Anne Fox

All languages have ways of showing what role a noun plays in a sentence. In English, a noun’s position in the sentence tells you how it’s being used. In German, the endings on the adjectives and articles that accompany the noun, which are based on case, tell you the noun’s function in the sentence. Here’s a quick overview of the German cases and the relationship they have with nouns, articles, and pronouns.

Speaking a foreign language correctly is all about mastering the basics of pronunciation. The key to mastering pronunciation is to start small by figuring out how the individual letters sound. Then you can expand to syllables, words, and finally, sentences. The rest is practice, practice, practice. Understanding stress in German This type of stress doesn’t have anything to do with meeting deadlines or having a BMW tailgate you at 110 miles per hour on the Autobahn.

In German, vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) can generally be pronounced in two ways — as short or long vowel sounds. The short vowel sounds are “clipped,” meaning they’re pronounced shorter than their English equivalents. Long vowel sounds are “steady-state” or “pure,” meaning the sound quality doesn’t change even though it’s a long sound.

German has three words — der, die and das — for the definite article the. To make matters more confusing for someone learning German, these three definite articles change spelling according to the case of the noun that they appear with in a sentence. The same is true for the indefinite articles. Just as English has two indefinite articles — a and an — that you use with singular nouns, German also has two indefinite articles (in the nominative case): ein for masculine- and neuter-gender words and eine for feminine-gender words.

Getting your hellos and goodbyes straight in German is a matter of keeping in mind how well you know someone. If you’re on formal terms — in other words, if you’re addressing one or more people with Sie (zee) (you, formal) — then you have one set of expressions. When you’re on du (dooh) (you, informal) terms of address, you go with conversational expressions.

Like every language, German contains some false friends — words that look very similar to English but have a completely different meaning. As you read the following list, you can see why you have to treat any new German word with kid gloves, especially if it looks like an English word, until you find out for sure what it means in English: After (ahf-ter): If you want to avoid embarrassment, remember the meaning of this word.

If you travel to a German-speaking country and need to know the time or where something is located, or you just want to get some basic information, a few common questions can come in very handy. English German Pronunciation Do you speak English? Sprechen Sie Englisch? shprêH-en zee êng-lish? How are you? Wie geht es Ihnen?

Because German and English are both Germanic languages, quite a few words are either identical or similar in the two languages. Words that share a common source are called cognates. Another group of words common to German and English stem from Latin-based words that English speakers are familiar with. Many of these words have direct equivalents in German (for example, nouns that end in -tion).

German has three extra vowels: ä, ö, and ü. The German word for those curious double dots over the vowels is Umlaut (oom-lout) (umlaut). Umlauts slightly alter the sound of the vowels a, o, and u, as outlined in this table. These sounds have no equivalent in English. Pronouncing Vowels with Umlauts German Letter Phonetic Symbol As in English German Example ä (long) ai say (“ay” in “say” with spread lips) nächste (naiH-ste) (next) ä (short) ê bet (clipped “e”) fällen (fêl-en) (to fell [a tree]) ö er her (without the “r” sound) schön (shern) (pretty) (remember: no “r” sound) ü ue lure (“ooh” with pursed lips) Tür (tuer) (door) To make your German vowels ä, ö, and ü sound a bit more authentic, try progressing through the ä, ö, and ü sounds, pronouncing the vowels as though you’re getting ready to kiss someone — in other words, round your lips and pucker up, baby!