Learn about adjective and possessive pronouns
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 13. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back. It’s another beautiful day in Berlin. We’re here stuck in the studio recording. I mean, we’re here bringing you another Beginner lesson. So Judith, what’s today’s topic? |
| Judith: Today, we’ll talk about what Germans in their free time. |
| Chuck: You mean, when they’re not recording podcast? I mean, it sounds interesting, but about Michaela and John? |
| Judith: John was quite hungry in the last lesson, so now they’re having lunch and John is talking about what he saw outside. |
| Chuck: All right. Let’s listen. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| Michaela: Und? Ist es schön draußen? |
| John: Ja. Ich liebe die schönen Gärten, die kleinen Straßen und die lachenden Kinder. Düsseldorf ist eine große Stadt, aber in großen Städten in Amerika ist die Umgebung nicht so schön.. |
| Michaela: Bist du jetzt müde? |
| John: Ja, ich bin sehr müde. Ich werde mich ausruhen. |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich kommt mein Mann später. Er geht noch zu seinem Verein. |
| John: Okay. |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| Michaela: Und? Ist es schön draußen? |
| John: Ja. Ich liebe die schönen Gärten, die kleinen Straßen und die lachenden Kinder. Düsseldorf ist eine große Stadt, aber in großen Städten in Amerika ist die Umgebung nicht so schön.. |
| Michaela: Bist du jetzt müde? |
| John: Ja, ich bin sehr müde. Ich werde mich ausruhen. |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich kommt mein Mann später. Er geht noch zu seinem Verein. |
| John: Okay. |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Und? Ist es schön draußen? |
| Chuck: And? Is it nice outside? |
| Judith: Ja. Ich liebe die schönen Gärten, die kleinen Straßen und die lachenden Kinder. |
| Chuck: Yes. I love the nice gardens, the small streets and the laughing kids. |
| Judith: Düsseldorf ist eine große Stadt. |
| Chuck: Düsseldorf is a big city. |
| Judith: Aber in großen Städten in Amerika ist die Umgebung nicht so schön.. |
| Chuck: But in big cities in America, the surroundings are not as nice. |
| Judith: Bist du jetzt müde? |
| Chuck: Are you now tired? |
| Judith: Ja, ich bin sehr müde. |
| Chuck: Yes, I’m very tired. |
| Judith: Ich werde mich ausruhen. |
| Chuck: I’ll just relax. |
| Judith: Wahrscheinlich kommt mein Mann später. |
| Chuck: My husband will probably come later. |
| Judith: Er geht noch zu seinem Verein. |
| Chuck: He’s first going to his club. |
| Judith: Okay. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
Lesson focus |
| Judith: Okay. Now it’s time to look at the new vocabulary found in this lesson. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
| Judith: Also, be sure to check out the learning center of lesson-specific tools and general reference. The first word is Draußen [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “Outside”. |
| Judith: Draußen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Outside”. |
| Judith: Next, Lieben [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To love”. |
| Judith: Lieben [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To love”. |
| Judith: For example, ich liebe dich. |
| Chuck: “I love you”. |
| Judith: I believe every American has heard this phrase. What do you think? |
| Chuck: Yeah, I’d say so. |
| Judith: Next, also a very easy word, Garten [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Garden”. |
| Judith: Garten [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Garden”. And I’m sure you’ve heard from kindergarten. |
| Judith: Kindergarten is actually a German word. This word is masculine and the plural is “Gärten”. As you’ve seen before, the words ending in –en don’t add any ending, however, this one changes its vowel. |
| Judith: Garten. |
| Chuck: “Garden”. |
| Judith: Gärten |
| Chuck: “Gardens”. |
| Judith: Next, Klein [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Small”. |
| Judith: Klein [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: Small. |
| Judith: Next, Straße [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “Street”. |
| Judith: Straße [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Street”. |
| Judith: This word is feminine, die Straße . |
| Chuck: “The street”. |
| Judith: And plural, die Straßen. |
| Chuck: “The streets”. |
| Judith: Basically, you’re making it end in –en. That’s the rule for this type of noun. Next, Lachend [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Laughing(ly)”. |
| Judith: Lachend [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Laughing”. |
| Judith: Or also “laughingly” because any adjective in German can also be an adverb. Now this rule that you just have the verb lachen – “to laugh”, and you add D to make it “laughingly”, it works for a lot of verbs. For example, also “kommen” becomes Kommend. |
| Chuck: “Coming” as an adjective. |
