Learn how to ask someone to find something
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: Chuck here. Beginner series, Season 2, Lesson #10. You Don’t Work Here! Hello and welcome to the beginner series, season 2 at germanpod101.com where we study modern German in a fun, educational format. |
| Judith: So brush up on the German that you learned long ago or start learning today. |
| Chuck: Thanks for being here with us for this lesson. Judith, what are we looking at in this lesson? |
| Judith: In this lesson, you will learn how to form the pleural. |
| Chuck: Today’s conversation takes place at a supermarket. |
| Judith: A small local one. |
| Chuck: The conversation is between Maria and the salesperson. |
| Judith: Maria wants to buy things for baked Apple. Remember, |
| Chuck: The speakers don’t know each other. So they will be speaking formal German. Basic and premium members |
| Judith: If you have a 3G phone |
| Chuck: You can see the lesson notes in your favorite browser on your phone. |
| Judith: Stop by germanpod101.com to find out more. |
| Chuck: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| M: So, ich habe jetzt Äpfel und mehrere Flaschen Bier. Es fehlt noch Marzipan. |
| M: Entschuldigung, haben Sie hier Marzipan? |
| V (annoyed): Natürlich haben wir Marzipan! |
| M: Wo finde ich es? |
| V: Warum fragen Sie mich?? Lassen Sie mich hier arbeiten! |
| M: Arbeiten Sie wirklich hier?? |
| Judith: Now it’s slowly. |
| M: So, ich habe jetzt Äpfel und mehrere Flaschen Bier. Es fehlt noch Marzipan. |
| M: Entschuldigung, haben Sie hier Marzipan? |
| V (annoyed): Natürlich haben wir Marzipan! |
| M: Wo finde ich es? |
| V: Warum fragen Sie mich?? Lassen Sie mich hier arbeiten! |
| M: Arbeiten Sie wirklich hier?? |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| M: So, ich habe jetzt Äpfel und mehrere Flaschen Bier. Es fehlt noch Marzipan. |
| M: Alright, I now have apples and several bottles of beer. Marzipan is still missing. |
| M: Entschuldigung, haben Sie hier Marzipan? |
| M: Excuse me, do you have marzipan? (Does this supermarket sell marzipan?) |
| V (annoyed): Natürlich haben wir Marzipan! |
| V (annoyed): Of course we have marzipan! |
| M: Wo finde ich es? |
| M: Where do I find it? |
| V: Warum fragen Sie mich?? Lassen Sie mich hier arbeiten! |
| V: Why do you ask me?? Let me work here! |
| M: Arbeiten Sie wirklich hier?? |
| M: Do you really work here?? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: Does this dialogue remind you of something? |
| Chuck: I think you might be referring to what’s called the Servicewüste. |
| Judith: Yes Servicewüste is a coin we turned here in Germany. It means Service desert and it describes the situation that the service can be really bad here in Germany. It’s especially bad from clerks and salespeople because they don’t get tips and they don’t typically get a share in the profits. So they don’t really have anything at stake. Well waiters can give you bad service too but not so commonly. |
| Chuck: You will also notice that waiters don’t just come up and just start speaking really friendly to you because they are generally supposed to be invisible until you need them. |
| Judith: It’s the German way. |
| Chuck: So they also won’t come to you and say, how is your food today like you’ll find in lot of America. Judith found it very strange when she was in the States and she was like, why are they interrupting my meal to ask how my food is. Of course, it’s fine. If it wasn’t fine, I’d go tell them. |
| Judith: Yeah and especially they are interrupting your conversations. If you are talking to people on your table especially if you are talking about something confidential, you don’t want a waiter hovering around. Here in Germany, some waiters and some restaurants are not committed to good service. They might refuse you for your replacement if a fly is in your glass or at one time, we had to wait really long for our order because they lost it somewhere in their ordering system and we didn’t get any kind of compensation for that either. It was really bad. |
| Chuck: And I think that happened more than once even. |
| Judith: I don’t generally remember these things, but that one was just too awful because we had a guest here and we hadn’t eaten in a while and we were all just starving. |
| Chuck: I wasn’t even thinking of that time. |
| Judith: Alright I think we have been complaining about bad service here in Germany a lot. Now let’s look at the vocabulary. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Chuck: Yeah we will give them good service here. |
