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Points of Departure: Sites for German Learners
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German-English English-German Dictionaries on the Internet
Deutschkurs
This page is going to be the sister page of www.englisch-lehrbuch.de
and a cousin of www.curso-de-aleman.de and www.estudiando.de.
Once finished the two pages will be connected with a voice chat (that
permits a communication of the users of both pages not only with the
keyboard but also with a mic) and with other interactive services. This
will allow the users whose mother tongue is English and who want to
learn German to be in direct contact with people whose mother tongue is
German and who are interested in learning English.
The BBC
Get a Quick Fix
of holiday phrases
Find out about Cool
German with our audio guide to slang
Follow our beginners' online course
Practise basic
grammar
Exeter University
This is an online Beginners' German course
designed by the German
Department of the University of Exeter. It will contain twenty chapters
of dialogue and exercises which are designed to give the absolute
beginner a grounding in the rudiments of the German language, as well
as providing background information about life and culture in all the
major German-speaking countries.
Herr
Nelson
Clark
Shah-Nelson
is a Colorado-licensed German teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. He
has taught online German since 1999. He previously taught German and
elementary geography using live interactive cable TV for the Denver
Public Schools Distance Learning Network. The DPSDLN began with Clark's
pioneering TV German class, "Tele Deutsch," in the spring of 1994. He
also spent a year teaching German and social studies in the classroom
at South High School in Denver and has taught and tutored students in
German and in English.
German
Word Order
English tends to rely mostly on word order to indicate the grammatical
function of a word or phrase, while
German uses inflections. The German endings, such as those indicating
the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases in three different genders, allow for some greater flexibility in
clause construction. Hence "Der Hund beißt den Mann" and "Den
Mann beißt der Hund" both mean "The dog bites the man" (as
opposed to "The man bites the dog"). Nevertheless, German word order is
extremely important, even when it is not vital to meaning, and its
correctness plays a major role in how a foreigner's command of the
language is evaluated.
Sunrock
Farm
We are an
educational farm dedicated to providing children and other visitors
with a rich and varied experience emphasizing the senses and the
realization that we are deeply connected to the natural world. We wish
to cultivate a sense of wonder, adventure, and respect for the
diversity of life in the world around us through intimate and joyful
hands-on experiences in the out-of-doors. We will engage the children
through direct contact with plants and animals using storytelling,
drama, singing and dancing to enhance their experience.
German Prepositions
Prepositions are often difficult to
translate, and not only for German learners. Browse through this
list and get a feel for how prepositions are actually used. Note:
Click on the prepositional group or on any preposition below:
Accusative
only
(highlighted in red)
|
durch,
für,
gegen,
ohne,
um |
Dative
only
(highlighted in blue)
|
aus, bei, mit, nach,
seit,
von,
zu |
Accusative
or Dative
(highlighted in green)
|
an, auf, hinter,
in,
neben,
über,
unter,
vor,
zwischen |
Dict.cc
An extraordinary online German-English/Engish-German
dictionary. It just may become the only online dictionary you
need!
The goal of dict.cc is making it possible to share your
vocabulary
knowledge with the world. This is the main difference to other
translation services - every user is encouraged to contribute to the
dictionary by adding and/or verifying
English-German translation suggestions. The resulting vocabulary
database can be downloaded, but please note that this is just a flat
text file, not translation software (although the data might be usable
for dictionary software).
Germany:
360°
Here you can visit cities and take a good
look around. View most interesting locations from all point of the
compass, and experience the architecture in its totality. Find your way
around at the train station or look around the park and market place
in the city. Here you can visit over 400 locations in German cities and
you'll find links to more panoramas of cities all over the world.
German: A List of Lists
Welcome to the Indo-European languages tutorial website.
Currently, there are tutorials for fourteen languages, as well as
Linguistics, English grammar, and the History of English. I hope to
write tutorials for Romanian, Norwegian, Danish, and Polish. But there
are many, many more languages for which I would love to write tutorials
in the future and other great people have been writing tutorials for
languages too, such as the Portuguese, Icelandic, Faroese, Welsh,
Ukrainian, Russian, Finnish, and Indonesian tutorials. There are also
comparative pages of the European, Romance and Germanic languages,
suggestions for learning foreign languages, and translation and
discussion message boards.
Enchanted
Learning
This page is designed for
children; however, I highly recommend it to German learners of all ages.
