Learn words about your family
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| Hey! What’s up, everybody? I’m Henrik. Welcome to a new episode of GermanPod101.com. Today, we’ll talk about one of the most important things ever and everywhere, it’s family. I’m right here, I’m standing at the barbecue place of my family. We come often here, sit together, having barbecue. My family is from here so I’m in the right spot for this topic so let’s get it started! So the first word always is the most important… |
| 1. Familie “family” |
| Ich habe eine große Familie. “I have a big family.” |
| Yeah, that’s true. I have like, I don’t know...my father, they were four siblings and then from my stepmother, they are four siblings. My mom only has one sibling, but then all of them have a lot of sons and daughters so I have a big bunch of cousins. I think big family is a great thing. I talk from experience like right now, it’s Easter time so we all will come together, have, I don’t know, Easter hunt or however that is called. |
| That brings me to number two… |
| 2. Vater “father” |
| Mein Vater ist deutsch. “My father is German.” |
| Number three… |
| 3. Ehemann “husband” |
| Mein Ehemann und ich sind seit neun Jahren verheiratet. “My husband and I have been married for nine years.” |
| I don’t have a husband, I don’t have a wife. I only have a girlfriend, yet who knows, maybe, it will change one day I guess. Yeah, being married is probably a great thing. I cannot tell from experience here, but in this case, nine years, that’s a long time. Hopefully, they’re going to stick together for longer. “Husband”, that’s ehemann. |
| Number four… |
| 4. Sohn “son” |
| Mein Sohn liebt es, Bilder zu malen. “My son loves to paint pictures.” |
| Yeah, if the son is pretty small, often, they love to paint pictures on the walls of grandma and grandad or uncle and aunt and they will all be so happy about it. No, but it’s cool, like a son, who has a son, I have a son, knows how precious that is and if they paint, cool. If they paint on the wall, not as cool, but also not such a big trouble. You can just repaint it if you want. |
| And we go on with the male family, number five… |
| 5. Bruder “brother” |
| Ich habe einen Bruder. “I have a brother.” |
| Actually, I have two brothers and two sisters. As I said, I have a big family. Also here, I think it’s really cool to grow up with siblings, to have a brother, have a sister. I would never have liked to grow up as an only child. It’s just like, I mean at holiday, all the fights and all this struggling for the attention of the parents, but somehow, it all makes you like grow together and you learn how to divide, how to share things, and when you grow up, you always have your partner, your brother. That’s a cool thing. |
| Number six… |
| 6. Onkel “uncle” |
| Mein Onkel züchtet Rinder. “My uncle raises cattle.” |
| Again, Onkel German, uncle English is very similar, very easy to remember I guess. My uncle, at least one of them actually, doesn’t raise cattle, but he’s a farmer in a town not so far from here so I love to go there. I’m living in a farm here, but also, it’s cool to go on his farm. But yeah, it would be so cool to have an uncle who actually raises cattle like being a little bit of a cowboy sometimes. Yeah, that’s like a romantic imagination. I like to be a cowboy, weeee! |
| Okay, like the wiseman in the family, number seven… |
| 7. Großvater “grandfather” |
| Ich habe diese Uhr von meinem Großvater geerbt. “I inherited this clock from my grandfather.” |
| Yeah, it’s great to have a grandfather for all of those of you who have. They always have this cool stories from back in the day. At least in my experience, they are great storytellers. They have seen the world and they can tell you about their experiences. They’re so wise. Maybe also, growing up, having them being so much older that it just gives you so much respect of what they have experienced. I don’t know, I just like to listen to stories of “my grandfather” meinem Großvater. All right, actually, what you also say instead of Großvater which is a little bit more formal is Opa. I don’t even know exactly what it would say in a short form in the US or in England, but when we call like we call daddy or father, we would call our grandfather, ‘Hey, Opa!’ ‘Opa, Opa, Opa!’ Like all the children, ‘Oh, Opapa!’, like oh, grandfather is there. |
| Number eight… |
| 8. Schwiegervater “father-in-law” |
| Ich gehe zum Spiel mit meinem Schwiegervater. “I'm going to the game with my father-in-law.” |
| Yeah, that’s something really cool. If families come together, you have a boyfriend or a husband, wife, whatever and you get along really good with the family of your partner as well, especially for example, if you’re interested in the same sports, imagine, you’re even interested in the same team, you can go to a game together and it just makes you… your family go together even more bonding by sports, I think that’s one of the easiest ways to do it as long as you have the same interests. It doesn’t really work to say, “Hey, let’s go to see my team.” And he’s like, “Oh, I hate soccer.” |
