Sold to

bulgariansld@abv.bg

WHY GERMAN IS EASY

BY BENNY LEWIS
WHY GERMAN IS EASY

BY BENNY LEWIS
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
About the author 3
Introduction 5
Having the right learning approach 7
Make mistakes! 10
A positive attitude is the key 12

PART ONE: GRAMMAR

German and English: close cousins with many similarities 16
Noun Genders 22
Plurals 25
Irregular noun declensions 29
Cases 30
Adjective endings 33
Prepositions and cases 35
Conjugation 37
Irregular verbs and past tenses 39
Separable verbs 43
Word order 45

PART TWO: VOCABULARY

Why German is the same as English 49
Germanic words 50
English loan words 51
Other international loan words 53
Word formation 54

Conclusion 58

2
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My name is Benny (Brendan) Lewis. I’m a vegetarian from Cavan, Ireland

and I don’t drink. I like to think of myself a “technomad” – a full-time
technology-enabled globe-trotter.

I have had plenty of jobs in the last decade – English teacher, Math-
ematics teacher, French/Spanish teacher, photographer, youth hostel
receptionist, tour guide, yoga store manager, first aid assistant, elec-
tronic engineer and several others. Before attempting to support myself
from my website Fluent in 3 Months and from other guides such as this
one, I was a location independent freelance translator.

I’m sure that the contents of this guide as well as the files and links
included within it will help you greatly in your mission to learn German.
The ideas described here in this book are what transformed my own
opinion of German and turned it from an academic subject spoken by
“humourless” people in my mind into a real language that has given me
countless amazing friends for life.

Thank you for your support,

and enjoy hacking German!

4
 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
Despite being the most widely spoken first language in Europe, German
is surprisingly low on many people’s list of languages to learn, with Eng-
lish, French, Spanish or non-European languages getting more focus in
many English-speaking countries.

However, in most of Europe, including Ireland, it’s one of the most

studied languages! For no reason other than the fact that I thought my
German teacher was cooler than the potential French one, I chose this
language to be the focus of my five years of secondary school studies.

In school I was more of a Maths nerd and considered myself stupid

in terms of arts and languages, and I pretty much accepted from the
start that I would never achieve anything impressive with my German. I
proved myself right by getting a C in my university entrance exams (the
“Leaving Cert.” in Ireland) in German.

After university I moved to Spain, where my language-learning jour-

ney began, and I realised that I (and everyone else) had the potential
all along to become fluent in a new language quickly. After Spanish I
moved to other countries to learn other Latin languages, but the frus-
tration of my five years of “wasted” German studies would continually
come back to haunt me.

Despite my success in other languages, German always seemed like the

“one that got away”. I would meet German travellers and have to speak
to them in English (or at best, another language I had learned), and
when I visited Germany to teach English, I was devastated to see that I
couldn’t even order a train ticket. What did I learn in those five years?

5
 INTRODUCTION

Finally, I’d had enough. I decided to make German one of my official

language missions, and I dedicated three months to learning it. Rather
than aiming to speak at a fluent level, since I imagined I had something
of a “head start” from my early years of study, I decided to sit the C2 ex-
amination from the Goethe Institut, one of the world’s toughest German
examinations for non-natives. Three months after I arrived in Berlin I sat
that exam and managed to pass four fifths of it.

The purpose of this guide is to outline one of the main reasons I feel I
was able to turn my almost non-existent German into a useful level so
quickly: the second time round I focused on what was easy. In retro-
spect, I can see that this was one of the most crucial aspects of my suc-
cess. In contrast, when I studied German in school, all I could see were
the many reasons I thought German was hard.

Rather than create a detailed course for the German language (since
there are already plenty of them around), here I want to put my own
spin on German and show some of the shortcuts I used to “hack” the
language quickly.

I’d like to help you discover a new, easy way to learn German. Using
these methods, you can have a confident command of German in just a
few months.

6
 HAVING THE RIGHT LEARNING APPROACH

HAVING THE RIGHT

LEARNING APPROACH
One reason I failed at my first attempt to learn German was not because
I didn’t have the ability to take on the language. It was also not because
German itself was too hard for me. Instead, it was largely due to a poor
approach I had for language learning in general.

have written extensively on this topic in several places, including on

the Fluent in 3 Months blog and in my weekly e-mails. But before I get
into detail about the German language in particular, I’d like to sum-
marise for you here the main philosophies I apply to all of my language
projects:

• Ditch your excuses. Bad luck, talent or not having the right genes are
bad excuses for not being successful in learning a language. You can
overcome any challenges to reach your goal if you are determined
enough.

• Change your “want” mentality to a “need” mentality. The decision

to truly immerse myself in my first new language, Spanish, gave me
the pressure that set off a spark in my mind realising that I needed
to learn Spanish. Casual interest can only get you so far, but passion
will bring you all the way to your goal. Speaking now is the smartest
decision you can ever make.

7
 HAVING THE RIGHT LEARNING APPROACH

• Focus on short-term, tangible goals, rather than aiming to “speak

well someday”. When you make conscious note of your progress, you
will be able to keep up your momentum and reach your overall goals
much quicker.

• Put good learning strategies into action. The best ideas in the world
are worth nothing if they aren’t implemented. Make a plan of action
(or a “mission” as I like to call it) and apply it.

• Make a language log. Be public about your goals to learn German,

and share your story with your friends and other learners for support.
You can write out your plans and share them with us on the Fluent in
3 Months forums.

• Create at-home immersion. You do not need to travel to Germany,

Austria or Switzerland to get some German immersion! I’ve created a
bonus Immersion Sample Schedule and attached it to this e-book to
give you tips on creating a German immersion environment at home.
You can also friend me on italki, my favourite site for connecting with
native speakers. On this site you can get free language exchanges,
very good private teachers, and online lessons which are much more
affordable than in-person lessons.

• Start before you’re ready. Get rid of the concept of “I’m not ready
yet” and start practising German right now. My first time in Germany
(in Munich) I was too ashamed of my weak German to use it. But
when I moved to Berlin and my level was exactly the same, I dived
straight into speaking German and never spoke English with Ger-
mans. I spent my first week in Berlin and still managed to communi-
cate despite my weak level!

8
 HAVING THE RIGHT LEARNING APPROACH

• Communicate creatively – not perfectly. Your ability to communicate

in German is not limited by your scope of vocabulary and grammar.
With a little practice you can extrapolate what someone is saying to
you and use non-verbal communication methods to get your point
across. Not falling back to English or another language will keep up
your rhythm and ensure you make progress quickly.

• Adjust to being a language learner. Sometimes learners have prob-

lems that don’t come specifically from German, but from the un-
familiarity of speaking a foreign language in general. Try learning
Esperanto for just two weeks. There are lots of aspects of Esperanto
that are the same as in German, like the Accusative case (easier to
get used to first in Esperanto) and lots of vocabulary like hundo and
flughaveno. Gaining the confidence to speak another language (but
doing it quickly) can give you a fantastic edge with your German.

• Don’t worry what natives will think. Germans are very helpful peo-
ple! The encouragement I got while I was learning the language was
amazing once they saw I was genuinely serious about making pro-
gress. They would give me many corrections, but keep the conversa-
tion in German even when their English was way better than my Ger-
man. Many expats do end up just speaking English with Germans,
but this is often due to laziness and defeatistism on the learners’
part – it’s not because of the native Germans!