| Judith: First word [So] |
| Chuck: So. |
| Judith: [So, so] Next [Jetzt] |
| Chuck: Now |
| Judith: [Jetzt, jetzt] Next [Apfel] |
| Chuck: Apple |
| Judith: [Apfel, Apfel] Next [Mehrere] |
| Chuck: Several |
| Judith: [Mehrere, mehrere] Next [Flasche] |
| Chuck: Bottle. |
| Judith: [Flasche, Flasche] Next [Es] |
| Chuck: It |
| Judith: [Es, es] Next [Fehlen] |
| Chuck: To be missing. |
| Judith: [Fehlen, fehlen] Next [Marzipan] |
| Chuck: Marzipan. It’s often used in cooking for sweet stuff especially. |
| Judith: [Marzipan, Marzipan] Next [Wo] |
| Chuck: Where |
| Judith: [Wo, wo] Next [Finden] |
| Chuck: To find |
| Judith: [Finden, finden] Next [Fragen] |
| Chuck: To ask |
| Judith: [Fragen, fragen] Next [Wirklich] |
| Chuck: Really |
| Judith: [Wirklich, wirklich] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Chuck: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Judith: The first word we look at is [Fehlen]. This verb can be used either personally as in [Paul fehlt noch] |
| Chuck: Paul is still missing. |
| Judith: Or impersonally as in [Es fehlt mir noch Marzipan] |
| Chuck: I am still missing marzipan. |
| Judith: And the second word we look at is [Haben] So in addition to the literal and figurative usages that you have seen so far, you can also use [Haben] to ask whether a shop sells something. In this case, you’d ask any salesperson [Haben Sie?] |
| Chuck: Do you have? |
| Judith: As if that salesperson themselves had what you are looking for. Now for some grammar focus. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Chuck: The focus of this lesson is the plural. German plurals can be a mouthful like there are different groups of words that form the plural differently. |
| Judith: Today we will look at two types of words but before that, please note that the German definite article is always die for plural nouns. No more worrying about [Der, die or das] for pleural. |
| Chuck: Though the first are actually easy. There is no [New] ending. All nouns ending in er, en or el do not add any ending. |
| Judith: This really easy group includes some very common types of words such as nationalities or professions. Almost all of them end in er. For example [Amerikaner] |
| Chuck: American. |
| Judith: [Japaner] |
| Chuck: Japanese |
| Judith: [Designer] |
| Chuck: The designer |
| Judith: [Programmierer] |
| Chuck: Programmer. |
| Judith: Another big part of these groups are diminutives like [Bierchen] |
| Chuck: Little beer. |
| Judith: Or [Büchchen] |
| Chuck: Little book. |
| Judith: Anything with [Chen] but just because these words don’t add any ending doesn’t mean that they remain entirely unchanged. So some of them add an [Umlaut] to the stem vowel. For example, [Apfel] forms [Äpfel] |
| Judith: [Der Apfel] |
| Chuck: The apple. |
| Judith: [Die Äpfel] |
| Chuck: The apples. |
| Judith: The second type of nouns that we look at today adds n or en for plural and most feminine nouns are in this group actually like [Flasche] |
| Chuck: Bottle. |
| Judith: [Sache] |
| Chuck: Thing. |
| Judith: [Suppe] |
| Chuck: Soup. |
| Judith: And there are also a lot of foreign words in this group like [Nationalität] |
| Chuck: Nationality. |
| Judith: This would be [Nationalitäten] in plural. |
| Chuck: Nationalities. |
| Judith: Another part of this group are masculine nouns ending in E or if they describe the living being. For example, [Der Deutsche] |
| Chuck: The German. |
| Judith: [Die Deutschen] |
| Chuck: The Germans. But wait you are missing another type. |
| Judith: What type? |
| Chuck: The ones that end in S. |
| Judith: They don’t add n or en. |
| Chuck: No. I am saying if you have taxi for example. |
| Judith: We are not dealing with all the nouns all the ways of forming plural today. There are too many types like five of them. Today, we are just looking at these two types. The rest will come in the future lesson. |
Outro |
| Chuck: All right fair enough. That just about does it for today. Don’t forget that you can leave us a comment on this lesson. |
| Judith: So if you have a question or some feedback, please leave us a comment. |
| Chuck: It’s very easy to do. Just stop by germanpod101.com |
| Judith: Click on comments |
| Chuck: Enter your comment and name. |
| Judith: And that’s it. |
| Chuck: No excuses. We are looking forward to hearing from you. Until next time |
| Judith: [Bis nächstes mal] |
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