Learn how to use prepositions
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Intermediate Series Lesson 16. |
| Judith: Willkommen. |
| Chuck: Welcome. |
| Judith: I'm very glad you managed to tune in today because today we are discussing a song that you requested. |
| Chuck: Wait, a song requested… You mean Tokyo Hotel? |
| Judith: That’s right. |
| Chuck: I knew I should’ve stayed in bed. |
| Judith: Ah, come on. It’s not going to be that bad. For one thing, we’re only looking at the lyrics, not listening to it. |
| Chuck: What kind of meaning is schrei, schrei? |
| Judith: Please, that’s not the song. |
| Chuck: It’s the only one I know. Ok. |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Judith: Today’s song is the one called Durch den Monsun. |
| Chuck: Ah ok. Well that’s a relief, at least we won’t be screaming. |
| Judith: Yeah. If you want to listen to this song, we’re going to post a link on the GermanPod101 website so that you can find out for yourself what they are like. I think this song’s actually not that bad. |
| Chuck: Alright. Listen at your own risk. We take no responsibility for any brain damage done while listening or ok… Alright, let’s just go to the song. |
| Judith: Das Fenster öffnet sich nicht mehr. |
| Chuck: “The window doesn’t open itself anymore.” |
| Judith: It’s not “open itself”. “It doesn’t open anymore.” Sich öffnen is like “doesn’t let itself be opened”. |
| Chuck: Oh, that sounds very philosophical. |
| Judith: Whenever you have a reflexive like this that doesn’t make much sense then it’s a semi passive meaning. Hier drin ists voll von dir und mir. |
| Chuck: “Here inside is full of you and more.” |
| Judith: Und vor mir geht die letzte Kerze aus. |
| Chuck: “And in front of me, the last cannon goes out.” |
| Judith: Wow, no problem so far. |
| Chuck: Yes, this is Tokyo Hotel after all, no? |
| Judith: You can’t say that they really used simple stuff. |
| Chuck: Alright, you’ll probably going to catch me later some time. |
| Judith: Ich warte schon ne Ewigkeit. |
| Chuck: “I'm already waiting a century”, no, “an eternity”, right? |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Ah, they caught me. |
| Judith: Ewigkeit, “eternity”, ewig, “eternal”. Endlich ist es jetzt soweit. |
| Chuck: “Finally it’s already so long ago”? |
| Judith: No, “now it’s time finally”. Es ist soweit, “it’s time”. |
| Chuck: It’s one of those things where I understand it but I can’t really translate it. |
| Judith: Yeah, it’s a phrasing. Es ist soweit. Und draußen ziehen die schwarzen Wolken auf. |
| Chuck: “And outside the black clouds are doing something on.” |
| Judith: Ziehen is “to drag”, but aufziehen is “to come into the picture”, “to appear”. |
| Chuck: Here comes the black clouds. It should be our Halloween episode. I think we’re a little late witch hat. |
| Judith: Ok, the chorus… |
| Chuck: Next year, next year Halloween. |
| Judith: The chorus. Ich muss durch den Monsun. |
| Chuck: “I have to go through the monsoon.” |
| Judith: Hinter die Welt. |
| Chuck: “Behind the world.” |
| Judith: Ans Ende der Zeit. |
| Chuck: “At the end of time.” |
| Judith: No, “to the end of time”. We’re going to discuss this in the grammar section. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: Bis kein Regen mehr fällt. |
| Chuck: “Until no more rain falls.” |
| Judith: Gegen den Sturm. |
| Chuck: “Against the storm.” |
| Judith: Am Abgrund entlang. |
| Chuck: “To the” something “ground along”. |
| Judith: Abgrund is “the abyss” or chasm. So “along the abyss”. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: In German, the entlang is always put after the word that you mean. It’s a post-position if you want. |
| Chuck: I think it’s the only one in German, right? |
| Judith: Yes, the only one that I can think of anyway. |
| Chuck: In Japanese all of them are like that, right? |
| Judith: I don't know. |
| Chuck: Well, I'm sure our Japanese pod listeners will write and tell us. |
| Judith: JapanesePod101. |
| Chuck: Of course. What other one is there? |
| Judith: Und wenn ich nicht mehr kann. |
| Chuck: “And when I can’t take it any longer”. |
| Judith: Yeah, or “When I can’t go on anymore”. Denke ich daran. |
| Chuck: “I think on it.” |
| Judith: Irgendwann laufen wir zusammen. |
| Chuck: “Some time we walk together.” |
| Judith: Or “run” or “jog”. Laufen is somewhere… not quite as fast as rennen but still fast. Weil uns einfach nichts mehr halten kann. |
| Chuck: “Because we just couldn’t it”? |
| Judith: No, “because nothing can hold us anymore”. Durch den Monsun. |
| Chuck: “Through the monsoon.” |
| Judith: So let’s recap this part because it was a long run-on sentence. Wenn ich nicht mehr kann, denke ich daran, irgendwann laufen wir zusammen, weil uns einfach nichts mehr halten kann, durch den Monsun. |
| Chuck: Yeah, what she said. |
