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Learning German in 6days PDF
Learning German in 6days PDF
Learning German in 6days PDF
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Aa
Ää
Bb
Cc
Dd
Ee
Ff
Gg
Hh
Ii
Jj
Kk
Ll
Mm
Nn
Oo
Öö
Pp
Qq
Rr
Ss
ß
Tt
Uu
Üü
Vv
Ww
Xx
Yy
Zz
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German Vowels
The letters which represent the German vowels are the same as
English. There is one exception though, and that is the addition of
three extra vowels. Let us take a look shall we? There are eight
vowels in German and they are, "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", "ä", "ö", "ü".
Not too complicated is it now? Let us move on.
Now on the other side of this coin is the long vowel. Sometimes
this is also called a "tense" vowel as well. What are the important
things to know about this category? Well there are a few actually.
Remember how short vowels could be pointed out because they
had two or more consonants following them? Well a long vowel
can be pointed out by having only a single consonant following it.
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to point out as a side note, it is not unusual for a long or tense
sounding vowel to have the letter "h" following the vowel.
As you can see, learning the German vowels is pretty basic. In fact
it's very easy. If you did not fully understand this just by reading,
please go back and read it a couple of times. In no time at all you
will have the grasp of the vowels and how they play an important
part into the structure of this language. Are you ready to continue?
Each letter has its own special sound, just like English and any
other language does. The German language however, does have
special characters called "Umlaut". What distinguishes an
"Umlaut" from a regular letter?
These dots are used to create a sharper sound. This sound is done
using the front part of your mouth. This may be a little harder for
some of us, since the English language does not use this kind of
sound technique. How do you know when to use these dots
though?
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You do not have to know. The dots on these letters are sort of "just
there". They are a rule and are used in conjunction with certain
words. Is this confusing you a little bit? Think for example, how do
we end a sentence? We end a sentence with a period mark of
course. So too, do certain words automatically use the "Umlaut"
letters.
Aa - Ah
Ää
Bb - Beh
Cc - Tseh
Dd - Deh
Ee - Eh
Ff - Eff
Gg - Geh
Hh - Hah
Ii - Ih
Jj - Yott
Kk - Kah
Ll - El
Mm - Emm
Nn - Enn
Oo - Oh
Öö
Pp - - Peh
Qq - Kuh
Rr - Err
Ss - Ess
ß
Tt - Teh
Uu - Uh
Üü
Vv - Fau
Ww - Veh
Xx - Iks
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Yy - Ypsilon
Zz - Tzett
I have been traveling around Europe for the last couple of months
and have been practicing my German extensively while I have
been in Germany and Switzerland. Your software has certainly
helped me take leaps and bounds out of the learning process. I
have found that I am ordering food and coffee with no problem at
all and one of the best things is that the locals want to talk to me
and find out what I am up to so I am finding a whole bunch of new
experiences and great people!!
The best part of the course for me has been Nik and Paul's audio
tracks, especially handy with the amount of traveling I have been
doing. Finding my way round the post office and ordering wine
(everyone leaves me to do it!) have made me the person other
travelers turn to for getting stuff!
Thanks for putting together a great course that makes learning fun
rather than a chore! Auf Wiedersehen"
-Gavin Prendergast
WASHINGTON, USA
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German Diphthongs
German diphthongs are basically two vowels which are put
together. It is rather simple really. Instead of pronouncing each
vowel separately, you blend them together. The German language
is a lot more into phonetics than our English counterpart. What
does this mean?
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Learning the diphthongs, alphabet, and consonants will give you a
strong solid base. It will allow you to progressively and actively
speak the German language without wondering what or when to
use a certain letter. I am confident these lessons will make you
better understand the German language. I encourage you to act
now as well and take hold of this software if you really are serious
about learning German.
When you travel around Germany, you will notice many cities and
towns having a mixed background. This is true because of
migration and the influence of other cultures. Some towns will
have a Polish sounding name, or a French one. Perhaps some will
even sound a little bit Ukrainian.
