Learn how to express past events and opinion
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Newbie Series Lesson 15. |
| Judith: [Willkommen zurück!] |
| Chuck: Welcome back, listeners. This is the 15th lesson of GermanPod101 Newbie Series. The Newbie Series focuses on the essentials of German for anyone who wants to start learning. |
| Judith: We teach you how to express yourself in a lot of basic situations. |
| Chuck: Today Lena and Michael continue to compare their tastes while waiting for their drinks to arrive. |
| Judith: Let’s get into the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Michael Schmidt: Gehst du gerne ins Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Normalerweise ja. |
| Michael Schmidt: Was heißt normalerweise? |
| Lena Wagner: Wenn es draußen regnet und der Film gut ist. 10000 BC zum Beispiel war schlecht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Ja, der Film war langweilig. Ich mag Thriller lieber. |
| Lena Wagner: Der Film war nicht langweilig, aber die Details stimmen alle nicht. |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| Michael Schmidt: Gehst du gerne ins Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Normalerweise ja. |
| Michael Schmidt: Was heißt normalerweise? |
| Lena Wagner: Wenn es draußen regnet und der Film gut ist. 10000 BC zum Beispiel war schlecht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Ja, der Film war langweilig. Ich mag Thriller lieber. |
| Lena Wagner: Der Film war nicht langweilig, aber die Details stimmen alle nicht. |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Gehst du gerne ins Kino? |
| Chuck: Do you like to go to the cinema? |
| Judith: Normalerweise ja. |
| Chuck: Normally yes. |
| Judith: Was heißt normalerweise? |
| Chuck: What do you mean normally? |
| Judith: Wenn es draußen regnet und der Film gut ist. |
| Chuck: When it is raining outside and the film is good. |
| Judith: 10000 BC zum Beispiel war schlecht. |
| Chuck: 10,000 B.C., for example, was bad. |
| Judith: Ja, der Film war langweilig. Ich mag Thriller lieber. |
| Chuck: Yeah the film was boring. I’d rather watch a thriller. |
| Judith: Der Film war nicht langweilig aber die Details stimmen alle nicht. |
| Chuck: The film wasn’t boring but the details just weren’t right. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Chuck: So let’s look at the vocabulary in that lesson. |
| Judith: The first word is normalerweise. |
| Chuck: Normally. |
| Judith: normalerweise. |
| Chuck: Normally. |
| Judith: The next word is heißen. |
| Chuck: To mean. |
| Judith: Note that this only means “to mean” in the third person. If you say [Ich heiße] it doesn’t mean “I mean”, it means “I am called, my name is”. But [Es heißt] is “it means”. The next word is wenn. |
| Chuck: “When” or “if”. Note that you can’t use this word for a question. |
| Judith: If you want to ask a question with the word “when”, then you would use [Wann]. The next word is regnen. |
| Chuck: To rain. |
| Judith: regnen. |
| Chuck: To rain. |
| Judith: The noun for this, “the rain”, is [Regen]. |
| Chuck: You would normally say [Es regnet] to say “it’s raining”. |
| Judith: That’s right. Next a really important phrase, zum Beispiel. |
| Chuck: For example. |
| Judith: zum Beispiel. zum Beispiel. |
| Chuck: “For example”. And you’ll sometimes see this abbreviated as z.B. |
| Judith: I think you mean [z.B.]. Small Z and capital B. |
| Chuck: I think our American listeners will see a Z there. |
| Judith: Is that so? Well, I'm thinking of everybody else. |
| Chuck: Well that’s just bad. |
| Judith: Oh, the next word is “bad”. Yeah. |
| Chuck: What’s wrong with the next word? |
| Judith: It’s schlecht. |
| Chuck: Oh, that’s “bad”. |
| Judith: schlecht. |
| Chuck: Bad. |
| Judith: Would you also say it’s [Langweilig]? |
| Chuck: Boring? |
| Judith: langweilig. |
| Chuck: “Boring”. When you talk about [Z] then yes, I think it’s boring. |
| Judith: Come on, let’s not argue about such details. Detail. |
| Chuck: Detail. |
| Judith: Detail. |
| Chuck: Detail. |
| Judith: Note that in German, the word “detail”, [Detail], is spelled with a capital S, but otherwise just the same. Just the pronunciation is different and it’s not even a standard German pronunciation because Germans like to use the original pronunciation of a word, and in this case it comes from French, so it’s [Detail]. However, the original pronunciation rule does not apply to plurals because for plural Germans will say [Details]. So the next word is stimmen. |
| Chuck: Be right. |
| Judith: stimmen. |
| Chuck: Be right. |
| Judith: And you can’t use this as [Ich stimme], “I'm right”, you have to use [Das stimmt], third person only, just like [Heißen]. Das stimmt. |
