Learn how to ask questions in the future tense
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 9. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back! I don’t know if you notice, but weather conditions are getting more and more extreme. |
| Judith: Here in Germany, one summer is way too cold, and then the next is too hot, and suddenly there are a lot of floods and storms. Recently, the car of an acquaintance of mine got damaged by grains of hail. They were the size of a golf ball. |
| Chuck: What? |
| Judith: I’m not kidding. It’s really weird. It was hailing golf balls in her area and in the middle of May too when most of Germany was enjoying beautiful summer weather. |
| Chuck: So as a foreigner, it might actually be dangerous if you can’t understand warnings about the weather. Today, we’ll cover some words and expressions relating to weather. |
| Judith: Let’s listen to the dialogue. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| John: Michaela, wie wird das Wetter heute? Wird es kalt? |
| Michaela: Nein, es wird wahrscheinlich sehr schön. |
| John: Wird es sehr warm sein? |
| Michaela: Nein, nicht zu warm. |
| John: Dann werde ich Jeans tragen. Wird es später Regen geben? |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich nicht. |
| John: Gut. |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| John: Michaela, wie wird das Wetter heute? Wird es kalt? |
| Michaela: Nein, es wird wahrscheinlich sehr schön. |
| John: Wird es sehr warm sein? |
| Michaela: Nein, nicht zu warm. |
| John: Dann werde ich Jeans tragen. Wird es später Regen geben? |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich nicht. |
| John: Gut. |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Michaela, wie wird das Wetter heute? |
| Chuck: Michaela, how is the weather going to be today? |
| Judith: Wird es kalt? |
| Chuck: Would it be cold? |
| Judith: Nein, es wird wahrscheinlich sehr schön. |
| Chuck: No. It will probably be very beautiful. |
| Judith: Warm und sonnig. |
| Chuck: Warm and sunny. |
| Judith: Wird es sehr warm sein? |
| Chuck: Will it be very warm? |
| Judith: Nein, nicht zu warm. |
| Chuck: No, not too warm. |
| Judith: Dann werde ich Jeans tragen. |
| Chuck: Then I will wear jeans. |
| Judith: Wird es später Regen geben? |
| Chuck: Will there be rain later? |
| Judith: Wahrscheinlich nicht. |
| Chuck: Probably not. |
| Judith: Gut. |
| Chuck: Good. |
Lesson focus |
| Judith: Okay. Let’s extract some useful words from this new dialogue. The first word is Wie [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “How”. |
| Judith: Wie [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “How”. |
| Judith: Next, Wetter [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Weather”. |
| Judith: Wetter [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Weather”. |
| Judith: Das Wetter, so it's neuter. You can ask for example, wie ist das Wetter? |
| Chuck: “How is the weather?” |
| Judith: One answer could be, Kalt [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Cold”. |
| Judith: Kalt [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “Cold”. |
| Judith: Next, Wahrscheinlich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Probably”. |
| Judith: I’ll break it down. Wahrscheinlich [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Wahrscheinlich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Probably”. |
| Judith: Next, Sonnig [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Sunny”. |
| Judith: Sonnig [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Sunny”. Die Sonne means “sun”. So you just add –ig to the end to make sonne. |
| Judith: You can notice this in a lot of German adjectives. Next we have Später [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Later”. |
| Judith: Später [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Later”. |
| Judith: Which is approximately the same as Dann [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Then”. |
| Judith: Dann [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Then”. |
| Judith: Next, Tragen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Wear” or “carry”. |
| Judith: Tragen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Wear” or “carry”, as in wearing clothes. |
| Judith: Or as in carrying a stuff. Note that this verb also changes its vowel like a lot of verbs you’ve noticed before. In this, however, it’s not from an E to I sound but from A to Ä, A with umlaut. So I’ll give the conjugations over quick. It’s “Ich trage, du trägst, er trägt, wir targen, ihr tragt, sir tragen” As usual, only the du and er forms change. Next is Zu [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Too” as in too much. |
