![]() ![]() German has a rule that the verb must always come second in the sentence: the same rule that we find in English sentences like ‘Where is John?’ (never ‘Where John is?’), or ‘Here comes John’. But we do need to learn to extend this concept over a wider range of words in order to use nouns correctly in German.Īnother instance where German uses concepts we naturally understand from English is in word order. English speakers use case naturally in some situations, for instance when we say ‘he met me’ and not ‘him met me’ or ‘he met I’. In addition to this, articles and adjectives also have endings determined by what is called case. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the German noun is a bit more complex than those found in English or even the Romance languages, although like them, German nouns have unpredictable genders. French and Italian, by contrast, each have four tenses with separate endings which have to be learnt. All other tenses are made by simple combinations with verbs which are the equivalents of English ‘have’ and ‘will’. Like English, German verbs only have two real tenses: ich trinke is ‘I drink’ and ich trank is ‘I drank’. ![]() Verbs, for instance, are much simpler than in the Romance languages. Here, German has both easy and difficult features. This ‘Lego Principle’ means that every word you learn gives you access to understanding many more items based on it.īesides vocabulary building, the other major part of language learning is grammar. But even much more complex words may be built up in this way, so for instance the German for ‘diabetes’ is Zuckerkrankheit, or ‘sugar-sickness’. A simple example is the word Fingerhut, or ‘finger-hat’, which is the German for ‘thimble’, or Handschuhe, ‘hand-shoes’, the German for ‘gloves’. One of the things which makes German fascinating to learn is the way that long words – and German is famous for its long words! – are built up by combining short ones. ![]() When it comes to more complex words, English and German share a lot of international words like Politik for ‘politics’ or Diskussion for ‘discussion’, easy to learn and familiar in many languages. Sometimes slight meaning changes reflect an interesting history: for example, the German word Zaun has the same origin as English ‘town’, but means ‘fence’, as towns used to be enclosed settlements. Sometimes you need to make a sound substitution: for example, English t is often German z, so ‘ten’ is German zehn and ‘tin’ is German Zinn. Of course, not all the correspondences between English and German are as straightforward as Arm and ‘arm’. In French, by contrast, the corresponding words are bras, main and doigt, or in Spanish brazo, mano and dedo: these words resemble each other, as French and Spanish belong to the Romance family of languages. This means that a lot of basic vocabulary is the same in English and German: for example, the English words ‘arm’, ‘hand’ and ‘finger’ correspond to German Arm, Hand and Finger. English speakers are at a great advantage when they learn German, as the languages are both members of the Germanic language family. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |