Learn how to talk about your plans
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 10. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back for another Beginner Lesson brought to you by GermanPod101.com. |
| Judith: Here, we take a brought approach to the language emphasizing listening comprehension, speech, grammar, vocabulary, and usage. |
| Chuck: So Judith, what are we going to learn today? |
| Judith: Today, we will learn about German splitting verbs, a minor annoyance in the German language. We will also see the future tense again, which we studied in the last lesson. |
| Chuck: Do you remember the forms of “werden”? If not, have a quick peek at last lesson’s PDF for review before we start with the dialogue. |
| Judith: In today’s dialogue, John and Michaela are talking about their plans for the day, as Michaela said that the weather would be quite lovely, as it usually is in Germany in spring or summer. |
| Chuck: Let’s listen. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| Michaela: Was wirst du heute machen? |
| John: Ich bin mir noch nicht sicher. Wahrscheinlich werde ich mir Düsseldorf ansehen, aber ich bin auch sehr müde... |
| Michaela: Das ist der Jet Lag. Ruhen Sie sich heute aus. |
| John: Aber ich bin in Deutschland! Ich werde mir die Umgebung ansehen. Kommen Sie mit? |
| Michaela: Jetzt? |
| Judith: Now slowly. |
| Michaela: Was wirst du heute machen? |
| John: Ich bin mir noch nicht sicher. Wahrscheinlich werde ich mir Düsseldorf ansehen, aber ich bin auch sehr müde... |
| Michaela: Das ist der Jet Lag. Ruhen Sie sich heute aus. |
| John: Aber ich bin in Deutschland! Ich werde mir die Umgebung ansehen. Kommen Sie mit? |
| Michaela: Jetzt? |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Was wirst du heute machen? |
| Chuck: What will you do today? |
| Judith: Ich bin mir noch nicht sicher. |
| Chuck: I’m not yet sure. |
| Judith: Wahrscheinlich werde ich mir Düsseldorf ansehen. |
| Chuck: Probably I’ll see look at Düsseldorf. |
| Judith: Aber ich bin auch sehr müde... |
| Chuck: But I am also very tired... |
| Judith: Das ist der Jet Lag. |
| Chuck: That’s jet lag. |
| Judith: Ruhen Sie sich heute aus. |
| Chuck: Just relax today. |
| Judith: Aber ich bin in Deutschland! |
| Chuck: But I’m in Germany! |
| Judith: Ich werde mir die Umgebung ansehen. |
| Chuck: I’ll take a look at the surroundings. |
| Judith: Kommen Sie mit? |
| Chuck: Are you coming along? |
| Judith: Jetzt? |
| Chuck: Now? |
Lesson focus |
| Judith: Let’s have a closer look at the words used in this dialogue. The first word is Sicher [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “Sure” or “safe”. |
| Judith: As in “Ich bin sicher.” |
| Chuck: “I’m sure”. Or it can be used with “Sicher ist sicher.”. |
| Judith: “Safely safe”. Can you say that in English? |
| Chuck: I think it’d be more like, say, “better safe than sorry”. |
| Judith: Yeah. “Sicher ist sicher.”. Better safe than sorry. Anyway, the next word Ansehen [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “To look”. |
| Judith: Ansehen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To look”. This is more like “to look around”, right? |
| Judith: Yeah. Or take a look or watch. Next is Aber [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “But”. |
| Judith: And the small word, auch [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Also”. |
| Judith: Auch [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Also”. |
| Judith: You may recognize this from the newbie series. Next is Ausruhen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To rest or relax”. |
| Judith: Ausruhen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “To rest or relax”. |
| Judith: Next, Dich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “You”, informally but as an object such as “Ich liebe dich.”. |
| Judith: This is the accusative case that we’ve seen before. Dich [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “You”. |
| Judith: Next, Deutschland [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Germany”. |
| Judith: Deutschland [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Germany”. |
| Judith: Next, Mitkommen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Come along”. |