| Judith: Zu [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Too”. |
| Judith: And finally, we have Regen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Rain.” |
| Judith: Regen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Rain”. |
| Judith: This is masculine, die Regen. Note also the verb “to rain” is “regnen”. Almost the same. Just an added N in the middle. “Regnen”. All right. Let’s talk about the weather in Germany. |
| Chuck: Well, in the summer, it tends to be less hot than it is in my region where I grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. |
| Judith: I think it’s generally a trend that the weather is less extreme. In summer, I think the average temperature would be about 30 degrees. |
| Chuck: Thirty degrees is pretty cool. It’s not that cool here. |
| Judith: Thirty degrees is not cold. I wouldn’t want it be much hotter than that. |
| Chuck: But it’s below freezing. What do you mean? |
| Judith: No, it’s not. Oh, I get it. You’re thinking Fahrenheit. I mean, Celcius, of course; centigrade. All of Germany uses Celcius. Just assume everybody is telling you the temperature in Celcius because nobody ever knows Fahrenheit. In fact, all the world, except for the United States, are not using Fahrenheit. |
| Chuck: Okay. So what would 30 degree Celcius be in Fahrenheit? |
| Judith: I’m not sure exactly. You should know. I mean, you’re the American living here. Thirty-five is 95 Fahrenheit, I believe. So 30 degrees, I don’t know. Maybe 85? I don’t know. |
| Chuck: I can’t get it over my head either. It’s not written on the paper. |
| Judith: Anyway. And 95 Fahrenheit is about the maximum you’ll get in the summer. Anything else is extra ordinary here in Germany. Then in spring and in autumn, it’s a lot less, of course. In winter, it’s always around zero degrees. |
| Chuck: Thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. |
| Judith: It never gets too cold. I heard that in Canada, for example, they have -40 sometimes. In Pennsylvania, they sometime have -20 at least, but here it’s -5, +5 or something like that. |
| Chuck: Yeah. And -40 is actually -40. |
| Judith: It’s amazing. Who ever thought of this stupid system, Fahrenheit. |
| Chuck: Fahrenheit was around before Celcius. |
| Judith: Really? Well, there’s a good reason people abandon it. It’s just complicated. I mean, what’s it based on to have these weird degrees? The Celcius system was based on the most elemental we know, that’s water. So zero degrees is when water freezes and 100 degrees is when water boils, and it’s very easy to figure out. |
| Chuck: I actually have no idea where Fahrenheit comes from. We’ll leave that as an exercise to the listeners. |
| Judith: Okay. If you know the solution, please write it in the lesson comments. Now also, one thing that I really like in Germany in summer is that there’s a lot more ice cream powders and cafés with outdoor seating on the street in the nice summer evening. |
| Chuck: But one thing you’ll notice is it’s a lot less common the air conditioning when you go into a store, for example. |
| Judith: Well, the restaurants are usually pretty cool but yeah, I don’t think that many houses have air conditioning. |
| Chuck: Yeah. It’s also a lot suited with the environment. The Germans are very environmentally conscious. |
| Judith: The houses are just better isolated. If you open the windows, like, over the night, then the rest of the day, it’s likely to stay pretty cool. |
| Chuck: Yeah. It’s almost like the feeling when I’m in the States that people want to air condition things. It’s so cold but they just want to prove that they can use that much energy. |
| Judith: Don’t remind me. I was freezing. When I came to States in summer, I was freezing. It was like gritting. I had brought t-shirts. It’s just not normal for us. |
| Chuck: Yes. You don’t get that much extreme temperature changes as you do in the States. |
| Judith: I think it’s very unhealthy to have this kind of temperature change, always go from freezing cold to really, really hot outside. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I think the most extreme I remember was in the New York subway where the subway station is really burning hot… |
| Judith: Oh, yeah. |
| Chuck: ..and the subway itself is really cold. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Chuck: So get your sweater off for the subway, right? But thankfully, when you visit Germany, you won’t have this problem. |
