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Learn German with GermanPod101.com! John and Michaela are going home now and meanwhile we will be looking at word genders. We will of course keep revising what was taught in the earlier lessons. And since our studio trouble is solved, there will be a new beginner lesson every week now!

Grammar: | Function: , | Topic: | Politeness Level:


This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 1 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

18 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #3 - The Oldtown”

GermanPod101.com says:

Thanks for sticking around! Watch out for a lot of new stuff appearing at GermanPod101.com in the next 7 days!

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Li says:

Thanks for the new lesson.

Just had a go in the learning center and I’ve got to say “Es ist gut! Sehr Gut!” :grin:

However, I do have some questions regarding the content:
1. The very first sentence of the dialogue “Es gibt viele schöne Gebäude hier.” why use “schöne” instead of the plain form “schön”?

2. In the learning center Vocabulary Questions, question 2 has “der Sahara”, but question 3 has “die Sahara”, I take the “Sahara” from 2 questions are not really related?

Danke,
Li

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petiteclaire says:

Li,

the answer to both of your questions lies in the system of declension in German :

- “schöne” is schön in the accusative plural (since Gebäude is in the plural, so has to be “schön”)
-”die Sahara” and “der Sahara” are one and the same :mrgreen: , here “der” isn’t the masculine article, but the singular dative form of “die” (basically, it changes because in the sentence, Sahara is used as a static location, and not simply as a descriptive noun…)

It’s really great to know that you will be releasing more lessons now !!! Go GermanPod !!!!

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Jacqueline says:

Ich freue mich darauf, die Lektionen zuhören.

Did i wrote that write? :smile:

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GermanPod101 says:

Thank you for explaining this faster than I could, petiteclaire. :smile:

Jacqueline, you got it almost right. It should be “Ich freue mich darauf, die Lektionen anzuhören.” anhören is the right verb when you have an object; zuhören is intransitive.

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Jacqueline says:

GermanPod101, Thanks for answering and explaning. :smile:

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Peter says:

Düsseldorf hat eine Altstadt. Fareham hat einen Altman. Ich bin er!

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MWmC says:

Hello!

Just one quick question: In the expansion it says “Die Düsseldorfer Altstadt ist sehr schön.” Why not “Die Düsseldorfe Altstadt,” since “die” already covers the number and gender of Altstadt? “Die schöne Altstadt,” but “Die Düsseldorfer Altstadt?”

Is there a separate rule for using proper names (like Düsseldorf) as qualifiers?

Thank you in advance!

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Richard16gill2343 says:

Hi again

I am finding your material really well paced.

Moved on now to the next lessons. I am using your series Beginners, Beginners S1 and Beginners S2 in parallel. Three podcasts is about right for my train journey to London. Generally this works well as the lessons reinforce each other. I am now working on lesson 3 in each. The language used in in S1 and S2 appears more complex than the original beginners course or is that just me?

Two points:

Trawling the depths of my fallible memory, I seem to remember spelling “da?” with an eszett. Your course spells it “dass”. Is this just poor memory or have spellings changed?

In the extended vocabulary for Beginners lesson 3 there is a reference to the Sahara. In one entry it is “der Sahara”, in the other “die Sahara”. I guess that Der Sahara is in a case other than nominative. Are tese covered in more detail later on in the course as it is one area where I am particularly weak?

Thanks again One day I will be up-to-date with your beginners courses!

Oh yeah, I tried looking at your grammarbank to check out Sahara. These do’t appear to be poulated yet. Any plans as to when they might be?

Sorry for the long message.

Richard

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richard16gill2343 says:

Sorry

I missed the answer to the sahara point above. It is a case chnage. Shows I should read all the comments closely!

In the expanded vocab (and in one of the beta tests) you have “Was isch das”. I can’t find “isch” in my dictionary. Is it a typo? Should it have been “ist”?

Richard

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Judith says:

MWmC, “Düsseldorfer” is the adjective for “Düsseldorf”. This kind of adjective based on a city name never changes.

Richard, using more than one series at the same time is a great way to re-inforce what you study. The Beginner Series marked as S1 is indeed more advanced, it’s meant for upper beginners, but the S2 series is also aimed at complete beginners, just with different vocabulary because we have a storyline. If you’re looking for another series that is at the same level as the original beginner series, try the Newbie lessons or the Absolute Beginner lessons that we’re presently producing. Both of these also contain more useful dialogs than the Beginner S2 series.

Indeed, there was a spelling reform which changed all daß to dass. It also made the spelling more consistent: whenever the vowel in other words is long, you’ll use ß now, and when the vowel is short, it’s spelled ss.

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richard16gill2343 says:

Judith

Thanks for this. I am already familiar with the Newbie series. I went through this in the 7 day trial period to check whether I liked your product and, more importantly, to check the shortcommings in my own very rusty German!

The Newbie series sold it to me but I recognised that I have big gaps in my grammar so settled on the Beginners courses as the point for me to start. I find your grammar and usage descriptions illuminating. Being UK English I do have to translate the American used on the site eg pants/trousers! but this is no real problem.

Wann ich kann, ich werde in Deutch schreiben. So, hertlichen Dank.

Richard

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Luanne says:

Hm…. Ich möchte Römisch Essen proben :lol:

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Cynthia says:

I was doing “Expansion with Audio” on Lesson 3 and ran across the sentence: “Was isch das?” Is that not suppose to be “Was ist das?”

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Robert Hone says:

:evil: How do I find the “so called” Learning Center?

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Germanpod101.com says:

Hello Robert,

If you go to the top of each lesson page, you can see the links named ‘Line by Line Audio sessions’ and ‘Expansion with Audio files’ That’s the learning center, which only Premium members can use.

I hope this helps.

Thank you.

- Jay / GermanPod101.com

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Franck says:

Hi!

in this lesson you explained the different genders. What I don’t get is why these genders are not written along with the words in the vocabulary lists and the flashcards. We need to learn new words with the gender !!
I really don’t get why it’s not the case.

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