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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Intermediate Series Lesson 1. |
| Judith: Welcome to the new Intermediate Series on GermanPod101. |
| Chuck: This series will help you get fluent in German. |
| Judith: We will prepare you for a life in Germany. And who would be a better expert on that than Chuck, who has lived here for several years. |
| Chuck: That’s right. I’ll share a lot of tips with you that you won’t find in any textbook. |
| Judith: In this first lesson, we will meet Mike, who just arrived in Germany. He has come here to find a job and meanwhile he’s staying with a German friend. |
| Chuck: So get ready to listen to this dialogue. And if you can, look at the dialogue transcript in the meantime so you can learn it more effectively. Open the PDF and either print it out or just look at it on the screen. |
| Judith: You can even see the dialogue on the screen of your iPod if you would press the center button. |
| Chuck: Or on your iPhone or iPod touch if you just push the screen where you listen. So let’s hear it. |
| DIALOGUE |
| D: Hallo Mike! Willkommen in Deutschland! Wie war der Flug? |
| A: 18 Stunden Flug von Springfield nach Berlin, ich bin hundemüde! |
| D: 18 Stunden! War das ein Direktflug?? |
| A: Nein, 2 Stops, in Chicago und in Dublin. |
| D: Jedenfalls freue ich mich, dass du jetzt hier bist und in Deutschland leben wirst. |
| A: Berlin ist schon eine faszinierende Stadt. Ich hoffe, ich finde schnell Arbeit. |
| D: Du schaffst das schon! Und eine schöne Wohnung finden wir auch für dich. |
| A: Danke, dass ich so lange bei dir wohnen kann. |
| D: Nichts zu danken. |
| D: So, das ist das Wohnzimmer. Du kannst hier auf der Couch schlafen. Das Badezimmer ist direkt gegenüber, und die Küche ist neben dem Badezimmer. |
| A: Hast du Bier da? Ich möchte gerne etwas trinken. |
| D: Nein, Bier habe ich nicht. Du kannst Wasser trinken, oder wir gehen zum Supermarkt und kaufen Bier. |
| A: Du musst nicht mitkommen. Ich kann das auch alleine, wenn du mir den Weg beschreibst. |
| D: Der Supermarkt ist gleich hier um die Ecke, in der Ackerstraße. Wenn du nach draußen gehst, siehst du ihn schon. |
| A: Ah, das ist einfach. Ich gehe jetzt Bier kaufen. Bin sofort wieder da! |
| D: Bis gleich! |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| D: Hallo Mike! Willkommen in Deutschland! Wie war der Flug? |
| A: 18 Stunden Flug von Springfield nach Berlin, ich bin hundemüde! |
| D: 18 Stunden! War das ein Direktflug?? |
| A: Nein, 2 Stops, in Chicago und in Dublin. |
| D: Jedenfalls freue ich mich, dass du jetzt hier bist und in Deutschland leben wirst. |
| A: Berlin ist schon eine faszinierende Stadt. Ich hoffe, ich finde schnell Arbeit. |
| D: Du schaffst das schon! Und eine schöne Wohnung finden wir auch für dich. |
| A: Danke, dass ich so lange bei dir wohnen kann. |
| D: Nichts zu danken. |
| D: So, das ist das Wohnzimmer. Du kannst hier auf der Couch schlafen. Das Badezimmer ist direkt gegenüber, und die Küche ist neben dem Badezimmer. |
| A: Hast du Bier da? Ich möchte gerne etwas trinken. |
| D: Nein, Bier habe ich nicht. Du kannst Wasser trinken, oder wir gehen zum Supermarkt und kaufen Bier. |
| A: Du musst nicht mitkommen. Ich kann das auch alleine, wenn du mir den Weg beschreibst. |
| D: Der Supermarkt ist gleich hier um die Ecke, in der Ackerstraße. Wenn du nach draußen gehst, siehst du ihn schon. |
| A: Ah, das ist einfach. Ich gehe jetzt Bier kaufen. Bin sofort wieder da! |
| D: Bis gleich! |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| D: Hallo Mike! Willkommen in Deutschland! Wie war der Flug? |
| D: Hi Mike! Welcome to Germany. How was the flight? |
| A: 18 Stunden Flug von Springfield nach Berlin, ich bin hundemüde! |
| A: an 18-hour flight from Springfield to Berlin. I am dog tired. |
| D: 18 Stunden! War das ein Direktflug?? |
| D: 18 hours! Was that a direct flight? |
| A: Nein, 2 Stops, in Chicago und in Dublin. |
| A: No, 2 stops, in Chicago and in Dublin. |
| D: Jedenfalls freue ich mich, dass du jetzt hier bist und in Deutschland leben wirst. |
| D: In any case, I am happy that you are here and that you are living in Germany. |
| A: Berlin ist schon eine faszinierende Stadt. Ich hoffe, ich finde schnell Arbeit. |
| A: Berlin is quite a fascinating city. I hope I find work quickly. |
| D: Du schaffst das schon! Und eine schöne Wohnung finden wir auch für dich. |
| D: You can do it. And we'll also find a nice apartment for you. |
| A: Danke, dass ich so lange bei dir wohnen kann. |
| A: Thanks that I can stay at your place meanwhile. |
| D: Nichts zu danken. |
| D: You're Welcome. |
| D: So, das ist das Wohnzimmer. Du kannst hier auf der Couch schlafen. Das Badezimmer ist direkt gegenüber, und die Küche ist neben dem Badezimmer. |
| D: So, this is the living room. You can sleep here on the couch. The bathroom is directly across the hall and the kitchen is next to the bathroom. |
| A: Hast du Bier da? Ich möchte gerne etwas trinken. |
| A: Do you have beer there? I like to drink something. |
| D: Nein, Bier habe ich nicht. Du kannst Wasser trinken, oder wir gehen zum Supermarkt und kaufen Bier. |
| D: No, I don't have beer. You can drink water. Or we can go to the supermarket and we buy some beer. |
| A: Du musst nicht mitkommen. Ich kann das auch alleine, wenn du mir den Weg beschreibst. |
| A: You don't have to come with me. I can also go by myself, if you tell me the way. |
| D: Der Supermarkt ist gleich hier um die Ecke, in der Ackerstraße. Wenn du nach draußen gehst, siehst du ihn schon. |
| D: The supermarket is right around the corner, on Ackerstraße. If you go out, you can see it already. |
| A: Ah, das ist einfach. Ich gehe jetzt Bier kaufen. Bin sofort wieder da! |
| A: Ah, that's simple. I go now to buy some beer. I'll be right back. |
| D: Bis gleich! |
| D: See you soon. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: Alright, wow, I'm quite tired now after this dialogue. [Ich bin hundemüde]. |
| Chuck: Dog tired. |
| Judith: Yeah, it’s a funny expression, isn’t it? I'm amazed it exists in English too. Do you really say “dog tired”? |
| Chuck: Yeah. |
| Judith: Anyway, it means “really tired”. |
| Chuck: But only when you’re really tired. |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: So like when you’re tired as a dog, then you can say it. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: First word is [Hundemüde]. |
| Chuck: Dog tired. |
| Judith: [Hundemüde, hundemüde] And the next word is [Direkt]. |
| Chuck: “Direct” or “directly”. Note that it’s spelled with a K at the end in German. |
| Judith: Yes, because we don’t… well, we hardly have any C’s in German. Next. [Jedenfalls] |
| Chuck: In any case. |
| Judith: [Jedenfalls, jedenfalls] Next. [Sich freuen] |
| Chuck: To be happy. |
| Judith: [Sich freuen, sich freuen] There’s also the expression [Sich auf etwas freuen]. |
| Chuck: To look forward to. |
| Judith: For example, [Ich freue mich auf meinen Geburtstag]. |
| Chuck: I'm looking forward to my birthday. |
| Judith: Yes. Next word, [Faszinierend]. |
| Chuck: Fascinating. |
| Judith: [Faszinierend, faszinierend.] Yeah, we don’t slur the SC or, in our case, the [SZ] there. You have to pronounce both letters which makes it kind of hard. [Faszinierend] Next. [Schaffen] |
| Chuck: To manage, to be able to do something. |
| Judith: [Schaffen, schaffen] |
| Chuck: You often hear this as [Ich schaffe das]. |
| Judith: Yeah, or [Du schaffst das]. “You can do it”. Next, [Wohnung]. |
| Chuck: “Apartment” or, for our British listeners, “flat”. |
| Judith: [Wohnung, die Wohnung] feminine and the plural is [Wohnungen]. Next, [Gegenüber]. |
| Chuck: Across from. |
| Judith: You use it with [Von, gegenüber von]. Next, [Küche]. |
| Chuck: Kitchen. |
| Judith: [Küche, Küche, die Küchen] and the plural, [Küchen]. |
| Chuck: Kitchens. |
| Judith: Next, [Neben]. |
| Chuck: Next to. |
| Judith: [Neben] Next. [Beschreiben] |
| Chuck: To describe. |
| Judith: [Beschreiben, beschreiben] |
| Chuck: To describe. |
| Judith: And the last word for today, [Um die Ecke]. |
| Chuck: Around the corner. |
| Judith: [Um die Ecke] |
| Chuck: Around the corner. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Judith: Ok, that’s it for the vocabulary. Now, what shall we talk about? |
| Chuck: I’d like to mention about [Ich bringe dich um die Ecke]. |
| Judith: Yeah, that’s an expression. It’s more suited to our advanced lessons where we’ll be doing expressions. But [Um die Ecke bringen] is “to kill somebody”, literally to bring somebody around the corner. |
| Chuck: Any idea where that comes from? |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Judith: No idea. But let’s do some culture. He’s going to the supermarket, so how about we talk about German supermarkets. Is there anything really striking? |
| Chuck: Well, things are a bit different. For one thing, you’ll notice he went to buy beer because you can always find beer, wine and liquor at the local supermarket. |
| Judith: Yeah, there’s no restriction on who may sell alcohol. Well, there is a restriction on who may pour alcohol, that is sell alcohol for immediate consumption, like in a pub. Yeah. If you can drink it immediately, then you need a license to sell the alcohol, but if it’s bottles or cans, for that matter, you don’t need a license. |
| Chuck: Another thing you’ll notice is that Germans are typically very environmentally friendly. This also means you should bring your own bag to the supermarket. It’s not just better for the environment, but many supermarkets won’t provide any. Well, at least not for free. |
| Judith: Yeah. You can buy plastic or cotton bags from the supermarket but you’ll have to pay, of course. |
| Chuck: Also, when you’re checking out, don’t expect anyone to pack things for you. |
| Judith: Yeah. We don’t have these really cheap jobs because everybody’s on employment money. |
| Chuck: I don't know if you ever shopped at Aldi in the States. But there, to unlock a shopping cart you have to put in a coin, but you get it back when you return the cart. You may also not know that Aldi is actually a German supermarket. |
| Judith: Yeah. So this goes for all supermarkets in Germany. I haven’t seen any supermarket that still provides shopping carts just like that, unlocked, because they get stolen way too often or just dumped in the next trash [inaudible 00:06:02]. |
| Chuck: Of course it can also be that you walked to your supermarket, in which case you probably don’t want to take a shopping cart load full of things back, so there’s always a basket you can get too. Well, at least there’s usually baskets. |
| Judith: Yeah, usually. Another things is that there’s bio products in supermarkets. So you don’t need to go to a special shop for those, even though there are special bio shops. But it’s just another effect of environmentalism being so popular here. |
| Chuck: Yeah. And one thing that I already got cheered out about earlier was, when I went to buy milk I bought something that was called H-milk. |
| Judith: [H-Milch], yeah. |
| Chuck: What is that exactly? |
| Judith: Oh, it’s milk but they treat it so that it lasts forever and it tastes a lot worse. |
| Chuck: Ah ok. I wish they’d have a sample available for that for me. |
| Judith: Good luck. Samples are very rare in German supermarkets. |
| Chuck: Yeah, I think I’ve only… maybe once in my entire time, maybe twice, in my entire time in Germany seen one. That’s over a period of three years. |
| Judith: In stores you’re more likely to get samples, big stores. |
| Chuck: I guess perfume stores, for example. |
| Judith: Well, obviously. But also like stores that have anything. Like, in the sweets section you can try some of the chocolate brands or whatever. It depends. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: So for grammar point today, I thought I would summarize what I expect you to know because this is the intermediate series and to be able to follow this series you should already know some basic German grammar. Obviously you know the gender of German nouns, the cases, the plural, present tense conjugation of verbs, including some irregular ones like [Sein] and [Haben]. And other things I will summarize as a recap, I will actually tell you how they are done so that you can refresh you knowledge if you forgot. One thing is the future tense. Oh, can you actually explain that? The future tense? |
| Chuck: Oh yeah. You form the future tense by combining [Werden] and the infinitive. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Chuck: For example, [Ich werde gehen]. |
