Learn how to reason in modern German
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Newbie Series Lesson 8. |
| Judith: [Willkommen zurück!] |
| Chuck: Welcome back. |
| Judith: It’s Tuesday again, so time for another Newbie lesson. |
| Chuck: So Judith, what’s today’s lesson about? |
| Judith: Well, the last Newbie lesson was about expressing what you want so it makes sense now that we’re going to dell further into expressing what you don’t want. I seem to remember that Lena has a hard time evading Michael’s suggestions. |
| Chuck: Yeah. I hope she won’t refuse to go out with him much longer. |
| Judith: Today she will teach us new ways of reasoning. |
| Chuck: New reasoning… that doesn’t sound good. |
| Judith: Michael also tries some reasoning of his own. |
| Chuck: Alright, let’s see what this brings. Just to get us situated, here’s the beginning of the phone call from the last lesson. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Lena Wagner: Lena Wagner. |
| Michael Schmidt: Hi. Hier ist Michael. Wie geht es dir? |
| Lena Wagner: Gut. Danke. Und dir? |
| Michael Schmidt: Auch gut. Lena, ich möchte dich treffen. Hast du Zeit? |
| Lena Wagner: Nein, ich habe jetzt noch zwei Termine. |
| Michael Schmidt: Dann lass uns morgen ins Kino gehen. Welchen Film möchtest du sehen? |
| Lena Wagner: Ich habe keine Lust auf Kino. |
| Judith: Now the new dialogue. |
| Michael Schmidt: Hmm. Wieso hast du keine Lust auf Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Es ist zu teuer und draußen ist es so schön. |
| Michael Schmidt: Dann lass uns in ein Café gehen. Kennst du das Café Antabli? |
| Lena Wagner: Nein. Das kenne ich noch nicht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Es ist cool. Die Cocktails dort sind sehr lecker und nicht teuer. |
| Judith: Now read slowly. |
| Michael Schmidt: Hmm. Wieso hast du keine Lust auf Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Es ist zu teuer und draußen ist es so schön. |
| Michael Schmidt: Dann lass uns in ein Café gehen. Kennst du das Café Antabli? |
| Lena Wagner: Nein. Das kenne ich noch nicht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Es ist cool. Die Cocktails dort sind sehr lecker und nicht teuer. |
| Judith: Now with the translation. |
| Judith: Hmm. Wieso hast du keine Lust auf Kino? |
| Chuck: “So why don’t you have any desire to go to the theatre?” |
| Judith: Es ist zu teuer. |
| Chuck: “It’s too expensive.” |
| Judith: Und draußen ist es so schön. |
| Chuck: “And it’s so nice outside.” |
| Judith: Dann lass uns in ein Café gehen. |
| Chuck: “Then let’s go to a café.” |
| Judith: Kennst du das Café Antabli? |
| Chuck: “Do you know the Café Antabli?” |
| Judith: Nein. Das kenne ich noch nicht. |
| Chuck: “No. I don’t know that yet.” |
| Judith: Es ist cool. |
| Chuck: “It’s cool.” |
| Judith: Die Cocktails dort sind sehr lecker und nicht teuer. |
| Chuck: “The cocktails there very delicious and not expensive.” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Chuck: Speaking of cocktails, I think it would be very interesting to discuss alcoholic drinks, don’t you think so? |
| Judith: Yeah, let’s do that. Now, I can tell you the drinking age in Germany, Switzerland and most parts of Austria is 16 years. |
| Chuck: Really? That young? |
| Judith: Yeah. It means that when you are 16 you can buy most types of alcohol. All except the really hard stuff. |
| Chuck: It’s actually kind of strange that in the States you can drive when you’re 16 but you have to wait till you’re 21 to drink alcohol. It seems to me like it would take more responsibility to drive than it would to drink. |
| Judith: I hear that in the states you can also be sent to war before you’re allowed to drink. |
| Chuck: Yeah, it’s quite strange too. |
| Judith: Anyway, in Germany the age is 16 years and a lot of people actually ignore it. Many people don’t even know what the age is, and in Bavaria especially beer is drunk by just about anybody. |
| Chuck: Yeah, you might find that, say, the Oktoberfest, for example, that you see a five year old kid with their parents drinking beer. |
| Judith: That’s because beer is almost considered a kind of food seeing that’s based on grain, you know, healthy stuff like wheat. If you see a kid drinking alcohol like beer or something, it’s not actually a violation of the law because it’s legal if the parent buys the alcohol or the legal guardian. There’s no restriction on the drinking age, there is only a restriction on who may buy the stuff. And you’re right, people just love beer. For men, it’s kind of a sacred association to watch soccer on TV while drinking beer. |
| Chuck: And one thing that you’ll notice is that they pretty much always drink German beer. The idea of drinking foreign beer is almost just wrong here. Now if you mention that you like Belgian beer or Czech beer or something, people just tend to look at you funny. |
| Judith: Well, a lot of people think that German beer is about as good as it gets. Why try foreign beer? |
