Hellos and Goodbyes in German

Hellos:

Hello!        Hallo!
Good morning! Guten Morgen! or Morgen!
Good day!     Guten Tag! or Tag!

Goodbyes:

Goodbye!      Auf Wiedersehen! or Wiedersehen!
Bye!          Tschüss! or Tschau!
Later!        Bis später! or Bis dann!

Landeskunde: Formal and Informal Conversations in German

Germans respect higher authority with their choice of certain phrases. The more formal phrases above are Guten Morgen, Guten Tag, and Auf Wiedersehen. The less formal ones are Tschüss, Tag, and Tschau.

• Claudia: Guten Morgen, Herr Wagner!
  
• Herr Wagner: Hallo, Claudia!

• Birgit: Tschau, Susi!
  
• Susi: Tschüss, Birgit!

Herr      Mr.
Frau      Ms.

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The German Alphabet

The 26 letters in both German and English are shown above. One other letter, ß (the esset), replaces two s's (ss) when the preceding vowel is long.

Another difference between German and English is the umlaut. The vowels a, o, and u can take an umlaut (double dots above), becoming ä, ö, and ü. The umlaut changes the sound of the vowel. For pronunciations of all the letters, go to the Pronunciation Guide in Appendix 1. Note: When spelling things out in German, say "umlaut" after the letter ("ah umlaut" for ä).

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Nominative Case

Cases describe what a noun or pronoun does in a sentence. When a noun or pronoun is the subject of a sentence, it is considered to be in the nominative case. For example, in the sentence "I ate an apple", I is the subject and the apple is the direct object. You will learn more about cases as the course continues.

* - Sie is the formal version of du and ihr. In all conjugations, it acts exactly like sie (plural)

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Names

To say "My name is..." in German, say "Ich heiße..."

To say "His/Her/Its name is..." in German, say "Er/Sie/Es heißt..."

To say "Their names are..." in German, say "Sie heißen..."

To say "Our names are..." in German, say "Wir heißen..."

To say "Your name is..." in German, say "Du heißt..."

To say "Your names are..." in German, say "Ihr heißt..."

To ask the question, "What is your name?" in German, ask "Wie heißt du?"

To ask the question, "What are your names?" in German, ask "Wie heißt ihr?"

To ask someone else's name, ask "Wie heißt..." or "Wie heißen..." for more than one person.

Note: There are possessive pronouns in German, they just don't apply here.

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Verbs

You have already learned one verb: heißen, to be called.

Two more extremely common verbs are the German translations for 'to be' and 'to have': sein and haben. They are conjugated like this:

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Wie geht's?

The German translation for "How are you?" is "Wie geht's?" or "Wie geht's denn?".

Responses:

Good: Prima! - Great!, Spitze! - Super!, Gut! - Good!", Sehr gut! - Very good!, und (and) Toll! - Terrific!

Bad: Miserabel. - Miserable., Schlecht. - Bad., Nicht gut. - Not good., und Sehr schlecht. - Very bad.

Okay: Ganz gut., So lala., und Es geht so.

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Articles

German, like many other languages, gives each noun a gender: Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter. Plural nouns also act differently not only with the verb of the sentence, but the article preceding it.

In English, there are two different types of articles: definite (the) and indefinite (a and an). German is the same, except that there are five different articles of each type. The nominitive case articles are as follows:

* - There is no indefinite article for plurals in German or English.
For example, in English, you do not say "a books".

Applications

Here are some nouns that use the articles above:

der Junge = the boy (ein Junge = a boy)

das Mädchen = the girl (ein Mädchen = a girl)

der Herr = the man (ein Herr = a man)

die Frau = the woman (eine Frau = a woman)

Remember that all of these are in singular third person.

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Forming Questions

You have learned two questions so far: "Wie heißt...?" and "Wie geht's?". In German, there are two basic ways to form a question. You can put a who/what/where/when/why/how word out front, or you can put the verb in the first position.

The German translations for Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How? are the following, respectively: Wer?, Was?, Wo?, Wann?, Warum? und Wie?.

The word Wer can be used as the subject of the sentence, so in that case, treat it as the exact same as er.

The question "Wie heißt...?", directly translated, means "How is ... called?". That is why it does not contain Was?.

When you put the interrogative (w-word) in, move the verb to second position, ahead of the subject.

When you want to question the validity of a sentence (or check to see it something is right), switch the verb and the subject. For example, to change "Er heißt..." to a question, say, "Heißt er...?"

To answer such a question, use yes or no and a statement. The German translation for "yes" is ja and the German translation for "no" is nein.

What's On the Test

To go straight to the lesson test, go here.

The test will have four parts to it: Grammar (18 points), Translating (34 points), Reading Comprehension (20 points), and Vocabulary (20 points), in that order. The Grammar section will test your ability to conjugate verbs given the infinitive and the subject. You will also have to know the articles of certain nouns.

The Translating section is worth the most points, and it too has two sections. You must know the translations for sentences and phrases going from English to German, and be able to take a German dialogue and translate it back into English.

The third section, Reading Comprehension, is all Fill-in-the-Blank. You will get two dialogues and be asked to fill in the blanks for these. Some of the hardest parts deal with the greetings, so make sure you know these.

The last section is a vocabulary section. You get 20 English words on the left and 20 German words on the right, and be asked to match them. To study for that, check out the 71 flashcards related to this lesson at FlashcardExchange.com (http://www.flashcardexchange.com/card_set.php?id=248162). That is the whole test. Take it!