Learn all about the perfect tense of the German verb "to have"
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: Chuck here, intermediate series season three lesson five, don't be mistaken for a German jelly donut. |
| Judith: Hello everyone, I'm Judith and welcome to germanbod101.com. |
| Chuck: With us you'll learn 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 talk to colleagues at a bar. |
| Judith: This conversation takes place at a German pub. |
| Chuck: This conversation is between Mr. Jones and his new German colleagues, the speakers are not too familiar with each other yet, therefore they will be speaking formal German. Let's listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Bayer: Und, wie schmeckt Ihnen die Berliner Weiße? |
| Jones: Oh ja, sehr gut. |
| ... |
| Bayer: Ah, da kommt Frau Weber. Sie sitzt auch bei uns im Büro. |
| Jones: Ja, ich erkenne sie wieder. |
| Bayer: Frau Weber, hallo! |
| Weber: Ah, Frau Bayer, hallo. Hallo Herr Jones. |
| Jones: Hallo. |
| Weber: Tut mir leid, dass ich etwas zu spät komme. Mein Auto ist nicht angesprungen. Sind Sie schon lange hier? |
| Bayer: Nein, ich bin seit 15 Minuten hier und Herr Jones ist auch eben erst gekommen. |
| Weber: Ach, gut. Ich hole mir kurz ein Bier an der Bar... |
| Weber: Herr Jones, wie hat Ihnen Ihr erster Tag bei uns gefallen? |
| Jones: Sehr gut. Alle sind sehr freundlich. |
| Bayer: Wann sind Sie eigentlich nach Berlin gekommen? |
| Jones: Ich bin vor 3 Wochen von New York nach München geflogen. Dort habe ich Freunde besucht. Und vor etwa einer Woche bin ich mit dem Zug nach Berlin gekommen. |
| Bayer: Und sind Sie früher schon einmal in Berlin gewesen? |
| Jones: Ja, aber nur für ein paar Tage. |
| Bayer: Na, dann können Sie ja noch viel entdecken! |
| Jones: Kommen Sie beide aus Berlin? |
| Weber: Nein, ich komme eigentlich aus Hamburg. |
| Bayer: Ich schon, ich bin hier geboren. Ich bin ein Berliner! |
| Bayer: So, how do you like the Berliner Weiße? |
| Jones: Oh yes, it's very good. |
| ... |
| Bayer: Ah, there's Mrs Weber. She is also in our office. |
| Jones: Yes, I recognize her. |
| Bayer: Mrs Weber, hello! |
| Weber: Ah, Mrs Bayer, hello. Hello Mr Jones. |
| Jones: Hello. |
| Weber: I am sorry for being late. My car didn't start. Have you been here for a long time? |
| Bayer: No, I have only been here for 15 minutes and Mr Jones also only just arrived. |
| Weber: Ah, good. I'll just grab a beer from the bar quickly... |
| Weber: Mr Jones, how did you like your first day at our company? |
| Jones: I liked it very much. Everybody is very friendly. |
| Bayer: When did you actually arrive in Berlin? |
| Jones: I flew from New York to Munich three weeks ago. There I visited friends. And approximately a week ago I came to Berlin by train. |
| Bayer: And have you ever been to Berlin before? |
| Jones: Yes, but just for a few days. |
| Bayer: Well, then you can discover a lot still! |
| Jones: Do both of you come from Berlin? |
| Weber: No, I'm actually from Hamburg. |
| Bayer: I do, I was born here. I am a Berliner! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: You traveled from New York to Munich and then came to Berlin but I think you could have traveled just as easily flying to Berlin. |
| Chuck: Sure, although not international flights go straight to Berlin, a lot of them go through Frankfurt instead. |
| Judith: Or Düsseldorf. |
| Chuck: True. |
| Judith: But there are enough flights to Berlin and apart from Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Munich and Berlin. There's also lots and lots of smaller airports which mostly see European traffic. |
| Chuck: Yeah you can also get really cheap flights within Europe like even for say 25 Euros or occasionally even for one Euro plus taxes becomes 25 Euros. |
| Judith: No, even one Euro without taxes. My father took a flight like that to Italy a very short time ago, |
| Chuck: Very nice. |
| Judith: It's amazing what's possible, you should really research that or have an European friend research that. |
| Chuck: yeah, a lot of people especially Americans are afraid to travel between European countries because they think the flights are going to be so expensive but they're really not. But you may have a bit of a ways to get out to the airport. |
| Judith: Yeah, but for within Germany it doesn't really make sense to fly to another German city the distances are just not that big. |
| Chuck: Yeah, the trains are pretty fast here and they're must faster than traveling in the states. |
| Judith: Yes, if you're arriving at an airport say in Frankfurt or Düsseldorf, there are train stations connected immediately to there and even the fast long distance trains stop there. So you can easily say fly into Frankfurt and then immediately take a train to Dresden. |
| Chuck: Yeah, but if you're doing it with the discount lines within Europe be careful of Frankfurt ______ (0:02:18) it's about two hours away from the city of Frankfurt. |
| Judith: It's two hours away from any civilization. I flew through there once. |
| Chuck: Why do you think they're cheap? |
| Judith: The cheap airports are not always that distant, for example the Venice airport, it's right in the middle of the city. |
| Chuck: Actually Berlin's cheap airport is only about a 45 minute ride from the center. |
| Judith: Yeah, just like the other one they're not the big airport. Berlin has two major airports and ______ (0:02:44) |
| Chuck: Then also remember the trains, the trains can reach up to 300 kilometers per hour or 180 miles per hour. |
| Judith: Yes, and they're very reliable, they're very comfortable, you can easily travel by train. |
| Chuck: Yeah, but the trouble you might have is if it snows a whole lot in the winter but every country there's a problem |
| Judith: And the advantage is that the vast majority of German towns are connected to the train network, you pretty much don't have to use buses between the house. |
| Chuck: You can also use trains coming from neighboring countries like from Amsterdam. |