| So having all this male part of the family settled, let’s go to the beautiful side, to our girls, number nine… |
| 9. Mutter “mother” |
| Meine Mutter macht unglaublich leckere Apfelkuchen. “My mother makes incredibly delicious apple pies.” |
| Yeah, whenever I come there, she’s like, “Hey! Can I prepare you something?” Yeah, I think there are many moms who are really good in cooking something specific or even more things. Appreciate it. As long as they enjoy doing it and it’s not just like work for them, they enjoy doing something good for you like mothers love to take care of their sons, I know, then you can enjoy the apple pie, she enjoys the time with you. Just go visit your mom and have an apple pie with her. |
| Number ten... |
| 10. Tochter “daughter” |
| Unsere Tochter ist Medizinerin. “Our daughter is a doctor.” |
| Well, great! That’s a hard field of study, but she helps people to survive, cool. |
| Number eleven… |
| 11. Schwester “sister” |
| Ich habe leider keine Schwester. “Unfortunately, I don't have a sister.” |
| Not true for me. I have two sisters and I’m super happy with them. One just returned from Australia; she was traveling there, pretty cool. I was a little bit jealous seeing the pictures of her driving the Great Ocean Road. My other sister, she’s quite a bit younger than I. She’s 13 years younger, just turned 14, the moment you get to the math and see how old I am. But it’s so cool like she’s just a little star, little angel growing up with us. If you have a little sister, you probably know what I’m talking about like you try to make her happy, you try to protect her that she’s doing cool. It’s great to grow up with sisters. So those of you who doesn’t have a sister, I’m sorry. |
| Number twelve… |
| 12. Ehefrau “wife” |
| Seine Ehefrau ist zehn Jahre älter als er. “His wife is 10 years older than him.” |
| Quite uncommon, like usually the husband is a couple of years older than the wife, but of course, it can totally be the other way around as well. I don’t know, I would say, by average year, probably, the husband is usually 3 years older than the wife. In Germany here, I would say, it’s a little bit easier than in English. In English, they have husband and wife, two completely different words. We made it a little bit easier. We have ehefrau “wife” and ehemann “husband”. So we just have frau and mann like “woman” and “man” and then we put ‘ehe-’ in front. Ehe, that’s the word for marriage. So marriage man, marriage woman, kind of, ehefrau, ehemann. |
| Number thirteen… |
| 13. Schwiegermutter “mother-in-law” |
| Die Ehefrau kommt nicht gut mit der Schwiegermutter aus. “The wife doesn't get along with her mother-in-law.” |
| Unfortunately also, this happens that there are families and the wife doesn’t really get along with the mother-in-law because the mother-in-law always still wants maybe too much influence on her son or the other way around that the wife kind of just wants to take the boy away from his mother. I, for myself, can luckily say that the mother of my girlfriend so my future mother-in-law, she’s super cool so I get along with her really well. She was actually even living here in Germany with us for two months and we did so cool stuff. She’s quite young still so it’s just like easy to hang out and do fun stuff. It’s a stereotype, you don’t get along with your mother-in-law, but I hope in most cases, it’s really cool with everybody. |
| Number fourteen… |
| 14. Großmutter “grandmother” |
| Ich vermisse meine Großmutter. “I miss my grandmother.” |
| As kids also, we don’t really say Großmutter, we mostly say Oma. It’s just like the nickname if you want to say like we say, “Hey Oma! What’s up? Can I have a piece of your apple pie probably?” Because not only mothers do good apple pie, also grandmothers. Yeah, so like the more formal word is indeed Großmutter “grandmother”, but as in English, you would say granny or grams, we just say Oma. Hey Oma! |
| Number fifteen… |
| 15. Partner “partner” |
| Ich möchte mich gerne mit der Familie meines Partners auf ihrer Sprache unterhalten. “I want to speak to my partner's family in their language.” |
| Okay, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed this topic about family. As I said in the beginning, I think it’s a very important topic, very important chapter because family, that’s the most important we got mostly. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed. Subscribe to the channel, leave comments, study the vocabs, study the phrases. Today, many of the words are not too difficult because they are very similar to English and then I see you next time. Bye-bye! |
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