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Aachen
Augsburg
Bergisch
Gladbach
Berlin
Bielefeld
Bochum
Bonn
Bottrop
Braunschweig
Bremen
Bremerhaven
Chemnitz
Cottbus
Darmstadt
Dessau
Dortmund
Dresden
Duisburg
Düren
Düsseldorf
Erfurt
Erlangen
Essen
Esslingen
Flensburg
Frankfurt
Freiburg
Fürth
Gelsenkirchen
Gera
Göttingen
Gütersloh
Hagen
Halle
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Hamburg
Hamm
Hanau
Hannover
Heidelberg
Heilbronn
Herne
Hildesheim
Ingolstadt
Iserlohn
Jena
Kaiserslautern
Karlsruhe
Kassel
Kiel
Koblenz
Köln
Krefeld
Leipzig
Leverkusen
Lübeck
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigshafen
Lünen
Magdeburg
Mainz
Mannheim
Marl
Minden
Moers
Mönchengladbach
Mülheim
München
Münster
Neuss
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Nürnberg
Oberhausen
Offenbach
Oldenburg
Osnabrück
Paderborn
Pforzheim
Potsdam
Ratingen
Recklinghausen
Regensburg
Remscheid
Reutlingen
Rostock
Saarbrücken
Salzgitter
Schwerin
Siegen
Solingen
Stuttgart
Trier
Ulm
Velbert
Villingen-
Schwenningen
Wiesbaden
Wilhelmshaven
Witten
Wolfsburg
Wuppertal
Würzburg
Zwickau
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German Consonants
Many German consonants are pronounced similarly to our
English language. There are a few differences however. At the end
of a word, some consonants are pronounced sharper than usual. In
those cases the letter "b" is pronounced like a "p", “g” is
pronounced like “k” and "d" is pronounced like a "t". There are
also a few others.
The “h” can be silent or pronounced. But the rule for that is easy: if
the h follows a vowel, it’s silent (like in “leihen” (borrow),
pronounced LY-EN). If it precedes a vowel, it’s pronounced (like
in “Hut” (hat), pronounced HOOT)
This may seem like a lot to take in, but it really isn't. Just try
sounding off the words with the pronunciation techniques you
learned in the German alphabet.
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German Vowel Pronunciation
German vowel pronunciation is easier to learn than most people
believe it to be. With only a couple extra vowels, it only takes a
couple minutes longer to learn. We can consider the extra vowels
special sounding vowels for now. This will make things easier.
The vowels are, "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", "ä", "ö", and "ü". German
has long vowels and short ones. Short vowels are pronounced with
a short crisp clear sound. There is no blending or rubbing or the
vowels. Every German vowel has its own clear pronunciation.
The "umlaut" is spoken from the front of the mouth. It uses the
tongue in a curling action to produce the sound needed. Try
practicing this technique a little bit before diving into words. The
skill will come with time so do not get disheartened.
German Adjectives
German adjectives, normally go in front of the noun which they
are modifying. German adjectives have an ending before a noun.
This ending, which is mostly “-e” in the singular and “-en” in the
plural, depends on several factors like the gender of the following
noun and the case. There are four cases in the German language:
nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. The different cases are
used depending on the function of the sentence. You’ll get some
examples for that in a minute.
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The nominative adjective refers to the subject of a sentence. This
makes it easy for us to pick out, since nouns start with a capital
letter. Now don't you wish English had that? What a struggle it was
to learn all of this is grammar school.
As you can see, it just takes practice and a bit of learning to master
the basics of German. Keep reading for the rest of our adjective
lesson. Let us move on to the accusative adjectives now.
Let us have a look at the dative case. Do you remember what the
accusative format dealt with? It’s the object of the sentence. Dative
deals with the indirect object of the sentence. This time it is not
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about who or what the action is being performed by but rather who
or what the action is being performed to. Question words are to
whom or what the sentence is about. The ending of adjectives in
the dative case is easy: it’s “-en” for all (male, female, neutral,
singular or plural).
German Prepositions
German prepositions can only be learned in one way: you have to
memorize them. Sometimes in life there is no shortcut to the high
road. This happens to be one of those times. Memorize the
prepositions, learn them, and you will be much better off!
Prepositions come in many different shapes and forms. They deal
with travel, people, and gender to name a few.
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A good example is if you are sick. What do we do when we are
sick? We take something for our sickness correct? Well in
German, you would take something against your sickness. See the
difference here? It is little subtle things like this which make up the
whole picture.
English has the object of the preposition; all prepositions are in the
same case. German has more and you have to know when to use
each preposition. Just like in adjectives, we have the accusative
and dative cases with prepositions. Certain German prepositions
are ruled by the accusative case. I would suggest you become
familiar with these as they are used a lot in German.
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I hope this gives you some sort of basic foundation in learning
what prepositions are all about. Utilizing the tools given here will
make you a better speaker. It will allow you to speak basic
conversation, order from restaurants, tell the time, and ask people
simple questions. The power of learning German is in your hands.
Viel Glück!
