The Everything Learning German Book, 3rd Edition: Speak, Write, and Understand Basic German in No Time

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Dear Reader,

Learning a foreign language can be a rewarding endeavor, especially when you truly want to know the language and make the choice in order to achieve some personal goal. And I’m glad your choice is German. It’s an important world language that is rich in history and culture.

Whether you want to be a German translator or just an informed tourist cruising down the Rhine or strolling along Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, you’ll find The Everything® Learning German Book, 3rd Edition the perfect vehicle for getting started on your linguistic journey. It’s not all grammar rules and vocabulary lists; a language is much more than that. It’s also the means for transmitting traditions and maintaining a culture’s sensibilities.

I think you’ll find that learning German can be fun and exciting. After you’ve developed your skills, your new language will be a helpful tool in discovering the world beyond our country’s borders.

Sincerely,

Edward Swick

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Answers to common questions.

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Urgent warnings.

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Important snippets of information.

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Introduction

It’s never too late to learn a new language! Perhaps you want to know German for business purposes, or you want to travel in the German-speaking countries. Maybe you have a keen interest in German literature and no longer want to read translations. Or maybe you’re interested in Germany itself because Grandpa Schmidt came from Bavaria eighty years ago and you just have to know more about his hometown and your family history.

No matter what your goal is in learning German, right now is the right time to start, and The Everything® Learning German Book, 3rd Edition gives you want you need to know. With a lot of enthusiasm and a little self-discipline, you will be on your way to acquiring the skills to speak and understand German.

German and English are brother and sister languages. At an early age they became separated and were brought up in different locations: the brother on the continent, the sister in England. This relationship makes learning German relatively comfortable for English speakers, because there are many words and elements in both languages that are still quite similar.

If you look at just a few words in the two languages, you’ll see the close relationship between them very clearly:

gut (good) Mutter (mother) habe (have)

mein (mine) Lampe (lamp) Papier (paper)

The word language comes from the Latin lingua, which means tongue. That’s an important fact. Articulating utterances by moving the tongue inside the mouth creates the sounds that we call language. Language is, therefore, fundamentally a spoken form. And when you use this book, you should discipline yourself to practice everything you learn out loud. Just thinking a new phrase or writing it down isn’t enough. You have to practice speaking German to learn German well.

You’ll find the audio that accompanies this book helpful, as it allows you to hear words and phrases pronounced correctly, which you can imitate and practice. All of the audio tracks are accessible here: www.simonandschuster.com/p/everything-learning-german-book

or look for the QR code shown next to each track throughout the book:

The contents of each chapter will guide you smoothly to understanding new structures and words. They are designed like building blocks. Understanding Concept A will help you learn Concept B. Understanding Concept B will help you learn Concept C, and so on. And you can move from idea to idea as slowly or as rapidly as is comfortable for you. The choice of a timetable for acquiring your German skills is yours.

If this is your first attempt at learning a foreign language, you will probably be surprised at just how simple the process is. If you know other foreign languages, you will discover that The Everything® Learning German Book, 3rd Edition is an efficient vehicle for developing your next language—German.

With new language skills, you open up many new avenues for yourself. The number of books available to you will be vastly increased. You’ll have access to a wider range of magazines and newspapers and, thereby, to new points of view. There will be more movies and theater productions to enjoy. And you will no longer be limited to meeting and getting to know only people who speak English. It will truly help to make you what the Germans call ein Weltbürger—a citizen of the world.

However you approach this learning experience, enjoy yourself. Experiment with words. Be creative with what you know. As long as you are consistent and enthusiastic, you will succeed. Have fun! Viel Spaß!

CHAPTER 1

It’s Already Your Second Language

If you’ve never studied German before or think you know nothing about it, you might be in for a little surprise. You already know many German words. And you have the advantage of being an English speaker, which means that your knowledge of that language will be a helpful tool for learning German efficiently and comfortably.

Where German Came From

German and English come from the same source. Both are Indo-European languages and evolved over centuries to become two parts of a larger group of languages called the Germanic languages.

English evolved in the British Isles, while German developed on the continent roughly in the territory that is today Germany. Each continued its separate linguistic path until approximately the fifth century A.D., when three large groups from the northern part of modern Germany began to move from their homeland to the island of Britain. These three peoples were the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons. They came both as conquerors and as immigrants and had an enormous influence on the culture and language of the large region they occupied. Their Germanic language fused with the Celtic-English and made English a predominantly Germanic language.

ESSENTIAL

Scholars believe that a tenth-century inhabitant of Britain would have had little trouble understanding a visitor from the region that is today northern Germany. It is that legacy of language that still exists in modern English that makes learning German a relatively easy task.

Why Did German and English Become Different?

One of the simplest and most obvious reasons why German and English developed in different directions is the geographical distance between the peoples who spoke the two languages. German was spoken in the north of the European continent. English was isolated on an island some 500 miles away. With little interaction and no means of communication between the two groups, the countries were on their own to change as time and history dictated.

The Norman Invasion

The last of the Saxon kings in England was Harold Godwineson. In October 1066 William the Conqueror left Normandy, France, and invaded England. At the Battle of Hastings he defeated Harold and his Saxon armies and became the first French ruler of the land. A French king became monarch of England, French culture reigned at the court, and the French language was commanded to be dominant in all regions of the realm. But it didn’t happen quite that way.

The Blending of Two Languages

There was great animosity between the French lords and their Saxon subjects. The Saxon underlings served their masters, but they refused to accept the new French culture and its language. And they held out for a very long time. But eventually, as one generation succeeded another and the hostility of the past was forgotten, the two classes of English society began to come together, perhaps without even noticing it. They worked together. They warred together. They married one another. French families were united with Saxon families. And their languages blended together to form a new kind of speech—Middle English.

A New Language Evolves

This blend of Saxon and French created an efficient language and was filled with the richness of two vocabularies. But the union also represented the end of the last close link to continental German. Geographical distance, the passage of centuries, and finally the influence of the French tongue on English were the major steps in separating German and English as brother and sister languages forever.

French pronunciation created problems that still endure today. One of these is spelling. In many cases, English words are spelled far differently from how they sound. This is because the original Saxon words were pronounced differently. If we still pronounced English words as they were originally pronounced, we would have far fewer spelling difficulties today. For example, we would pronounce the k in kneel.

The gh presented many problems for the French speakers, who tried to master the language of their underlings. Originally, that combination of letters was pronounced very much like ch in Scottish: loch. The French often mispronounced those letters as an f. Sometimes they just omitted the sound completely. The result was a change in the pronunciation of many English words—but the spelling remained the same.

Compare the words in the table below. Listen to the audio for the German pronunciation.

TRACK 1

Today, although German and English are completely separate languages, there still are many similarities that reveal their underlying relationship and make learning German a relatively easy task for English speakers.

Many Similarities Remain

Because of the great similarities that still remain between German and English, you will find many recognizable elements in German, which will help you gain a swifter understanding of a grammatical idea or even the use of a certain word.

For example, German and English both use what are called definite and indefinite articles to identify a person or thing as specific or unspecific. German examples are der and ein. The English examples are the and a/an (the man refers to a specific man; a man is unspecific).

German and English still have many of the same tenses as well. You may not be able to form the German tenses yet yourself, but you should be able to recognize the similarity in the following tense forms.

And, of course, there are seemingly endless lists of vocabulary words that show the close relationship of the two languages.

These similarities provide you with a formidable advantage in learning German, and they will help to make your experience with your new language a pleasant and successful one.

Germany Today

Did you know that the word Kaiser is not entirely a German word? It’s the German spelling of the Latin word caesar, which is pronounced very much like Kaiser. The German monarchs began using the title of emperor (caesar) at the end of the nineteenth century. The last German Kaiser was Wilhelm II, who abdicated and fled Germany into exile at the end of World War I.

Before the German monarchs became emperors, they were mere kings. A king (der König) was married to a queen (die Königin). The son of a king and queen was the crown prince (der Kronprinz). A princess was called die Prinzessin. And they lived in the capital city (die Hauptstadt) of Berlin in a palace (im Schloss). After the collapse of the monarchy, Germany became a republic with a government much like the British system. It was called die Weimarer Republik and lasted only until Adolf Hitler came to power.

Today Germany is a democratic nation with a parliamentary system, which is similar to the British system. The head of the government is the chancellor (der Kanzler), although there is also a Präsident, who is mostly a figurehead and has limited powers.

The parliament is called the Bundestag and meets in the restored Reichstag building in Berlin. The German word Tagung means convention. The Bundestag, therefore, is the federal convention or gathering of the people’s representatives. Those representatives are called Abgeordnete.

ESSENTIAL

You may recall that Hitler called his regime the Third Reich (das dritte Reich). The word Reich means empire. The third empire followed the second, which ended with Kaiser Wilhelm II. The first empire refers to the Holy Roman Empire (das Heilige Römische Reich deutscher Nation).

Many People Speak German

Because Germany had been a leader in scientific discovery for such a long time, it was believed that students who studied science should have a knowledge of German. It is still an advantage for a scientist, but there are also other reasons for learning German.

One major reason to study German is that German is the dominant language in a large area of northern and central Europe. In addition to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, you will also hear it in Liechtenstein, in the Czech Republic near the German border, and in many cities in Hungary (which was once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). German is one of the languages used in modern European commerce. German is the native language of more EU citizens than any other language, and only English is spoken by more EU residents than German. It is also the language in which much of the world’s great music and literature has been written.

Even in the United States, to which German-speaking immigrants have been coming for more than two centuries, you can find clusters of people across the country whose first language is German. There is probably not a large town or city in the entire country where there aren’t groups of native Germans. Indeed, millions of Americans can claim to have at least a portion of German blood running in their veins.

German Dialects

Just like English, German has regional pronunciation differences and even vocabulary differences in some places. Remember that German is also spoken in Austria and parts of Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and there are often differences in the language between those countries. These differences are often called dialects, and they are the local variations or peculiarities of the standard language.

Dialects are not unique to the German-speaking countries. There are also regional differences of speech in the United States. In many places in the South you’ll hear far tar when someone is referring to a fire tower. In some areas of the Northeast you’ll hear Ameriker for America. And just consider how many speakers in various places in the country drop the final g from words ending in –ing: goin’, comin’, runnin’, and so on.

FACT

It is estimated that there are between 50 and 250 dialects (depending on how the term dialect is defined) within the German language. There are almost 100 million people who speak German as their first language. Most of them—about 83.5 million people—live in Germany, Switzerland, or Austria, but about 4 million call North and South America home.

We even have vocabulary that is used specifically in a certain region. In some places people say corn on the cob. In others, they call it roastin’ ears. Some say peeping Tom, and others say window peeper.

German is no different. In standard German, for example, the letter combinations st and sp are pronounced as if they were spelled sht and shp, as in the words Stein (SHTINE) and sparen (SHPAHREN). But in some northern German regions, particularly around Hamburg, many people pronounce words that start with st and sp differently, as in Stein (STINE) and sparen (SPAHREN). These are dialectical differences.

There are similar examples in vocabulary. German has more than one word for carrot—Karotte, Möhre, Mohrrübe, gelbe Rübe—and one or another is preferred in different parts of the German-speaking world.

But no matter where you are, you can rely on what you learn in this book. This book will teach you standard German, which is understood universally among German speakers. Where it is important to be aware of a dialectical difference, it will be pointed out to you and its significance explained.

The Vocabulary You Already Have

German and English share many words in common. These are called cognates, and they are found in most European languages. In addition, there are numerous other words that are immediately recognizable, because they have only a one- or two-letter difference from English. Very often, a k in the German word replaces a c in an English word, as in Amerika. Words that end in –ic or –ical in English tend to end in –ik and –isch in German, as in music, die Musik, and musical, musikalisch. There are also many English words commonly used in German, and that’s quite an advantage for developing a German vocabulary quickly.

The following list includes just a few German words you will recognize immediately. You’ll notice that each of the nouns in this list is preceded by der, die, or das. These words mean the—you’ll learn more about their meaning and use in Chapter 4. You’ll also notice that nouns are always written with a capital letter. Note that ue and ch in the pronunciation guides are bold because they represent sounds unique to the German language. (For more information see Chapter 2.) Listen to the audio for the German pronunciation.

die Adresse (DEE ah-DRESS-eh)

aktiv (ahk-TEEF)

der Artist (DAIR ahr-TEEST)

das Auto (DUSS OW-toh)

das Baby (DUSS BAY-bee)

blind (BLINT)

die Chance (DEE SHAWN-tseh)

der Club (DAIR KLOOP)

der Computer (DAIR kawm-PYOO-tuh)

cool (KOOL)

das Design (DUSS dee-ZINE)

effektiv (av-fek-TEEF)

der Elefant (DAIR ell-ay-FAHNT)

fair (FARE)

der Film (DAIR FILM)

historisch (hih-STOH-rish)

das Hotel (DUSS hoh-TELL)

innovativ (in-oh-vah-TEEF)

der Job (DAIR JAWP)

der Kapitalist (DAIR kah-pee-tah-LEEST)

der Kommunist (DAIR koh-moo-NEEST)

die Konferenz (DEE kawn-fare-ENTS)

der Konflikt (DAIR kohn-FLIKT)

kritisch (KRIH-tish)

das Land (DUSS LUNT)

die Lyrik (DEE lueh-REEK)

mechanisch (may-CHAH-nish)

minus (MEE-noos)

der Moment (DAIR moh-MENT)

der Name