| Judith: Mitkommen [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Come along”. Note, you can also use this with other words like “mitmachen”. |
| Judith: Yeah. We’ll get to that later. Mit just means “along” or “with”. Next word is Jetzt [natural native speed] |
| Chuck: “Now”. |
| Judith: Jetzt [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Now”. |
| Judith: And finally, Umgebung [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “Surroundings”. |
| Judith: Die Umgebung [natural native speed]. |
| Chuck: “The surroundings”. |
| Judith: In Germany, it’s singular. In English, it has to be plural. So the surroundings. Let’s talk about surroundings in a German city, say, a residential area. Is it much like suburbia? |
| Chuck: Not really. Everything is to be reached by foot. |
| Judith: That’s true. And the areas are actually made for walking in them. There are a lot of sidewalks and even bicycle pass. A lot of Germans like cycling. |
| Chuck: I remember once, in the States I lived about a 20-minute walk from work but it was just too dangerous to able to walk to work because it was right along the highway. |
| Judith: It’s really annoying. But in Germany, I really like being able to walk in the neighborhood and there’s a lot of useful things there, for example, bakeries, supermarkets, kiosks. You can basically do your everyday shopping without leaving the suburb or without taking a car. Of course, there are also churches, primary schools, kindergartens. For secondary school, you usually have to go to the city center, but that means that most of the kids can just walk to school or maybe take a bike. |
| Chuck: That’s something I found interesting. I don’t really ever remember seeing a school bus here. |
| Judith: There are a few for the parents that like o send their kid to a school on a different town or something, but generally you can take your bike or walk, as I said. |
| Chuck: Oh, yeah. I remember sometimes I’d be on the bus and just see this hoard of school children coming that just make all these noise in the bus. |
| Judith: Yeah. The normal public transport also sometimes gets used as a school bus because there’s really good public transport even in the suburbs especially between the suburbs and the city center, you can find a lot of buses and the government is subsidizing them so that they are actually around. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I remember when I lived in the suburbs of Heilbronn, for example, there was always a bus that came every 15 minutes to go to the city center. |
| Judith: And to the train station. |
| Chuck: Yeah. That, too. |
| Judith: It’s just very convenient. |
| Chuck: Yeah. And most of time, unless you’re doing a lot of travel between different cities and you don’t live in the center, then you don’t really usually need a car. |
| Judith: I’d say in the center, you don’t need a car. In the suburbs, maybe if their public transport takes too long. |
| Chuck: Yeah. The difference is what you need to do on a daily basis. |
| Judith: If you just go shopping a couple of days a month, then it’s too convenient to just go there by bus. |
| Chuck: Yeah. It’s also nice because you can always find a grocery store within walking distance. So it’s not this thing where you go out and you get four or five grocery bags and fill up your car and go home. You just go there, get enough to fill out two bags and just carry it home. No big deal. |
| Judith: That’s convenient. If you suddenly notice you’re out of eggs or something for recipe, you just go and grab them. |
| Chuck: Yeah. But don’t forget to take your shopping bag with you because otherwise, you’ll pay 10 cents for the bag there. |
| Judith: At most shops, yeah, they will charge you. If you do have to buy a bag out of one of those shops, you can get a paper one or a bag made of cotton which will last long and it’s more environmental-friendly. |
| Chuck: Yeah. They do this because they want to make sure that people don’t just keep using up lots and lots of more plastic bags. I think next time, I’ll go with you to the grocery store. |
| Judith: To go with me? That would be “mitkommen” in German. Come along. |
| Chuck: Oh, really? |