9
 MAKE MISTAKES

MAKE MISTAKES
Something that sets this guide apart from other languages guides is
that I’m going to encourage you to make mistakes.

Of course, I don’t mean that you should intentionally say things wrong
when you know how to say them correctly; rather, I’ll be pointing out
situations in which you’re better off knowingly making mistakes rather
than not speaking at all. This is especially important for people focused
on communication. When your goal with German is to talk with native
speakers, sometimes it’s OK to make mistakes!

If you say das instead of der or don’t add the right adjective ending, I
can guarantee you that you will still be understood very well. Perfecting
such grammar points is essential to getting an ‘A’ in an examination,
but will be much less important in your ability to express yourself and
be understood when speaking German.

Beginner to intermediate learners should not aim for perfection in a lan-

guage. You will make mistakes, but you have to embrace this! Mistakes
are a natural part of the learning process. Once you reach intermediate
level and are ready to iron out the final issues, you can come back to
what I honestly feel are less crucial aspects of the language in the initial
stages.

Spending two hours learning tables of which prepositions take which

cases is going to help you communicate a tiny fraction of the amount
that the same two hours invested in learning essential, “you-specific”
vocabulary would do.

10
 MAKE MISTAKES

Since this advice may not be for everyone, I have included the follow-
ing symbol beside parts of the body of the text that discuss my “hacks”.
! This symbol appears for components of German that will not hinder
communication if you don’t get them right. Getting these aspects ab-
solutely right should be a low priority until you are confident with other
more important parts of German.

However, if you are learning German for academic or other reasons, or

if you are already confident with your ability to communicate the ba-
sics, you can ignore these particular shortcuts. When you are ready for
it, then “tidying up the edges” and focusing on these issues is actually
a lot easier once you’ve already become used to the language and are
indeed communicating in it.

11
 A POSITIVE ATTITUDE IS THE KEY

A POSITIVE ATTITUDE
IS THE KEY
The core of this guide is a rephrasal or a different way of looking at
certain points of German that you may consider difficult. This guide at-
tempts to present those points in another light.

In addition to applying these short cuts yourself, you should try to take
the whole positive attitude that accompanies the suggestions given
here and apply them to as many other parts of the language as pos-
sible. I can’t possibly cover everything in this guide, but you will soon
start to get the idea and see how these hacks can also work for anything
I have not mentioned here.

No matter what language I learn, I always try to look at my cup as “half-

full”. It’s possible to answer this entire guide with a list of reasons why
German could be “hard”, but that will never help the learner. German
is not hard; you make it hard through the way you think about the lan-
guage. That’s good news, because you can also choose to make Ger-
man easy simply by changing the attitude you have when you approach
the language!

This positive attitude creates a feedback loop in your mind, in which

you’ll look for more evidence to support the idea that it isn’t that bad
after all, and this will further fuel your openness to learn more in the lan-
guage without creating invisible barriers. Progress will flow, and you’ll
be speaking confidently before you know it!

Of course, this works with a negative attitude just as effectively. It’s

12
 A POSITIVE ATTITUDE IS THE KEY

hard to get out of the vicious circle of a language being hard because
you think it’s hard, but I hope the points in this guide will get you on
that road and break you free from believing that German is out of your
reach!

Many of the aspects of German that I don’t cover in this guide are found
commonly in most course materials, or you can discover them for free
in the online courses listed in the Resources section. And of course, you
can always ask natives directly if German is still giving you problems.
Actively seek out a solution to jump over each hurdle!

13
 GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY
Since I discuss grammar in this guide, I try to avoid using overly techni-
cal terminology, but there are a few terms you’ll see that you should be
familiar with. These include:

Definite article: This refers to the various ways of expressing the word
“the” in German (der/die/das/den/dem/des). “The” and “a” are arti-
cles, and “the” is a definite article because it refers to a definite object.

Indefinite article: This refers to the various ways of expressing the word
“a” in German (ein/eine/einen/einem/eines). As the name suggests,
unlike “the”, “a” refers to something indefinite. Think of the difference
between a car (it could be any one) and the car (a very specific “defi-
nite” car).

Adjective: This is a word that describes an attribute of something. Big,

small, yellow, shiny, green – these are all adjectives. In English these
words never change, but in German they get particular endings depend-
ing on the words around them.

Case: A case describes how nouns (objects acting or being acted on in

the sentence) or pronouns (words representing these nouns, like “him”
or “it”) relate to other words in a sentence. See the Case section that
describes the differences between various cases, specifically Accusa-
tive, Nominative, Dative and Genitive in German.

Preposition: Words like “in”, “to”, “for”, “by”, “with” etc. that indicate a
relationship between other words in a sentence.

14
 PART ONE

GRAMMAR
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

GERMAN AND ENGLISH

CLOSE COUSINS WITH MANY SIMILARITIES

One of the main reasons it’s possible to argue that German isn’t hard is
that it’s actually in the same family as English. Strong Germanic family
ties from just a couple of thousand years ago means that the older an
English text is, the closer it is to what German would also have been at
the time.

There are endless remnants of the common Germanic language in both

languages that crop up so often, they really do give you a huge head
start. In the second section I’ll discuss the vocabulary aspect of this, but
first let’s have a look at the grammar!

Try this. Ask yourself:

How would Shakespeare have said it?

If you’ve ever read Shakespeare, you can appreciate the ties with Ger-
man even more, and many of German’s characteristic properties were
actually sprinkled into English from just a few centuries ago. The English
“you” for example was actually originally the plural version of the word
“you all” that became a general form encompassing both singular and
plural.

Before that, we of course used thou. This is not very far off from Ger-
man’s du, but its equivalent version of “yours” – thine is very similar to
dein. Then from thee you have dich.

16
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

This extra “you” had its own conjugation (verb person version), which
is extremely similar to German. Thou hast = Du hast, thou canst = du
kannst, etc. Thinking of this always made the German conjugation seem
more logical to me.

Another feature of Shakespearian English is its use of the auxiliary verb,

which also exists in French and Italian. Rather than saying, “he has
come” (since we use “have” for all such auxiliary situations in modern
English), you would say “he is come”. This mirrors modern German’s Er
ist gekommen.

Before coming back to the 21st century, here are two Shakespearian pas-
sages that illustrate these examples.

“
Othello: But I do love thee! and when I love
thee not, Chaos is come again.

Hamlet: And it must follow, as the night the

day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Why German is way easier than the competition?

When you see a big fat grammar book that goes into great detail about
German grammar, it’s easy to think that there is a vast ocean of differ-
ence between German and English. This is a problem I have with many
courses: all they seem to do is list the differences.

To me, this seems like a very pessimistic way of looking at a language!

Having delved into several non-German languages, I can tell you that
there are lots of ways a language can be made complicated that Ger-
man very generously spares us.

17
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

In German, there are no tones (Chinese), no vast number of conjuga-

tion combinations in active use (Spanish), no liaisons between words
(French), no completely different writing system (Thai); there’s just one
different letter (ß) and some dots over ‘a’s and ‘u’s instead of a com-
pletely different alphabet (Russian / Greek). There are no postpositions
and preposition suffixes (Hungarian / Turkish), Locative case (Polish),
strings of difficult to pronounce consonants (Czech), no future subjunc-
tive (Portuguese), no preposition conjugation (Irish), and there are
thousands of other aspects it doesn’t have that you will see in other
languages.

