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

One more week in the bag and the last one to go, woohoo! In a way I can’t wait for the classes to finish so I can have some break from German and can revise all the material we covered. Also, there are tons of unfinished exercises in the kursbuch and arbeitsbuch which I could finish.

We did sentences with “dürfen” in which the rules are stated. For addressing people, its preferred to use “man” instead of “Leute” or “Menschen”. So, a typical sentence for saying you should not walk in the bicycle lane would be

„Man darf nicht auf dem Fahrradweg gehen.“

Or to say people shouldn’t smoke in a restaurant it should be

„Man darf nicht im Restaurant rauchen.“

We also did normal, comparative and superlative adjectives. The superlative is easy since you only have to add “-sten” at the end of the adjective. It’s a little more complicated for the comparative since you have to see what the word ends with. Adjectives ending with “el” get “ler” at the end like dunkler and the ones ending with “er” replaces the “er” with “rer” like teurer. Monosyllabic adjectives get “er” at the end and also an Umlaut like größer. Ich wünsche euch ein schönes Wochenende.

Sudeep

Heute im Kurs haben wir über das Thema Bewerbung diskurtiert. Wie bauen wir einen guten Lebenslauf auf? Was sind die Unterschiede zwischen Bewerbungen der verschiedene Länder?

Mir ist es sehr interessant, dass Deutsche oft im Lebenslauf ihre Hobbys schreiben. Unsere Lehrerin sagte uns den Grund. Es gibt so viele Vereine in Deutschland und „im Verein arbeiten“ bedeutet soziale Kompetenz. Wenn man ein Mitglied in einem Verein ist, kann man vielleicht teamfähig sein. Noch ein Punkt ist das Alter und der Familienstand. Eine Mitarbeiterin aus der USA hat es bezweifelt, weil es in der USA verboten ist, dass Arbeitgeber diese Information ihren Bewerber zu fragen. Sie hat auch nichts mit der Arbeit zu tun.

Seit ich nach München gefahren bin, suche ich immer einen Job. Obwohl ich schon ein Praktikum in München gemacht habe, habe ich kein Deutsch benutzt. Das Bewerbungsgespräch und die Arbeit waren alle auf Englisch. Aber jetzt bereite ich den Lebenslauf und das Anschreiben auf Deutsch vor. Ich hoffe, dass es bei einer erfolgreichen Bewerbung helfen wird.

Yang

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

Adjective declensions have always been a huge headache for me and I believe, for many other students learning German as well.

I think the main reason for that is the difference across languages. In Chinese, there is no gender for nouns, which means no “der, die, das” and therefore all declensions of adjectives are identical. In English, it works more or less the same way. When I learn German as a foreign language, I can’t help but using English as reference. When there is a conflict between these languages, it would make learning extra hard. According to our teacher, the problem that most struggle with are “Dativ” and “Adjektivdeklination”, probably due to the various forms for different situations.

So far it seems there is no way else but to learn it and memorize it though exercises. Just think of it as when kids acquire languages. Maybe it’s time to quit asking why and try tackling the problem in a more primitive method: repeating and repeating until it becomes automatic.

Yang

Das deutsche Alphabet haben wir schon im A1.1 Kurs gelernt, aber wie buchstabieren wir einen Namen am Telefon? Fast alle von meinem Kurs wussten die Antwort nicht, als die Lehrerin uns fragte.

In diesem Kurs haben wir eine Tabelle gelernt, in der es den richtigen Namen für jeden Buchstaben gibt. Zum Beispiel, A wie Anton, B wie Berta, und so weiter. Zusammen mit einem Spiel, das “Galgenmännchen“ heißt, haben wir viel geübt. Das Buchstabenspiel ist wie “Hangman“ auf Englisch. Die Lehrerin denkt an ein Wort, das weiter die Studenten raten. An der Tafel zeichnet die Lehrerin zuerst einen Galgen und manche Unterstriche, deren Anzahl von der Länge des Wortes hängt. Dann raten wir das Wort Buchstabe für Buchstabe. Wenn jemand einen falschen Buchstabe sagt, wird ein mehr Teil des Körpers gezeichnet. Das Ziel ist, dass wir alle richtigen Buchstaben haben, bevor alle Körperteile von dem Männchen gezeigt werden.

Davor habe ich nur auf Englisch einer Hotline angerufen und sehr oft gibt es Situationen, wenn ich meinen Name oder Adresse geben muss. Jetzt kann ich meinen Name auf Deutsch buchstabieren! Yang, Ypsilon, A wie Anton, N wie Nordpol, G wie Gustav!

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Since the A1.1 course, we have been taught how to say the basic letters of German. However, how do we spell names on a telephone, without using just letters but in a more elegant way?

This is what I learned recently in my C1 course. There is a complete list of the names for letters, one name attached to one letter. For example, A in Anton, B in Berta, and so on. We learned it together with a game. It’s called “Galgenmännchen“ in German and the rule is exactly like the English version of “Hangman”. In this game, the teacher would first draw gallows and a few underlines, whose length depends on the length of the word for guessing. Then the students would guess the word letter by letter. When a wrong letter is given, the teacher would draw a body part of the little man. The goal is to get all the correct letters before the man is hung.

Before this I have phoned some service hotlines but only in English. Quite often in these cases, I have to give the name and address, where it requires spelling. Now I can finally spell my own name in German! Yang, Ypsilon, A wie Anton, N wie Nordpol, G wie Gustav!

Yang

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

Last Saturday in Munich there was a grand celebration in the central area. It was the Christopher Street Day, an annual celebration for the rights of LGBT people throughout Europe. Together with my friends and thousands of other cheerful people, I watched the gay pride parade near Karlsplatz.

There were two special moments in this event that touched me. The first one was when the group of the police, the justice and the customs (die Polizei, die Justiz und der Zoll) showed up, and the other was the LGBT group from the refugees. They, among all the parades, have won the most applause. At that moment, it seemed that the governmental department was not that far away and “cold” but made of people just like any other human being around us. Also at that moment, we saw hope in human, even if wars are still happening in other parts of the world. Other than that, a lot of successful companies took part in this parade, making it even more influential.

It is quite nice to see such events taking place. They constantly remind us how long people from minority groups have struggled yet still kept on fighting for basic human rights.

Yang

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