| Judith: “When I can’t go on anymore I think about the time when we will run together because nothing can hold us anymore; we will run through the monsoon together.” He puts it at the end it’s really weird even in German. It makes it hard to understand. |
| Chuck: Yeah, I can get every individual line but putting it all together it’s just… ok. |
| Judith: Ein halber Mond versinkt vor mir. |
| Chuck: “A half-moon sinks in front of me”? |
| Judith: Yeah, “sinks down”, “goes down”. |
| Chuck: “Sets”. |
| Judith: Yes. War der eben noch bei dir? |
| Chuck: “Was it even still…” |
| Judith: No. |
| Chuck: No? |
| Judith: Eben, gerade eben, “just now”. |
| Chuck: Ah, “was it just now still with you”? |
| Judith: Und hält er wirklich, was er mir verspricht. |
| Chuck: “And was it true, was it really true what he promised me”? |
| Judith: No, halten. Halten, “to keep”. “Does he keep what he promises me?” |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: I'm not sure what he’s talking about, the moon promising something, but that’s Tokyo Hotel for you. Ich weiß, dass ich dich finden kann. |
| Chuck: “I know that I can find you.” |
| Judith: Hör deinen Namen im Orkan. |
| Chuck: “I hear your name in the hurricane.” |
| Judith: Ich glaub noch mehr dran glauben kann ich nicht. |
| Chuck: “I believe that I can’t believe anymore.” |
| Judith: “I can’t believe more, I can’t believe in it more strongly.” |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: And the chorus. And a set of “hey, hey, hey”. And next stanza - Ich kämpf mich durch die Mächte. |
| Chuck: “I battle through the powers.” |
| Judith: Wow, your German vocabulary is perfect for a Tokyo Hotel song. |
| Chuck: Yay! |
| Judith: Hinter dieser Tür. |
| Chuck: Thanks for the compliment. “Behind this door”. |
| Judith: So, “the powers behind this door”. Werde sie besiegen und dann. |
| Chuck: “They would be victorious over you”? |
| Judith: No, werde, ich werde. |
| Chuck: “I will victor”? |
| Judith: Vanquish. Besiegen, “to vanquish”. |
| Chuck: Oh, I was thinking of siegen. |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: “I will vanquish and then”? |
| Judith: “I will vanquish them and then”, yes. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: Siegen does not have an object. You say ich siege, “I win”, but besiegen you have the object because of the be prefix. So “I win against them or I vanquish them”. |
| Chuck: Yeah, Sieg is an important word to know if you play German video games. |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: When you beat a battle it’ll say Sieg. |
| Judith: It might. |
| Chuck: Or it’ll say... |
| Judith: Du hast gewonnen. |
| Chuck: No, the other one. If you lose, it’s… |
| Judith: Niederlage. |
| Chuck: Yeah, Niederlage. Niederlage. |
| Judith: What have you been playing. |
| Chuck: Oh nothing. |
| Judith: Ok. |
| Chuck: Next line. |
| Judith: So “I'm fighting through the powers behind this door, I will vanquish them and then…” Führen sie mich zu dir. |
| Chuck: “Guide me…” no. “Guide them to me to you…” What? |
| Judith: No. “They guide me…” |
| Chuck: “They guide me to you”. |
| Judith: Yes, because of the dann you have the subject and verb inverted. |
| Chuck: Yes. |
| Judith: Dann wird alles gut. |
| Chuck: “Then everything will be good.” |
| Judith: Dann wird alles gut. |
| Chuck: “Then everything will be good.” |
| Judith: Alles gut. |
| Chuck: “Everything good.” |
| Judith: The chorus and this part is repeated, dann wird alles, dann wird alles gut, dann wird alles gut. And that’s the song. |
| Chuck: Yes. So now you can get one of those T-shirts in Germany that say “I survived Tokyo Hotel”. |
| Judith: Have you seen those? I might get one. |
| Chuck: No. I think someone will start making one after this podcast. |
| Judith: Ok. Well, this is obvious a very figurative song that you can’t take at face value because, for one thing, there’s no monsoon in Germany. And I'm very happy there isn’t. The weather in Germany is actually quite, quite nice, wouldn’t you say? |
| Chuck: Yeah, it`s not bad. I liked it better in the summer though. |
| Judith: Yeah, but now it’s getting cold, but I still think that it’s less extreme than, say, in the New England states. You know geographically the New England states are more south than Germany? Even Montreal is more south, it’s just we have a different climate here because of the golf stream. Everything is nice and warm and temperate. |
| Chuck: Yeah. |
| Judith: So… |
| Chuck: The one thing that I found interesting was that you don’t get the extremes in the summer or the winter. So it’s not quite as cold in the winter, you won’t see quite as much snow as, say, in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. |
| Judith: You won’t see temperatures of -20 or -40 Celsius. It’s also less hot in summer. |
| Chuck: Yeah. So you don’t really see a need for air conditioning here. |
| Judith: Yeah. And very few people have air conditioning. I mean, in private homes it’s something really extraordinary. They may have it in shops, especially in big stores. |
