Back to learning German – week 2 at Deutsch Akademie

So we had lovely weather here in Munich…Sunday in particular was the best by far since I arrived in Germany. Munich has so many things to do and see if the sun is shining, and I spent most of the day cycling around some of the sites I hadn’t yet seen (Luitpold Park, Olympia Park, and Schloss Nymphenburg) and then catching some rays in the Englisch Garten.  I couldn’t believe how busy it was there – it was difficult to even find a space to sit ;)  So many people and so much going on made for a brilliant atmosphere though.

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During the weekend, I was able to practice speaking a little bit of German to one of my German friends, and have definitely begun to speak German a lot more confidently in restaurants/beer gardens/bars.  I was even able to answer in German when approached by someone in the English Garden asking where my shoes were from!Anyway, so it’s back to learning German at Deutsche Akademie.  Monday was our fifth lesson, and although it’s always good fun, it is starting to get more complicated.  We spent quite a bit of time on verb endings (or Verb-Endung), and because it’s quite different to English it’s taken me a bit longer to grasp than the previous stuff we’ve learnt.  In German, verbs end in different letters depending on the subject (or Subkekt).  So for the verb ‘to come’ you’d say:

  • I come – Ich komme
  • You come -Du kommst
  • He/She/It comes -Er/sie/es kommt
  • We come – Wir kommen
  • You come (plural) – Ihr kommt
  • They come – sie kommen
  • I/they etc formally – Sie kommen

It’s mostly the same pattern for the majority of verbs, and I think (hope) I’m starting to get the hang of it!The good thing about German lessons at Deutsche Academie is the way we often apply our learning to real life situations.  For example, filling out the registration form or spelling out our email addresses.  We’re starting to listen to dialogue more from real life situations too, and today we listened to a scene from a group of friends having coffee together.  It was really interesting to hear how the words we’ve been learning should be pronounced and pick up extra bits of vocab along the way too.  Apparently, one of the women in the story was learning German, although she sounded pretty good to me! Let’s hope that’ll be us by the end of the course ;)