| Judith: Yes, it's quite easy especially because there are no more border controls, they were abolished between almost all the European countries with a notable exception of Switzerland. Passing from Germany through Italy by way of Switzerland is still an annoyance because they're going to search the train but other than that it's very comfortable. You barely notice that you're crossing borders. |
| Chuck: Of course if you're doing a trip across Europe and you really want to really save money another great way to go is with long distance buses. The trouble is it's hard to find out what the best deals are because there are so many different bus companies. |
| Judith: Yes and neither of them is very big. They all only have a couple of departures a day. |
| Chuck: And some don't even run every day for certain lines, you'll find that they have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule something like that. |
| Judith: Yeah, trains are the better way to go in Germany. |
| Chuck: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: First word [Büro]. |
| Chuck: Office. |
| Judith: [Büro, das] this word id neutral and the plural is [Büros] next [erkennen] |
| Chuck: To recognize |
| Judith: [erkennen] the forms are [Er erkennt, Er erkannte, Er hat erkannt] next [spät] |
| Chuck: Late. |
| Judith: [spät] next [anspringen] |
| Chuck: To start, in the context of a car starting. |
| Judith: [anspringen] next [Es springt an, Es sprang an, Er ist angesprungen, eben] |
| Chuck: Just a moment ago, or, indeed. |
| Judith: [eben] next [holen] |
| Chuck: To fetch or pick up. |
| Judith: [holen], next [gefallen] |
| Chuck: To please. |
| Judith: [gefallen] so this a vowel changing verb [Es gefällt, Es gefiel, Es hat gefallen] next [freundlich] |
| Chuck: Friendly. |
| Judith: [freundlich] next [früher] |
| Chuck: Earlier, before, or in the past. |
| Judith: [früher] next [entdecken] |
| Chuck: To discover. |
| Judith: [entdecken] next [geboren sein]. |
| Chuck: To be born. |
| Judith: [geboren sein]. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Chuck: let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Judith: The first phrase we look at is [Tut mir leid]. |
| Chuck: This means I'm sorry or literally, 'It makes me harm'. |
| Judith: Yes it does me harm or it makes me harm. It's not exactly logical but it means I'm sorry and [Tut mir leid] is the informal shortening of [Es tut mir leid] so you're dropping the S and well because it's so informal you should probably avoid it when talking to your boss or I don't know. |
| Chuck: When do you actually use [Tut mir leid] if it's the informal version of the 'I'm sorry'? |
| Judith: What do you mean, you can say it to your friends or to your family. You know when you're not sorry, sorry, sorry. |
| Chuck: Tut mir leid about that, didn't mean to confuse you like that. |
| Judith: Another thing we should talk about is the verb [gefallen]. |
| Chuck: It's tricky because there's no real English equivalent but to please comes closest. |
| Judith: Yes Germans often say [Es gefällt mir]. |
| Chuck: Literally it pleases me. |
| Judith: Typically translated as 'I like it' in English [Es gefällt mir] the subject and the object are swapped if you translated it as 'I like it'. Finally I should say what I just said in the dialogue [Ich bin ein Berliner], it's technically wrong, to call yourself a citizen of Berlin you should just say [Ich bin Berliner] because we don't use any articles with nationalities and like. [Ein Berliner] could be taken to mean a jelly donut because using the word in that sense would require an article but you know Kennedy famously said this phrase when Berlin was divided. |
| He came to Berlin and he called himself a citizen of Berlin and he said [Ich bin ein Berliner] somebody, they taught him wrong German but nobody misunderstood it. Nobody thought he actually called himself a jelly donut, that would be ... |
| Chuck: There's a myth that there were people laughing in the crowd but when you watch the video you can tell no one's laughing, they were all cheering. |
| Judith: Yes, definitely. It meant a lot to the people. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Chuck: The grammar focus of this lesson is the German perfect tense with [sein]. |
| Judith: In intermediate lesson three we already mentioned that the German perfect tense is often formed just like in English with the form of the auxiliary [haben] and the past participle. What we didn't yet talk about are the cases where German verbs use the auxiliary [sein]. |
| Chuck: To be. You may be familiar with this from French where there is also some verbs that use 'to have' and others that use 'to be' for the perfect tense. In German the basic idea you learn is that verbs of motion or verbs that change state 'we used to be' and almost everything else for 'we used to have'. |
| Judith: However there are still exceptions to this rule. |
| Chuck: Let's look at some imperfect forms. |
| Judith: [Ich bin gekommen]. |
| Chuck: I have come. |
| Judith: This is a verb of motion hence it uses [sein] |
| Chuck: I have gone. |
| Judith: Just the same [Ich bin gegangen, Ich bin geflogen] |
| Chuck: I have flown. |
| Judith: Still it's motion [Ich bin gesprungen]. |
| Chuck: I have jumped. |
| Judith: [Ich bin gewesen]. |
| Chuck: I have been. |
| Judith: This is not a verb of motion but it uses [sein] anyway. |
Outro |
| Chuck: That just about does it for today, before we go, we want to tell about a way to drastically improve your pronunciation. |
| Judith: The voice recording tool. |
| Chuck: Yes the voice recording tool in the premium learning center. |
| Judith: Record your voice with the click of a button. |
| Chuck: Then play it back just as easily. |
| Judith: So you record your voice and then you listen to it. |
| Chuck: Compare it to the native speakers. |
| Judith: And adjust your pronunciation. |
| Chuck: This will help you improve your pronunciation fast. So see you next time. |
| Judith: [Bis nächstes Mal]! |
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