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A Mixed Bag of Links to Sites for German Learners
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The
first paragraph, under each link, is excerpted directly from its web
site, so that you might decide whether it be of interest before
visiting the site. For example, you might have a great aversion to
Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" and would avoid each and every
reference to it.
Should this be the case, please avoid clicking the bluely underlined
link that sends you there. In any case, I sincerely hope
that you find the content of interest, and that it further your
interest in learning the German language.
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.
German
About From
Hyde Flippo,
Your Guide taught German for 28 years at the high school and community
college levels. Technically, he retired in 1996, but he is still
teaching - now on the Web.As a teacher, Hyde often traveled to
Europe with students. Now he and his wife visit Austria, Germany, and
other parts of the world about every two years. While still teaching,
Hyde published his first book, The German Way. (See Web link
below.) Other books: Deutsche Sagen und Legenden (German
legends) and When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do, all from
McGraw-Hill.
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...
| das Restaurant |
This is written as in English but
it
is pronounced quite differently. |
| im Restaurant |
in the restaurant |
| Ist hier noch frei? |
"Is this seat taken?" Literally: "Is
here still free?" |
German
Pronouns: Nominative Case
| Singular |
Plural |
First Person
Talking about yourself or yourself and others in
your group. |
Ich
I |
Wir
we |
Second Person, Informal
Talking to someone, or a group of people. These
people
could be your friends, siblings, animals, children, parents, anyone you
are on intimate terms with. |
du
you |
ihr
you |
| . |
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 |
(auf Kisten, etc) (hier)
oben !, this
way up!;this side up!;
so ist das Leben, mal bist du oben
, mal bist du unten, that's
life, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down;
oben und
unten (von etw) verwechseln, to get sth upside down;
wo ist oben
(bei dem Bild)?, which is the top (of the picture)?;which is the
right way up (for the picture)?;
| 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)
Envision
German Cases:
Instructions: Stare at the screen and learn the German cases
(Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive)
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? |
Strong and Week Adjective Endings in German
- 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!
A Color-Coded
Advertisement with Annotations
Briefe
in die türkische Heimat
mit guten Wünschen
zum neuen Jahr (zu dem neuen Jahr)
Letters
into the Turkish homeland
with good wishes
to the new year
Note how the Subject, Briefe,
joins with three
prepositional phrases to form the first element of the sentence.
So there are only three (3) elements, and the first element
consists of eleven (11) words! Essentially, the main skeleton of
the sentence is: "Letters have tradition." The prepositional
phrases let you know what kind of letters they are.
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.