Learn how to form German verbs that have vowel changes
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: Chuck here. Absolute Beginner Season 2, Lesson 12; Meet Spanish Girls in Germany. Hello and welcome back to GermanPod101.com, the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn German. I’m joined in the studio by... |
| Judith: Hello, everyone, Judith here. |
| Chuck: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk to a girl and exchange phone numbers. |
| Judith: This conversation takes place at the German language school at break time. |
| Chuck: The conversation is between Paul and Sarah, a fellow student. |
| Judith: The speakers are both students. Therefore they’ll be speaking informal German. |
| Chuck: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUES |
| Sarah Hallo! Bist du auch neu hier? |
| Paul Ja. Ich bin neu an der Goethe Schule und auch neu in Deutschland. |
| Sarah Ich wohne schon seit zwei Jahren in Deutschland. Ich heiße übrigens Sarah. |
| Paul Ich heiße Paul. Sarah... woher kommst du? |
| Sarah Ich komme aus Spanien. Und du? |
| Paul Amerika. Sprichst du auch Englisch? |
| Sarah Ja, aber nicht sehr gut. |
| Paul Ich lerne seit fünf Jahren Spanisch. Möchtest du mit mir üben? |
| Sarah Ja, aber nicht hier. Gibst du mir deine Handynummer? |
| Paul Ja. Das ist 0173/48506229. |
| Sarah Danke. Meine ist 0151/36148297. |
| English Host: Now let’s hear it with the English translation. |
| Sarah Hallo! Bist du auch neu hier? |
| Chuck Hello! Are you also new here? |
| Paul Ja. Ich bin neu an der Goethe Schule und auch neu in Deutschland. |
| Chuck Yes, I am new at the Goethe school, and also new in Germany. |
| Sarah Ich wohne schon seit zwei Jahren in Deutschland. Ich heiße übrigens Sarah. |
| Chuck I have lived already for two years in Germany. I'm called Sarah, by the way. |
| Paul Ich heiße Paul. Sarah... woher kommst du? |
| Chuck I'm called Paul. Sarah... from where do you come? |
| Sarah Ich komme aus Spanien. Und du? |
| Chuck I come from Spain. And you? |
| Paul Amerika. Sprichst du auch Englisch? |
| Chuck America. Do you also speak English? |
| Sarah Ja, aber nicht sehr gut. |
| Chuck Yes, but not very good. |
| Paul Ich lerne seit fünf Jahren Spanisch. Möchtest du mit mir üben? |
| Chuck I've been learning spanish for 5 years. Would you like to practice with me? |
| Sarah Ja, aber nicht hier. Gibst du mir deine Handynummer? |
| Chuck Yes, but not here. Can you give me your cell number? |
| Paul Ja. Das ist 0173/48506229. |
| Chuck Yes. It is 0173/48506229. |
| Sarah Danke. Meine ist 0151/36148297. |
| Chuck Thanks. Mine is 0151/36148297. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: Okay. Well, if you haven’t managed to practice the numbers by now then maybe you should re-listen to the dialogue and try to write down the phone numbers before you hear the translation. |
| Chuck: How about we talk about Denglisch today? |
| Judith: Denglisch? Yeah, that’s a fun topic. Denglisch is what we call English words that German is adopting right now. For example meeting, these words are tricky because people argue about the gender and what plural they should take. I think people agree that meeting is „Denglisch“. „Denglisch“ meeting and the plural is meetings, something like that. |
| Chuck: Very often they’ll just use the English plural, minus the rules that Germans can’t remember. For example, “hobby” becomes “hobbys” in German but with the “ys.” |
| Judith: Yes. It’s frustrating. However, there are also some words that have familiar endings for which there already is a rule in German and this will behave according to that rule. For example, the plural of investor is „Investoren“ |
| Chuck: There’s a lot of fake English in German too. Everybody will tell you that these words are English. Well, you may have never heard them before, at least not with that meaning. |
| Judith: Yeah, things like handy. |
| Chuck: Cell phone. |
| Judith: Or call shop. |
| Chuck: A place to make cheap calls to other countries. |
| Judith: Or beamer. |
| Chuck: Projector. Yeah. I even had a boss once asked me, “Could you bring me the beamer?” It completely puzzled us to what he wanted. |
| Judith: Yes. But to someone’s English, so it must be, right? |
| Chuck: Absolutely. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first word is... |
| Judith: neu |
| Chuck: New. |
| Judith: neu |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: Deutschland |
| Chuck: Germany. |
| Judith: Deutschland |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: wohnen |
| Chuck: To live or to inhabit. |
| Judith: wohnen |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: schon |
| Chuck: Already. |
| Judith: schon |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: woher |
