Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Chuck: This is Beginner Series, Lesson 12.
Judith: Willkommen zurück.
Chuck: Welcome back, listeners, for another Beginner lesson brought to you by GermanPod1011.com. In the Beginner Series, we don’t just learn basic German; we also discuss the culture and customs you’ll find in German-speaking countries.
Judith: Today, our cultural topic is German food, not just the breakfast items we covered in Lesson 7, but lunch food and the ingredients it may involve.
Chuck: I like the taste of this already. In Berlin, I see a lot of foreigners, but few of them try out the German food while they’re here because there’s so many other kinds of foreign restaurants here. <
Judith: Maybe the German cuisine just doesn’t have a reputation abroad yet, but it’s still very good. So see this as a secret tip to make your vacation more enjoyable. By the way, how is John enjoying his vacation?
Chuck: I truly am not sure. That woman was quite harsh with him for walking on the bike path; but I think John is not the kind of person that would let one experience ruin his whole vacation.
Judith: Right now, John is returning to Michaela’s home. Let’s see what he says.

Lesson conversation

John: Da bin ich wieder.
Michaela: Hallo John!
John: Jetzt habe ich Hunger. Hast du etwas zu essen?
Michaela: Ja, es gibt gleich Mittagessen.
John: Schön. Was gibt es?
Michaela: Pfannkuchen mit Speck.
John: Pfannkuchen zum Mittagessen? Ich habe Lust auf Schnitzel. Hast du keine Zeit, Schnitzel zu machen?
Michaela: Nein, es gibt Pfannkuchen.
Judith: Now read slowly.
John: Da bin ich wieder.
Michaela: Hallo John!
John: Jetzt habe ich Hunger. Hast du etwas zu essen?
Michaela: Ja, es gibt gleich Mittagessen.
John: Schön. Was gibt es?
Michaela: Pfannkuchen mit Speck.
John: Pfannkuchen zum Mittagessen? Ich habe Lust auf Schnitzel. Hast du keine Zeit, Schnitzel zu machen?
Michaela: Nein, es gibt Pfannkuchen.
Judith: Now with the translation.
Judith: Da bin ich wieder.
Chuck: Here I am again.
Judith: Hallo John!
Chuck: Hi John!
Judith: Jetzt habe ich Hunger.
Chuck: Now I am hungry [I have hunger].
Judith: Hast du etwas zu essen?
Chuck: Do you have anything to eat?
Judith: Ja, es gibt gleich Mittagessen.
Chuck: Yes, we’ll have lunch shortly, [Literally, there is shortly lunch].
Judith: Schön. Was gibt es?
Chuck: Nice. What are we having? [Literally, what is there?]
Judith: Pfannkuchen mit Speck.
Chuck: Pancakes with bacon.
Judith: Pfannkuchen zum Mittagessen?
Chuck: Pancakes for lunch?
Judith: Ich habe Lust auf Schnitzel.
Chuck: I am in the mood for schnitzel [I have desire of schnitzel].
Judith: Hast du keine Zeit, Schnitzel zu machen?
Chuck: Don’t you have time to make schnitzel?
Judith: Nein, es gibt Pfannkuchen.
Chuck: No, we are having [there are] pancakes.