OK, but maybe it’s “harder” than English, right?

Not quite. English can be quite a headache in comparison to German.

German is a phonetic language, which means that (with very few excep-
tions) you know exactly how you should pronounce a word when you
see it spelled, and when you hear it you can almost always write it out
correctly. I won’t mention the German phonetic rules at all in this guide
since they are covered well in most courses (usually at the very begin-
ning).

But this is not at all the case in English!

To illustrate this, try reading the first verse of this poem “English is
tough stuff”:

18
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

“
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Anytime someone claims that English is way easier than other languag-
es, I like to offer them €100 if they can read this entire poem without
making a mistake on the first try. Even natives can’t do this!

When learning English vocabulary, you have to learn which random pro-
nunciation and spelling goes with each word as well as its meaning. The
rare times that German words are not pronounced exactly as they are
spelled... is because they are English loan words!

English spelling and pronunciation based on the spelling is a nightmare

for learners (trust me – I was an English teacher for several years; teach-
ing this was the majority of my work!) so German’s easy-to-follow pat-
terns are truly a breath of fresh air.

There are many other little parts of English that are unnecessarily com-
plicated as well, and which are much simpler in German. In English, we
capitalize days of the week and months, but not seasons; we capital-
ise cities, countries and continents but not names of animals. German
capitalises all nouns – no exceptions. English did this too until the 18th
century, when we must have thought it was way too easy and

19
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

that people needed an extra challenge.

This may seem trivial, but it complicates a sentence when you read it
because without that capitalisation it becomes harder to distinguish
which word is a noun, which is verb, etc. In German, even though the
word order might be strange (more on that later), you know immediately
which part of the sentence is the noun when you read it. There is no
doubt in your mind that that word is the subject or the object (not the
verb, article, adjective, or adverb.)

In the above poem, it’s difficult at a glance to know whether I mean

“tear” the verb (rhyming with air) or “tear” the noun (rhyming with fear).
It’s extra work to figure it out – work that you’ll be spared in German!

Next, there are tenses. German simplifies this immensely. While there
are two ways to say the past (ich aß vs ich habe gegessen for example),
in conversational German you pretty much only use one (ich habe ge-
gessen), and in written German you pretty much only use the other (ich
aß). English uses both depending on the situation (“I have eaten” vs “I
ate” – for example, you can’t say “two years ago I have eaten a pizza”).
German uses way less confusing tenses.

English also has several ways of rendering the future: “I will” / “I am

going to”, etc. Except for cases outlined in your grammar book (usually
for emphasis or clarification), you don’t actually need to use German’s
werden to describe the future in most situations (which, even if you did,
works similar to English’s “will”). Instead, you can just use the present
version and tag on a time to make it clearer. For example, “I’m going
to eat bread tomorrow” and “I’ll eat bread tomorrow” can both be Ich
esse morgen Brot, which is also “I eat bread”/ “I am eating bread”, with
tomorrow added.

20
 GRAMMAR – GERMAN AND ENGLISH

In fact, German’s present tense is way more versatile than it is in Eng-

lish. Ich gehe (depending on the context) can be “I go”, “I am going”,
“I have gone”, “I have been going”, “I will go”, or “I am going to go”.
That’s six tenses in English for the price of learning one in German! The
subtleties between these tenses are easily expressed in other ways. “I
have gone”/ “been going”, for example, is expressed by simply adding
seit (“since”) rather than rephrasing the verb structure as in English.

I could go on, since there are many other aspects of English that are
less logical than German and thus make the language quite tricky un-
less you are just used to it after lots and lots of exposure. But I’ll be get-
ting to these as we look at why particular parts of German that you may
have thought were hard are actually not that bad.

21
 GRAMMAR – NOUN GENDERS

NOUN GENDERS
Genders are one of the first things people are often ready to criticise as
a really tough aspect to German: three genders that are randomly as-
signed to words!

When I was initially learning German, I pictured a Germanic tribesman

“designing the language” by having a friend spin him around blindfold-
ed until he was dizzy and then pointing at random items to assign them
as masculine, feminine or neuter. To me it seemed like the only way we
could arrive at a girl being neuter and a table being masculine.

When I was first learning German, it was suggested to me that I should

simply learn the genders with each new word. So not only did I have to
learn the meaning of new words, but I also had to somehow remember
their genders. Not just that Tisch is “table”, but that Der Tisch is “the
table”, not die or das.

It can seem very daunting and intimidating to have to learn this for hun-
dreds of thousands of words that potentially make up the language, but
a slight change in perspective can make a huge difference! Don’t think
of the objects (door, house, bird, etc.) as having genders – this really
isn’t logical, it’s the words that have gender. This distinction makes a
world of difference.

A word, as a grouping of letters, can easily be masculine, feminine or

neuter and have nothing to do with actual sexual gender, or necessar-
ily being “manly” or “girly”. These are just convenient titles for different
categories of letters, and they may as well be yin and yang or positive

22
 GRAMMAR – NOUN GENDERS

and negative. Other than when they are actually being associated with
people of that gender (like father, sister, and girlfriend), these gender
associations are rarely ever going to help.

So think of it this way: a word is made up of a group of letters, and its

ending can help it fit into a particular category. The word ending (or
the entire word when it’s short) is almost always what’s influencing a
word’s “gender”.

With this in mind, you can actually know what gender a word is just by
looking at it (or hearing it), even if you have never seen that word before
in your life. For example, you don’t even need to know what Mädchen
(girl) means to be able to tell its gender – identifying the diminutive
ending -chen is enough to tell that it’s neuter.

Some good courses list these differences, but in case yours doesn’t
check out About.com’s list of rules for recognising the genders on DER,
DIE and DAS and try their quizes to make sure you remember. Learning
these lists is way easier than trying to memorize the gender of individ-
ual words – it’s just a few dozen bullet points – but it covers nearly all
words you will encounter.

While you’re in the process of learning that list and are still not confi-
dent about them yet, I can tell you that genders are not that big a deal
! in beginner to intermediate German. Using perfect genders, especially
when combined with cases, should actually be on your low priority list
if you are focused on communication and understanding!

For understanding, most of the time it makes no difference whether

you say der/die/das/den/dem, etc. because other surrounding words
will indicate the influence and meaning of the case. All of these words

23
 GRAMMAR – NOUN GENDERS

translate to “the” in English (or occasionally don’t translate at all), so as

long as you can recognise them all as “the”, then you will be fine.

For speaking with natives, here’s a suggestion that perfectionists will

hate: guess! You have a 1 in 3 chance of being right, and if you are
wrong it usually doesn’t matter. Natives will understand you very well if
you say “der Fenster” instead of das Fenster. Your mental energy should
be focused instead on other parts of the sentence that do indeed con-
vey important meaning. Once you have mastered these, then you can
iron out your genders and cases to ensure that you’re speaking more
accurately.

But never let speaking imperfectly hold you back from trying. You’ll
be (presumably) talking with human beings who will know that you’re
a learner, and who will be aware of the problem that genders pose to
learners. They will not spit out a loud “WRONG!” every time you slip up.
I was congratulated on my German many times when I was speaking it
confidently, even though I would occasionally use the wrong genders.
The priority should always be to keep the conversation flowing.