| Chuck: That’s right. |
| Judith: And the last word for today is alle. |
| Chuck: “All” or “everybody”. |
| Judith: alle. |
| Chuck: “All” or “everybody”. |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Judith: I'm sure all of you have already gone to a cinema, but have you gone to a cinema in Germany? |
| Chuck: I would doubt it. |
| Judith: Well, as a tourist, yeah. Probably you won’t have time for it, but maybe if you’re staying for a month or something, it’s definitely an experience you should try. Watch some good German movies while you’re at it. |
| Chuck: Yeah, it’s better than watching the dubbed ones from America. |
| Judith: Yeah, there’s one thing I don’t like about German cinemas, actually, is that all the foreign language movies are dubbed into German. But there’s a way around it, at least in the bigger cities like Berlin definitely. You can find showings in the original language or with subtitles, you just have to look for the letters OV, original version, in the film title or maybe OMU, which stands for [Original mit Untertiteln], a showing with subtitles. |
| Chuck: Another thing I don’t like about Germany is you have these weird seat reservations. |
| Judith: What’s weird about seat reservations? |
| Chuck: Well, it’s like you can’t just sit wherever you want to, you have to sit in these strange places. Like the other day, we went to a theatre and we got row 1, seats 1 and 2. |
| Judith: Well, I think that’s because the clerk didn’t like us. |
| Chuck: Yeah, probably. Cause we didn’t have exact change, I think it was. |
| Judith: It’s annoying, but at least there’s no hassle about who wants to sit where. And you have to show up really, really early because your seat will still be there. |
| Chuck: Yeah. |
| Judith: You can spend some time buying some foods, for example, like popcorn. |
| Chuck: Except the trouble is the popcorn’s sweet here, not the buttery and salty like in the States. |
| Judith: What’s the problem with that? It’s great. Yummy, sweet popcorn. Honey-based. Now, what you have is disgusting. I tried it in Canada and it was worst the shock of my life to discover that the popcorn I bought… You know, I bought this huge pack to share with some friends, and it was… I took one bite and I was, “Bleah, what’s this stuff?!” Here, in Germany it’s not even known that people might be enjoying their popcorn in a different way somewhere else. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I still prefer the salty ones and I'm just glad that around the corner from where I live, I found a video rental store that sells traditional, American popcorn, buttered and salted. |
| Judith: As long as you’re eating it. What I also like is the other kind of sweets you can get at a cinema. For example, also ice cream. Before the movie starts, they have a lot of advertisements, and maybe in the advertisements there’s one ad for this ice cream. And then you think, “Well, where can I get ice cream now?” And just at that moment, there’re people coming into the room and they’ll offer you that ice cream, and you can buy it right from your seat. |
| Chuck: Yeah. Another interesting thing is you’ll find that they sell beer in the cinema here as well, and it’s totally normal. |
| Judith: What’s not normal about that? |
| Chuck: It’s supposed to be a family place. |
| Judith: Really? Well, a few movies there will be… like for six year olds, and considerably more movies for like 16 year olds and over. It’s just that people like to enjoy a beer with their movie. |
| Chuck: And also beers tend to be about the same price as the other drinks. |
| Judith: Well, all of them are extremely expensive. You don’t need to look at that. Even the foods, you can pay like three times the normal price. |
| Chuck: Yes, just like the States. Well, it was a bit surprising to find that the small here is half a liter. |
| Judith: Yeah, that’s not normal. That’s also imported from America. Normally, in Germany, you would get 0,20 or 0,33, it’s the standard size drink, but now there’s a couple of companies like mainly McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King and maybe the cinema chain that say small is currently half a liter, a huge drink. You know, and in any German restaurant you get that as the big, large, extra-large size, you get it in 0.50. |
| Chuck: Yeah, unless you’re drinking wheat beer. Then the standard is half a liter. |
| Judith: Well, for beer there’re special sizes that you should be drinking them at. |
| Chuck: Even the [Maß] which is 1 liter. |
| Judith: Yeah, that’s bad. |