Lesson focus

Judith: Now, this text has been full of useful expressions. Be sure to go to GermanPod101.com and check out the formal and informal transcripts and translations. You will find them in the PDF for this lesson. Now let’s look at the vocabulary a bit more closely. The first word is Da [natural native speed].
Chuck: “There”.
Judith: Da [natural native speed]
Chuck: “There”.
Judith: For example, ich bin da.
Chuck: “I’m there”. Or as in “I’m here”.
Judith: Another useful word is Wieder [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Again”.
Judith: Wieder [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Again”.
Judith: You could use to form “Ich bin wieder da”.
Chuck: “I’m there again”.
Judith: Next, a really easy word, Hunger [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Hunger”.
Judith: Hunger [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Hunger”. Note, this is spelled the same way.
Judith: Yeah, except for capital H because all nouns in German are capitalized. Also note that this word is masculine. The next word is Etwas [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Something”.
Judith: Etwas [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Something”.
Judith: Etwas [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Etwas [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Something”.
Judith: Next, Gleich [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Shortly”.
Judith: Gleich [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Shortly”. Pay attention to the “ch” sound at the end. Gleich [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Shortly”.
Judith: Next, Mittagessen [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Lunch”.
Judith: Mittagessen [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Lunch”.
Judith: This word is neuter and it literally means “noon food” because mittag means “noon” and essen means “food” or “to eat”.
Chuck: And even more literally, it’s “middle day food”.
Judith: Yes. Mittag means middle day. You find “tag” in there, the word for “day”.
Chuck: Germans just like to stick a bunch of words together and hope they make something.
Judith: Well, mittag would not normally be recognized for a compound word, but yes, mittagessen is compound. Definitely. Along the same lines, you can do the word for “dinner”. It’s Abend Essen, “evening food”. But let’s get back to the vocabulary used in this lesson. The next word is Mit [natural native speed]
Chuck: “With”.
Judith: Mit [natural native speed].
Chuck: “With”.
Judith: It’s such a basic word, I don’t know why we haven’t used it before. In this lesson, we used mit in the phrase “Pfannkuchen mit Speck”. Speck [natural native speed] means…
Chuck: “Bacon”.
Judith: Speck [natural native speed]
Chuck: “Bacon”.
Judith: It usually comes in little squares, little bits, and you put it in your pancake. To make pancakes with Speck, you put bacon in your pan and wait till it’s done, and then you add the pancake dough.
Chuck: Of course, you don’t eat maple syrup on that.
Judith: No. This is a kind of non-sweet pancakes. Germany has a lot sweet pancakes and also some non-sweet ones. Now the next word is Lust (auf) [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Desire (of)”.
Judith: Lust (auf) [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Desire”.
Judith: And finally, we have Zeit [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Time”.
Judith: Zeit [natural native speed].
Chuck: “Time”. Also, you might see this in the airport when you come in. You’ll see a paper called Die Zeit.
Judith: Yeah. That’s a popular German newspaper. It also tells us that Zeit is feminine, just like lust, by the way.
Chuck: So I bet you’re wondering after all this talk about lunch, what do Germans actually eat for lunch? Could you tell us, Judith?
Judith: I can try. The thing is that there’s not really a typical German food because it varies a lot by the region. For example, the southern German cuisine is much more similar to the one of Austria and Switzerland. Of course, there are some ingredients that can be found everywhere. For example, sausages or mustard, of course; potatoes, cabbage in different forms.
Chuck: You can definitely recognize sauerkraut there.
Judith: Yes, sauerkraut. I believe it’s famous, but we also have, for example, Rotkohl, red kraut; Gruenkohl, green kraut; Kohlrabi. I like Kohlrabi. I like Kohlrabi. I tried to find it in Montreal, it was really hard. I like it as a snack, eating raw Kohlrabi.
Chuck: You might notice, if you become a student over here, what you might find in a typical university cafeteria is a meat with sauce on it and then just have potatoes. There’s also Rosenkohl or Brussels sprouts.
Judith: I hate that.
Chuck: Yeah. Let’s get on something more interesting. So if you come to Germany to study at a university, you’ll find that often, your meal consist of a kind of meat with a sauce over it, and a kind of potatoes.
Judith: Yeah. Potatoes are a very common food here, even though they’re not originally from Germany, but they’re not the only food. Of course, there’s potato soup, potato salad. But for example, in the southern region where you came from, you should have also eaten a lot of Spätzle.
Chuck: Yeah, quite common. It’s sort of like macaroni and cheese, but more high class, I guess, you could say.