24
 GRAMMAR – PLURALS

PLURALS
Why can’t German just add an ‘s’ for plurals like in English?

This question comes up a lot, but it ignores the many irregular plurals
we have in English, too.

By far the most common plural ending for feminine nouns in German
(and occasionally for some masculine or neuter ones) is -n or -en. This
sounds familiar when you look at certain English words, like “ox/en”
and “child/ren”.

In English we actually did this quite a lot in the past! The archaic/po-
etic word brethren, now used in fraternal order, actually used to be the
standard plural form of “brother” (initially written brether).

This is even more evident in word root changes. For example,

English has “foot”/”feet”, “(wo)man”/”men”, “tooth”/”teeth”,
“mouse”/”mice”, “goose”/”geese”. This is actually more complicated
than the German equivalent of adding an umlaut and no ending or
-e/-er endings in words like Hand/Hände, Wand/Wände, Nacht/Nächte,
Apfel/Äpfel, Vater/Väter.

Once again, it’s ordinarily suggested that you simply learn the plural as
you learn the word (so theoretically, every time you meet a new word
you’d have to learn the gender, the plural, and the word itself, as well as
any special case declensions – phew, sounds exhausting!)

This is not a practical solution, especially for beginner to intermediate

learners who have many other things to worry about. So once again,

25
 GRAMMAR – PLURALS

I recommend you use some short cuts!

One of the books I like (and that I list in the Resources section) is Ham-
mer’s German Grammar and Use (Martin Durrell), and in the book the
author shares some very helpful statistics. I’ll share the most important
ones below, but keep in mind that you shouldn’t try to memorise these
right now, just use them for reference to help you understand the sim-
ple rule of thumb I’ll introduce.

Masculine:

• Most masculine nouns have a plural in -e or ¨e. The umlaut goes over
about half of the nouns where it would be possible (i.e. not over i or
e), e.g. Arm/Arm(e), Hund/Hund(e), Fuß/Füß(e), Stuhl/Stühl(e).

• Most masculine nouns ending in -el, -en, or -er form their plural
without an ending or umlaut, e.g. Onkel, Bäcker, Computer (same in
singular and plural).

• A small number of masculine nouns have the plural -en or -n, espe-
cially “weak nouns” (see any grammar book explanation for what
this means).

Feminine:

• Over 90% of all feminine nouns have the plural -en/-n, e.g.
Arbeit(en), Regel(n), Studentin(nen) (the last n gets doubled for -in
ending nouns).

26
 GRAMMAR – PLURALS

• About a quarter of feminine monosyllables have a plural in ¨e, e.g.

Hand/Händ(e), Nacht/Nächt(e), Stadt/Städt(e), etc.

Neuter:

• About three quarters of neuter nouns have the plural -e, e.g. Bein(e),
Jahr(e).

• Slightly less than a quarter of neuter nouns have the plural ¨er/-er.
The umlaut is used if possible and the majority are either mono-
syllabic, e.g. Dorf/Dörf(er), Kind/Kind(er), or start with ‘Ge’, e.g.
Gesicht(er), Gehalt(er), Geschlecht(er).

• Neuter nouns ending in -el, -en, -er (note that this is the same as for
masculine); diminutives ending in -chen, -lein; and words formed
with Ge...e all have the same plural as the singular form, e.g. Mäd-
chen, Gebäude, Messer, Kissen.

• -s is used with many recent loan-words from English or French:

Chef(s), Hotel(s), Restaurant(s), Team(s), Tunnel(s), and for abbrevia-
tions like LKW(s) and for most words ending in a vowel other than
unstressed -e: Auto(s), Genie(s).

There are other possibilities and very occasional exceptions, but these
rules cover the vast majority of the nouns you will ever come across in
German.

Ideally, you would learn the proper plural of nouns as you come across

! them, but since this may not be practical if your priority is to communi-
cate as much as possible in a short time, you will, once again, be better
off guessing.

27
 GRAMMAR – PLURALS

Learning off precise plurals should also be low priority when compared
to learning new vocabulary or more important aspects of grammar.

This is another situation where I can confirm from personal experience

that Germans will understand you perfectly well if you use the wrong
plural. Just like if a beginner English learner said to you that he saw six
“mouses”, it would sound a little weird, but you would understand it no
problem.

In an academic examination you would lose points for writing down the
wrong plural; however, with human beings you will gain points for actu-
ally saying something, rather than keeping your mouth shut for fear of
saying it wrong.

Based on the statistics above, you have a pretty decent chance at

guessing the correct plural! The most common ending is -e, so try this
one first. If the singular already ends in -e, it is slightly more likely to
be feminine so add an -n.

Use this rule of thumb, then try to learn the above list, and finally get
feedback from natives and spend more time reading, and you will quick-
ly see the exceptions.

As always, this is not a perfect solution, but saying a word in what

sounds like plural will get you further. The context and use of numbers
or die (genderless plural article, even though it’s the same as the femi-
nine article) will make it much clearer that you mean plural.

28
 GRAMMAR – IRREGULAR NOUN DECLENSIONS

IRREGULAR NOUN
DECLENSIONS
This issue of adding an -n for ‘weak’ masculine nouns (e.g. der Junge,
but den Jungen) is another part of the language that’s worth getting
used to through study and experience to get it right, especially in aca-
demic situations.

However, in practice, getting this wrong will very rarely if ever hinder
understanding. This was one of the last things I worked on when I was
learning German, and months of sticking to Name even though the Ac-
! cusative/Dative singular is Namen never once caused a misunderstand-
ing. I would also rate this as a low priority, to be revised when you’re
ready to improve towards advanced level.

The other declension is the Genitive -s. This isn’t hard to remember
since we use it in the English Genitive too, just with an apostrophe (e.g.
“the cat’s head”). Masculine and neuter nouns add an -(e)s in the Geni-
tive singular, so that is a good rule of thumb to go by. Feminine nouns
tend not to have a special Genitive form at all.

Keeping this in mind can help you avoid learning those tables of noun
declensions until you’re at a more advanced level, when they will be-
come more important.

29
 GRAMMAR – CASES

CASES
The intimidating cases were a main reason I was so intimidated by Ger-
man in school – what does “Accusative” even mean? It sounds like I’m
being accused of something, and it just made German seem even less
fun. Genitive? Dative? They sound like names of aliens on Star Trek.

About.com gives a handy introduction to understanding the logic be-

hind each of the cases and what they mean. But understanding what
each case means unfortunately doesn’t help you much with using them.
Their use goes beyond simple definitions, so sometimes it’s better just
to see them in action.

After my five years of German study in school, I still had no idea what
Accusative meant, but learning a little Esperanto actually showed it to
me very clearly and logically in no time! If you have just a week or two to
dabble in this language, it could make a huge difference to your poten-
tial German level.

These cases and how to use them may seem intimidating at first, but
many courses go to great lengths to explain them precisely and have
you perform exercises in their use. Reading a lot can also show you how
they work in action.

But here I’ll offer you some short cuts.

For the Accusative case, you can actually pretend it’s the same as the
! Nominative if you aren’t being scrutinised by a fussy examiner. So don’t
worry too much about saying den instead of der, don’t worry about the

30
 GRAMMAR – CASES

weak nouns looking different, and forget about adjective ending differ-
ences (see below).

Grouping the Accusative and Nominative together immediately simpli-

fies your life and will very rarely ever cause problems with natives, espe-
cially when they know what stage you’re at in the language.