| Judith: Next, Kind [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: If you remember from “kindergarten”, you might figure out that “kind” means “Child”. |
| Judith: Yes. And you might figure out that the plural is “kinder”. |
| Chuck: “Kids”. |
| Judith: Kind [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Child”. |
| Judith: Kinder. |
| Chuck: “Kids” or “children”. Kind sounds a lot like kid. |
| Judith: Yeah. But I’m not sure it has the same root. Also note that Kind is neuter. You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. Next, Groß [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Big”. But note this can also mean “tall”. |
| Judith: Groß [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Big” or “tall”, as in “Wie groß bist Du?” |
| Judith: “How tall are you?” |
| Chuck: Notice it’s not saying “how big are you?” |
| Judith: Yeah. The German word groß does not quite overlap with what you have in English: tall, big, huge. In all of the places, you could use groß. Next word is Stadt [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Town” or “city”. |
| Judith: Stadt [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “Town” or “city”. |
| Judith: This word is femine, die Stadt. Plural, Städte. |
| Chuck: “Cities”. |
| Judith: Next, Sein [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “His”. |
| Judith: The possessive pronoun, Sein [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “His”. |
| Judith: And last word for today, Verein [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Club”. |
| Judith: Der Verein [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “The club”. All right. So I look forward to going out to the nightclub tonight and dancing and partying. |
| Judith: Not quite. Verein is not a nightclub. |
| Chuck: Ow? What is it then? |
| Judith: Verein is a place where you meet people with the same interest, for example, a basketball club or a dancing club, or stamp collecting club. This brings us to the next topic, German clubs. Now, of course, you can say the most popular type of club is the soccer club here. The majority of people have been or are still in the soccer club. |
| Chuck: Bu there’s also many other sports club you’ll find in the city, from ball games to martial arts, swimming and dancing, you’ll also find gaming clubs like the German games of Skat and Doppelkopf, which are these really complicated card games; but older people tend to like to play them, and some younger. But you’ll also find chess clubs and groups for German board games. |
| Judith: There are also clubs dedicated to keeping cultural life, for example, shooting clubs that show their prowess at the German Shooting Festivals, and there are carnival clubs that prepare all year to man a little wagons and parades we have for carnival; dialect clubs dedicated to keeping the local dialect alive; or even folklore clubs. So these are usually for foreigners. Like I know in Kamp-Lintfort, there’s a Korean folklore club or Turkish folklore club, Kurdish folklore club. |
| Chuck: So you mean there’s clubs for carnivals? |
| Judith: No. Carnival is not quite the same as the German Karneval. Karneval is a season around Mardi Gras. I believe you have Mardi Gras over there; but here, it’s much more pronounced. It’s seven days of parades and costumes and things. These clubs prepare for it. |
| Chuck: So I guess somewhat like Halloween but a bit different. |
| Judith: Yeah. Clubs dedicate the entire year to preparing for this one season. |
| Chuck: Wow. |
| Judith: Of course, there are also other clubs like more boring ones like reading clubs. Rapid reading is very common here or having little pigeons [ph]; there’s collector’s clubs and much more. I would say the entire scene of hobby clubs is more developed here than in America because schools don’t typically offer many clubs of their own, so the youth and also like join public clubs instead. |
| Chuck: Or they watch TV all day. Germans watch only about three and a half hours of TV a day on average. |
| Judith: Only? It seem to be, that’s a lot. Three and a half hours? I don’t think I watch three and a half, two hours of TV a week. |
| Chuck: Well, it’s still lower than the American average of roughly four and a half hours a day, but subtly rising. |
| Judith: Yeah, unfortunately. |
| Chuck: It’d be better if they just listen to our podcast instead. |
| Judith: Definitely. At least then, you would learn something. |
| Chuck: But I guess it is nice sometimes to just forget about the podcast and just sit down in front of the TV. I mean, I practice my German while I relax and watch TV. |
| Judith: Well, for you it would actually be a practice if you go to Germany and watch TV there, but that doesn’t mean that we’re relax during the lesson. In the last lesson, you already had the chance to relax a bit; it was mostly revision, but today I have a very juicy grammar topic for you: adjective endings. |