There are three categories of adverbs: those for time, for the
manner and for the place. They tell you “when, how long”, “how”
and “wo, wohin”, respectively. Here are some examples from each
category:
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This lesson will focus on the uses of adverbs in asking directions.
When you ask how to get to a certain place, keep in mind that
German has many meanings. What do I mean by this? I mean that
the use of the word can be something totally different in another
context. If you ask "Where is my hat?", it would be completely
different if you were to ask "Where is she going?". Do you see
what I am getting at? The first one is asking for a location, the
second one for a motion or direction. If you are going to ask
something with the word "where" in the question, use these rules.
The word "wohin" is used when talking about motion or direction.
The word "wo" is about asking location. So if you were to ask,
"Where is my hat?", you would use "wo". If you were to ask,
"Where is she going?", you would use "wohin".
Now that you have that under your belt, it is time to consider the
consequences. That's right, how often do you think before you act?
I really hope you do. You may be the world's greatest person at
asking for directions in German. Yet, do you have any darn clue on
what the answer will be and how to comprehend it? Perhaps, but I
think if you asked the average person, you would have no idea
what they said back.
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Straight ahead - Geradeaus
North - Norden
East - Osten
South - Süden
West - Westen
Back - Zurück
Forward - Vorwärts
Left - Links
Right - Rechts
Going - Gehen
Leaving - Verlassen
Arriving - Ankommen
Where is… - Wo ist…
How do I get to… - Wie komme ich nach…
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So is the stem of a verb. Conjugation in German is not hard. It
requires identifying the stem of the verb and knowing what to do
with it, once you find it. Let us look at an example.
What are some verbs in English that we can look at first? Think of
some off the top of your head. How about running, walked, looked,
jumping, and tripped. What is the stem of these verbs? The stem of
these verbs is run, walk, look, jump, and trip.
The infinitive form of regular German verbs ends with "en". And
the stem is this basic form without the ending. So if we take the
verb “gehen”, to go, what do you think the stem is? Right, it’s
“geh”, which alone is not a word, just the stem. Now you may be
wondering just how many verb endings the German language has.
Well, it does have more verb endings than English. Do not get
disheartened though. Some verb endings are normally repeated and
there is some sort of pattern to things. Let me explain. Which
endings do you have to add to the stem? That depends on the
context of the verb. For regular verbs in the present tense the
endings are:
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„-en“ sie gehen (they go)
German Verbs
I decided to place German verbs after German verb conjugation
because I thought it would flow better. For some reason people
tend to have a better understanding of all the verb types after they
have seen the conjugation and separation of verbs.
For the singular verbs, the endings include, "e", "st", and "t". For
the plural verbs, the endings include, "en", and "t" respectively.
What about irregular verbs? Do they not have a place in this
language too? They most certainly do, and let me show you just
what they are all about.
If we can quickly go back and recap what a verb stem is, we would
know that it does not change. This is true for all regular verbs in
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German. The stem stays constant. The only addition is the verb
ending, which is placed on the ending of course! This is not true
for irregular verbs.
You may be interested to know that there are 170 irregular verbs in
the German language. That may seem a little daunting, but, what
about English? There are 283 irregular verbs in English. Which
languages have the least amount of irregular verbs? Well Chinese
takes the cake with this one, as it only has 1 irregular verb. But
their alphabet is crazy so we won't go there.
German Nouns
Well after learning about verbs, German nouns are not that
difficult. What is a noun again? Are they not things, places, ideas,
or people? Yes they most certainly are. Examples of nouns include
computer, desk, sun, sky, cloud, water, shoes, camera, cat, boat,
and so on.
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If the noun is masculine, it simply is referring to something of
masculine nature. An example would be a male waiter. This is a
masculine noun. A feminine noun would read a female waitress.
Now obviously these are silly examples but you get the point.
Choices of the noun can seem a little random and that is alright.
Each culture has its own history and way of shaping their
language. So sometimes you just have to roll with the facts folks.
However, there are almost always exceptions to rules governing
nouns.
Depending on the noun's suffix, it may or may not give away the
gender that it is. Nouns ending in "ik" normally are feminine.
Knowing the gender will come with practice and speaking the
German language. If you want a lot of practice with German, give
this course a try today. It has detailed games and audio with easy
words to learn and follow along with.
The suffix "in" is also a giveaway most of the time for a feminine
noun. Again though, there are a few words ending in "in" which
are not feminine. Also please note that the use of this can
sometimes be used for turning something that is masculine in
nature into a feminine word. The "er" ending means masculine
most of the time. Remember from previous lessons how certain
words may be feminine or masculine? Well if a noun is associated
with that word it is probably of the same gender. Keep this in mind
as you go through your learning.
