Deutsch Sprechen in Wien

German is the third foreign language I’ve studied in a classroom setting, as an adult, by my own choosing. I was forced to take Spanish as a little kid, and Latin doesn’t really count as a foreign language because it doesn't help you talk to anyone. After six years of Latin, I have a thorough knowledge of Roman history and a fairly good grasp on grammar. Both are useful, though--we’ll come back to that.

I wanted to study a language in a place where the language was spoken. Plus, I wanted to spend some time in Vienna. German it was! Enter four weeks of intensive beginning German, three hours a day, four days a week. Sit back and relax, and I will give you a crash course. This is a long post, because this is also my review for my test am Mittwoch. The best way to study something is to teach it!

The first important thing you learn about German is, like French, nouns have genders. And, like Latin, nouns can be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. You can’t tell what gender a noun is just by looking at it; the genders are only indicated by the articles. Der is the masculine definite article, die is the feminine, and das is the neuter. Der Stift is “the pen,” die Tasche is “the bag” and das Buch is “the book.” All nouns—not just proper nouns—are always capitalized in German.

You have to memorize noun genders, there’s no shortcut, because you want to use the correct article when you speak so as not to look like an idiot. There’s a bakery chain called Anker that’s all over Austria; they have a location in the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station that my friend Alex and I go to during die Pause (the break in the middle of class). I ask for ein klein Cappuccino, bitte (a small cappuccino, please). Der Cappuccino is a masculine noun and therefore I use the indefinite article ein. If I were asking for a hot chocolate, I’d ask for eine heiße schokolade because “chocolate” is a feminine noun and therefore uses the indefinite article eine. And if I wanted a croissant, I’d say ein Croissant, bitte, because the word for croissant is the neuter das Croissant, and neuter nouns use the indefinite article ein. Der, die, das. Ein, eine, ein.

Alex is partial to Anker’s schoko-vanille krone. She was accidentally given a regular schokocroissant once; she was very sad. Speaking of schokocroissant, German likes to push nouns together (not separating by hyphens or anything) to create compound words. The new compound noun takes the gender of the last noun in the new word. So, sticking with the theme of chocolate; the word for cake in German is der Kuchen. To say chocolate cake, you say der Schokoladenkuchen, a masculine noun even though chocolate is feminine, die Schokolade.

Side note: the letter ß isn’t a “B;” it’s a stressed “S” sound, like “ss.” The word for street in German is die Straße, and you see this word everywhere and I’d say it in my head every time I saw it: “strah-ss-eh.”

The next thing you learn about German is personal pronouns. Ich, du, er/sie/es, wir, ihn, and sie/Sie. I, you, he/she/it, we, you all, and they/formal you. Unlike in French and Persian, where the formal “you” is the second person plural (vous and شما (shoma), respectively), in German, the formal “you” is the third-person plural, Sie, with a capital “S.” Sie with a lowercase “s” is just “they.”

Personal pronouns go kind of hand-in-hand with verb conjugations, so let’s conjugate a verb and write some sentences. The German way to say “to work out” is machen Sport which literally translates to “to make sport.” Also note that “sp” is pronounced “shp,” which makes it sound even funnier. Shport.

Ich mache Sport. I work out.

Du machst Sport. You work out.

Er macht Sport. He works out.

Wie machen Sport. We work out.

Ihr macht Sport. You all (y’all) work out.

Sie/sie machen Sport. They (or you, formally) work out.

Machen is a regular verb; note the endings. Most verbs conjugate like this, except for the fun, irregular ones!

The verb always has to be the second word in the sentence, unless you’re asking a question. You must go through great pains to make sure that the verb is second, otherwise it gets pissed off. Unlike in Latin, where you can reorganize the words to make pictures if you feel like it, or in Farsi, where there’s a couple different right orders, in German, word order is very rigid.

For example, if I want to say “I drink coffee,” (which I do, a lot of it these days), I’d say:

Ich trinke Kaffee. 

BUT, if I wanted to say “in the morning, I drink coffee,” we’d have to move the subject just so that the verb trinken can stay in the second position. Also note that German infinitives end in -en. In Farsi, they end in -dan (دن ) or -tan (  تن ) , in French, they end in -er, -ir, or -re. In Latin, they end in -re. But I’m confusing myself! So, “in the morning, I drink coffee.”

Am Morgen, trinke ich Kaffee.

We had to move the subject to after the verb so that the verb could be the second thing in the sentence. The subject can either be the first or the third thing in the sentence. So, we couldn’t say trinke Kaffee ich. 

What is that pesky little word before Morgen? Am? That is a preposition of time. We haven’t talked about prepositions yet! Luckily, I didn’t learn anything too complicated about prepositions. Am is used when you’re talking about der Tag (the day of the week), or die Tagzeiten (the time of day, except for night, die Nacht). Am comes before whatever day or time you’re talking about, and you can insert the whole prepositional phrase at the beginning or at the end of a sentence (just don’t disturb the rules we discussed earlier about word order).

