Learn how to count
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| M: Hello and welcome to German Survival Phrases brought to you by germanpod101.com, this course is designed to equip you with the language skills and knowledge to enable you to get the most out of your visit to Germany. You will be surprised at how far a little German will go. Now before we jump in, remember to stop by germanpod101.com and there you will find the accompanying PDF and additional info in the post. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment. |
| F: German Survival Phrases. Lesson 15, Counting 1 through 10. This lesson is very straightforward as we are going to cover counting 0 through 10. Let’s jump right in 1 [eins] means 1, 2 [zwei] means 2, 3 [drei] means 3, try to hear the difference between the English word dry and the German [drei] dry [drei] 4 [vier] means 4, 5 [fünf] means 5, 6 [sechs] means 6, 7 [sieben] 7, 8 [acht] means 8, 9 [neun] means 9, 10 [zehn] means 10 and 0 [null] means zero. Counting things in German is very straightforward as the number is followed straight by the object. For example, one person is [eine Person]. The number comes first followed by the object, in this case person. In German, nouns have singular and plural forms. Therefore if there are two people, it would be [zwei Personen] In German, nouns also have a gender. In case of the word for people, the gender is female. However this does not make a difference when counting. The usage of numbers is similar to the one in the English language. You put the numbers before the object as they are important for telephone numbers, cooking recipes or lists. While you will generally see the Arabic numbers in commercials, receipts and telephone numbers, you will also encounter them written out and you may occasionally see Roman numbers. In books or any other form of publication, you will find the words 1 to 13 to be written out and German students are encouraged to use them this way. However, you will very seldomly find a large number written out. 1345 for example is rather unlikely to be written out in a normal text. And there is also one really simple thing about German numbers. The numbers themselves are all female, I mean feminine. Of course, there are also German counting-out rhymes. Unfortunately most of them are either too complex to explain in a Survival phrase lesson or they don’t cover the numbers from 1 to 10 to begin with but you may know one German counting-out rhyme, the song [Zehn kleine Jägermeister] by [Die toten Hosen] is based on the concept of a well known and politically incorrect counting-out rhyme. If you listen to it, you can pick up all the numbers from 10 down to 1 and for those interested in the story, I suggest watching the [comic star] music video. It gives a pretty good sense. For those curious right now, [Jägermeister] which we could translate as a form of wildlife ranger for now is sitting in his cabin. He is lonely and therefore invites nine other [Jägermeister] to join him. They do some reckless things. In every rows, one of them does until in the end there is only one left again. It’s a bit like the 99 Bottles song just with people in considerably lower numbers and for those that are curious why I said that, we could translate [Jägermeister] as a wildlife ranger for now. Well that’s mainly because it isn’t. The term itself is long since out of use and doesn’t really mean a wildlife ranger but more like a professional kind of hunter. It’s still not always likely referred to in the song. The term [Jägermeister] also is a brand name of a famous German liquor made with a lot of herbs and things that are good for one’s digestion. Seeing that the band also made a song about another liquor called [Bommerlunder] this isn’t entirely off the mark especially when you look at the clip and you see the Reindeer like figures which bears strong resemblance to the [Jägermeister] mascot. So maybe that’s what that song actually meant but enough of that. First of all, we don’t want to encourage heavy drinking and second of all, this is more likely to be stuff for a new intermediate lessons and last but not least, our time is running out. |
| M: Okay to close our today’s lesson, we’d like you to practice what you’ve just learned. I provide you with the English equivalent of the phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out aloud. You have a few seconds before I give you the answer. So [Viel Glück] which means good luck in German. |
| F: 1 [eins] 2 [zwei] 3 [drei] 4 [vier] 5 [fünf] 6 [sechs] 7 [sieben] 8 [acht] 9 [neun] 10 [zehn] 0 [null] |
| M: That’s going to do it for today. |
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