| Judith: And the sentence would be “Ich komme mit.”, “I come along”. This introduces the topic of splitting verbs because you notice the infinitive is “mitkommen” and what I just said is “Ich komme mit.”. So the “mit” actually gets split off the verb and put after it. |
| Chuck: So you can say “Ich mitkomme”? |
| Judith: No. That would be wrong. There are certain prefixes that are connected to the verb sometimes and sometimes split off. For example, for the infinitive, they’re always connected. Also, for the future tense, you always see them connected, “Ich werde mitkommen”. There are other occasions when they’re connected. They typically split off or a conjugated tense like the present tense, the prefix goes to the end of the sentence. So, “Ich komme mit.”, “I come along” is a conjugated form. “Ich werde mitkommen” is one where it doesn’t split off because it’s an infinitive “mitkommen”, and “Ich komme mit.” is one that splits off because it’s present tense. |
| Chuck: So wait, what verbs does this happen to? |
| Judith: Well, obviously not all verbs. We have seen quite a lot of German words that didn’t have anything like this. That’s usually verbs that are phrasal verbs in English like “come along”, “bring along”, “go out”, “go away”, “leave behind”. You know, just kind of a combination where you have one verb and one thing that could be a preposition or something. I’m not sure how classify this. Most German splitting verbs are actually a direct equivalent like “mitkommen” - “come along”, or “mitbringen” – “bring along”, or “ausgehen” – “go out”. It’s like a direct equivalent, except in German, we actually say “out go” in this case, and it later becomes “go out” when it splits off. |
| Chuck: But at least “Ich komme mit.” isn’t too far because you could also say in English, “wanna come with”? |
| Judith: Can you? Really? I never heard that. Is it American? |
| Chuck: It’s pretty colloquial. |
| Judith: Okay. Well, that makes it easy to learn, doesn’t it? |
| Chuck: Maybe it’s very local to Pennsylvania where I grow up, because there are a lot of Germans that came there originally. |
| Judith: It could be. There are certain prefixes that will always split off and you will eventually recognize them instinctively. For example, in this lesson, we saw “mit” along, “an”, and “aus”; “mitkommen” – “to come along”, “ansehen” – “to look at”, and “ausruhen” – “to rest”. We actually say “to rest out”. This is the case where it is not the same as the English. |
| Chuck: So this is sort of like, “do you want to hangout?” |
| Judith: Yeah. Hangout. Well, “ausruhen”… |
| Chuck: “aushängen” |
| Judith: …is really “relaxing”. |
| Chuck: “I was hanging” doesn’t really work there, doesn’t it? |
| Judith: No. Not quite. So some examples. “Ich werde ausgehen.” The present tense version would be “Ich gehe aus.”, “I go out”. “kommst du mit?” … |
| Chuck: “Are you coming with?” |
| Judith: “Nein, ich ruhe mich lieber aus.” |
| Chuck: “No, I’d rather relax”. Or literally, “No, I rest myself preferably out”. |
| Judith: Surely it doesn’t sound that easy, but this, I have to get used to this way of speaking, Yoda speaking, as you’ve said. |
| Chuck: “No, I rest myself preferably out”. So that’s just like you. You’re never in the mood for doing something fun. Well, I’m going to go out and have fun now. |
| Judith: No, not right now. We aren’t done with the lesson yet. We can’t leave the listeners without reading the dialogue once more. |
| Chuck: Do we have to? |
| Judith: Of course we have to. Let’s go for it. |
| Chuck: All right. I guess there’s not much left. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Michaela: Was werden Sie heute machen? |
| John: Ich bin mir noch nicht sicher. Wahrscheinlich werde ich mir Düsseldorf ansehen, aber ich bin auch sehr müde... |
| Michaela: Das ist der Jet Lag. Ruhen Sie sich heute aus. |
| John: Aber ich bin in Deutschland! Ich werde mir die Umgebung ansehen. Kommen Sie mit? |
| Michaela: Jetzt? |
Outro |
| Chuck: All right! That’s it for today’s lesson. |
| Judith: Be sure to pick up the PDF at GermanPod101.com. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to use our forum or comment on today’s lesson. |
| Chuck: See you again soon! |
| Judith: Bis bald! |
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