Learning German A Language Advantage

  • Added:
    May 17, 2013
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Taking a break outside to learn German
Taking a break outside to learn German
Photo by Kai Hendry

The German alphabet includes twenty six base letters, three umlauts and an extra B. Umalaut is naturally seen in vowels like a, o, u etc. Umlaut is characterized by sound change. Umlaut a sounds pretty much like the short e. O is pronounced like the English sound u and the final umlaut u is quite similar to French sound ’u’. German verbs are extremely flexible and can be placed anywhere according to the necessity.

While learning German, you should bear in mind that the German sounds are consistently phonemic. Diphthong ‘au’ sounds like in English wors ‘Ouch’. There are some sounds that are the combination of the sounds ‘s’ and ‘t’. When used in the beginning of the word it is pronounced as ‘Sht’.

The personal pronouns are er, ich, sie, es, du etc. Like in many other languages, ’you’ has formal and imformal forms. When you use ‘You’ in formal circumstances then ‘Sie’ is used. If it is used in informal circumstances then ’du’ is used.

When you learn a particular language it is mandatory that you learn to greet in that particular language. Same goes while learning German too. In German, to say hello in a casual way the words ‘Gruss dich’ are used. Likewise, to say bye the words ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ are used. But if it is on the telephone that you are saying bye then another word ‘Auf Wiederhoren’ are used. ‘How are you’ forms an integral part of the conversation and to say it in German you should say ‘Wie qeht es Ilhen’ when you use it in a formal tone and ‘Wie qeht es dir’ when you use it in a casual way. Similarly ‘danke’ is the German word for ‘thank you’.

German nouns can be easily identified because of the fact that nouns begin with a capital letter under normal circumastances. Though nouns are closely associated with the gender, sometimes nouns stand independently showing the least influence of the gender. For example, the words ‘ocean’ or ‘sea’ have three different German words and each possesses a different gender. When a word is presented in its plural form, then usually it changes its form to ‘die’ irrespective of the gender. It occurs in the accusative and nominative plural forms. ‘Die’, ‘der’ and ‘das’ are the German substitutes for the English definite article ‘the.’ Along with it comes the indefinite article ‘ein’ or ‘eine’. ‘Ein’ indicates that there is only one singular person or thing involved and also denotes the gender of the noun. ‘Eine’ is used with some restrictions since it can be used only with the feminine gender whereas ‘ein’ can be used both with the masculine or neuter gender. In German, there are four cases namely accusative, dative, genitive and nominative. Some personal adjectives are also present in German language including sein (e), mein (e) which are collectively called the ‘ein’ words.

Learning German is definitely worth your time and anyone who can afford it should definitely indulge in learning German.

Author's Profile

Candy Mayers is primary focused on writing and sharing her experience with learning German, English, French or Portuguese.


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