The best news is that they actually are almost exactly the same. Adjec-
tive endings and rare changes between weak nouns only occur (if at all)
for the masculine (one out of three). It’s also the only one that changes
the article (der to den and ein to einen).

One reason I feel a lot of grammar tables are wasteful is that they make
you learn the same information twice in many cases, and this is one
of them. Forget the table and just learn the masculine differences. The
feminine and neuter ones are the same between these two cases.

For the Genitive and Dative cases, you also don’t need to learn the
entire table. If you look at any of the grammar tables (there are many,
but once again the list is definite articles, indefinite articles, adjective
endings for def/indef/no articles), you will see that this part is a mirror
image of itself. The masculine and neuter versions are always the same
for Genitive and Dative.

What this means is that if you still don’t know the gender of the noun
(see above), you can guess at the masculine/neuter version of the case
! (dem for Dative, des for Genitive for the definite articles, similar for
indefinite articles and adjective endings) and there is a 66% chance of
you being right.

31
 GRAMMAR – CASES

This doesn’t get around the issue of using the cases precisely right, but
it will get you into the flow of being right most of the time, and as you
get used to the language, the use of the cases will be much clearer and
you can gradually perfect this.

32
 GRAMMAR – ADJECTIVE ENDINGS

ADJECTIVE ENDINGS
Adjective endings depend on three different things:

1. the case
2. the gender, and
3. whether there is a definite article, indefinite article, or no article
at all

With a definite article, all endings are -en except for singular Nominative
and Accusative. Masculine accusative is also -en.

e.g. Wo ist der schwarze Anzug? Ich finde den schwarzen Anzug
nicht.

With an indefinite article, all Dative and all Genitive are -en, and the
plural of all cases is -en. The remainder looks like the definite article
endings: Nominative -er, -e, -es and Accusative -en, -e, -es (masculine,
feminine, neuter). Of course, the only difference in these two is the mas-
culine (see above).

e.g. Das ist ein schöner Pullover, Ich habe ein neues Hemd.

Without any article, all endings look like they would for their definite ar-
ticle equivalents. If it would be dem then it’s -em, if it would be die then
it’s -e, der is -er, and das is -es, etc.

I think that’s a little tidier than a table, but it’s still needlessly compli-
cated – so until you are more comfortable with the language, you can
use a work-around!

33
 GRAMMAR – ADJECTIVE ENDINGS

I absolutely assure you that if you get these wrong no German will ever
be perplexed at what you’re trying to say. Germans often slur their ad-
jective endings, and uneducated Germans tend to use the wrong end-
! ings too. Besides, these endings are low priority even in some exam
situations, so they should also be among the last things you learn and
never stop you from expressing yourself.

Looking at that list you will see that the majority are -e or -en (with the
latter slightly more likely). Picking either one of these (hopefully leaning
towards the correct version) is usually enough. Add one of these end-
ings on to your adjective and just say it!

34
 GRAMMAR – PREPOSITIONS AND CASES

PREPOSITIONS AND CASES

Most grammar books will give you a long list of which prepositions take
which cases. My list below is shortened to only include the more impor-
tant ones and skips the Genitive:

Accusative: bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne, um

Dative: aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu, gegenüber

Dative or accusative: an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwichen

One way I remembered these when I was a beginner learner was to

come up with a little tune and sing the prepositions to that tune. When
you do it this way you only truly need to remember the first one to get
you started. For example, for the Accusative prepositions think of the
tune to “We will we will rock you” from Queen and sing “bis, durch, für,
gegen, ohne-um” in the same way. Singing it a few times and reminding
yourself later will help this come back to you much quicker.

But you will notice that there are slightly more that take the Dative or
Accusative (rather than just one of these). So rather than learn this third
list off, you can presume that is the default and just learn the other
cases as being specifically Accusative or specifically Dative.

The way to distinguish between these takes some getting used to, but it
basically depends on whether or not there is motion involved. So, in Ger-
man, rather than having a word “into”, they simply use the same word as
without motion “in”, but distinguish by the case. So Wir gehen ins Kino
(ins = in + das, Accusative) versus Wir sind im Kino (im = in + dem, Dative).

35
 GRAMMAR – PREPOSITIONS AND CASES

However, this is indeed tricky to get used to at first. In most cases the

! verb itself will make it very clear whether or not motion is involved (“go-
ing”, “coming”, and “putting on” involve motions whereas “is”, and
“resting on” do not, e.g.) Getting the cases mixed up in this situation
does not hinder communication.

I would recommend sticking to the Accusative most of the time (but use
Dative if you remember that no motion is involved) and learning off the
specifically Accusative or specifically Dative prepositions as your prior-
ity, using the music trick or otherwise.

If you are starting out and have no idea at all how to apply these, simply
ignore the cases and use the Accusative den, die, and das all the time.
Germans will not be confused if you say it wrong.

Having said that, the list of prepositions is not particularly long so this
will not be that difficult to master. The only issue is whether or not you
have mastered the cases in general yet. If you have, then learn these off
as soon as possible because it’s only a little bit more work to dramati-
cally reduce the number of mistakes you are making. If you still have not
mastered cases yet, then focus on communication right now – but come
back to this soon.

36
 GRAMMAR – CONJUGATION

CONJUGATION
Conjugation refers to how the verb changes depending on the person(s)
it is applied to. Like in English, we say “I am”, but “you are” and “he is”,
even though the actual verb is “to be”. These types of changes are what
we’re talking about when we talk about conjugation.

Tables of conjugations are provided in most courses, but here are a few
notes to keep in mind to simplify them slightly:

• Usually you don’t have to learn each conjugation. The majority follow
the pattern -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en. Some change the roots (e.g. fahren,
fährt), so try to learn these as you see them, but keep in mind that
these root changes are only for second and third person singular
(i.e. individual “you” and “he”/”she”/”it” conjugations). So even if
you have never conjugated the verb before, if it’s for ich, wir or Sie/
sie (“I”, “we”, “they” or “you” polite) it pretty much always follows
the standard pattern. For wir or Sie/sie, it’s the same as the infinitive
(standard dictionary) form.

• One thing that helped me remember the plural conjugations (“we”,

“they”, “you” polite) as always ending in -en, is remembering that
-en is also a noun plural form for most feminine words (see the Gen-
der section above). So you have Eine Sängerin schwimmt but Die
Sängerinnen schwimmen. While there may be no actual linguistic
connection between these, the association itself helped me.

• If you opt to use the formal “Sie”, you don’t have to conjugate at all.
“Conjugated” form = infinitive, with “You are” = Sie sind being the
only major exception.

37
 GRAMMAR – CONJUGATION

• As mentioned in the introduction to the Grammar section, the -st

conjugation is easy to remember if you think about how Shakespeare
would have said it. Thou hast = du hast, thou canst = du kannst, etc.

• One way you can get around using verbs you aren’t yet confident with
conjugating, but still speak with no mistakes, is to learn the modal
verbs first. Wollen (want to), mögen (like), dürfen (may, in the sense
of “be allowed to”), müssen (to have to), sollen (should), and kön-
nen (to be able to) are very useful verbs! Learn their conjugations
first (they’re irregular, but made slightly easier because the first and
third person forms – “I” and “he”/”she”/”it” – are the same), and
try to rephrase your sentence to use them if you can. Instead of say-
ing “I am going to the supermarket”, say “I have to go to the super-
market”, for example, if you are not confident in saying gehen/fahren
in the right way. Note that this phrasing puts the second verb at the
end, which is discussed in the Word Order section below.