| Judith: Yeah. I’m much happier here. Also, a note for our Canadians in this occasion is that it’s not necessary to talk about the weather in Germany. I don’t know. When I came to Canada, everybody was talking about the weather first thing in a conversation, and here’s it’s okay. You can talk about it; you don’t need to. |
| Chuck: So what would the weather be like tomorrow? |
| Judith: That’s “Wie wird das wetter Morgen?” You will notice, it involves the future. In Germany, it’s less common to say, “how’s the weather?” You are more likely to say, “how will the weather be?” |
| Chuck: So is the future tense difficult? |
| Judith: No. It’s really easy, actually. You just take a form of “werden”. “Werden” is a special auxiliary for that, and the infinitive of the word. Unfortunately, “werden” is irregular, and that’s about the hardest part about this future thing. “Werden” behaves a bit like a vowel-changing verb, except it also has some irregular forms. I’ll just give them to you and Chuck will translate. “Ich werde” |
| Chuck: “I will”. |
| Judith: “du wirst” |
| Chuck: “You will”. |
| Judith: “er wird” |
| Chuck: “He will”. |
| Judith: wir werden |
| Chuck: “We will”. |
| Judith: “ihr werdet” |
| Chuck: “You all will”. |
| Judith: “sie werden” |
| Chuck: “You will”. |
| Judith: “They will”. |
| Chuck: “They will.” They will. |
| Judith: All right. Now you can look these up in the PDF, of course, and you will have plenty of opportunities to practice. One more thing that you should be careful is when there are two verbs or one auxiliary and one word in a German sentence, the second one goes to the end of the sentence. So in this case, the “werden” is right after the subject or second to place in the sentence, and the actual verb, which is infinitive, goes to the end. |
| Chuck: So I guess you could say it’s sort of like the way Judith talks, “You will the force haben.” |
| Judith: Yeah, something like that. |
| Chuck: It’s a pleasure to mix languages. |
| Judith: Yeah. Okay. |
| Chuck: You will the force have. |
| Judith: Yeah, like that. Get used to it. Maybe you speak English a bit like that and it would be no problem for you to remember this special word order. |
| Chuck: I’m always a bit confused in this. Can you give me some examples? |
| Judith: Yeah. Sure. For example, “Ich werde Pfannkuchen essen”, “Ich werde Pfannkuchen essen” |
| Chuck: “I will eat pancakes”. |
| Judith: Note that the “werde” comes right after the ”ich” and the “essen” has been moved to the end of the sentence. If this was present tense, it would be “Ich esse Pfannkuchen.” |
| Chuck: “I eat pancakes”. |
| Judith: Compared to “Ich werde Pfannkuchen essen.” |
| Chuck: “I will eat pancakes”. |
| Judith: And maybe another example with kommen. “Ich werde nach berlin kommen.” |
| Chuck: “I will come to Berlin.” |
| Judith: All right! There’s one special case that I should warn you about. We used it in this lesson. It is “es gibt”. You heard this as an expression before. It means “there is” or “there are”. “Es gibt”. And this, in the future tense, is “es wird geben”. For example, “es wird Regen geben.” |
| Chuck: “It will be rain”. |
| Judith: Also, we often just use a present tense and imply the future. For example, we did so in the last lesson. I believe that John said “Ich nehme mir noch zwei Würstchen” and what he implied was “Ich werde mir noch zwei Würstchen nehmen.” |
| Chuck: “I will take two more sausages”. So why are we always talking about food? You’re making me hungry. |
| Judith: I’m just trying to give our listeners a chance to review these vocabulary items. |
| Chuck: Well, they should be using our learning center or the Word Bank for that instead of taking my time with it. |
| Judith: You really! Well, the learning center is convenient, I must say but we got to practice them some too so that you don’t forget these words. |
| Chuck: All right. |
| Judith: Now, I think we are almost done with this lesson. Let’s just listen to the dialogue one more time. |
| John: Michaela, wie wird das Wetter heute? Wird es kalt? |
| Michaela: Nein, es wird wahrscheinlich sehr schön. |
| John: Wird es sehr warm sein? |
| Michaela: Nein, nicht zu warm. |
| John: Dann werde ich Jeans tragen. Wird es später Regen geben? |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich nicht. |
| John: Gut. |
Outro |
| Judith: Great. With the weather being sunny and no rain in sight is the perfect time to sit outside and study. |
| Chuck: You got to be kidding me. You mean it’s the perfect time to sit outside and have a nice drink. |
| Judith: While listening to more GermanPod101 lessons? |
| Chuck: I guess so. |
| Judith: Anyway, thank you for listening. |
| Chuck: See you next week. |
| Judith: Bis bald! |
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