Am Donnerstag, Charlsie liest Zeitung.  

“On Thursday, Charlsie reads the newspaper.” (I don’t, I listen to the BBC. And lesen, “to read,” is an irregular verb, but don’t worry about that now.) We could also say:

Charlsie liest am Donnerstag Zeitung.

It means the same thing and is still correct.

Another example:

Am Abend, Charlsie sieht fern. “In the evening, Charlsie watches TV.” Probably Modern Family.

Charlsie sieht am Abend fern. This also works.

I learned two other temporal prepositions: in and um. Um is used for talking about a specific time. We won’t go into telling time in German or into numbers, because that’s basically just a giant vocabulary lesson (although numbers in German are easier than they are in French). I will say, however, that, like in Farsi, “clock,” “hour,” and “time” are all the same word, which is helpful. In Farsi it’s ساعت, or saa’at, and in German it’s die Uhr. You just replace am with um, and you replace the time of day or the day of the week with a specific time. Easy-peasy.

Um acht Uhr dreißig, Charlsie und Alex lernen Deutsch. 

“At eight-thirty, Charlsie and Alex learn German.” Because class starts at 8:30am.

In is used in the same way as am and um, but it is used with die Nacht, die Monate (months of the year) and die Jahrezeiten (the seasons, literally “times of year”)

In Nacht, Charlsie isst Schokolade. “At night, Charlsie eats chocolate.” True. Maybe too much, but life is challenging, and chocolate is helpful.

Charlsie isst in Nacht Schokolade. Still true.

Note that when we say one of these phrases, something like am Morgen, trinke ich Kaffee, we don’t use an article in front of Kaffee because we’re talking about “coffee” generally, not specifically. But what if we wanted to say, “Charlsie drinks a coffee.” As in, a singular coffee. Preferably one she made in her studio apartment to save money, but realistically probably one she bought at a café. Then we’d need an article.

But wait! “Coffee” functions as the object of the sentence, and German, like Latin, has noun cases. That means the way the noun looks can change depending on the role in plays in then sentence. A noun that functions as the object of a sentence is written in the accusative case. Luckily (or unluckily) for us, in German, the only thing that changes about a noun when you put it into the accusative is the article, and only masculine nouns do the changing.

For definite articles, der becomes die, but the feminine die and neuter das remain the same. For indefinite articles, ein becomes einen, but the feminine eine and the neuter ein stay the same.

So, “Charlsie drinks a coffee,” because der Kaffee is a masculine noun, is Charlsie trinkt einen Kaffee.

French and Farsi don’t have noun cases, bless them.

Latin was really helpful to me here, because I spent four years painstakingly labeling the cases of nouns in pages and pages of poetry and prose about Romans (mostly farmers, slaves, soldiers, and patricians) doing stuff. Even though the nouns aren’t the same, the concept of noun cases is. Lots of people in the class had never encountered a language with noun cases, so they had to grasp the concept before they could even worry about the articles. Thanks are owed to Dr. Stipanovic, my high school Latin teacher.

Some verbs take nouns in the accusative, and some don’t. My class listened to a painfully cringy song that included these verbs: haben, braucht, kaufen, suchen. To have, to need, to buy, to look for. Essen, trinken. To eat, to drink.

This brings us to something else fun and different about German! There is another set of articles in German that doesn’t really exist in English: negative articles. When you put one of these articles in front of a noun, it means “none” or “no.” In the nominative, these articles are: kein (masculine), keine (feminine), and kein (neuter). In the accusative, the only one that changes is the masculine: kein becomes keinen.

Often, you use these negative articles to negate a sentence instead of negating the verb, like we do in English, French, and Farsi. I’ll give you an example. If you want to say “my cat does not need coffee,” you’d say: Meine Katze braucht keinen Kaffee. 

This literally translates to “my cat needs no coffee.” You’re negating the noun, not the verb. “Coffee” is the object of the sentence, so you say keinen Kaffee instead of kein Kaffee. Brauchen, “to need” is a regular verb that conjugates just like machen above.

You’d also use negative articles to say you don’t like something: Mein Vater mag keinen Salat. Literally, my father likes no salad. Which is true; no salad could please him.

Quick note: if there is no object to negate, you can negate the verb by placing nicht directly after the verb.

Mein Bruder duscht nicht. “My brother doesn’t shower.”

Evan schläft nicht. “Evan doesn’t sleep.” He doesn’t, he works on Wall Street now.