• There are patterns in how verbs change their vowels in the present
tense, and they almost always work as follows (as mentioned above,
this only happens for the “you” (sing/informal) and “he”/”she”/”it”
verb versions; all others don’t change the root part at all):

add an umlaut: fahren/fährt, fallen/fällt. Also halten, schlafen, schla-

gen, tragen, & wachsen.
e – ie: sehen/sieht. Similar for stehlen and lesen.
e – i: essen/ißt, geben/gibt. Also helfen, nehmen (nimmt), sprechen
and werfen.

Keeping this in mind will save you from many conjugation tables.

38
 GRAMMAR – IRREGULAR VERBS AND PAST TENSES

IRREGULAR VERBS AND

PAST TENSES
As mentioned before, there are two ways of applying the standard past
tense (technically the past tense and the perfect tense). In English
both of these are different, as they are in written German. However, in
spoken German you should only use the perfect (two-word) version. In
spoken German, only the auxiliaries and the modal verbs still use the
one-word past tense.

Usually, the past conjugation (the one-word version) is a little more

complex because it may involve a root change (fahren to fuhr) if it’s an
irregular verb, so it’s better to focus on saying the perfect version, and
just recognising the simple past version.

If your focus is on writing rather than speaking, then you will have to
work on both, interestingly enough, with much more focus on the non-
perfect version.

This change in focus when speaking can help you dramatically. Attempt
to be able to say the two-word version, but just work on recognising the
other one. The only exceptions are for the auxiliaries haben and sein and
the modal verbs, which use the one-word past tense in almost all cases.
You also need to know these conjugations for forming and recognising
more complex past tenses, which work very similarly to the way they do in
English (e.g. “I had eaten lunch”).

So learn: ich hatte, du hattest, etc. – and keep in mind how similar it looks to
English’s “I had...” and ich war, du warst, which isn’t that far off from “I was”.

39
 GRAMMAR – IRREGULAR VERBS AND PAST TENSES

To actually learn the irregularities, it helps a lot to think of similar words

in English. German’s schwimmen, schwamm, geschwommen looks
remarkably like English’s swim, swam, swum. When you look through
a list of irregular verbs, mark the ones that look similar to English and
learn them first to make it easier.

As an experienced English teacher, I can tell you that non-natives learn-

ing English have very similar tables to look through, without the advan-
tage of having a similar system in their own language.

This is one of those things that you do need to sit down and study, but
you will start to see patterns among them.

There are several patterns that will immerge, so here are a few to get
you started:

• The vast majority of regular verbs use the present tense third person
singular (“he”, “she”, “it”) form as a base and add ge- to the start.
If the third person singular form would involve a vowel change (e.g.
fahren -> er fährt), then add ge- to the infinitive instead. Verbs that
this rule applies to include: geben (gegeben), fahren, fangen, halten,
laufen, lesen, messen, schlafen, sehen, tragen, wachsen. Also the
common verbs kommen and rufen work this way as well. Using this
rule of thumb is not ideal, but you can’t know the list of irregular past
tenses immediately, so sometimes you might have to just guess at
this. It will not impede understanding. It would be like saying “eat-
ed”, “sleeped” or “writed” in English. It’s awkward, but understand-
able.

• When there are root changes in the perfect tense, the verbs also end

40
 GRAMMAR – IRREGULAR VERBS AND PAST TENSES

in -en rather than -t. The changes tend to follow these patterns:

e – o: brechen/gebrochen, helfen/geholfen. Also for sprechen, ster-

ben, treffen, werden
eh – o: nehmen/genommen, stehlen/gestohlen (like in English,
steal/stolen)
ei – i: leiden/gelitten, pfeifen/gepfiffen, schneiden/geschnitten
ei – ie: bleiben/geblieben, schreiben/geschrieben. Also steigen and
treiben
ie – o: reichen/gerochen, schließen/geschlossen. Also bieten,
fliegen, fliehen, ziehen
i – u: finden/gefunden, sinken/gesunken, springen/gesprungen,
trinken/getrunken

As you go through lists of words like these you should see many
words you recognise as doing the same in English. The last ones
above for example work in parallel to “find”/”found”, “sink”/”sunk”,
“spring”/“sprung” and “drink”/“drunk”.

To help you get through this quicker (since I do consider this an impor-
tant aspect of communication early in the language, both for recogni-
tion and for speaking), I have included the flashcard deck I myself used
for studying. This also includes the one-word (simple past) tenses as
well, so you can learn the complete version of irregular past tenses. See
the Resources section for more information about this.

You can’t know the full list of irregular past tenses immediately, so
sometimes you’ll need a short cut. In this case just guess the regular
! past tense and always use that as the default for most verbs you use
until you have learned the irregular verbs off.

41
 GRAMMAR – IRREGULAR VERBS AND PAST TENSES

However, if you know it’s irregular but can’t remember how it changes,
then add an -en at the end instead of a -t, since nearly all irregular ones
use -en, and you’ll at least be partially right.

Getting this precisely right is not a very high priority (people will still
understand you), but the root changes make it more difficult to under-
stand, and it does sound weird (like it would in English) so this list
should be dealt with sooner rather than later. Studying these forms in
an SRS application (I use Anki) helped me learn them way quicker.

A final component you should remember is whether the verb past uses
haben or sein. I have indicated this in the SRS deck, but as you are
! learning and need to speak, getting this exactly right is lower priority
than getting the sound of the verb itself correct. Using haben most of
the time will almost always do the trick.

Verbs with sein usually involve motion or a change of state. This is dealt
with in most courses, but it takes a little practice to get used to. Doing a
few exercises with such words and trying to remember that it takes sein
when learning them helps a lot, but the logic of the movement/change
of state starts to become more obvious with time. Until then, use what
feels right and people will understand you!

42
 GRAMMAR – SEPARABLE VERBS

SEPARABLE VERBS
English has a host of phrasal verbs that act very similarly to German’s
separable verbs. Basically, the entire concept of the verb is described
not just by the verb itself, but by the verb and a preposition, and the
phrase cannot be taken literally by the individual words.

In English for example, to “run into” means “to meet”. Ex: “I ran into
my ex on the street”. Verbs like this stick together and don’t quite work
like they would in German. However, thinking about English’s separable
verbs helps a lot in understanding German’s equivalent.

Take an example like “She looked his phone number up”. Here there
are five entire words between the verb and the preposition, and yet it
doesn’t make sense until you say that “up”. The same thing happens in
German!

The difference is that in English, we put the object (here “his phone
number”) between the verb and preposition, but in German the prepo-
sition goes to the end of the sentence, so there is even more potential
spacing. But it isn’t that different. It’s important to recognise this, as
calling it strange will make it harder to accept it as a natural part of the
language.

If you’re uncomfortable with separating the verb and unsure about put-
ting the preposition at the end, one good trick is to keep the verb stuck
to its preposition (the default, dictionary way it is presented) by using a
modal verb (see Conjugation).

43
 GRAMMAR – SEPARABLE VERBS

For example, ich will abfahren for “I want to leave” uses the modal verb
(will) to push the second verb (abfahren) to the end of the sentence.
But in this case, you do not need to separate the verb and it stays in its
dictionary form.

