Learn how to use the German prefixes da and dar
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: Chuck here. Intermediate Series Season 2, Lesson14. German prefixes. We are very happy about that. |
| Judith: Hello, everyone. I'm Judith and welcome to GermanPod101. |
| Chuck: With us, you’ll learn how to speak German with fun and effective lessons. |
| Judith: We also provide you with cultural insights. |
| Chuck: And tips you won’t find in a textbook. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to answer a letter of application. This conversation takes place at a German home. |
| Judith: The conversation is between Mike and his German friend. |
| Chuck: The speakers are friends, therefore they will be speaking informal German. |
| Judith: The letter is in formal German though. |
| Chuck: Attention, listeners. Comment… |
| Judith: Comment. |
| Chuck: And comment some more. |
| Judith: It’s easy. |
| Chuck: And asking questions really helps improve progress. Let’s listen to conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| A (excited): Guck mal! Ich habe eine Antwort auf meine Bewerbung! |
| D: Ah, ein Brief vom Institute of English? |
| A: Ja. Hoffentlich bekomme ich den Job! |
| A: Hmm. |
| D: Was schreiben sie? |
| A: Lies selbst... |
| D: „Guten Tag, Herr Marshmellow, |
| D: Vielen Dank für Ihre Bewerbung und Ihr Interesse, unser Team zu verstärken. Wir haben uns sehr darüber gefreut. |
| D: Wir haben sehr viele interessante Bewerbungen erhalten und die Entscheidung fällt uns nicht leicht. Deshalb bitten wir Sie um Geduld. Wir werden uns in den nächsten Wochen bei Ihnen melden. |
| D: Wenn Sie in der Zwischenzeit Fragen haben, rufen Sie mich bitte an. |
| D: Freundliche Grüße, Frau Michely. |
| Abroad there are many values associated with Germany. Some of them are right and some just quite aren’t there anymore. Let’s go over them. |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| A (excited): Guck mal! Ich habe eine Antwort auf meine Bewerbung! |
| D: Ah, ein Brief vom Institute of English? |
| A: Ja. Hoffentlich bekomme ich den Job! |
| A: Hmm. |
| D: Was schreiben sie? |
| A: Lies selbst... |
| D: „Guten Tag, Herr Marshmellow, |
| D: Vielen Dank für Ihre Bewerbung und Ihr Interesse, unser Team zu verstärken. Wir haben uns sehr darüber gefreut. |
| D: Wir haben sehr viele interessante Bewerbungen erhalten und die Entscheidung fällt uns nicht leicht. Deshalb bitten wir Sie um Geduld. Wir werden uns in den nächsten Wochen bei Ihnen melden. |
| D: Wenn Sie in der Zwischenzeit Fragen haben, rufen Sie mich bitte an. |
| D: Freundliche Grüße, Frau Michely. |
| Judith: Jetzt mit Übersetzung. Now with the translation. |
| A (excited): Guck mal! Ich habe eine Antwort auf meine Bewerbung! |
| A (excited): Have a look! I have an answer to my application! |
| D: Ah, ein Brief vom Institute of English? |
| D: Ah, a letter from the Institute of English? |
| A: Ja. Hoffentlich bekomme ich den Job! |
| A: Yes. I hope I will get the job! |
| A: Hmm. |
| A: Hmm. |
| D: Was schreiben sie? |
| D: What are they writing? |
| A: Lies selbst... |
| A: Read for yourself… |
| D: „Guten Tag, Herr Marshmellow, |
| D: „Good day, Mr Marshmellow, |
| D: Vielen Dank für Ihre Bewerbung und Ihr Interesse, unser Team zu verstärken. Wir haben uns sehr darüber gefreut. |
| D: Thank you very much for your application and interest in strengthening our team. We are very happy about that. |
| D: Wir haben sehr viele interessante Bewerbungen erhalten und die Entscheidung fällt uns nicht leicht. Deshalb bitten wir Sie um Geduld. Wir werden uns in den nächsten Wochen bei Ihnen melden. |
| D: We have received a lot of interesting applications and the decision isn't easy for us. Therefore we ask for your patience. We will get back to you in the next weeks. |
| D: Wenn Sie in der Zwischenzeit Fragen haben, rufen Sie mich bitte an. |
| D: If you have any questions in the meantime, please call me. |
| D: Freundliche Grüße, Frau Michely. |
| D: Best regards, Mrs Michely. |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Chuck: Abroad there are many values associated with Germany. Some of them are right and some just quite aren’t there anymore. Let’s go over them. |
| Judith: First the things that Americans might always tell me are like, things like discipline, industriousness, preciseness, all of these are associated with Germany, but really they were important to the Prussian Empire in Northern Germany. The Prussian Empire disappeared in the 19th century though and it never reached Southern Germany so don’t be surprised if many modern-day Germans are not like this. |
| Chuck: Alright. Then let’s think about being organized and being on time. |
| Judith: Oh, this is still very important. |
| Chuck: Yeah, I’d say being more than five minutes late is a big no-no. And many people are unhappy if they can’t plan out their days beforehand. |
| Judith: Yeah. If you want to stay with someone in Germany or if you want to do something together, then you should let them know as far as in advance as you can. |
| Chuck: Yeah. In fact, even yesterday we were going somewhere and we noticed that we’d be more than 10 minutes late, so we just immediately decided to take a taxi. |
| Judith: First, actually we called them to say that we were 10 minutes late, and afterwards, when we thought it would be like 20 minutes, we decided to get a taxi. |
| Chuck: It’s really critical and might even be worth paying to be sure that you’re on time. |
| Judith: The last thing that people expect from Germans is brutal honesty. And you can still observe this with some people. Generally, I’d say people in Germany value honest answers and many Germans will still give you a feedback more openly than you might be accustomed to. |
| Chuck: Yeah, I think just in the way of Germany, people will find that in New York City they are just a lot more brutally honest with you than you’re expecting if you come from another part of the country. So let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: First word, [Hoffentlich]. |
| Chuck: Hopefully. |
| Judith: [Hoffentlich, hoffentlich] next [Bekommen] |
| Chuck: To receive. |
| Judith: [Bekommen, bekommen] Don’t confuse this with “to become”. [Verstärken] |
| Chuck: To strengthen. |
| Judith: [Verstärken, verstärken] [Darüber] |
| Chuck: “About that” or “above that”. |
| Judith: [Darüber, darüber] [Entscheiden] |
| Chuck: To decide. |
| Judith: [Entscheiden, entscheiden] [Fallen] |
| Chuck: To fall. |
| Judith: [Fallen, fallen] [Leicht] |
| Chuck: “Light” or “easy”. |
| Judith: [Leicht, leicht] [Deshalb] |
| Chuck: Therefore. |
| Judith: [Deshalb, deshalb] [Bitten] |
| Chuck: “To request” or “beg”. |
| Judith: [Bitten, bitten] [Geduld] |
| Chuck: Patience. |
| Judith: [Geduld, Geduld, die Geduld] this is feminine. [Melden] |
| Chuck: “To report”, “notify” or “message”. |
| Judith: [Melden, melden] [Zwischenzeit] |
| Chuck: Meantime. |
| Judith: [Zwischenzeit, Zwischenzeit] This is also feminine. |
| Chuck: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Judith: The first phrase we’ll look at is [Es fällt mir leicht]. |
| Chuck: I deal well with it. |
| Judith: In the text we had [Es fällt uns nicht leicht]. So that would be “We don’t deal well with it”. |
| Chuck: How about [Freundliche Grüße]? |
| Judith: Yes, that’s the second thing I wanted to talk about. We already had [Mit freundlichen Grüßen], this is the standard ending for formal German letters. [Freundliche Grüße] is a variation on that, it does come across quite as formal or quite as trite. It’s still formal enough for business correspondents but you may not want to use it for the very first letter you send someone. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Chuck: I think German words starting with DA or DAR are often a problem area for English speakers. |
| Judith: Yeah, and there are lots of them. I mean [Dafür] and [Darüber], but they are also an equivalent for every single preposition. The DA part always means “that”, so [Dafür] is… |
| Chuck: For that. |
| Judith: And [Darüber]… |
| Chuck: About that. |
| Judith: Similarly, you can form words based on every preposition. |
| Chuck: So, just remember, if you want to say [Für das] or [Über das], don’t do it. It’s just wrong. You need to change it into [Dafür] and [Darüber]. I remember I had a lot of problems remembering this when I first came to Germany. |
| Judith: The recipe is simple: if the preposition start with a consonant, then you just add DA, D-A, and if it starts with a vowel, then you need an additional R, so the prefix is DAR, like D-A-R. |
| Chuck: Could you give me some examples of that? That seems complicated. |
| Judith: Oh, it’s not complicated For example, [Auf das] becomes [Darauf]. |
| Chuck: Because [Da-auf] sounds just really weird. |
| Judith: It’s hard to pronounce, so [Darauf]. And similarly [An-das] becomes [Daran]. [Von-das] is [Davon]. See, there you don’t have the R because [Von] starts with a consonant. |
| Chuck: Cause [Dar-von] sounds really weird. |
| Judith: And [Dagegen] “against that”, [Dazu] “to that”. |
| Chuck: I wish I really would have done this [inaudible 00:06:19] when I first came to Germany. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Chuck: I had to learn all these ones separately. |
| Judith: And they’re really useful. I mean they replace sentence parts. For example, if you have a sentence [Ich weiß nichts von dem Unfall]. |
| Chuck: I don't know anything about that accident. |
| Judith: Then you can say [Ich weiß nichts davon]. |
| Chuck: I don't know anything about that. |
| Judith: So “about that” becomes [Davon] because otherwise you would say [Von dem Unfall]. You have to match the preposition. Normally, “about that” could also be [Darüber] but here you would normally [Von dem Unfall] and that’s why you have to use [Davon]. Always choose the word that contains the preposition that you’re replacing. |
Outro |
| Chuck: That just about does it for today. Ok, some of our listeners already know about the most powerful tool on GermanPod101.com. |
| Judith: Line by line audio. |
| Chuck: The perfect tool for rapidly improving listening comprehension. |
| Judith: By listening to lines of the conversation again and again. |
| Chuck: Listen until every word and syllable becomes clear. Basically, we break down the dialogue into comprehensible, bite-sized sentences. |
| Judith: You can try the line by line audio in the Premium Learning Center at GermanPod101.com. |
| Chuck: And they are bite sized, you can chew them all day long. See you next time! |
| Judith: Bis nächstes Mal! |
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