Chuck: Here in Germany? |
| Judith: No, no. In Canada. |
| Chuck: Okay. Yeah. They have all kinds of crazy stuff in Canada when it comes to the wildlife. |
| Judith: It’s so cute. |
| Chuck: It’s annoying. |
| Judith: How can you think they’re annoying? I somehow think that you’re not really appreciating the kind of variety you have. I mean, here we have a lot of variety in the mud flats in the very north. Actually, this kind of terrain, the mud flat terrain, is very good for a variety of species. The only place on earth that’s warm that has more variety would be the rainforest, but somehow it’s not the kind of animals that I’m really looking forward to seeing, like all kinds of insects and worms, and I don’t know what, living in those mud flats. |
| Chuck: I must admit that having been in Germany for a while, I’m sometimes quite surprised that the insects I end up seeing like flying around the apartment or something. |
| Judith: Oh, don’t remind me. |
| Chuck: Judith really loves them. |
| Judith: I’m glad that we got an apartment fourth floor now. |
| Chuck: Because there’s one really cool insect that’s like six inches long… no, not six inches, maybe four inches long, and just flies in these really weird patterns. |
| Judith: Don’t, please. |
| Chuck: It’s really quite. |
| Judith: This is a German lesson. |
| Chuck: It’s culture. |
| Judith: If you want to see animals, go to the zoo. Germany has lots of well-tended zoos. And as far as I go, they shouldn’t be anywhere near our apartment. |
| Chuck: If you want to see insects, go the youth hostel. |
| Judith: Usually, they are quite good. So let’s get serious here. Some grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Chuck: Today’s grammar are the modal of verbs, “können” and “wollen”. In this lesson’s dialogue, you’ve encountered their forms and “können” and “wollen” are known as modal verbs and they always have to be used in conjunction with another verb. Let’s go through the conjugation real quick. For “können”, it is “Ich kann”… |
| Chuck: “I can”. |
| Judith: “du kannst” |
| Chuck: “You can”. |
| Judith: “er kannt” |
| Chuck: “He can”. |
| Judith: “wir können” |
| Chuck: “We can”. |
| Judith: “Ihr könnt” |
| Chuck: “You all can”. |
| Judith: And “sie können”. |
| Chuck: “They can”. |
| Judith: For “wollen”, it follows the same pattern. “Ich will”. |
| Chuck: “I want”. |
| Judith: “du willst” |
| Chuck: “You want”. |
| Judith: “er will” |
| Chuck: “He wants”. |
| Judith: wir wollen” |
| Chuck: “We want”. |
| Judith: “ihr wollt” |
| Chuck: “you all want”. |
| Judith: “sie wollen” |
| Chuck: “They want”. |
| Judith: As you can see, they really run parallel, and most of the endings are what we would expect, except that singular and plural have different vowels. For [können, the singular vowel is “a” and the plural is “ö”. And for “wollen”, the singular vowel is “i” and the plural vowel is “o”. Yet, we can’t lump on with the vowel-changing verbs because the vowel-changing verbs that you have encountered only changed for the second and third person singular, the “du” and the “er” forms. And these verbs change the vowel already for the first person singular. Both verbs are quite easy and they’re very useful so I imagine that you’ll learn them quickly. They are both used in the same way with an infinitive verb just like in English. One thing you need to pay attention to is that in German, the infinitive verb is placed at the very end of a sentence while the modal verb is staying in second place. This happens whenever you have more than one verb in this German sentence. |
| Chuck: So what could be an example of that? |
| Judith: Oh, there’s plenty of examples. For example, “Willst du etwas singen?”. |
| Chuck: “Ja, Ich will.” |
| Judith: Hey, that’s not a question to you. Translate. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
| Judith: “Willst du etwas singen?” |
| Chuck: “Do you want to sing something?” |
| Judith: Yeah. And you answered, “Ja, Ich will.” “Yeah, I want”. |
| Chuck: You might occasionally hear me singing in the intermediate lessons. |
| Judith: I hope not. I hope we’ll be seeing less of that and more… “Ich kann nicht gut singen.” |
| Chuck: Yeah, I know you can’t. |
| Judith: No. That was actually a sentence that you could say sometimes, “I can’t sing well.” |
| Chuck: Yeah, I know. |
| Judith: “Chuck, kann nicht gut singen.” |
| Chuck: I can’t say lies on the show. |
| Judith: Okay, that’s some neuter subject. “Herr Woja kann heute früh nach Hause kommen.”. |
| Chuck: “Mr. Woja [ph] can come home early today.” |
| Judith: And you’ll notice that all the other information comes before the actual verb “kommen”. Literally, the sentence says, “Mr. Woja [ph] can today early to home come”. |
| Chuck: German word order is so much fun. |
| Judith: You’ll get used to it. |
| Chuck: Someday, I will. |
| Judith: Okay. I guess that’s it for today’s lesson. Just listen to the dialogue one more time. |
| Chuck: All right. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Neighbor: Hallo, ich bin der neue Nachbar! Sie haben ein Paket für mich? |
| Michaela: Wie können Sie einen Hund als Paket bestellen! |
| Neighbor: Nun… |
| Michaela: Der arme Hund! |
| Neighbor: Ich will einen Hund haben, und ich habe keine Zeit, ihn irgendwo abzuholen. |
| Michaela: Sie können den Hund nicht abholen? Wie werden Sie dann Zeit für den Hund haben? |
| Neighbor: Geben Sie mir jetzt meinen Hund! |
| Michaela: Ich kann Ihnen den Hund nicht geben… |
Outro |
| Chuck: That’s so crazy, sending a dog by mail. |
| Judith: Yeah. I think we talked about it in the last lesson already. It’s just unimaginable. I don’t mean that this would be common in Germany. That’s not why the dialogue works like that. Now, I think every German would be just as appalled. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I don’t think you’d see a dog-sending web startup any time soon. |
| Judith: Anyway… |
| Chuck: So that’s what dogs do to us. |
| Judith: Anyway, I hope that you’re tuning in again next week. |
| Chuck: All right. See you next week. |
| Judith: Bis nächste Woche. |
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