| Chuck: As you probably notice by now, adjectives tend to change their endings when combined with different nouns. That happens to reflect the case and gender when there’s no definite article that could reflect that, but I actually pretty much always mess this up, so maybe Judith can explain it better than me. |
| Judith: Okay, I’ll try. Well, the thing is they should reflect the case or gender when there’s no definite article that could reflect it. So the endings that the adjectives take will remind you of the endings that the definite article would take if there was one. For example, we have “der Mann” –er ending. If you don’t have “der Mann”, if you have, for example, “ein Mann” and you put an adjective to that, it would be “ein großer Mann”. The “groß” suddenly acquires this –er ending that was otherwise attached to the der. |
| Chuck: So it is actually logical afterall. |
| Judith: Well, more or less. Not all the time. Another example where it’s logical again is “die Frau”. When you say “eine große Frau”, the E ending also supposed to remind you of “die”, “das Kind”, “ein großes Kind” the –es ending there. And there are cases when the indefinite article will already take the ending so that the adjective doesn’t have to take it. For example, in the case of “dem Mann”, you don’t say “ein” anymore, you say “einem”. So the “groß” doesn’t have to take the ending; it just takes the ending –en in those cases when the indefinite article…all the definite article already has the ending. Also, if you have “dem großen Mann”, if you combine the definite article and an adjective, the adjective ought to take the –en ending. |
| Chuck: Wait, I’m forgetting a bit about… this is a dative, right? |
| Judith: Yes, it’s dative; dative in German. |
| Chuck: Could you give an example for sentence with that? |
| Judith: “Chuck geht mit einem großen Mann ins Kino.” “Chuck goes to the cinema with a tall guy”. |
| Chuck: Not a big guy. |
| Judith: Maybe. You can’t tell in German actually, but usually when somebody is big, we say “dick”. |
| Chuck: Fat. |
| Judith: So “Chuck geht mit einem dicken Mann ins Kino.” |
| Chuck: “Chuck goes with the fat man in the theater”. |
| Judith: Now you want any more examples? Now let’s look at a couple other words for now. For dative, it’s normally “der Frau”, for example, “mit der Frau”. In this case also, the “ein” already acquires the –er ending, “einer”, and then it becomes “großen Frau”, “einer großen Frau”, “mit einer großen Frau”. Same for the child, “mit dem Kind” or “mit einem großen Kind”. So you can say that either the definite article has the ending. If there’s a definite article, it will have the ending, or the indefinite article will have the ending; and if that doesn’t have the ending, then the adjective will. |
| Chuck: I think after this explanation, I’m going to have to look at the PDF file to see the whole table. |
| Judith: Yeah. It’s hard to teach this kind of grammar in a podcast when you can’t show any diagrams. So I really think that you should have a look at the PDF. It’s not that complicated. I mean, I explained the rules. |
| Chuck: You can get that with the basic membership, right? |
| Judith: Yeah, of course. It’s quite cheap and definitely worthwhile, in this case. In the other cases too, or less my boss will fire me. Now let’s have some examples from the dialogue, for example, “die scönen Gärten”. |
| Chuck: “The beautiful gardens”. |
| Judith: “eine große Stadt” |
| Chuck: “A big city”. |
| Judith: “in großen Städten” |
| Chuck: “In big cities”. |
| Judith: “zu seinem Verein” |
| Chuck: “To his club”. |
| Judith: Now, these were some examples of the cases, but I think you really need to see them again in context, because cases only make sense in context. If you see a word on its own, it will always be nominative. So here’s the dialogue again. |
| Michaela: Und? Ist es schön draußen? |
| John: Ja. Ich liebe die schönen Gärten, die kleinen Straßen und die lachenden Kinder. Düsseldorf ist eine große Stadt, aber in großen Städten in Amerika ist die Umgebung nicht so schön.. |
| Michaela: Bist du jetzt müde? |
| John: Ja, ich bin sehr müde. Ich werde mich ausruhen. |
| Michaela: Wahrscheinlich kommt mein Mann später. Er geht noch zu seinem Verein. |
| John: Okay. |
Outro |
| Judith: Are you a member of any club, Chuck? |
| Chuck: No. |
| Judith: All right. So you can’t claim that as an excuse to leave. |
| Chuck: I think I’m going to go join a club now, if you don’t mind. |
| Judith: You are lucky that this is the end of today’s lesson. You don’t actually have to stay around. |
| Chuck: Cool. I don’t want to join a club. Good. Less work for me. |
| Judith: Now, be sure to check out the vocabulary list with audio in the learning center at GermanPod101.com. Of course, leave us plenty of comments on this lesson. Say if you liked it. Say if there’s any better way I could explain the case endings, for example. |
| Chuck: And see if there’s any German clubs in your area. You’ll never know. In any case, see you soon! |
| Judith: Bis bald! |
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