| Chuck: In our local supermarket you can find lots and lots of different varieties of beer. And I think about the only foreign beer there is there are two types of Mexican beer. |
| Judith: There’re really a lot of different brands in Germany. I'm sure there must be more than a 1,000. Most cities have their own brand of beer that’s brewed there, and some eve several. But of course most of these brands are available locally only. And there’s a kind of antagonism associated with it. For example, you shouldn’t try to buy a [Kölsch] beer in a Dusseldorf pub. That is a beer from Cologne. |
| Chuck: But you’ll often find that drinking wine is very popular as well, and in contrast to the beer, it doesn’t matter which country’s wine you drink. For example, French and Italian wine is just as popular as German wine. And you’ll also notice that the German white wine is the most popular. |
| Judith: When people drink white wine it’s very often from Germany. When they drink red wine it’s usually from France or from Italy or the like. |
| Chuck: With them together, beer and wine, the average German consumes 140 liters of beer or wine every year. |
| Judith: That’s a lot. I mean, can you imagine? It’s almost like you drink a liter of either beer or wine every other day. |
| Chuck: It’s also quite common to drink beer or wine with a meal, even a normal lunch. You can just have a nice half a liter of beer. |
| Judith: But you have to be careful about what you match. The beer usually goes with the common, simple food, people’s food, and the wine is more associated with restaurant food and the like. |
| Chuck: Toward the south it’s more common to drink beer for lunch, especially if you have to go back to work in the afternoon. |
| Judith: Over here I don’t think it’s that acceptable to get drunk over lunch. |
| Chuck: You don’t get drunk, you just have a beer. When I lived in [Baden Württemberg], it was quite common to go out and just have a beer with a meal. Or even… we had what was called [Weißwürstcchen], parties for breakfast, where we’d have white sausage with beer for breakfast at work. |
| Judith: This is just amazing the kind of customs they have in the south. |
| Chuck: The food in the south is quite different from in the north of Germany, although they have the national foods too. |
| Judith: Yeah. Now about other alcoholic beverages apart from beer and wine, they are not consumed as often at the moment. There is a trend of youths drinking more and more high proof alcohol at an even younger age but… Also, mostly not the really hard stuff but a mix, they’re called [Alkopops] in German it means mix of, like, vodka and soft drinks. And this attracts a lot of young customers. |
| Chuck: I like smell of [Smirnov Ice]. But one thing I don’t like in Germany is it’s so expensive. Why is that? |
| Judith: That’s because the government has been trying to combat youth drinking and they put a tax of 80 or 90 eurocents on each bottle. |
| Chuck: That’d be over a dollar tax on each bottle? |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Wow. |
| Judith: Of course the result is mostly that youths just get a bottle of vodka and a bottle of Sprite or something and then mix it. |
| Chuck: Yeah, so it doesn’t have that much of effect, just the alcohol companies lose money, I guess. So how do I say “I want to get drunk” in German? |
| Judith: It’s [Ich möchte mich besaufen]. [Besaufen] comes from the word [Saufen] which is how an animal would drink, it implies drinking in a very messy way or drinking a whole lot. And [Besaufen] is only “to get drunk”. But really, you shouldn’t be learning this kind of word. I’d prefer if you learned some really useful words instead. |
| Chuck: Like what? Why is the phrase “I want to get drunk” not useful to know? |
| Judith: Like today’s vocabulary, of course. I’ll just go ahead cause I know that you’re not going to ask me to go over the vocabulary. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: The first word is wieso. |
| Chuck: Why. |
| Judith: wieso. |
| Chuck: Why. |
| Judith: The next word is zu. |
| Chuck: “Too”, as in too much. |
| Judith: zu. |
| Chuck: Too. |
| Judith: One way you could use that, for example, is zu teuer. teuer is the next word. |
| Chuck: Expensive. |
| Judith: teuer. |
| Chuck: Expensive. |
| Judith: zu teuer is… |
| Chuck: Too expensive. |
| Judith: That’s something you could tell a merchant, for example, if you want to try to haggle, but normally you can’t do much haggling in Germany. |
| Chuck: You might just only be able to get that at a flea market or something, where you can haggle for a price. |
| Judith: Yeah. At a flea market definitely, but not at normal shops or anything like that. Now, the next word is draußen. |
| Chuck: Outside. |
| Judith: draußen. |
| Chuck: Outside. |
| Judith: Next, schön. |
| Chuck: “Nice” or “pretty”. |
| Judith: schön. |
| Chuck: “Nice” or “pretty”. |
| Judith: You could say [Draußen ist es schön]. |
| Chuck: It’s nice outside. |
| Judith: The next word is kennen. |
| Chuck: To know. |
