Learn the genitive case
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 14. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back. I hope you’re all doing well. |
| Judith: I hope you are well and ready for another Beginner lesson. Today’s lesson is a prime example of what GermanPod101 is all about: fun lessons that teach you real authentic German. |
| Chuck: So what exactly is today’s lesson? |
| Judith: Well, remember that John was a bit jet-lagged and he went to rest? Now he’s awake again and he was just wondering through the house when he found some dirt on Michaela. Just when he was having a closer look, Michaela joined him. |
| Chuck: That doesn’t sound very nice. Well, anyway, let’s see what happened. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| John: Hey Michaela, liest du die "Bravo"?? |
| Michaela: Die "Bravo"? ... Das ist Lisas "Bravo". Lisa ist meine Kusine. |
| John: Und was ist mit den Hello Kitty Sachen? |
| Michaela: Ähmm... Das sind die Sachen meiner Freundin. |
| John: Und dieses Foto? Du bist wirklich süß mit Nutella um den Mund... Ist das das Foto deines Mannes? |
| Michaela: Nein. |
| Judith: Okay. Read again slowly. |
| John: Hey Michaela, liest du die "Bravo"?? |
| Michaela: Die "Bravo"? ... Das ist Lisas "Bravo". Lisa ist meine Kusine. |
| John: Und was ist mit den Hello Kitty Sachen? |
| Michaela: Ähmm... Das sind die Sachen meiner Freundin. |
| John: Und dieses Foto? Du bist wirklich süß mit Nutella um den Mund... Ist das das Foto deines Mannes? |
| Michaela: Nein. |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Hey Michaela, liest du die "Bravo"?? |
| Chuck: Hey Michaela, do you read the "Bravo"?? |
| Judith: Die "Bravo"? ... Das ist Lisas "Bravo". |
| Chuck: The "Bravo"? That’s Lisa’s "Bravo". |
| Judith: Lisa ist meine Kusine. |
| Chuck: Lisa is my (female) cousin. |
| Judith: Und was ist mit den Hello Kitty Sachen? |
| Chuck: And what’s with the Hello Kitty stuff? |
| Judith: Ähmm, Das sind die Sachen meiner Freundin. |
| Chuck: Ehm, that’s my (female) friend’s stuff. |
| Judith: Und dieses Foto? |
| Chuck: And this picture? |
| Judith: Du bist wirklich süß mit Nutella um den Mund. |
| Chuck: You are really cute with Nutella around the mouth. |
| Judith: Ist das das Foto deines Mannes? |
| Chuck: Is that a picture of your husband? |
| Judith: No. |
Lesson focus |
| Judith: Chuck, are there any embarrassing pictures that I could ask your parents about? |
| Chuck: Of course not. |
| Judith: You mean, nothing? |
| Chuck: No, I don’t think there are any of those. |
| Judith: I’ll have to check that with your mother. The last time I asked, she seemed really eager to show me your pictures. |
| Chuck: Yeah. It seems like you were hiding something from me when I was at your parent’s place. |
| Judith: Me? I would never do that. |
| Chuck: Uh-hmm. |
| Judith: Let’s get to the vocabulary. The first word is Lesen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To read”. |
| Judith: Lesen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To read”. |
| Judith: Note this verb changes its vowel. Instead of lesen, you have “liest”, “du liest”, or “er liest”. |
| Chuck: And “ich”? |
| Judith: “Ich lese” of course, same pattern as with all vowel-changing verbs. The next word is Kusine [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Female cousin”. |
| Judith: Die Kusine [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “The cousin”. |
| Judith: Next, die Sache [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “The thing”. |
| Judith: This is one of the most useful German words. I can’t believe we’re only learning it now. Next word, Freundin [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Female friend”. |
| Judith: Freundin [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Female friend”. But that sounds like “friends” to me. |
| Judith: No. Friends would be Freunde. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
| Judith: The –in is really characteristic. You will see it often added to indicate a female. For example, “Engländer” is somebody from England and “Engländerin” is a female from England. |
| Chuck: Okay. That doesn’t work for Americans, right? |