German Participles
After all this, we come to German participles. What is a
participle? A participle is a word which can take on a different
form. This depends on the context of the sentence or what the
situation is all about. Let us take a closer look.
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German is a fun language to learn. It has a great ring to it along
with crisp clear words. However, there are a few obstacles which
we will all inevitably run into along the way. What are these
obstacles? They are the obstacles of participles.
German participles are words which can be used in more than one
way. They can cause problems if you do not know when to use
them. A headache in the least! Words such as halt, nur, aber, and
schon are included in the troublemakers. Why so much error
though? There is so much error because these words must be used
in different situations.
Please note that there are no present participles which are used like
the "ing" endings in English. There is no present progressive tense
in German and this is the reason why. So do not use participles in
this tense. Not even the German dictionary helps with dealing with
participles. A little ironic wouldn't you think?
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participles are used more in writing than in speaking. Why is this
so? Perhaps tradition, or just the way the language originated.
German Pronouns
Well you are almost completed with your journey of this free
course. I strongly recommend that you continue your learning with
this course. I believe it is hands down the best German learning
package available today. For many reasons I believe this is true.
Just to name a few real quick here, customer support, the price
(lowest out there), tools available, audio downloads, interactive
games, and more. But first, back to German pronouns.
English pronouns include words such as we, they, I, and so on. The
German pronouns are a little similar, but with a small twist. You
know how there are two ways of saying "you" in English? Well it
is double that in German!
The pronoun "ich" does not begin with a capital letter. This is
different from say, the letter "I" in English, which is always a
capital if on its own. The pronoun "ihr" can mean the plural of
"you". It can also mean "her". This is crazy is it not? No it is not,
be patient, you will learn in time.
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The older tradition of language has sort of fallen by the wayside.
The polite forms of the word you, are really no longer relevant in
most of today's society. The "sie" you form is used in a general
way, when addressing pretty much anybody except yourself.
However, if you find yourself becoming lost, just use the formal
way of "Sie". Most relationships are formal anyways when you
first meet, later turning to a more casual way of saying hello. This
would be accomplished by using "du".
German Greetings
You may find it ironic that I chose to use German greetings as the
final lesson in this free course. However, I think it is appropriate
for more than one reason, you now have the basic understanding of
the language and how it is used. You also should head on over to
this course and pick yourself up a copy if you want to practice and
become proficient in German. I cannot recommend this program
highly enough.
German greetings are not that hard to master. Most of them are less
than four words. You can memorize the words as you see fit. You
can also use them as you see fit. These are very helpful for you
folks out there that are planning on traveling to Germany, or as the
natives call it, Deutschland.
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As with all generations now, the German culture is becoming more
relaxed about the rules. However, the rules still apply and you
should approach the learning of the language with a strict
coherence to the way it has been spoken for many generations.
Their language in general, is a little more formal overall than
English. This is a good thing, after all, who ever said that being
polite was something to be ashamed about? I wish you the best in
your learning and I will see you in the members’ area of this
course.
Hello - Hallo
Goodbye - Auf Wiedersehen
Later! - Später!
Have Fun - Haben Sie Spaß
Bye - Tschuess
Merry Christmas - Frohe Weihnachten
Happy Easter - Fröhliche Ostern
How Are You? - Wie Geht Es Ihnen?
I Am Fine - Ich Bin Fein
How Is The Weater? - Wie Das Wetter Ist?
What Time Is It? - Welche Zeit Es Ist?
Where Is The Bathroom? - Wo Das Badezimmer Ist?
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Why Learn German?
This is quite a good question actually. Why learn German? Well
for starters, why would you not want to expand your personal
knowledge? The world is full of idiots and the remaining
intellectual few are dwindling. How many people just within your
inner circle, do you know that are able to speak a second language
fluently? Probably not very many I might imagine.
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Success Story: James Brito
"Before I got this course, I only had a basic understanding of
German, and couldn't find the time to attend classes and tutorials.
Now, thanks to your lessons, I can learn the language whenever I
want, without forking over $500 for a ten-week class that I hardly
have the time for! The lessons have been great. I have greatly
increased my understanding of the pronunciation and vocabulary
necessary to carry out conversations in German.
The MegaGerman game is really cool, and being able to read the e-
book online helps a lot-no worries if I forget to bring the paper
book with me. Oh yeah, and the voices in the online lessons are
very entertaining! Nik and Paul have a fun, entertaining chemistry.
Danke schon, and keep up the great work!"
-James Brito
NEW YORK, USA
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