| Chuck: I think the most likely place to find it would be in a bus, for example. |
| Judith: Not necessarily. |
| Chuck: It depends. |
| Judith: You’re lucky if they have it in the bus. Otherwise just keep the windows open. And you know what German families do, they just keep the windows or doors open. Like, during the night, if it’s really hot days in summer, like the one week of really, really hot days that we get. |
| Chuck: But the one nice thing is if you are in air condition inside you won’t need your sweater. |
| Judith: Yes, it’s not quite as icy as it is in the States. They don’t make it as cold because they know people are not used to having air conditions. So they just keep as like room temperature, let’s say 20 Celsius, that’s 68 Fahrenheit, I believe. |
| Chuck: So you won’t have it in the States where you’re like sweating to death outside, and then you walk in and all you sweat immediately freezes on your skin. |
| Judith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That describes my experience a lot. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I still think the worst is the New York subway. There’s blistering hot subway stations and the freezing cold subway cars. |
| Judith: Yeah. Can’t be healthy. |
| Chuck: Yeah. We’re not here to rant about the States. So you want to rant about Canada? |
| Judith: Well, one thing that I noticed is that Canadians just love to talk about the weather, at least the Canadians I know. And that’s not something that’s necessary here. You can safely skip it. |
| Chuck: Think I like to talk about how many inches of snow they have. Oh wait, it’s Canada, how many centimeters of snow they have. |
| Judith: Yeah, we don’t get that much snow. There are skiing resorts where you can get a lot of snow but here it’s not as common. |
| Chuck: Yes. So yay not much. |
| Judith: We do get… |
| Chuck: yeah, that’s a good word. |
| Judith: We do get ice on the street. And we do get ice in ice-cream parlors. Italian ice-cream parlors – I love those. You know that Italians make the best ice-creams, right? |
| Chuck: Yes. And it’s also interesting that you’ll often hear Germans make the mistake of Eis for ice-creams and say the same word for both. |
| Judith: Yes, it’s Eis, E-I-S, Eis. And at those parlors, if it’s particularly hot, I sit outside and the sun is, like, burning me up and then I get ice cold ice-cream and… |
| Chuck: Then I throw the ice cream at Judith. |
| Judith: Hey, you’re ruining the picture. It’s just brilliant, you know, out there, sitting, ice-cream parlors, hot summers. |
| Chuck: Throwing ice cream at Judith, yay! It makes the picture even better. |
| Judith: Let’s do some grammar. Get you out of your good mood. |
| Chuck: Have we got any ice-cream? |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: So today’s grammar is about prepositions and the cases they use. Because you notice that in German, the prepositions can have different cases. They can use either dative or accusative, and a few of them will even use genitive. Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a rule for these, when to use these, you just have to learn them by heart. For example, common prepositions that use the dative are aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, von and zu. And if you look at the PDF you can actually study these and learn them by heart. Or maybe you should learn an example with them to be able to remember them better. Then there are common accusative prepositions, bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne and um. And… |
| Chuck: But some of them use both? |
| Judith: Yes, actually. Those are the easiest ones, the ones that can use both. They really use dative if they are about aesthetic location and accusative if they’re about a direction. For example, the preposition in. You can have in den Park, for example Ich gehe in den Park, “I'm walking into the park”. That’s the in with accusative. and you can have im Park, “in the park”. Ich gehe im Park spazieren. “I'm taking a walk in the park”, as in “within it” because the park is the location, it’s not a direction where you go. Or maybe I should take an example from the song, there are a lot of directions in there. We had ans Ende der Zeit. |
| Chuck: “To the end of time.” |
| Judith: Yes, and usually you would hear am Ende der Zeit. |
| Chuck: “At the end of time”, which is the mistake I made when I translated the song cause I'm so used to hearing the other form. |
| Judith: Yes, so am Ende der Zeit, dative, is the location, “at the end of time”, and ans Ende der Zeit is “to the end of time”, as in “going to the end of time” or “until the end of time”. |
Outro |
| Chuck: So if you’re getting confused just remember you can find the grammar summary in this lesson’s pdf. |
| Judith: And really we should consult it more often, German…. |
| Chuck: *cough* I’ll see you soon! |
| Judith: Bis später! |
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