Adjectival nouns
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Episodes
German GrammarPod
German GrammarPod is a podcast about German grammar for people learning the German language.
Episodes
Reported Speech and Konjunktiv I
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Commands
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Reciprocal Verbs and Einander
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Reflexive Verbs
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Reflexive Pronouns
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Adjectives and Adjectival Endings
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How to Use a Dictionary
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General Tips & Tricks
This podcast gives you a wide range of tips and tricks for learning a language. It focuses on German, but these tips and tricks could be applied to learning any language. To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here .
Relative Pronouns3
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Relative Pronouns 2
This podcast covers relative pronouns after prepositions and some other special cases. To listen to this podcast directly on your computer, click here .
Relative Pronouns
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The Conditional - Part 2
This episode is about more of the really practical stuff you need to know about the conditional. To listen to the episode directly on your computer, click here .
The Conditional and Umlauts
The conditional basically means sentences with a would. For instance, if I were rich, I would buy a house. To download this podcast directly on your computer, click here .
Word Order - Multi-Clause Sentences
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Word Order - Exceptions to the Standard Main Clause
Word order has a highly complex set of rules in any language. So many, that I'm not convinced anyone has ever managed to write them all down for any given language. For pretty well every rule there is an exception, and there are even exceptions to exceptions. This podcast focuses on the most productive rules about exceptions to standard word order, the ones that have a big effect on sentence structure and apply to lots of sentences. It also gives suggestions about what approach to take if you wa...
Word Order in a Standard Main Clause
German word order in a completely standard, neutral main clause is a follows: * nominative subject, * conjugated verb, * accusative then dative pronoun, * nouns with definite determiners, in the order dative, accusative * most adverbials * nicht – or other negation particles * adverbials of manner * nouns with indefinite determiners, in the order dative, accusative * the complement, and finally * any other verbs. My podcast on German word order contains more information about what those terms me...
The Pluperfect
The pluperfect is the ich hatte es getan or I had done tense. You make the pluperfect in German by taking the perfect tense (the ich habe es getan tense) and changing the auxiliary verb (the habe or the bin etc.) into the simple past version of itself ( hatte or war etc.). So instead of ich habe ein Eis gegessen – I have eaten an ice cream you get ich hatte ein Eis gegessen – I had eaten an ice cream. And instead of ich bin im Ozean geschwommen – I have swum in the ocean you get ich war im Ozean...
The Simple Past
The simple past - also known as the preterite or the imperfect tense - is equivalent in form to the English I did form ( ich tat es ). The way that regular verbs form their simple past is by a or being inserted into the present tense ending. For instance ich kaufe - I buy becomes ich kaufte - I bought and du kaufst - you buy becomes du kauftest - you bought. The German simple past is mainly used in written German, where it can express most past tenses expressed in English by either the I have do...
When to Use the Perfect Tense
This podcast is about when to use the perfect tense. The perfect tense is the ich habe es getan tense and corresponds in form to the I have done it tense in English. But the rules on when you use the tense are rather different in German. The German one is often interchangeable with the simple past tense (the ich tat es tense), whereas in English, past tenses are usually not interchangeable with each other. As a rule of thumb, Germans use the perfect tense to express the past tense in spoken Germ...
Past Tenses: How to Use The Perfect
The perfect tense is one of three German past tense forms. It's also the one that's most commonly used in spoken German, so very useful to learn. The perfect tense is a compound tense. This means it uses two verbs: an auxiliary (or helper) verb and a main verb. Most of the time, the auxiliary verb is haben , which means to have. But for some verbs, especially intransitive verbs of motion and intransitive change-of-state verbs, the auxiliary verb is sein , which means to be. The main verb then sh...
The future tense & the verb werden
Hallo all, It's been longer than I intended yet again, but I've finally managed to finish another episode of German GrammarPod. This episode is about the future tense and also about the verb werden in general. The future tense is pretty simple in German. Most of the time you can just use the present tense form. But where this would be ambiguous, you add the verb werden (conjugated into one of its present tense forms) in the same way English adds the verb will to make the future tense. Werden als...
The present tense
The present tense is pretty simple in German: there's only one. So where English has to choose between Sarah is walking to work and Sarah walks to work, German has only Sarah geht zu Fuß zur Arbeit . However, whereas English only has two different forms of each verb in the present tense (apart from for the verb to be ), e.g. walk and walks , have and has , German verbs have lots of different forms in the present tense (typically four or five), depending on which personal pronoun you're using. (P...
Cases: The Genitive Case
The genitive case is used to indicate possession, like of or apostrophe-s ('s) does in English. However, apart from in formal, written texts (and in its version of adding 's , which is just to add an s to the end of proper nouns), German tends to avoid the genitive. Most of the time in spoken German, Germans use a von plus the dative instead of a genitive to mean of . The genitive is unusual in German, because as well as affecting determiners (words like the and a ) and adjectives, it also affec...
The Dative Case
The dative case is used for the indirect object (that's the noun or pronoun which is impacted indirectly by the action, as opposed to the one to which the action is done directly). The classic example is he gives me the book (er gibt mir das Buch), where the direct object is the book and the indirect object is me . The dative also follows certain prepostions (words like with, to and between ). All determiners (that's words like the and a ) change in the dative, although a couple of personal pron...
The Accusative Case
The accusative case is used for the direct object (that's the noun or pronoun to which an action is done). It's like the shark in Peter ate the shark where shark is the noun that gets eaten. It also follows certain preopstions (words like for, through and without). Only singular (i.e. not plural) masculine nouns change in the accusative. All the determiners and adjectives that stand before these always end in -en . The other nouns stay the same as in the nominative. Some pronouns also change. Th...
Cases: The Nominative Case
This podcast is about cases, which are a way of showing what role the different words are playing in a sentence. German has four cases: Nominative Accusative Dative Gentitive This podcast describes how cases work in general, then goes on to look at the nominative case in more detail. To listen to the audio file directly on your computer, click here . Or, if you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, click the link on the top left of this blog....
The Gender Podcast
I finally have my first podcast up and running. You wouldn't believe how complicated publishing podcasts is, and I thought the long bit was going to be writing the podcast :) Anyway, I'm all up and running now, so welcome to the first episode. First of all in this episode you get a bit of an introduction to the podcast and who it's aimed at (basically everyone who wants to learn German, but I'm hoping to get some feedback to make sure I'm not overstretching myself a bit there. So if you think th...