| Chuck: But you won’t get one of those in the movie theater. |
| Judith: Or maybe… |
| Chuck: For beer? |
| Judith: Have you tried getting one in Munich? |
| Chuck: Maybe in Munich. |
| Judith: Now enough with the fun stuff. Let’s look at the grammar actually. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: Today’s grammar, we’re going to look at the verb sein. |
| Chuck: To be. |
| Judith: You already saw the forms es ist. |
| Chuck: It is. |
| Judith: And Sie sind. |
| Chuck: You are (formally). |
| Judith: There’re two forms that you’re presently missing and that is ich bin. |
| Chuck: I am |
| Judith: And du bist. |
| Chuck: You are (informally). |
| Judith: So all the forms that you’ll need are ich bin, du bist, es ist, Sie sind. |
| Chuck: So I guess I really can say ich bin ein Berliner. |
| Judith: Yes. If you want to say that you’re a jelly donut. |
| Chuck: Well, it’s actually a myth that the crowd misunderstood Kennedy when he said ich bin ein Berliner cause they actually did understand him as saying he’s someone from Berlin. |
| Judith: Yeah. Well, he should have said ich bin Berliner because you don’t use an article with that. But the thing is that there’s very few occasions where somebody would declare himself a kind of pastry, so from the context it was clear. Now let’s have some examples of these extra forms of the verb. Let’s start with ich bin Judith. |
| Chuck: Ich bin eine Banane. |
| Judith: No. |
| Chuck: What? “I'm a banana.” That’s another valid sentence. |
| Judith: But when would you use that? Ich bin Judith is very useful. I’ve said it countless times in my life. |
| Chuck: I’ve never said Ich bin Judith. |
| Judith: Ok. Then let’s say du bist Chuck. |
| Chuck: Ok. Du bist Chuck. |
| Judith: Ich bin Judith. Ich bin nicht Chuck. |
| Chuck: Ah ich bin Chuck. |
| Judith: Yeah that’s right. |
| Chuck: Okay. |
| Judith: Ich bin im Studio. |
| Chuck: Ich bin Amerikaner. |
| Judith: Du bist auch im Studio. |
| Chuck: Das Studio ist schön. |
| Judith: Die Germanpod101 Podcasts sind interessant. At least we hope they are. In this lesson’s dialogue, you’ve also encountered the verb in its past tense. You know the tense that you need when talking about things that are past and those forms are ich war. |
| Chuck: I was |
| Judith: Du warst. |
| Chuck: You were |
| Judith: Es war. |
| Chuck: It was |
| Judith: Sie waren. |
| Chuck: You were (formally). |
| Judith: You know that these are more regular. In fact they work just the same as möchte in the endings they take. Let’s hear the forms again. Ich war. |
| Chuck: I was. |
| Judith: Du warst. |
| Chuck: You were. |
| Judith: Es war. |
| Chuck: It was. |
| Judith: Sie waren. |
| Chuck: You were (formally). |
| Judith: And now some examples. [Ich war gestern in Hamburg] |
| Chuck: [Ich war einkaufen] |
| Judith: [Die Sachen waren sehr teuer] |
| Chuck: [Du warst im Kino] |
| Judith: [Der Film war interessant] |
| Chuck: Well, I don’t actually know. I think there was a debate about whether the film was interesting or not. |
| Judith: Really? I believe Lena clearly said that it was. By the way, if you are ever unsure of something that was said in our lessons, the PDF transcript can probably answer your question. And if any doubt remains, just post about it in the comment section or in the forum and we’ll provide further information. Or maybe another helpful community member will answer it even before we can. |
| Chuck: We could even answer you whether I'm a banana or not. |
| Judith: I don’t think they need to ask that. |
| Chuck: Well, anyway, as you know, we value active participation and frequently have surprises in store for those who are active. GermanPod101 is not just about Judith and me, it’s about everybody helping each other to learn German. |
| Judith: And making it an enjoyable experience. |
| Chuck: Speaking of enjoyable, let’s revisit that conversation Michael just had with Lena. |
| Michael Schmidt: Gehst du gerne ins Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Normalerweise ja. |
| Michael Schmidt: Was heißt normalerweise? |
| Lena Wagner: Wenn es draußen regnet und der Film gut ist. 10000 BC zum Beispiel war schlecht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Ja, der Film war langweilig. Ich mag Thriller lieber. |
| Lena Wagner: Der Film war nicht langweilig, aber die Details stimmen alle nicht. |
Outro |
| Chuck: Well, I hope you’ll find that all the details are correct on GermanPod101. |
| Judith: If they’re not, just write us a message and we’ll fix things. So I hope you enjoyed this lesson. |
| Chuck: Yes. See you next week. |
| Judith: [Bis nächste Woche]. |
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