| Judith: kennen. |
| Chuck: “To know”. This is like to know a person or a thing. |
| Judith: For example, [Kennen wir uns?], “Do we know each other?” |
| Chuck: As opposed to [Ich weiß die Richtung]. |
| Judith: Yeah, be sure not to confuse [Wissen] and [Kennen], but then you haven’t learned [Wissen] yet. |
| Chuck: And [Ich weiß die Richtung] means “I know the direction” which is what males would try to say if they’re trying to figure out where to go in Germany. |
| Judith: The [Richtung] they know might actually be [Dort]. |
| Chuck: There. |
| Judith: dort. |
| Chuck: There. |
| Judith: The next word is lecker. |
| Chuck: “Yummy” or “delicious”. |
| Judith: lecker. |
| Chuck: Delicious. |
| CULTURAL INSIGHT |
| Judith: Chuck, what do you find [Lecker]? |
| Chuck: One thing I really like is [Schnitzel mit Bratkartoffeln]. It’s a way of cooking meat, with a special kind of potatoes, with a nice sauce on it. |
| Judith: It’s not a very special kind of potatoes. It’s potatoes that are cut up and fried in a pan. |
| Chuck: They taste very special. |
| Judith: You may also add [Speck] or something, or egg to make them taste even better. |
| Chuck: So what’s [Speck]? |
| Judith: [Speck] is “bacon”. |
| Chuck: Oh ok. |
| Judith: There are a lot of yummy German foods. We could go on and on. |
| Chuck: Best to come to Germany and try them out for yourself. |
| Judith: Yeah, that’s right. Now, we just covered German breakfast foods in the last beginner lesson. did you actually listen to that? And do you need a refresher of what we taught you there? If so, try the dialogue track that is exclusively available for Premium Members. This way you can just listen to the dialogue and you can refresh what was said there. |
| Chuck: Of course, this lesson we’ll have a dialogue track as well which you can use for a quick review of the storyline. If you want to review just the grammar or just the vocabulary, have a look at the summaries in the PDF instead. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: Now let’s look at today’s grammar. When you don’t like or don’t want something, express your reasons using denn. |
| Chuck: “Because.” |
| Judith: And zu. |
| Chuck: “Too,” as in “too much.” |
| Judith: And let’s have some examples sentences. Ich möchte nicht ins Kino gehen, denn es ist zu teuer. |
| Chuck: “I don’t want to go to the movies because it’s too expensive.” |
| Judith: Note that Denn es ist zu teuer. “Because it is too expensive.” Ich habe keine Lust auf die Arbeit, denn die Arbeit ist zu langweilig. |
| Chuck: “I'm not in the mood for this work because it’s too boring.” |
| Judith: Zu langweilig. “Too boring.” Of course you can also use adjectives in other ways. For example, das Essen ist lecker. |
| Chuck: “The food is delicious.” |
| Judith: Das Bier ist sehr lecker. |
| Chuck: “The beer is very delicious.” |
| Judith: Die Teilchen sind nicht lecker. |
| Chuck: “The pastries aren’t delicious.” |
| Judith: Die Getränke sind so lecker dort. |
| Chuck: “The drinks are so delicious there.” |
| Judith: Die Mahlzeiten sind nicht lecker genug. |
| Chuck: “The meals are not delicious enough.” But why is the article always changing? I heard das Essen, das Bier, die Teilchen, die Arbeit and so on. |
| Judith: The definite article “the” can either be der, die or das for singular German nouns. It reflects the gender of the word. Words are classified as either masculine (male), feminine (female), or neuter (neutral). Masculine nouns get the article der. Feminine nouns get the article die and neuter nouns get the article das. In plural however, the article will always be die. You shouldn’t worry too much about the different forms of “the” just yet at this point. Just try to absorb the language, and keep in mind that die is for plural. |
| Chuck: Oh yeah, the beginner series also has detailed explanations of grammar points such as this, whereas the Newbie Series focuses on getting you a feel for the language and letting you start speaking in German as soon as possible. |
| Judith: Alright. Let’s listen to the dialogue one more time. |
| Michael Schmidt: Hmm. Wieso hast du keine Lust auf Kino? |
| Lena Wagner: Es ist zu teuer und draußen ist es so schön. |
| Michael Schmidt: Dann lass uns in ein Café gehen. Kennst du das Café Antabli? |
| Lena Wagner: Nein. Das kenne ich noch nicht. |
| Michael Schmidt: Es ist cool. Die Cocktails dort sind sehr lecker und nicht teuer. |
Outro |
| Chuck: Hmm, yummy cocktails. That reminds me, I have an appointment at [Antabli]. See you guys next week. |
| Judith: Hey, Chuck. Chuck, come back. Chuck. I can’t believe this. He really left me all alone here to finish up the lesson. Well, what can I do? I’ll just remind you to leave a comment underneath the lesson, best leave a really nasty comment to Chuck about his work ethics. We have to get a handle on this guy. Anyway, please tune in again for the next Newbie lesson, and meanwhile don’t forget to practice. Bis bald! |
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