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Lesson Transcript

Hallo, ich heiße Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura.
Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German.
In the last lesson we learned how to count euros. Did you practice at home?
In this lesson, we're going to learn other useful tips to talk about your schedule - for example, if a friend asks you "What are you doing this weekend?"
Let’s start!
To ask a friend, or someone you already know, you say:
Was machst du am Wochenende?
[slowly] Was machst du am Wochenende?
Let’s break it down.
Was is "what".
"machst” is "to do" if you’re talking about “du”.
Du is the informal way to say “you.”
And am Wochende is "this weekend"
If you want to ask the same question in a formal way, turn du into Sie, the formal version.
Then you need to change machst to machen, because it’s referring to a different pronoun -- Sie.
Was machen Sie am Wochenende?
[slowly] Was machen Sie am Wochenende?
What if you’re not asking about this weekend?
Asking about a different time period is as easy as replacing am Wochenende.
Tomorrow is morgen.
So you can also say
Was machst du morgen?
What are you doing tomorrow?
Notice how you skip "am", otherwise you are asking "what are you doing *this morning.*" If that's what you want to say, just add it back in!
Was machst du am Morgen?
Or, you could put in a weekday, like Montag, "Monday" or Sonntag, which is "Sunday".
Was machst du am Montag?
Was machst du am Sonntag?
So now, if someone asks *you*
Was machst du morgen?, or "What are you doing tomorrow?", how can you answer?
Here's an example: Ich gehe ins Büro.
"I'm going to the office."
Ich gehe means "I'm going", ins means “to,” Büro means "the office". Feel free to replace "office" with many other locations!
Now it’s time for Laura’s Insights.
In some situations, the question
Was machst du? can also mean more generally "What do you do?" or "What is your job?"
This is a really common question you can ask, or that you might be asked the first time you meet someone.
In this lesson we learned how to talk about your schedule. Next time we are going to learn how to use the verb sein "to be". We'll also talk about how to tell people your nationality.
I'll be waiting for you in the next Deutsch in 3 Minuten.
Bis bald!

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