Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Newbie S1 #18
Wishes and thoughts
CONTENTS
2 INTRODUCTION
3 DIALOGUE
5 POST CONVERSATION BANTER
5 VOCAB LIST
8 CULTURAL INSIGHTS
10 LESSON FOCUS
16 OUTRO
# 18
COPYRIGHT © 2019 INNOVATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
INTRODUCTION
Judith: [Willkommen].
Chuck: Welcome listeners. We’re back for this week’s Newbie lesson.
Judith: GermanPod101 gives you five podcasts a week. And we have something for
everybody, phrases and two different courses for beginners, entertaining music
lessons for the intermediates, and German cultural podcasts for the advanced
students. Who else can claim this?
Chuck: So we pretty much have something for everyone. So if you have any friends
that are interested in learning German, whether they can already speak it fluently or
more likely maybe they don’t know any German at all, tell the about GermanPod101
and our free podcasts.
Judith: The more people listen to the podcast, the more people will also interact on
the website, share tips and experiences, practicing German together, Chuck and I
may even host a chat session, all in and about German.
Chuck: So tell your friends, post about it on your blog or Twitter or other sites, and
don’t forget to post on GermanPod101 itself, the comments or the forum.
Judith: If you want, you can even apply to have your own personal blog on
GermanPod101 talking about German or living in Germany. Just contact us by email.
Our email address is contact us, all in one word,
@germanpod101.com.
Judith: Today we’ll discuss appointments. Germans take their appointments very
Chuck: So do you think there might be a chance that Michael might get an
appointment with Lena? Maybe a candlelight dinner?
DIALOGUE
Michael Schmidt: Schade. Ich denke wir sehen uns am Mittwoch, oder?
Michael Schmidt: Ich hoffe, dass das Wetter schön sein wird.
Michael Schmidt: Ich denke, dass wir uns trotzdem treffen werden.
Michael Schmidt: Schade. Ich denke wir sehen uns am Mittwoch, oder?
Michael Schmidt: Ich denke, dass wir uns trotzdem treffen werden.
Chuck: That’s too bad. I think we will see each other on Wednesday right?
Judith: Okay.
Chuck: Okay.
VOCAB LIST
Judith: Ok. Let’s look at the vocabulary. The first word is gleich.
Judith: gleich.
Chuck: To think.
Judith: denken.
Chuck: To think.
Chuck: Us.
Judith: uns.
Chuck: Us.
Chuck: Exactly.
Judith: genau.
Chuck: Exactly.
Judith: einfach.
Chuck: To hope.
Judith: hoffen.
Chuck: To hope.
Judith: This is usually used with the next word, which is dass.
Chuck: That.
Judith: dass.
Chuck: That.
Judith: Note that this is spelled with double S now. It used to be spelled with the [ß],
that special character.
Judith: But it evolved out of an old way of writing the S along with an old way of
writing the Z.
Judith: [Z]
Judith: [Z]
Chuck: [You should hear how many] arguments we always get into about this.
Judith: Don’t talk while I'm talking. [Dass] starts a sub clause, and we’ll learn more
about that in the grammar section. The next word is Wetter.
Chuck: Weather.
Judith: Wetter.
Chuck: Weather.
Judith: This is used with the article [Dass] because it’s neutral, [Dass Wetter].
Judith: trotzdem.
CULTURAL INSIGHTS
Chuck: Yeah, Germans take their appointments pretty seriously. You’ll find that
Germans generally prefer their schedule much more structured so they’re much
likely to do things at the last minute.
Judith: Yeah. If you find that you need to cancel, you should call in a long time ahead.
Chuck: Yeah. And you might find that if you want an appointment with a doctor that
you might have to wait like another month for one.
Judith: Well, doctors are special, but even with normal people you should always call
and you should try to be punctual when you have an appointment. Being more than
five minutes late is frowned upon. If you’re like 30 minutes late it’s just inexcusable,
there’s no way you can make up for it. So that’s also an occasion when you should
definitely call and let people know.
Chuck: And also know that many hairdressers or barber shops only accept people
with by appointment.
Judith: Yeah, especially on busy days. I mean, with hair dressers, for example, it may
be that they let you just come in on a normal day, but if it’s the day before Christmas
then it’s very, very certain that they won’t.
Chuck: But if you look for the cheaper barber shops or hairdressers in the city, then
those are usually without appointment, but you may end up waiting anywhere from
a half hour to a full hour to get your hair cut.
Judith: Yeah. That’s the same with doctors actually because even if you have an
appointment, you may have to wait a long time. And if you’re not there when your
name is called, you just lose your chance. You’ll have to make another appointment.
Judith: And as for appointments with the authorities, you should probably call and
make an appointment. Normally, you don’t need one, like you can go into the work
office or the foreigner’s office at any time, but then you’ll have to wait a long time.
And if you make an appointment, that can save you a lot of time.
Chuck: Yeah, for example if you want to get a Visa and you’re in a city that’s fairly
large like Berlin or Hamburg or Frankfurt, then you can often make an appointment
to discuss you case.
