We had a test today to recapitulate what we had learned so far. It included a lot of the grammar that we learned in A1. The first question was about using sein or ihr based on the subject being male or female and also if it was nominative or akkusative.

The next question was with prepositions for dativ with den/der/den definite forms or with einem/einer indefinite forms. The questions were also testing if we remembered the gender of the subject.

Questions with personal pronouns with dativ such as mir/dir/ihm/ihr/uns/euch/ihnen or with akkusative such as mich/dich/ihn/es/sie/uns/euch/sie and recognizing whether to use the singular or plural forms. Filling out some sentences with the normal/comparative/superlative form of the verbs.

Then we had to organize sentences by using the correct forms of the verbs based on whether it was a staement with verb in the 2^nd position or a question with Wann/Warum. Also, we had to arrange sentences with denn and weil in the middle of a sentence as well as the ones starting with Weil which was the last topic we learned.

All in all, this was a nice overview test which all round questions. There are plenty of other exercises in the book as well for further practice.

Sudeep

Like the saying goes “Second place is the first loser”. Well if you going to say that in German you will have to know the words. They go like erste, zweite, dritte etc as you can see in the picture. This is also used in referring to dates like 25^th of July would be fünfundzwanzigsten Juli. So in a sentence you use is as

Mein Geburtstag ist am achtundzwanzigsten Januar.

So that was fairly straight forward. We started discussing how kids express love for their parents. In German you say

Ich habe dich lieb
Or
Ich mag dich (in bavaria)

to your parents or anyone else and

Ich liebe dich

only to your boyfriend/girlfriend. So, there is quite a difference in those two and you don’t want to be assuming wrong things when someone says something along those lines to you 😉

Sudeep

After learning comparative and superlative forms of adjectives last week we started learning how to construct sentences with it. Basically, if the two things under comparison are not similar you have to use “als” like

Ich bin größer als du.

And when they are similar you have to use “so” or “genauso” with the adjective and add a preposition “wie” like

Ich esse Pizza genauso gern wie Pasta.

Simple enough right? Only difficultly was figuring out under which category of the adjective classes would it fall for deciding the comparative additive.

Our next story article went over a nice scene with a Wohnmobil next to a See. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just transport ourselves inside the picture? Right now, in Munich it is pretty warm so staying in the water is the best way to relax. Although I don’t think everyone can swim in the Isar since it is a bit cold. I was at the Germering See this weekend where the water temperature was perfect.

Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?

Sudeep

We went over the signs for the Regeln in Germany and how to say what is allowed vs what we mustn’t do. The key difference between English and German here is that with “muss nicht” you are saying you don’t have to but you can do it. So, if you want to say what you really shouldn’t be doing in by “darf nicht” which means not allowed to by law or whatever. This is more stricter way of saying it which is generally the normal way to express a “schild” for a “regeln”.

We also played a team game today where we had to bet 1000 imaginary euros into guessing which of the 10 sentences were grammatically correct. There were 5 sentences wrong among the 10 but somehow when we first read it, 9 out of 10 seemed incorrect 😊 Well after further consultation we tried to agree on what other sentences could be correct and maybe we are mistaken in remembering some of the grammar rules. Mind you that we couldn’t use the books or the phone so it was quite a challenge. After the correct answers came out, the winners got their kinder chocolate prize which we took from them outside the class haha

Sudeep

Haben and sein are a bit clearer now. It’s just easier to think about it in English and not worry about the German grammar rules 😊 Thanks to a classmate for the tip!

We learned Imperativ sentences (commands) with ihr and du. For du you only use the stem verb as the first word and for ihr you use the stem verb with a -t at the end like

Schlaf nicht so lange! (for du)
Schlaft nicht so lange! (for ihr)

This brought us to the household chores which everyone has to perform. From taking the garbage out to wiping the floor, you know the stuff which no one likes doing! What grinds my gear most though is when I have to use a vacuum cleaner which was not designed properly (Miss my Hoover windtunnel!). You go over this same piece of dirt 5 times and its still there. Might as well pick it up with your own hands at that point.

The class ended with a quick game of memorizing some of these household chores in 2 min and writing down as many as you can remember out of the 14 listed in the book. I could only remember 6 but got 4.5 due to spelling mistakes. Two of our classmates got 8 points which was the highest score as you can see in the picture!

