Learn German: The Basics of the German Language

1. Introduction: If you've been trying to learn German, we just can't seem to wrap your head around the basics- Hi, I'm Multilingualy and are here to help you. Welcome to your full starter kit of the German language for total beginners. In this class, I'll teach you all the basics you need to know when starting with your new language journey. And hopefully gets you from zero German to actually understanding what's going on in this language. This class is for you, if you're a complete beginner, don't have much time to learn or just don't want to spend hours trying to figure out the basics. If so, join me in this class. We'll start from the beginning. I hope you have a great time learning with me. And don't forget, after each lesson you watch. Look at the project and resources section. There, you will find useful printable PDFs to remind you of everything you've just learned and all the important things you need to remember. So let's not waste any more time and start with your new language adventure. 2. Basic German Word Order: In this lesson, we are learning about basic German word order. So let's start with the word order in English. Look at the sentence. I am going to the beach on Wednesday with my brother. Notice that in English, we start off with the subject, which is "I". So subject is the thing or the person that's doing the action. Then we have the verb, which in this case is "am going". Then we have three additional parts to the sentance, which are the place in this example "to the beach", the time "on Wednesday". And lastly, the manner, which is "with my brother". So manner is just additional information about the action. Now in English, we can change this up. We can put the time in the beginning of the sentence. So "On Wednesday, I'm going to the beach with my brother". Now notice the pattern of word order in English, which is subject, verb, place, time, and manner. It's important to look at this so we can understand what happens in German. Now let's see what happens to an English sentence if we add a second verb. So we're just going to add, "I want", so "I want to go to the beach on Wednesday with my brother." What has changed? We've added the second group right after the first verb, because that's what it belongs in an English sentence. So let's add this to our pattern. Okay, so verb, then a second verb, place, time, and manner. Now let's see what happens in German word order, so it's a little bit different. Let's just translate our English sentence. "Ich gehe am Mittwoch mit meinem Bruder zum Strand." The subject is the verb "Ich". That time am "Mittwoch". "Mit meinem Bruder" is the manner. And lastly, the place which is "zum Strand". Notice how the verb is in the second position right after the subject. Now let's move that time to the beginning of the sentence. "Am Mittwoch, gehe ich mit meinem Bruder zum Strand." Look at how the verb must remain in the second position. And this is a very important and inflexible rule that we must learn in Germany. Now what happens if we add a second verb in German? In English, the second verb comes right after the first verb. In German, however, something very different and important happens if a "Ich will am Mittwoch mit meinem Bruder zum Strand gehen." The second verb comes right at the end of the sentence. And this is very important. It's a little bit strange to native English speakers, but it's just a rule and we need to remember and get used to. Let's see what the pattern is. The subject, the first verb - in the second position, the time, the manner, the place. And lastly, if there's a second verb, it comes in their final position. And to summarize, there are two important rules to remember. The First rule, the verb must come in the second position. And if there is a second verb, it comes in the final position. And the Second rule is about those other elements in the sentence which we didn't talk about much. But they go in order, time, manner, and place. 3. Special Characters: The German alphabet has 26 letters that are the same as in English. It also has three umlauts, as well as one ligature. So let's start with the first umlaut, which is "ä", two dots. This one is pronounced "a". You can pronounce it long or short depending on the word. For example, in "ähnlich", which means "similar", it's pronounced along, but "Äpfel", meaning apple, it's pronounced short. Next one is "ö". "öffnen", which means "to open" or "das Öl", which means "oil". And the last one is "ü", for example, "üben" which means to practice or "fünf"- five. Another special letteris the Eszett. This letter only exist in German and it looks similar to the "B". The pronunciation is very easy it's Iike a normal S, for example, "heiß", which means "hot". Also "Spaß", which means "fun". So when do we use it exactly? We usually use it after a long vowel like in "Spaß". The a is long. And another example is "groß". You don't say "groß", you say "groß". Here the vowel is long, so it's followed by the Eszett. We also use it went two vowels are together, which is what we had before "heiß". And you probably don't have this letter on your keyboard, but you can keep the alt pressed while you press the code to 225. on your numbers block for Microsoft and alt + "b" for Mac. 4. Present Tense : Now we will learn about the regular present tense verb endings in German, will learn how to construct the present tense in German as well as how to use it. So first things first, you need to learn how to find the stem or the root of the verb, which comes from the infinitive, as well as the regular verb endings. So these are the verb endings. As usual, we are taking our six persons and assigning an ending. For "ich" we use the ending -en, For "du" -st, for "er, sie, es"-t. For "wir" -en, for "ihr" -t and for "sie" -en. So these are the endings, but how exactly do we find the stem or the root of the verb, which will add the endings to. It's very simple, so we just take the infinitive, that we find in the dictionary and remove the ending, which is -en. And this is our stem, will use the verb "spielen" as our example. "spielen" means to play, remove the ending, and this is our stem. And to this stem we add the regular verb endings. So let's do that right now. Ich spiele, du spielst, er, sie, es spielt, wir spielen, ihr spielt, sie spielen. 