175 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
175 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: German notes
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date: 2019-04-23
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layout: page
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---
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An abandoned series of posts highlighting things I have learned about the
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German language.
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# Chapter 1: introduction
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## Cognates
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A cognate is a word that is derived from the same original form such as kühl and
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cool. We'll explore some consonant relationships that exist between German and
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English to make guessing more accurate and faster but of course, always consider
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checking the dictionary for the definitive answer.
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| German | English | Examples |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| f, ff (medial or final) | p | hoffen - to hope, scharf - sharp |
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| pf | p, pp | Apfel - apple, Pfeife - pipe |
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| b (medial or final) | v or f | geben - to give, halb - half |
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| d | th | Ding - thing |
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| ch | k | Buch - book, machen - to make, suchen - to seek |
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| cht | ght | Macht - might, Sicht - sight, Recht - right, Nacht - night |
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| g | y or i | sagen - to say, legen - to lay, Nagel - nail, fliegen - to fly |
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| k | c | kommen - to come, kritisch - critical |
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| s, ss, ß (medial or final) | t | hassen - to hate, grüßen - to greet, besser - better, Fuß - foot |
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| tz, z | t | Katze - cat |
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| t | d | trinken - to drink, kalt - cold, Tochter - daughter |
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Note that sometimes it may require some flexibility with vowels to get the
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correct word e.g., hören - to hear. Try to figure out the following words: Haus,
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lassen, Sonne, Wort.
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Good? What about Pfefferminze and tanzen (try your luck with stripping -n/-en if
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you think it's a verb in its infinitive form)
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Okay let's learn proverbs. Well, first there's this thing with German where it
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is possible to "glue" multiple words to produce another word referred to as
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compounds for example Sprichwörter means proverbs! look both of them up. Now for
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the actual proverbs.
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* Blut ist dicker als Wasser. Blood is dicker(thicker) als(as)
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Wasser(ss->t).
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* Reiche Leute(people) haben fette Katzen.
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Book titles! Buchtitel, apparently used for both singular and plural.
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* Yasmina Khadra, was der Tag der Nacht schuldet (haven't read it yet by the
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way).
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## Genders
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.. note::
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Find a way to ease the process of memorizing these? being able to
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quickly remember and map the endings would be very helpful.
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Complex stuff, unsure how to deal with it other than just practicing it often.
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But with what?
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It's very important to know what your subject's gender is to understand the
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context of the passage in hand. The corresponding German definite articles are
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as follows
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| Gender | Article |
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| --- | --- |
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| Masculine | der |
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| Feminine | die |
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| Neuter | das |
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| Plural | die |
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### Masculine
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1. Nouns denoting male beings.
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2. Most nouns ending with -er that are agents of a specific activity e.g., der
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Computer.
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3. The days, months and seasons. Look them up!
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4. Nouns ending in -ig, -ich, -ing, -ast, -mus e.g., König (king), der
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Socialismus (Socialism).
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5. Points of compass. Norden, Süden, Oster und Westen.
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### Feminine
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1. Nouns denoting female beings.
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2. Nouns of most trees, fruits and flowers. Look your favorites up!
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3. Nouns ending with -er, -ie, -ik, -in, -ion, -hiet, kiet, -schaft, -tät,
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-ung, -ur e.g., die Gesundheit (health), die Gesellschaft (society) und die
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Hoffung.
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### Neuter
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> Diminutive nouns usually have an umlaut if the stem vowel is a, o, u or au
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so a becomes ä...
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{.info}
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1. Nouns with diminutive endings -chen, -lein e.g., das Buch -> das Büchlein,
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das Männlein.
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2. Most nouns of foreign origin that end in -o e.g., das Auto.
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3. Infinitives used as a noun e.g., das Kommen.
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4. Nouns ending with -ium, -um e.g., das Vism.
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## Compounds
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New words in German sometimes can be formed by combining simpler words. Some of
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these words can be particularly graphic. For example.
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* Abend (evening) + Land (country) = (occident).
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* Morgen + Land = (orient).
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* Morgen + Röte = (dawn).
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* Eier (eggs) + Auflauf(crowd) = Eierauflauf (soufflé).
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The gender of the noun is determined by *its final component*. Thus, even in a
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word as long as Unfallversicherungsgesellschaft (accident-insurance-society),
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the article will be *die* because the suffix *-schaft* is feminine. This seems
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difficult...
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* Standard German is known as Hochdeutsch, try figuring that out. Northen dialects
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are referred to as Platt which you *should* be able to guess.
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* Sie haben eine nette Dreizimmerwohung etwa 10 kilometer von der Stadtmitte.
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* Deutschland ist eine Bundesrepublic in diverse Länder oder Bundesländer
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unterteilt. Die Länder habt lokal Kontrolle uber Bildung und jeder hat sein
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Landesregierung.
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# Chapter 2: Pronunciation
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This, in addition to the tables provided by Colloquial German, should serve as a
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good document for how German pronunciation is like. Of course, you *should*
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always look up the pronunciation in its audio format and/or learn how to read
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IPA table efficiently to improve your pronunciation skills.
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This is also helpful to have a, sometimes misleading, sometimes correct guess of
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the word's definition simply by saying them. For example, jung is pronounced
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young and indeed does mean young.
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Keep in mind that all German nouns are capitalized e.g., Buch for book.
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## Vowels
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> Keep in mind that I myself don't know most of these words. They're used
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to simply give an example on how German sounds like in a way. It'd be
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good if you pick up a word or two from this guide. I don't think you'll
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be revisiting this page much. Maybe I'll consider updating the tables
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with better/more fitting examples that you *may* find interesting.
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{.info}
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Vowels are either short or long like most languages. They are long when
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* They are doubled: Paar (Pair), Haar (hair), Schnee (Snow).
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* They are followed by h: sehen (to look. Sehen is the noun view, notice the
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capitalization matters!), Jahr (year), Ohr (ear).
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* They are followed by a single consonant: gut (good), rot (red).
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They are shower when
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* They are followed a double consonant: Bett (bed), Mann (man), hoffen (to
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hope).
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* They are followed by two or more consonants: sitzen (to sit), ernst (serious,
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look it up!).
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| Vowel | Type | English equivalent sound | German words |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| a | long | father | Vater, haben, sagen |
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| a | short | hot | Vasser, Hand, alt |
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| e | long | may | See, geben |
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| e | short | let | Ende |
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| i | long | greet | Tiger, Universität |
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| i | short | sit | ist, dick, Mitte, Mittag, Mittwoch |
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| ie | long | similar to here, look up how the following are pronounced. | Bier, hier, fliegen, liegen |
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| o | long | open | Sohn, Brot, Segelboot |
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| o | song | Sonne, Sommer | (none) |
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| u | long | dune | Blume, Pudel, Handschuh |
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| u | short | bush | Mutter, und, unter |
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