Grammar
Worksheets
Nancy Thuleen's German Pages:
...you'll find a list of the grammar
worksheets
I've compiled over the last few years. All of these pages are my own
compilations, but I can't claim credit for every single sentence or
idea -- many of these worksheets were compiled from older textbooks and
various internet sites, and the clip art comes from older textbooks and
from freeware clip art collections.
Feel free to use these as handouts or links
for your own teaching, or
for your own reference -- there's no need to give me credit.
History of
the German Language
German (Deutsch, [dɔʏ̯tʃ] (help·info)) is a West Germanic language and one of
the world's major languages. It is very closely related to English and Dutch.
Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 95 to 120 million
native speakers and another 20 million non-native speakers, and it is
taught in schools and universities, mainly in Europe. Worldwide, German
accounts for the most written translations
into and from a language (Guinness Book of Records).
The
Awful German Language
by Mark Twain
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg
Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I
spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I
had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a
"unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also
have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I
had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time,
and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under
great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in
the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of
what a perplexing language it is...
| . |
sein |
haben |
werden |
ich
du
er/sie/es |
bin
bist
ist |
habe
hast
hat |
werde
wirst
wird |
wir
ihr
sie/Sie |
sind
seid
sind |
haben
habt
haben |
werden
werdet
werden |
| ich
spielte |
I
played |
Ich
spielte Basketball. |
| du
spieltest |
you (fam.)
played |
Spieltest
du Schach? (chess) |
German
Gender Rules
Always FEMININE
(die/eine):
- Nouns
ending in the following suffixes: -heit,
-keit, -tät, -ung,
-schaft - Examples: Freiheit,
Schnelligkeit, Universität,
Zeitung, Freundschaft (freedom, quickness, university, newspaper,
friendship). Note that these suffixes usually have a
corresponding English suffix, such as -ness (-heit, -keit), -ty (-tät),
-ship (-schaft).
- Nouns
ending in -ie: Drogerie,
Geographie, Komödie,
Industrie, Ironie (often equal to words ending in -y in English)
German Verb Endings (Present Tense)
Ending
|
Subject
Pronouns (Nominative Case)
|
e
|
ich
|
st
|
du
|
t
|
er,
sie, es
ihr
|
en
|
wir
sie
Sie (note capitialization)
|
Einkaufen Gehen (to go shopping)
| die
Einkaufsliste (-n) |
shopping list |
| einkaufen |
to do the shopping |
| einkaufen
gehen |
"To go shopping". In this
construction, both "einkaufen" and "gehen" are infinitives. Only the second verb "gehen" declines (i.e. changes its endings),
whereas "einkaufen" remains the same. |
| jetzt |
now |
| Gehst du
bitte jetzt
einkaufen? |
Will you please go and do the
shopping now? |
Calling the Doctor
| Anna
Müller |
Guten Morgen, Frau Müller
am Apparat. Hat die Frau Doktor Weber einen Termin frei? |
| Frau Krug |
Ja, natürlich, Frau
Müller. Um 10.20 Uhr haben wir einen Termin frei, oder zehn
Minuten später um halb elf. Ist das in Ordnung? |
| Anna
Müller |
Wie spät ist es jetzt? |
- Danke! (DAHNK-uh) Thanks! Thank you.
(also "No thanks" - See note below)
- Danke schön!* (DAHNK-uh shoon) Thank you!
- Tausend Dank! (TAU-zent DAHNK) A thousand thanks! Thanks
very much!
- Danke vielmals! (DAHNK-uh FEEL-malls) Many thanks!
- Recht schönen Dank! (RECHT shoon-en DAHNK) Many
thanks!
Auf
der Bank
A
account (bank) s
Konto
bank account s Bankkonto
in my account auf meinem Konto
amount r
Betrag
ATM, cash
machine r Geldautomat (-en)
B
bank (n.) e
Bank (-en)
at the bank auf der Bank
to the bank auf die Bank
He's going to the bank. Er geht auf die Bank.
She's at the bank. Sie ist auf der Bank.
Herr
Nelson
Clark
Shah-Nelson
is a Colorado-licensed German teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. He
has taught online German since 1999. He previously taught German and
elementary geography using live interactive cable TV for the Denver
Public Schools Distance Learning Network. The DPSDLN began with Clark's
pioneering TV German class, "Tele Deutsch," in the spring of 1994. He
also spent a year teaching German and social studies in the classroom
at South High School in Denver and has taught and tutored students in
German and in English.