Judith: Yeah. It’s just a type of noodles but very often eaten with eggs or some good sauce or something.
Chuck: Yeah. So if you absolutely have to have your mac-and-cheese, Käsespätzle is pretty close to what you can get.
Judith: Yeah, try it. Or try Knoedel. That’s dumplings made from potatoes and you had a kind of a festive food. At least with my family, we’d usually have it on festive days or Sundays or something. They’re very nice food. I like it a lot.
Chuck: Of course, we can’t forget about Schnitzel, my personal favorite. That’s actually more popular in Austria but also, of course, you can get it anywhere in Germany.
Judith: At any imbiss, the fast food places.
Chuck: Yeah. At imbiss, you’ll get it with fries; at a nice restaurant, you may get it with Bratkartoffeln. So it’s potatoes made in a special way.
Judith: Yeah, fried potatoes; which brings me to the next item: “Reibekuchen” – potato pancakes.
Chuck: You enjoyed those yesterday, didn’t you?
Judith: Yeah. I had them with apple sauce.
Chuck: Yeah. I think that’s pretty weird myself.
Judith: It’s yummy! Of course, you can have with some kind of non-sweet stuff, but with applesauce, it’s just the right mixture of sweet and non-sweet. Now my father, he likes to eat them with peach syrup and they are really sweet.
Chuck: Yeah. Or you can do what did, which made people look really at me and asked for maple syrup with them.
Judith: I don’t want to eat that. It sounds kind of weird.
Chuck: It still tasted good.
Judith: Okay. Now of course in Germany, there’s also food that we adopted from immigrants. For example, you can get pizza and pasta just about anywhere.
Chuck: But what I really like is the Doner kebabs. It’s basically a kind of meat with a salad inside of a pita and you can also get them very spicy if you’d like.
Judith: Yeah. Doner kebab was brought by Turkish immigrants conjugated to German cuisine.
Chuck: Since there’s so many Turkish people here, you’ll find them on almost every block in Germany.
Judith: Yes, really common. They have become the new national food. Now from the earlier waves of immigration, there are also quite a lot of places where you can gyros, but not nearly as often.
Chuck: Well, that’s gyros for those of you who just pronounced it as its spelled. So I guess that’s about all we need to learn for the day. I think we’re about done, right?
Judith: No, not quite.
Chuck: What is there left?
Judith: Well, of course, the grammar. Hello? Every lesson has to have a grammar section.
Chuck: Does it? All right. You can go ahead with that then.
Judith: Well, I’ll make it easy for you. Today, we’re just going to do some review, especially, of course the verb haben which you learned in the last lesson. Here are the form again: ich habe…
Chuck: “I have”…
Judith: “du hast”
Chuck: “You have”.
Judith: “er hat”
Chuck: “He has”.
Judith: “wir haben”
Chuck: “We have”.
Judith: “ihr habt”
Chuck: “You all have”.
Judith: “sie haben”
Chuck: “They have”.
Judith: Now Haben is a very, very versatile verb as evidenced by all this lesson’s dialogue already. Here are some really useful expressions that involved haben: “Hunger haben.”
Chuck: “To have hunger” or “to be hungry”.
Judith: “Lust haben auf etwas”
Chuck: “To have desire of” or “to be in the mood for”. I think I could say something like “Ich habe
lust auf Feierabend.”
Judith: Not quite yet. Please, let’s continue. “Zeit haben.”
Chuck: “To have time”.
Judith: And here’s some more expressions that I also used but weren’t in the dialogue: “Durst haben.”
Chuck: “To have thirst” or “to be thirsty”.
Judith: “Interest haben”
Chuck: “To have interest” or “to be interested”.
Judith: “Angst haben”
Chuck: “To have fear”. So, “to be afraid”.
Judith: “Recht haben”
Chuck: “To have right”. That’s, of course, “to be right”.
Judith: I feel like when you say “Du hast recht”, and of course then I would say “Du hast Unrecht.”
Chuck: “To have wrong” or “to be wrong”.
Judith: And finally, “gern haben”
Chuck: “Willingly have” or “to like”.
Judith: Yeah. It means “ to like”.
Chuck: Such as in the phrase “Du kannst mich gern haben.”
Judith: No, not quite. What it means, “I don’t care what you say”. It’s a different expression. It has nothing to do with “gern haben” meaning “to like”. Now I think it’s about time to look at the dialogue and see how these expressions actually came up.
John: Da bin ich wieder.
Michaela: Hallo John!
John: Jetzt habe ich Hunger. Hast du etwas zu essen?
Michaela: Ja, es gibt gleich Mittagessen.
John: Schön. Was gibt es?
Michaela: Pfannkuchen mit Speck.
John: Pfannkuchen zum Mittagessen? Ich habe Lust auf Schnitzel. Hast du keine Zeit, Schnitzel zu machen?
Michaela: Nein, es gibt Pfannkuchen.

Outro

Chuck: I think I’m going to go eat some pancakes for lunch now. That sounds pretty yummy.
Judith: Almost. We’re almost there, just a little bit longer. I want to tell people that we would really like some feedback and, of course for that, you would go to GermanPod101.com and write it right under this lesson or post it in the forum.
Chuck: I’d like pancakes but I guess feedback is going to have to do; but we want yummy feedback.
Judith: Yey, yummy feedback.
Chuck: So we’ll see you all soon!
Judith: Bis bald!

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