| Judith: Yes, it does; “Amerikaner, Amerikanerin”. |
| Chuck: Okay. Nice. |
| Judith: It doesn’t work for Germans. For Germans, “Deutsche, Deutsche” just like adjectives. Next word is Dieses [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “This”. |
| Judith: Dieses [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “This”. |
| Judith: Note that this is the neuter form. If you’re talking about a masculine, you will have to change it to “dieser”. For feminine nouns, you have to change it to “diese”. ”Dieser, diese, dieses” . Next word is Foto [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: Which means “photo”. |
| Judith: Big surprise there! |
| Chuck: Notice this is spelled with an F in German. |
| Judith: Foto [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Photo”. I’ve seen lots of Germans make mistakes with this in English, too. |
| Judith: Well, it’s a new thing for us. It used to be spelled with Ph, but one of the recent spelling reforms, you can change to F. Next word is Wirklich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Really”. |
| Judith: Wirklich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Really”. |
| Judith: I’ll break it down for you, Wirklich [slowly - broken down by syllable]. |
| Chuck: “Really”. |
| Judith: That’s Süß |
| Chuck: Oh, cute. You’re sweet. |
| Judith: That’s the next word actually, Süß [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: I just said it means “cute”, right? |
| Judith: Cute as a person or an animal, or sweet as in candy, or should I say sweet as in feedback. Yummy feedback. Don’t forget to leave us some. |
| Chuck: Oh. And that leads us to the next word, um. |
| Judith: No, the next word is Um [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Around”. |
| Judith: Um [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Around”. |
| Judith: So that’s what we had, um den Mund or “around the mouth”, as on all sides of it. But um is also used for times. For example, um zwei Uhr. |
| Chuck: “Around two o’clock”. |
| Judith: Actually, it means “at two o’clock” because Germans don’t want to be late. |
| Chuck: So it means “around two o’clock” for me. |
| Judith: No. When you’re in Germany, you should also arrive at exactly 2:00 o’clock. |
| Chuck: Oh, yeah. I’m always on time. |
| Judith: And similary, you could say “um zhen Uhr”. |
| Chuck: “At 10:00 o’clock.” |
| Judith: Okay. One more word left for today. That is Mund [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Mouth”. |
| Judith: der Mund [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “The mouth”. So all the vocabulary is up now, but there’s another word in there I didn’t quite get. It was something about Bravo. |
| Judith: Yeah. Well, that’s not a vocabulary item; it’s a name. It’s a name of the largest teen magazine in the German-speaking area. It’s mostly about boy groups and pop singers. They also have a bit of advice on sex life and the like. |
| Chuck: So it’s for girls, basically? |
| Judith: Yeah. Well, mostly. |
| Chuck: What’s interesting with the magazines in Germany, it’s like they have magazines on just about everything. |
| Judith: Yeah. Not just TV magazines but magazines about every single hobby. I mean, really, going from astrology, to chess, to stamp-collecting, to cooking. |
| Chuck: There’s even one I found on retro video games. |
| Judith: It’s amazing. But of course, there’s a lot of computer magazines anyway. |
| Chuck: Yeah. Like I think there’s about four magazines about the Mac and I mean, there’s even things like about iPod, for example. I think there’s even two magazines I saw on the iPod. |
| Judith: About iPods. Yeah. Well, I used to buy those magazines about games, you know, where they have the most stuff, but since the internet, I don’t need them anymore. |
| Chuck: You mean computer games. |
| Judith: Yeah, computer games. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
| Judith: PC games. There’s also magazines about every science, like, mainly the popular science like geography, history, politics, and the like, but every science also have its magazines and in the big magazines store, you’ll find them all. Of course, there’s a lot of lifestyle magazines; for example, Brigitte for women. |
| Chuck: Would that be something like Vogue or…? |
| Judith: Judith: Judith: Yeah, Vogue, we have to. Brigitte is more like advice to women. I think it’s for older women than Vogue is. No, I didn’t do their market research but… and of course, there’s also magazines about royalty or stars. We already mentioned Bravo for teenies, about stars that teenies would be interested in. But for older women, there’s Das Goldene Blatt, for example. It’s actually, I think in America too, that older women tend to be interested what princess so and so is doing with her life. |
| Chuck: It could be. |
| Judith: You’re not sure? |
| Chuck: I don’t think it’s quite as much. |
| Judith: Well, I guess you don’t have your nobles and your royalty that you could be talking about, but over here, we’re like always following the progress of whatever German girl who managed to marry the Prince of Sweden or whatever. I’m not even sure who married whom yet right now because I don’t care for those kinds of things. Now, one kind of magazine that I like to read, for example, while at the head dresser is (inaudible) 0:09:51. |
| Chuck: I see that’s sort of like Time magazine. |
| Judith: Maybe. That’s one of Europe’s largest weekly magazines. If you want to read it, you can get it everywhere in the world. It might be good to improve your German once you’re at an advanced level. I find it a very interesting read. There’s other news magazines, too. |
| Chuck: Here, one magazine that be interesting for foreigners to read is the Bild. |
| Judith: That’s a newspaper. It’s not a magazine. The only reason that could be interesting for foreigners is because the vocabulary and the grammar is so, so easy. It’s the magazine for the uneducated, I would say. It’s a tabloid that’s very lured headlines and you’re like always very opinionated and plenty of pictures, large font. You get the idea. |
| Chuck: I remember seeing something about magazine Der Stern. |
| Judith: Der Stern. |
| Chuck: Yeah, Der Stern. What was that about? |
| Judith: Oh, that’s another news magazine. |
| Chuck: Okay. So it’s like Der Spiegel? |
| Judith: Der Spiegel. Yeah. These magazine names are actually good to learn the German articles. |
| Chuck: Yeah. Eventually, I’ll learn this article. |
| Judith: Anyway, it would probably be embarrassing for an adult to be caught reading the Bravo as Michaela firmly does. What can other embarrassing things could you imagine? Have you done anything that’s really embarrassing? Ah, you probably wouldn’t tell, right? Well, there are a couple so-called singers that I would imagine would be embarrassing to have a CD collection but then they taste so different. We’ll not mention them here or I’ll get hate mail from the ones. I don’t think it seems well. When you found out something embarrassing, you can always say, “This is my husband’s stuff”, “this is my friend’s stuff”, and so on like Michaela did. |
| Chuck: Yeah, you can but actually in German then you need the genitive case, don’t you? |
| Judith: Yeah, actually. |
| Chuck: Because genitive case is used for discovering possession. For example in the English sentence, this is my husband’s magazine. The apostrophe S in the husband’s indicates that it’s genitive. |
| Judith: In German, the genitive is really easy when you have a person’s name. For example, Anne’s book is simply “Annes buch”. |
| Chuck: So it’s just the same as in English, except the apostrophe is missing. |
| Judith: Unfortunately, the rest of the genitive case is more complicated than that. Also, it changes both noun and the article. In that way, it’s unlike the cases that you have learned before. |
| Chuck: Could you go into that a little bit deeper? |
| Judith: Okay. So I’ll give you the forms. For genitive singular masculine, we have “des Mannes”. |
| Chuck: “The man’s”. |
| Judith: “eines großen Mannes” |
| Chuck: “A tall man’s”. |
| Judith: And for feminine, we have “der Frau”. |
| Chuck: “The woman’s”. |
| Judith: Or “einer großen Frau”. |
| Chuck: “A tall woman’s”. |
| Judith: And for neuter, we have “des Kindes”. |
| Chuck: “The kids”. |
| Judith: “eines großen Kindes” |