Lately I’ve been drinking two coffees a day instead of one. Europe is tiring. We’d say Ich trinke zwei Kaffees. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Evil laugh

German plurals are a sight to behold. In terms of articles, the definite plural article, regardless of gender, is die, and the negative plural article is always keine. That’s easy. What is hard is how the noun itself changes. There are eight possible ways German nouns can change to become plural, but there is no way to tell what the plural of a noun is other than looking it up and memorizing it. I will show you.

add an -s

der Kaffee --> die Kaffees

add an -en

die Nachricht (the message) --> die Nachrichten (the messages)

add -er and maybe an umlaut

das Kind (the child) --> die Kinder (the children)

das Buch (the book) --> die Bücher (the books; note the fun little added umlaut )

add no ending and maybe an umlaut

der Computer (the computer) --> die Computer (the computers; the only thing that changed was the article)

der Apfel (the apple) --> die Äpfel (the apples; note the umlaut)

add an -e and maybe an umlaut

die Nuss (the nut) --> die Nüsse (the nuts)

der Stift (the pen) --> der Stifte (the pens)

Wish me luck with this on the test HAHAHA.

Where do I drink my coffee? To tell you, we first need to address one more kind of präpositionen (preposition): prepositions of location. There are obviously lots, but gimme a break, I’m a beginner, so I only know three: aus, in, and ins.

Aus is used when you are answering the question “from where?” and when the answer is a country or city. So when I ask Alex where she’s from (woher kommst du?), she would answer:

Ich komme aus Brazil.  

In is answering the question “where?” when the answer is a country or city. If I ask Alex where she lives (wo wohnst du?), she would say:

Tim und ich wohnen in Wien. (“Tim and I live in Vienna.”) Tim is her German husband. He works for Uber, but in their corporate offices, not as an Uber driver.

Finally, ins answers the question “where to?” when the answer is a place like a museum or a café. If Alex asks me where I’m going after class, I’d say:

Ich gene ins Cafe. “I’m going to a café.”

We’re almost done, I promise, and I’m impressed you’ve made it this far. I have a couple more things to talk about involving verbs. There are a few different kinds of verbs.

There’s a wonderful kind of verb called a modalverb that takes the infinitive of another verb. The one we dealt most with is können, “to be able to,” as in “Boo can talk.” Können is always paired with another verb’s infinitive, which always comes at the end of the sentence. I’ll give you some examples; note können’s irregular conjugation.

Boo kann sprechen. “Boo can talk.” She can. In many languages.

Du kannst fahren. “You can drive.” Rare for Europeans because most of these never drive anywhere.

Ich kann reiten. “I can ride.” Which is what everyone thinks when they learn I’m from Texas.

You can also add an adverb in between the conjugated verb and the infinitive to describe the infinitive.

Boo kann toll sprechen. “Boo can speak well.”

Du kannst ein bisschen fahren. “You can drive a little.”

Ich kann nicht so gut reiten. “I can’t ride so well.”

The other modalverb we worked with was möchten, “to want to.” Möchten conjugates normally. You use it the same way as können.

Boo möcht essen. “Boo wants to eat.” All cats always want to eat.

Alex möcht Deutsch lernen. “Alex wants to learn German.”

There is a final category of verbs to discuss…this is the last thing, I promise! These verbs are called Trennbare Verben, and they’re verbs with prefixes attached. This reminds me a little of Farsi, where you have a root verb that gets all kinds of prefixes attached to it that change the meaning. “To have” in Farsi is  داشتن(dashtan) and “to like” is دوست داشتن  (doost dashtan). In German, these verbs are separated from their prefixes when they are conjugated and prefixes are always plopped at the end of the sentence. For example, anrufen means “to call.” If I say “I call my mom,” it would look like this:

Ich rufe meine Mutter an.

But if the verb stays as an infinitive in the sentence (for example, because there is a modalverb), the prefix is not separated.

Ich möchte meine Mutter anrufen. “I want to call my mom.”

Other examples of Trennbare Verben are einkaufen (to shop), fern sehen (to watch TV) and ankommen (to arrive).

Okay, so we’ve covered some basics of German grammar. But what if you decide to visit Germany or Austria? Knowing about accusative articles isn’t going to help you a whole lot. So, here’s a few quick phrases and words to help you out, with some haphazard pronunciation guides.

Excuse me is enschuldigung (en-SHOOL-deh-goong, with goong said like “goo”)

Sorry is tut mir leid (toot meer lied, as in “I lied about speaking German”), but I didn’t hear this much in Vienna

If you want to ask someone how they are, you’ll say wie geht’s dir? (vee gets deer) Your response, formally, would be es geht mir gut, und dir? (es get meer goot, und deer). I’m good, and you? But you could also just reply super, sehr gut, or nicht so gut. Super, very good, and not so good.

Thank you is danke schön (DAHN-kuh schoon), or, if you’re feeling particularly professional, viele dank (FEEL-uh donk).

Danke furs Lesen, meine Freunde!

word order is important! Plus our teacherr Kathi's shoulder