Judith: Yeah. If you go there and wait, be prepared for a number drawing system. I
don't know if you have those in the States. It’s basically you have a little machine that
gives out numbers and whenever… yeah.
Judith: Ok.
Chuck: And you’ll also see that in the smaller cities, you may find that you just wait in
the hallway till your time comes.
Judith: Yeah, that’s the less nice way. If you have to wait two hours sitting in a hallway
just not to lose your place in line.
Chuck: Yeah, because I’ve noticed that the ways the offices work in Berlin are quite
different from the way they worked in [Heilbronn].
Judith: Well, it’s obvious with the big city or with a city that has a lot of foreigners to
deal with.
LESSON FOCUS
Judith: These are really easy because they use the EN ending just like the infinitive,
they’re not distinguishable actually. For example, wir sehen.
Chuck: We see.
Chuck: We come.
Chuck: We will.
Chuck: We have.
Chuck: We were.
Chuck: Now the more important grammar thing is sub clauses. In this dialogue, you
saw a couple of sentences that were quite complex.
Chuck: Will drive you nuts if you don’t know the form of them. Or more likely they’ll
drive the German nuts that you’re talking with.
Judith: I don’t think it’s that hard for English speakers because a lot of it it’s very
similar. For example, just like in English, we have a long form and a shorter form in
German. For example, Ich denke, dass du intelligent bist.
Judith: This would be the long form. And the short form for that is Ich denke du bist
intelligent.
Judith: So what you notice is that the “that” is dropped. “I think that you’re
intelligent” or “I think you’re intelligent”. And in German it’s the same Ich denke, dass
du intelligent bist. Ich denke du bist intelligent.
Chuck: So basically whenever you have a sub clause, like whenever you use the verb
dass, think, “Ok, I would normally put the verb here, but this time I'm just going to
shove it all the way at the end of the sentence.”
Judith: Yeah that’s the thing with the long form. And that’s how German differs from
English, it is that you have to move the verb and it’s the same as for the future tense
for example or for all the verbs like könnte and möchte that we had before. So, only
in this case you put all the verbs at the end. This is one difficulty of the long form. You
may want to think that, “Ok, we’re always going to use the short form and I don’t
have to learn anything different”, right? It’s not a good idea because in speech you
can use the short form, but in writing you should always use the long form, anything
else just sounds very strange and colloquial like writing and SMS message.
Judith: Yes, you can. It’s the same rule as before. If there’s more than one word at the
end of the sentence, you just have to digest them backwards. The first verb to digest
is at the very end, then the second verb will be next to last and so on.
Judith: I think it will be easy enough when you get used to it. I’ll give you some
examples.
Judith: So then we have the wird at the very end, Ich hoffe, dass es nicht regnen wird.
Wird regnen is the way that you have to think of them, “will rain”.
Judith: Yes. I believe Yoda was a German. And let’s have one really, really complex
long sentence that you can already understand. Michael hofft, dass Lena nicht viel
für die Uni lernen müssen wird.
Chuck: So let me give this one a try. “Michael hopes that Lena won’t have to study
much for university.”
Judith: Yes.
Chuck: Or literally, “Michael hopes that Lena not much for the university study must
will”.
Judith: Oh, it’s just the German way. And one more thing, what happens to stacked
sub clauses when you have a sub clause of a sub clause of a sub clause? I found a
really good example in the song Mr Wichtig by TicTacToe. It’s a song about this guy
who’s lying on the beach and just feeling very self-important and…
Judith: No, TicTacToe is the name of the band. It’s a German rap band, they dissolved
a couple of years ago.
Judith: Stop it, they weren’t bad. Anyway, in this song, there’s a line Meinst du das,
was ich denk, oder denkst du nur du denkst, dass du weißt, was ich mein? So let’s
break it down. Meinst du das, was ich denk?
Chuck: Do mean what I think or do you just think you’re thinking that you know what
Chuck: Or for fun, literally, “mean you that what I think or think you only you think
that you know what I mean”. Well, the end made sense.
Judith: Yeah. It’s not that different from English. Anyway, you can also find this
example in the PDF grammar summary. And it’s great because now you can
understand complex German sentences.
Judith: Even then, Kant is… his writings are so difficult, even for Germans.
Chuck: Yeah. In the advanced series, Judith’s going to go over the latest readings by
Kant.
Chuck: Just write her and tell her you want to hear Kant. Ok, maybe you don’t want
to hear Kant, ok.
Michael Schmidt: Schade. Ich denke wir sehen uns am Mittwoch, oder?
Michael Schmidt: Ich hoffe, dass das Wetter schön sein wird.
Michael Schmidt: Ich denke, dass wir uns trotzdem treffen werden.
OUTRO
Judith: Alright. No matter what the weather is, you can count on having another
Newbie lesson next Tuesday.
Chuck: That’s right. Neither snow nor sleet nor hale will keep us from our GermanPod
lessons.
Chuck: That’s like the post office saying in the States or something like that.
Judith: Ah ok. Meanwhile, don’t miss Thursday’s beginner lesson and tomorrow’s
lesson for intermediates.
Chuck: Just because your German is not as advanced yet to understand Kant, it
doesn’t mean you can`t enjoy German music.