| Judith: Yeah, [Du wirst gehen, Er wird gehen, Wir werden gehen, Ihr werdet gehen, sie werden gehen]. That’s the example with [Gehen]. Of course you can put any verb. And I also assume that you know the simple past tense of [Sein], just based on the stem [War]. [Ich war, Du warst, Er war] and so on, quite regular. Other than this, we’re not going to assume any knowledge of the past tense for now, but there’s some other things about verbs that you need to know. |
| Chuck: The verbs that adopt a lighter vowel for the second and third person singular. For example, [Ich sehe, Du siehst, Er sieht, Wir sehen, Ihr seht, Sie sehen]. |
| Judith: Yeah. And similarly for [Geben] which does [Gibt, halten, hält] and irregularly [Nehmen] and [Nimmt]. There are a couple of these verbs. We call them vowel changing verbs on GermanPod101. |
| Chuck: Yeah. And one other thing to be careful of is the verbs that have prefixes which alter the meaning a bit. For example, many of these split off for the present tense, but are attached to the verb for the infinitive. For example, [Mitkommen] becomes [Er kommt mit]. |
| Judith: Yeah, or [Ich komme mit] or [Du kommst mit], the conjugation is just regular except for this splitting part. And [Mit], whenever you see [Mit] as a prefix, it always splits off so you can actually learn which prefix is split off and then you will know for every verb. The meaning is kind of harder to get but this will be a topic also in our Intermediate Series. Then we had reflexive verbs, the ones with “oneself” in English. They use accusative pronouns except for the third person, which is always [Sich] so [Mich, sich, dich] and so on. |
| Chuck: Another thing that’s fairly hard for English speakers to get a grasp on is that the first verb in the sentence always comes in the second position. So, for example, I would literally say “Yesterday went I to the store”. |
| Judith: Yes. And when you have other verbs like the second and any other verb, they are placed at the very end of the sentence, after everything else. For example, actually I didn’t think of an example. |
| Chuck: I'm glad that you’re here came. |
| Judith: Yes, that works. I'm glad that you’re here came [Ich freue mich das du hierhin gekommen bist]. Yeah. Also, there’s the word [Möchte], we had it in the newbie and beginner series which means “would like”. It’s the conditional tense of [Mögen], but we haven’t done the conditional tense as whole, just this one word - [Möchte]. Similarly, we’ve done [Könnte] which is “could” in polite requests. Then we had “can” which is [Können] in German. The singular forms are based on the stem [Kann] and the plural forms are based on [Können]. So [Ich kann, Du kannst, Er kann, Wir können, Ihr könnt, Sie können]. Similarly, for [Müssen], this is the word “must” in German. The singular forms are based on the stem [Muss] and the plural on [Müssen]. And [Dürfen], the singular forms, are based on [Darf], the stem [Darf], and plural for [Dürfen]. [Ich darf, Du darfst, Er darf, Wir dürfen, Ihr dürft, Sie dürfen] |
| Chuck: Sheesh, that was a lot of grammar. You’re trying to really overwhelm our listeners? |
| Judith: No, actually not. It’s just you should know all this if you’re listening to the intermediate series. This is all stuff that we have already taught in the beginner series, newbie series, the new beginner series… Listen to these if you need explanations on any of these grammar points. |
| Chuck: Well, I guess we do need a foundation to build off on. This series will teach you more advanced grammar and, of course, more advanced vocabulary. |
| Judith: Not advanced, advanced, just right for intermediate students. And we’ll do our best to lead you up to the advanced level. |
| Chuck: So I guess it can’t hurt if you listen to our old Intermediate Series as well, if you haven’t done so already. An advanced level of German requires a lot of vocabulary. You can probably memorize a lot more of it per week than just the 10 to 15 words we teach you in one podcast. |
Outro |
| Judith: So listen to more podcasts and gain all kinds of words from them. |
| Chuck: And then use the Word Bank Tool in the Learning Center to commit them all to memory. |
| Judith: It`s the easiest way to improve your German. |
| Chuck: And don`t miss our next lesson either. See you then. |
| Judith: Bis bald. |
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