Talking about Possessions

Learn how to ask about possessions

Vocabulary (Review)

Learn New Words FAST with this Lesson’s Vocab Review List

Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.

Select your level

Or sign up using Facebook

By clicking Join Now, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and to receive our email communications, which you may opt out at any time.

Already a Member?

Lesson Notes

Unlock In-Depth Explanations & Exclusive Takeaways with Printable Lesson Notes

Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.

Select your level

Or sign up using Facebook

By clicking Join Now, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and to receive our email communications, which you may opt out at any time.

Already a Member?

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 today’s lesson we are going to learn how to talk about things you own by using the verb haben, “to have.”

Hast du ein Auto? “Do you have a car?”

[slowly] Hast du ein Auto?

Let’s take a closer look at this question.

Hast du, means “Do you have”. You can see that haben has been conjugated to Hast because the subject is “du”.

Ein Auto, means “a car”

So if you *do* have a car, how can you answer this question?

Just turn the verb haben into the 1st person—Ich habe ,”I have”

So in this case, we go from

Hast du ein Auto? to

Ich habe ein Auto. “I have a car.”

[slowly] Ich habe ein Auto

Say for example that a classmate wants to borrow a pen from you. He might ask, Hast du einen Stift? Which is “Do you have a pen?”

If you only have a red pen, you can answer Ich habe einen roten Stift. “I have a red pen.”

Okay, so now let’s look at the FORMAL way to ask someone if he or she has something.

Instead of Hast du, you’ll start with “Haben Sie”, to mean “do you have”. For example...

Haben Sie ein Auto? “Do you have a car?”

[slowly] Haben Sie ein Auto?

Now it’s time for Laura’s tips.

If you want to sound really natural when asking if someone has something, you can use the word oder. Here’s an example.

Du hast einen Hund, oder? This literally means “You have a dog, or?”

You just add the little word oder after the sentence. It makes the whole sentence sound like a question.

In recent lessons, we have learned about the verbs sein, to be, and haben, to have.

Next time we’ll learn how to use these two verbs in their negative forms in order to say “I’m not” and “I don’t have”.

Did you know that to turn a verb into the negative form in German, you just have to add some little word?