Sudeep

After a relaxed weekend in Thuringia came back home last night to an over flowing kitchen drainage pipe. What a huge mess to clean up and freaking out over further overflows. Trying to talk to neighbors to not use the kitchen sink in the little German I know was a challenge. I used the google translated sentences but seems like they couldn’t understand much :/

Did the homework in a rush this morning and of course made a lot of mistakes! We converted the homework sentences in the present tense to perfect form on the fly and boy talk about a hodgepodge in the brain. For the first 30 min in the class felt like I forgot everything but our teacher was nice enough to slow down a bit and go over some of the very basic rules all over again. Hey repetition helps alright! That’s the only way stuff goes from short term memory to long term memory. I have keep remembering that for perfect forms haben is always with direct object and sein is with verbs of motion, verbs describing change of state and then there are a few special cases to remember. Practice, practice practice!!!

Sudeep

We are learning Deutsch but this does not mean that we will be able to understand what people say in all parts of Germany. According to wiki, Germany has 35 different dialects! That’s a lot of dialects considering the size of Germany.

We had a lot of trouble describing how our classmates live their life as you can see from all the scribbles in the kursbuch. For examples when asked “Isst du jeden Tag Obst?” the answer should be “Sie isst jeden Tag Obst”. The switch between jeden Tag and Obst is correct (for some reason). But this is not the case when asked “Wie oft machst du Sport”. The answer describing your classmate should be “Sie macht Sport jede Woche”. So now it is in the back :O

With the “noch nie” we had a more consistent form such as
“Sie ist noch nie in die Sauna gegangen.” and “Sie hat noch nie Kaffee getrunken.“

This was surprising that in our class very few people drank Kaffee but it was good that most people lebst gesund. I think that’s a very classic feature of big cities that most people tend to live a more healthy life except for when it comes to drinking haha

Sudeep

In daily life, there is always these instances when you have to make an excuse for either being late or to not show up at all. Some maybe predetermined and some maybe actually true. Whatever the case conveying them in German is important. Don’t let the scary word Entschuldigung scare you, you will get used to it. Also, you could say tut mir leid (I am sorry) but I have heard it less in public.

We learned a lot of new vocabulary apart from the ones which are highlighted on top of the page in the kursbuch. The ones highlighted were regular household stuff like Licht (light), Handtuch (handtowel), Föhn (hairdryer) etc. Especially in the text which in is each chapter there are tons of new words describing a scenario. One of the scenarios we went through was when 2 people got stuck in the elevator and the conversation that followed. Can’t believe an elevator can malfunction since German engineering can never fail so how can this ever happen!

Sudeep

It is getting a little clearer with the distinction between dativ and akkusativ. The dativ part of a sentence is basically the action which is not performed right now. Akkusative is more like the action you are directly referring to.

The questions like “with whom?” and “with which person?” are referred to as “mit wem?” and “mit welcher Person?”. Remembering to whom the sentence is referring to helps identify the nominative and hence figure out which his/her form can be used to replace it. For example,

Die Nachbarin von Herr Rahn, wohnt uber Herr Rahn.

Where the underlined nominative could be replaced by Seine Nachbarin.

A confusing word we learned is “absagen” which is a “trennbares verb” and used in a sentence like “Ich sage ab” (I cancel) which is similar to “Ich sage” but then it means “I say”!!The “ab” changes the meaning of the word completely so when you listen to a sentence you have to hear the whole sentence before jumping onto a conclusion. When you are reading its fine go back and look the previous words and find a fit but when you are listening I think this could be challenging.

Sudeep

I feel like throwing a party when all the grammar rules come to and ends! Regardless of the rules we are having a lot of fun in the class. We played a game where everyone writes “Ich Lieblingsstadt…, Ich Lieblingsrestaurant…” etc on a sheet of paper. The paper then gets mixed up and not given back to us, so we ended up with someone else’s sheet. We have to read the sheet as “Ihre Lieblingsstadt…” and guess who wrote it. We ended up knowing some new restaurants in Munich from this exercise :)

We learned the Dativ forms of personal pronomens and it was a little complicated. Each one of the nominativ forms has a distinct Dativ form and some are words!! Also, the words are eerily close in pronunciation, so it is equally confusing. I have to find a pneumonic to somehow remember this. Well I have the whole weekend to figure this out.

We kind of finished all the parts of speech (I think) but the distinction between Dativ and Akkusativ is not very clear to me but we will go over this in detail with examples next week. I will try to look at some examples during the weekend to get a better feel for it. Enjoy the weekend!