With a bit of practice, you’ll recognize the prefixes that can detach them-
selves from the verb. There are a limited number of them, and most of
them are exactly the same as prepositions, e. g. ab, auf and mit.

There are also prefixes that don’t detach themselves, for example ver-,
zer- or be-. You can safely ignore these until it becomes time to form the
perfect tense; then you just forget about adding ge-, (e. g. “I have for-
gotten” = ich habe vergessen) because nothing must come before these
prefixes. There also mustn’t be anything in front of the separable verb
prefixes, but since these are not welded to the verb, they will kindly de-
tach themselves, let the ge- in, and reattach themselves (e. g. “He has
come along” = er ist mitgekommen).

44
 GRAMMAR – WORD ORDER

WORD ORDER
“Named must your fear be, before banish it you can.” – Yoda

German’s strange word order gives it a bad reputation, but I always

liked to compare it to how Yoda speaks. The writers of Star Wars made
him speak strangely to help convey how old he was (about 900 years).
While you can argue that this is illogical since he wouldn’t quite have
been attending Shakespeare plays, there is some sense to it, since
English (once again) was more similar to German on this front originally,
and that comes through clearly when you read older texts in English.

But back to German itself: there is logic to the word order. In fact,
there’s way more logic than there is in the way that English builds sen-
tences! It’s different, but it’s not that complicated. It only takes some
getting used to.

When a sentence starts with the subject and only contains a single verb
and no relative clauses (extra mini-phrases), the word order is the same
as in English (subject, verb, object). For simple sentences, you can just
say it as it comes naturally to you and it’s likely you will be doing it to-
tally right.

German has a different way of emphasising things from the way we do

it in English, though, so one thing you can always count on is that the
verb is in the second position in main sentences that aren’t questions.
That’s second position – not as the second word.

So “last year I went to Spain” is letztes Jahr bin ich nach Spanien ge-
fahren, not “letztes Jahr ich bin…”. This takes some getting used to, and

45
 GRAMMAR – WORD ORDER

will not cause huge misunderstandings if you get it wrong (It would be
like saying “I bought last week a car” in English – it sounds weird but is
totally understandable).

This use is easy to understand, but can only come with practice. Speak-
ing with natives and having them correct me drilled the right use into
my head.

This also applies to putting verbs at the end. Applying the same logic
as with separable verbs (with the preposition at the end) helped me
immensely to apply this rule to verbs as well. Once again, the rule itself
isn’t that hard to understand – if you have a second verb in the sen-
tence, especially after a “modal” verb, then that second verb goes right
to the end.

Though this rule is straightforward to understand, it is difficult to imple-

ment. Practice will make it work. Write or speak regularly with Germans
(see Resources) and this aspect of the language will quickly become
second nature to you. This is something you can say the English way
and it will be understood by Germans, but I would recommend pushing
this up in terms of your priorities of things to say correctly.

One final aspect of German word order that is also logical, but different
to English, is the order of the descriptive parts of a sentence. In English
you can say “I went to the shop yesterday by car”, or “I went by car to
the shop yesterday” or “I went by car yesterday to the shop”. The first
is slightly more likely, but the others are just as possible (especially if
you’re emphasising certain parts of the sentence).

German is stricter. In German, the order sticks to time, then manner,

46
 GRAMMAR – WORD ORDER

then place. First say when, then how, then where. For absolute begin-
ners, it’s not a big deal to get this precisely right – I would put this lower
down on my list of priorities for mastering, but definitely come back to
this to get it right by the intermediate stage.

47
 PART TWO

VOCABULARY
 VOCABULARY – WHY GERMAN IS THE SAME AS ENGLISH

WHY GERMAN IS
THE SAME AS ENGLISH
You can see from the Introduction and many parts of the Grammar sec-
tion that German and English have a huge amount in common. Vocabu-
lary is no exception!

Akzent, Adresse, Afrika, Apfel (apple), April, Arm, Atlas, Australien – this
is just a small selection of words that are pretty much exactly the same,
just with slight spelling differences. This alphabetical list at about.com is
an excellent resource to study and instantly boost your scope of vocabu-
lary, by seeing what you already know!

There are several different ways that German and English can have the
same or similar words, and recognising these can help immensely:

1. Germanic words

2. English loan words

3. Other international loan words

49
 VOCABULARY – GERMANIC WORDS

GERMANIC WORDS
Most of these words are old English words that have been common to
both languages for thousands of years. While it’s hard to simply guess at
these, patterns start to immerge when you get more exposure.

English would have been keener to use the equivalent German words
today if it weren’t for the Norman conquest of 1066. An invasion from
France left French-speaking royalty and aristocracy in power in England
for centuries and brought an influx of French words, especially in formal
contexts.

What this means is that the less formal a word is, the more likely it is to
be similar in German. If someone knocks on your door you can formally
say “enter”! (from the French entrer) or (more casually) “come in”! This
is similar to German’s (her)einkommen (separable verb). If you’re having
an interesting discussion with someone, they can give you something to
“consider” (French considérer), or you could just say something to “think
about” (think = denken). “Think about” = nachdenken.

You’ll start to see that German prefers to stick to the simple verb and
add prefixes or prepositions to expand on similar concepts, rather than
to create an entirely new word. More on this is found in Word Formation
below.

This makes it drastically easier to get the gist of what’s being said in Ger-
man. Even if you can’t remember precisely how to translate a word at the
time you hear or read it, you will recognise the core verb if you know your
basic vocabulary, and that will help you get a very good gist of what’s be-
ing said.

50
 VOCABULARY – ENGLISH LOAN WORDS

ENGLISH LOAN WORDS

German loves English. Where English would be frowned upon in other
languages, German has embraced modern English vocabulary into many
aspects of the language.

When talking about technology, in German you will use your Computer
to connect to the Internet, and open your Browser to check your E-Mail.
You can go to your favourite Website or Blog and download(en) a Chat
program. When you log-off you can send your friend an SMS. For more
technology words, many of which you will instantly recognise, see about.
com’s list of technology/computer vocabulary.

This holds true in other aspects of life as well. I decided it would be

easier to sign up for a Flatrate contract on my mobile phone; I loved to
sit in Alexanderplatz to relaxen; and of course it’s always fun to go to a
Party or Disco.

Many useful “Denglisch” (English in German) words are listed once

again here on about.com. Many of these are the preferable ways to say
a word (I saw Flatrate written in huge letters on many billboards adver-
tising phone contracts while living in Berlin), but some other ones are
restricted to more informal usage.

Because most languages are very restrictive in how to accept loan words,
I usually recommend against using English when speaking them, espe-

!
cially when locals are not likely to understand. With German however, I
found it very helpful to take advantage of “Denglisch” in the early stages
and to occasionally use English words while speaking German sentenc-
es, even if they are not likely to be correct.

51
 VOCABULARY – ENGLISH LOAN WORDS

Purists will hate this, but if you’re a beginner learner, you are better off
getting into the flow of building sentences with German structure without
letting a lack of vocabulary hold you back from trying. Since German is
already 5% English for various reasons, you can stretch this a little and
make it 15-20% English while you’re learning. English is “cool”, especial-
ly among young Germans, so this temporary setback will not cause you
huge problems.