00:01:24.770 --> 00:01:26.045 And if I wanted to say "I play basketball", for example, I'd say "Ich spiele Basketball". This verb "warten", demonstrate that German verbs can sometimes vary from the standard pattern. So the stem of this verb is wart-, and let's add the endings to the stem. Now, notice two difficulties that "du wartst". It's a little bit hard to pronounce. Also the third person singular and the second person plural. They both have two t's at the end. Therefore, in German, an extra vowel -e is added between the stem and the ending to make it easier to pronounce. Let's look at some more examples for the present tense. The hat, I'm Buddha. "Sie hat ein Bruder" - "She has a brother". "Er liebt apfel" - "He loves apples." "Wir gehen am Montag zur Schule." "We go to school on Monday." 5. Present Negative Tense: In the previous lesson, we'll learn how to make regular present tense in German. And now we'll learn how to make present negative tense. It's very simple. There are two ways of making any sentence negative. First one is by using "kein" instead of "ein, eine, einen" with nouns or by inserting a negative adverb with the verbs, will learn how to do that in a moment. First with nouns, we'll replace "ein" with "kein" For example, i"Ich habe eine Katze." "eine Katze" is a noun. So instead of "eine" we say "keine", so "Iche habe kein Katze." It means "I don't have a cat." Another example,"Ich trage ein Hut." means "I wear a hat." And if I wanted to say "I don't wear a hat", we will replace "ein Hut" with "kein Hut" So "Ich trage kein Hut." means "I don't wear a hat." Another way of making a sentence negative is by adding a negative adverb after the verb. The most common negative adverbs in German are "nicht", which means not. "nie" - "never" and "niemals", which also means "never". Let's look at some examples. "Ich esse Brot." This means "I eat bread." You'll use the adverb "nie" because it means "never." So after the verb, "esse" will add "nie", "Ich esse nie Brot" - "I never eat bread." Another one, "Emily fahrt langsam." "Emily drives slowly." We add "nicht" after the verb. "Emily fahrt nicht langsam." This literally means "Emily driver is not slowly." which in English, we translate as "Emily doesn't drive slowly." And other "Ich spiele oft Tennis." "I often play tennis." "Ich spiele nicht oft Tennis." "I don't play tennis often." 6. Adjectives: In this lesson, we are learning about German adjectives. So how exactly the German adjectives work? Briefly when used in front of a noun. Adjectives in German decline, which means that their endings change in order to give extra information about the grammatical function of the noun. For example, "Ich sehe einen alten Mann." means "I see an old man." Here, the adjective "alt"meaning "old", takes the ending -en, to show that the noun "Mann"is the direct object of the sentence, as well as the noun is masculine. English doesn't make this kind of distinction. So it's a little tricky to remeber to make these changes at first. And I don't recommend you try to learn how to make these changes when first starting with German, because you'll just get confused with all the weak, the mixed and the strong declinations. It's really not that crucial when you're first starting off. Fortunately for us, such changes don't happen at all when the adjective comes after the noun. For example, "Meine Mutter ist alt." "My mother is old." Notice that the adjective "alt" didn't change at all because it comes after the noun, which is "Mutter". And I've listed for you 10 most common German adjectives because these are the ones you probably come across the most in a German speaking environment. 7. How to Form Questions : So to ask a question in German, this is very simple. You just swap the verb and the subject. So "Du isst" - "You are eating", swap the verb and the subject. "Isst du?" And this means "Are you eating?" "Bist du glucklich." You are happy. "Du" is the subject and "bist" is the verb. Swap these around "Bist du glucklich?" "Are you happy?" "Er ist beim Arzt." "He is at the doctor's. "Ist er beim Arzt?" "Is he at the doctor's?" Another way of forming a question is by using a question word, just like in English. "Wann ist sie gekommen?" "When did she come?" "Wann" means "when". "Wer ist das?" - "Who is this?" And these are the German question words. Obviously, there's more of them, but these are the most common ones. 8. What’s Next: So we've officially come to the end of our language learning journey. And I hope you really enjoyed this class as much as either making it. And for your class project, you need to fill out the worksheet I'm going below. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask. And don't forget to look at the PDFs I made for you with everything you've just learned. Thank you so much for watching this course and I'll see you in my next one. Bye!