| Chuck: The tall kids. |
| Judith: The –es ending there is very characteristic. You have it on both the article and the actual word for masculine and neuter. “des Mannes,des Kindes”. That’s four times the –es ending. |
| Chuck: And if you’re a board fanatic like me, you might also have heard of Spiel des Jahres, which s the largest board game award in the German board game industry. It’s a Game of the Year. |
| Judith: Yes, perfect example. Ok for “Frau” you can’t say that is just “der Frau” and the noun doesn’t change. Now going into plural, we have “der Männer” |
| Chuck: “The man’s”. |
| Judith: “großer Männer” |
| Chuck: “Tall man’s”. |
| Judith: Yeah. And the rest is actually the same because there’s no difference between masculine, feminine, and neuter in the German plural. So it is “der Frauen”. |
| Chuck: “The woman’s”. |
| Judith: “der Kinder” |
| Chuck: “The children’s”. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Chuck: So, that was a bit complicated, ey! Well, congratulations! That’s the last of the German cases. Now the only form you haven’t encountered yet is the dative plural, and I think we’ll do that next lesson because I’m feeling a bit tired. |
| Judith: Actually, I think we should do it this time because dative plural is really easy and we just haven’t managed to find it in one of the dialogues. |
| Chuck: All right. If that’s easy, we can just go over quick. |
| Judith: You already know the dative singular and you can review anything in the PDF anyway. So dative plural is “den Männen”. |
| Chuck: “To the men”. |
| Judith: Or “großen Männen”. |
| Chuck: “To the tall men”. |
| Judith: “den Frauen” |
| Chuck:”To the women”. |
| Judith: And you notice already it’s still the same. Everything is the same in plural, every single case. |
| Chuck: Okay. That wasn’t too bad. |
| Judith: Don’t forget to look at the PDF transcript of this and do this lesson’s exercise. Otherwise, you may forget the endings. |
| Chuck: And of course, you’ll still be understood if you occasionally get the endings wrong, but you still don’t want to get the wrong endings engrained in your head. That could be a major obstacle for achieving fluency later. |
| Judith: Yeah, like Chuck. Chuck, you’re currently suffering from that. You learned your first German without the grammar book and now you will have a really time getting rid of those wrong endings that you have memorized. |
| Chuck: Well, I kind of read the grammar book. |
| Judith: You mean not seriously. |
| Chuck: Maybe. |
| Judith: Anyway, that’s why it’s better to get it right in the first place or at least not to let much time pass until you look at them seriously. |
| Chuck: So anyway, you saw several examples of the genitive in action in this lesson. Let’s listen to that dialogue again. |
| John: Hey Michaela, liest du die "Bravo"?? |
| Michaela: Die "Bravo"? ... Das ist Lisas "Bravo". Lisa ist meine Kusine. |
| John: Und was ist mit den Hello Kitty Sachen? |
| Michaela: Ähmm... Das sind die Sachen meiner Freundin. |
| John: Und dieses Foto? Du bist wirklich süß mit Nutella um den Mund... Ist das das Foto deines Mannes? |
| Michaela: Nein. |
Outro |
| Judith: All right. That’s it for today. I’m leaving. |
| Chuck: Wow. For the first time, Judith wants to leave early. Maybe John should find more embarrassing items to talk about. |
| Judith: He should be careful not overstay his welcome as a guest in Michaela’s home. |
| Chuck: Yeah. If he’d listen to GermanPod101, he’d probably know more about German etiquette and he wouldn’t have been endangered being run over by a bicycle. |
| Judith: Oh well, you can’t reach them all. Listeners, if you know somebody who would benefit from listening to GermanPod101, please mention us to him. If you’ll have a homepage or a blog, you could also post about us there to reach more people. Remember that if you are a founding father, you can grant any of your family and friends an immediate 25% off on any subscription. |
| Chuck: Oh. That can make me more popular. I mean, it can make you more popular. Anyway, I’ll see you next week. |
| Judith: Bis nächste Woche. |
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