For example, if you don’t know how to say “apartment” (Wohnung) yet,
don’t let that stop you from making your request mostly in German: Ich
suche ein Apartment im Zentrum! Apartment is actually commonly-used
in German, but the meaning is a bit more restricted.

52
 VOCABULARY – OTHER INTERNATIONAL LOAN WORDS

OTHER INTERNATIONAL
LOAN WORDS
English isn’t the only language that German has taken under its wing.
There are a host of French and Latin words that can help a lot if you
know either of these languages. The good news is that you will recognise
many of these even if you speak no French or Latin! German wasn’t the
only language that had the idea to borrow from other languages, and
English has also borrowed extensively from both French and Latin.

When a German word comes originally from French, the word will likely
get a French sound to it, and this is important to take into account. Res-
taurant for example isn’t pronounced with the final ‘t’ in German, as in
French, and the last part is nasalised.

Unfortunately, the Latin and Greek words follow their own plural rules in
German (das Komma – die Kommata), but the French words are usually
very simple to use and even add a simple -s for many of them (or -n if it’s
feminine, like die Chance(n), or die Pose(n)).

German also has plenty of Italian words, especially in relation to cooking

and music (like English) and banking (unlike English).

Apart from loans from other languages, brand names and other interna-
tional terminology also stays the same in German. You can order a Coke or a
Pepsi; if you want to order a beer, just say the beer’s brand name. This can
help a lot when you don’t know the word of a product, but know who made
it, or who sells it in Germany. Ein “Kleenex” bitte may be a bit difficult to un-
derstand (Kleenex isn’t so big there), but Ein Tempo bitte definitely works!
(Tempo is the German equivalent of Kleenex).

53
 VOCABULARY – WORD FORMATION

WORD FORMATION
Of course, the vast majority of German is not made up of words you will
instantly recognise (as you’ll know if you try to read a text). But the good
news is that you still don’t have to simply sit down with a list of vocabu-
lary to study to understand them all. There are short cuts you can use
instead!

A very important short cut is how German forms new words. While Eng-
lish may tend to use the French/Latin versions for complicated words,
German stays purer in this situation and simply modifies the root of the
word with prefixes and suffixes.

This simplifies things greatly, as you can see a root and get a good gist of
what’s being said if you’ve already learned some basic vocabulary.

So while you have completely different words in English, in German they

seem way more similar. Consider the following:

Denken = think, mitdenken = to follow the argument / use your own in-
tellect, nachdenken = reflect, ponder, mull over, think about etc., erden-
ken = conceive/devise/think up, bedenken = consider/take into consid-
eration, durchdenken = digest/reason out/reflect about/think through,
and der Vordenker is a pioneer in science.

This is so consistent that you can actually deduce what a word means
based on its root and prefix, even if you have never seen it before. Here
are some useful guidelines (not exhaustive):

54
 VOCABULARY – WORD FORMATION

Inseparable prefixes:

BE: (1) Similar to “be-“ in English, as in “befriend”. Causes the verb to

take a direct object, e.g. sich befinden (be located), befreunden, bekom-
men (get/receive, not become), bemerken (notice)

BE: (2) Makes verbs from adjectives with the sense of giving something/
someone that quality: befeuchten (moisten), befreien (liberate), beruhi-
gen (calm)

EMP: Sense or receiving: empfangen (receive), empfehlen (recom-

mend), empfinden (feel)

ENT: Away from, similar to “de-“/”dis-“ in English: entdecken (discover:

Decke = cover), entfernen (remove/take out), entkommen (escape), ent-
lassen (release), entstehen (originate), entwerten (devalue/cancel)

ER: (1) Fatal/dead: erhängen (hang/execute), erschießen (shoot dead),

ertrinken (drown)

ER: (2) Like “re-“ in English: sich erinnern (remember), erkennen (recog-
nise), sich erholen (relax)

VER: (1) Bad/away, like “mis-“ in English: sich verirren (go astray, get
lost), sich verkalkulieren (miscalculate), sich verhören (mishear), sich
vertippen (to mistype), verschlafen (oversleep)

VER: (2) Lose/away/out: verkaufen (sell, whereas kaufen is buy), ver-

lassen (leave/abandon), verlieren (lose), verdrängen (drive out, repress
[one’s thoughts/feelings])

55
 VOCABULARY – WORD FORMATION

VER: (3) Like “for” in English: verbieten (forbid), vergeben (forgive), ver-
gessen (forget)

VER: (4) Change of state: verarmen (to become poor), verlängern (make
longer), verbessern (make better i.e. improve), verdoppeln (double)

VOLL: Complete/full: vollenden (complete/finish), vollführen (execute/

carry out)

ZER: Into pieces: zerbrechen (shatter/smash), zerreißen (rip up), zer-

stören (destroy)

When saying these words, always put the main stress on the verb part
and not on the prefix (bekommen). All of these form past participles for
the perfect tense discussed above without adding ge- before them.

Separable prefixes can be understood more literally, or require the par-

ticular verb + preposition to be learned off for its own special meaning
(as with phrasal verbs in English). In this case, the stress goes on the
preposition in the unseparated form (ankommen).

Consistent suffixes:

German suffixes are “productive”, so this means you can add them to
words you may not have seen before and you are likely creating a word
that exists in some situations.

-¨e to denote a quality: groß – Größe (size), stark – Stärke (strength),

scharf – Schärfe (sharpness)

-er for a person: denken – Denker (thinker)

56
 VOCABULARY – WORD FORMATION

-heit/-(ig)keit to form abstract nouns from adjectives: gleich – Gleich-

heit (equality), bitter – Bitterkeit (bitterness), heftig – Heftigkeit (inten-
sity/vehemence), genau – Genauigkeit (precision)

-nis also for forming abstract nouns from verbs or adjectives: erleben –
das Erlebnis (experience), hindern – das Hindernis (obstacle), die Wild-
nis (wilderness)

-schaft to denote a collective or state: Freundschaft (friendship); Ge-

sellschaft (society, but also company); Landschaft (landscape).

-ung – This is extremely common and refers to the action of the verb. It
can be very similar to English’s “-ing”: Bedeutung (meaning), Landung
(landing), or more general: Wohnung (apartment, from wohnen to live)

The good news is also that all of the above are mostly feminine nouns,
apart from some of the -nis endings.

If you have learned a good deal of verbs and adjectives, but need to
think of the -ness/-ity form of the noun, just guess! Take the root form
! and add one of the above endings and you will be understood. It’s a
useful temporary solution before you learn the word itself.

The opposite also works – if you know what the noun means, and it
ends in heit/keit/nis/schaft or ung, then take off the ending and try to
use that as a verb or an adjective. It’s very likely that you’ll be right.

57
CONCLUSION
I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide and that you’ll use it just as a starting
point to discover many other methods for learning German that work
for you and bring you closer to your goal. Being unintimidated by the
learning process is one of the most crucial parts of getting into language
learning, and I hope I’ve helped you see ways in which German is actu-
ally much easier to learn that you might have thought!

Please get in touch and let me know how you’re progressing in your Ger-
man, and make sure to catch up with me on the blog or on Facebook.

Next up: Don’t forget to read the Sample Immersion Study Schedule that
came as a free attachment to this guide.

And as always, happy language learning!

– Benny Lewis

59
© Copyright Brendan Lewis – All rights reserved.