| Chuck: From where? |
| Judith: woher |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: Spanien |
| Chuck: Spain. |
| Judith: Spanien |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: Amerika |
| Chuck: USA or The Americas. |
| Judith: Amerika |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: Englisch |
| Chuck: English language. |
| Judith: Englisch |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: geben |
| Chuck: To give. |
| Judith: geben |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: dein |
| Chuck: Your, informal. |
| Judith: dein |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Chuck: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Judith: The first word we’ll look at is „nach“. We had it before meaning “after,” but „nach“ can also mean “towards. And then there is the issue of „Handynummer“ it’s a compound noun that means its two nouns stuck together. English is on defense where it comes to combining nouns. For example, why is birthday one-word but school day is not? Anyway, German is clearly in favor of compound nouns. So whenever there are two nouns next to each other that form one unit of meaning, then German will write them down as one word without a space. Finally, we should talk about „zwei“ |
| Chuck: Two. |
| Judith: „zwei“ is also pronounced „zwo“ when you’re giving out phone numbers. This is to make it easier to distinguish „zwei“ and „drei“. However it’s not mandatory to pronounce „zwo“ and in our dialogue. |
| Chuck: Yeah. For sure this is a train station telling me which track to go to and I got quite confused. |
| Judith: Yeah. When there is a lot of noise, then you can also say „zwo“ |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Chuck: The focus of this lesson are vowel-changing verbs. |
| Judith: You’ve seen the verb “essen” before but there is something we didn’t tell you about it before. It’s not quite regular, it’s actually part of a group of verbs called vowel changing verbs. |
| Chuck: And if you didn’t guess, the thing they have in common is that they change their stem vowel at some point. |
| Judith: To be precise, they always change their stem vowel for the second and third person singular, that is the du and the er / sie / es forms. |
| Chuck: Can you tell us the forms of 'essen' as an example? |
| Judith: Of course, essen |
| Chuck: So the stem is "ess" for all forms except the "du" and "er" forms. For "du" and for "er", the vowel becomes an I. What other verbs that we have that change their vowels? |
| Judith: For example geben → ich gebe, du gibst, er gibt, wir geben, ihr gebt, sie geben. And nehmen → ich nehme, du nimmst, er nimmt, wir nehmen, ihr nehmt, sie nehmen. Careful here, the eh changes to im, because it's a short vowel. |
| Chuck: I think in today’s dialogue I also heard the form "Du sprichst". |
| Judith: Yes. sprechen is another such verb. sprechen → ich spreche, du sprichst, er spricht, wir sprechen, ihr sprecht, sie sprechen |
| Chuck: Ah, I see a pattern. It changes always toward a vowel that’s further in front of the mouth. E changes to I or IE in exceptional cases. |
| Judith: Indeed. And you will later also encounter verbs where A changes to Ä |
| Chuck: So the A gets Ä |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: That change is also recognized in the informal imperative form. |
| Judith: Yes. For vowel changing verbs, the imperative also includes this change. For example, Iss! means Eat! or Gib! |
| Chuck: Give. |
| Judith: Nimm! |
| Chuck: Take. |
| Judith: Sprich! |
| Chuck: Speak. |
| Judith: All of them use an I instead of an E. |
| Chuck: Once you’re used to the idea, the vowel changing verbs won’t be that much of a problem because they’re logical in their own way. It change is 100% always for the second and third person singular and no other forms.And the vowel is always an E changing to an I or an A changing to an Ä. |
| Judith: Could be a lot worse. |
Outro |
| Chuck: That just about does it for today. |
| Judith: Listeners, do you know the powerful secret behind rapid progress? |
| Chuck: Using the entire system. |
| Judith: Lesson notes are an important part of the system. |
| Chuck: They include a transcript and translation to conversation. |
| Judith: And key lesson vocabulary. |
| Chuck: And detailed grammar explanations. |
| Judith: Lesson notes accompany every audio or video lesson. |
| Chuck: Use them on a site or mobile device or print them out. |
| Judith: Using the lesson notes with audio and video media will rapidly increase your learning speed. |
| Chuck: Go to GermanPod101.com and download the lesson notes for this lesson right now. So see you next week! |
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