UNIT ONE
What's different in German? Basic tips and patterns
Learning German is often perceived as difficult. In 1880, Mark Twain
famously dubbed it ‘ the awful German language’, protesting ‘ surely there
is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery
and elusive to the grasp’ ( Mark Twain, ‘The awful German language,’ The
Tramp Aboard, 1880 ( Harmondsworth: penguin 1997), pp. 390–402).
But is this really the case? One thing that is very helpful in learning
German is that it is a systematic language, which follows rules. There are
many ways to make these rules easier to learn, and there are quite a few
tips which will help you in learning the language.
If you approach the language step by step you will find that it is much
easier than you may think at the beginning. Here are pointers to some
basic principles where German is different from english, and which may be
useful before you start out with the grammar proper.
Spelling– capital letters and different characters
There are a few ways in which German spelling is different from english.
Capital letters for nouns
German is one of the few languages which uses capital letters not only at
the beginning of sentences but also within sentences. In English, this
applies only to proper names, to the personal pronoun ‘I’ and to
personifications, such as ‘Love’.
In German, all nouns must always be written with a capital letter,
regardless of whether they are at the beginning of a sentence or in the
middle:
Der Mann und Frau arbeiten jeden Tag am Computer
The man and the women work at their computer everyday.
Note that the pronoun ich (‘I’) has no initial capital in German, but Sie
(formal form of ‘you’) has.
Different characters
This German alphabet has some characters which do not exist in the
English alphabet:
B–the sharp ‘s’
The letter b, called eszett in German, is pronounced like the normal
English ‘s’, for example in ‘sun’ or ‘basic’.
German uses this letter for instance after ei and ie, and after a,o,u if they
are pronounced long:
hieBen– to be called
StraBe– street
groB– big
The umlauts– a,o,u
These are very important. They change the pronunciation of a word and,
more importantly, its meaning:
Mutter means ‘mother’, but Mutter is the plural form and means ‘mothers’.
Musset means had to, but musset means ‘should’ or ‘ought to ‘.
Three genders
All nouns in German are masculine, feminine or neuter. This shows in their
singular article: der for masculine, die for feminine, das for neuter.
It is important to realise that gender in German is grammatical, not
biological as it is in English. This means that objects, concepts etc. which
are neuter (‘it’) in English can be masculine, feminine or neuter in German:
Der tisch– the table (masculine)
Die tur– the door (feminine)
Das Fenster– the window (neuter)
Whenever you learn a new learn noun, always learn it with its gender: the
best way to do it is to learn it with its article. You will find that this will pay off
in the long term.
Endings
One of the principle differences between English and German is that in
German words take specific endings depending on their relationship to
other parts of the sentence. This applies to verbs, articles and possessive
adjectives and adjectives.
Verbs
These are words describing the ‘action’ of a sentence, such as ‘to run’, ‘to
think’. For example, the German verb ‘to go’ has different endings when
used with ‘I’,’he’, and ‘they’:
Ich gehe– I go
Er geht– He goes
Sie gehen– They go
Articles and possessive adjectives
These words, which describe the quality of a noun, such as a ‘new’
computer, an ‘intelligent’ woman, a ‘beautiful’ house, follow a similar pattern
when they appear in front of a noun. In German adjectives can have
different endings when they are linked to a masculine noun ( ein neuer
computer), a feminine noun ( eine intelligente frau) or a neuter noun (
ein schones Haus).
Cases
One of the most important features of German is that you can tell what
function a noun performs in a sentence by its ending and the form of the
article. These show its case. For example, a noun can be the subject of the
sentence, i.e. the ‘agent’ of what is happening:
Der hund beißt den Mann– The dog bites the man
Or it can be the object, i.e. the ‘receiver’ of the action in the sentence:
Der Hund beißt den Mann– The dog bites the man
The subject and the object are in different cases, which means that the
article (‘the’) has a different ending. Both ‘dog’ and ‘man’ are masculine
(der) but ‘the dog’ is the subject (der hund) and the man is the object (den
mann).
Word order
Word order is much more flexible in German than in English, but there are
some very important rules. The most important apply to the position of the
finite verb. Here are some basic principles, which illustrate the difference to
English word order.
● The finite verb is the second idea in most statements:
Er hat zwei Bruder— He has two brothers
Morgen fahre ich nach manchester– Tomorrow im going to
manchester
● The finite verb goes at the beginning of a sentence in orders and
many questions:
Öffnet das Fenster– open the window please.
Hast Du morgen Zeit— Are you free tomorrow
● The finite verb goes at the end in subordinate clauses:
Ich kann morgen nicht kommen, weil ich nach manchester
fahre
I cant come tomorrow because im going to manchester
● If there are two verb forms, one of them goes at the end:
Morgen mus ich nach manchester fahren
Tomorrow i have to go to manchester
Tenses
English tenses differentiate between an action happening at the moment (‘i
am working’) and an actin taking place regularly (‘i work at harrods’). In
German, this difference does not exist. The finite cerb form is the same in
both statements:
Ich arbeite– i am working
Ich arbeite bei harrods– i work at harrods
The past in English is expressed either by the present perfect tense (when
something happened recently or has a connection to the present: ‘I was
working’ or the simple past tense (when something happened at a certain
time in the past or has no link to the present: ‘I worked’). German is
simpler: you normally use the present perfect when you talk about the past
regardless of when it happened, and you normally use the simple past in
written German.
And finally– looking for principles
German is a very systematic language, and very soon you will realise that
there are certain patterns which occur again and again. If you bear this in
mind you will see that, after the first few weeks of a fairly steep learning
curve, things will become easier and you will recognise these patterns.
Buy a good dictionary. It not only gives you a list of translations but also
tells you how to pronounce unfamiliar words and gives you important
grammatical information, for example whether a verb takes a certain case
or what plural is for a noun. Throughout the book, we tell you how to work
with dictionaries to get this kind of information and how it is relevant.