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Better German Podcast with Susi

Susanne Schilk-BlĂŒmel
Since 09/2023 56 episodes

27 Introduction to Parts of Speech for Learning German

2024-03-13 27 min

Description & Show Notes

Hello and welcome to the Better German Podcast! In this episode, we'll discuss the most important parts of speech in the German language. Host Susi Blumel breaks down the fundamental components of language, from nouns and articles to verbs and adverbs, offering clear explanations in both English and German. By the end of this episode, you'll have a deeper understanding of these essential building blocks of German, paving the way for more effective language learning. So, whether you're a beginner or looking to broaden your linguistic knowledge, stay tuned for a comprehensive introduction to the parts of speech in German.

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Summary
In this episode of the Better German podcast, host Susi Blumel covers the most important parts of speech in the German language. She explains the functions and usage of nouns, articles, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, offering examples in both English and German. Susi emphasizes the practical approach to learning German and the importance of understanding these parts of speech in order to navigate the language effectively. She also hints at upcoming German courses for different levels of learners.

Key Topics and Bullet Points
Primary topic: Introduction to Parts of Speech
Definition of parts of speech
Importance for learners of German
Reasons for covering parts of speech in the podcast

Primary topic: Noun (Substantiv)
Definition of a noun
Examples of nouns in German and English
Explanation of how nouns change in German

Primary topic: Article (Artikel)
Definition of an article
Importance of articles in German
Functions of articles
Explanation of how articles indicate gender in German

Primary topic: Verb (Verb)
Definition of a verb
Examples of verbs in German
Explanation of how verbs indicate time in German
Information on the basic form of a verb in German

Primary topic: Adjective (Adjektiv)
Definition of an adjective
Description of how adjectives change in German
Overview of the importance of adjectives in forming sentences

Primary topic: Pronoun (Pronomen)
Definition of a pronoun
Examples of personal pronouns in German and English
Comparison of pronouns in German and English

Primary topic: Adverb (Adverb)
Different definition of adverb in German compared to English
Explanation of how adverbs give conditions and describe actions in German
Information on the non-changing nature of adverbs in German

Primary topic: Preposition (PrÀposition)
Definition of a preposition
Explanation of the crucial role of prepositions in creating correct sentences in German
Importance of learning the meanings of individual prepositions

Primary topic: Conjunction (Konjunktion)
Definition of a conjunction
Explanation of how conjunctions connect words or sentences in German
Placeholder of learning prepositions and conjunctions as "small words"

Primary topic: Interjection (Interjektion)
Definition of an interjection
Examples of interjections in German and English
Explanation of the role of interjections in expressing strong emotions

Primary topic: Conclusion and Resources
Recap of the importance of parts of speech for learners
Mention of upcoming German course and grammar course
Encouragement to sign up for the newsletter for updates on the courses

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Transcript

Welcome to the Better German podcast. My name is Susi BlĂŒmel, and I will teach you German and everything around the language , the countries and the culture. Hello, welcome to new episode of the Better German Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to cover the most important parts of speech in the German language. So a part of speech, of course, is a kind of a word sorted by functions, sorted by the different way they are being used in a sentence. So these are the parts of speech and I'm going to go over the most important ones that— the most important ones for a learner of German. And I'm going to both define them and also tell them both in English and German, what they are. Now, if you've been following me for a while or this podcast, then you may wonder why I even do that because a part of speech is of course a grammar thing. These are— the most important part or the most basic part of grammar is basically like what parts of speech are there and what functions do these different parts of speech have. And so maybe you're thinking, "Hmm, but didn't Susi say all the time that we don't need any grammar?" Well, first of all, I don't say we don't need any grammar, but I'm basically referring to how I teach German to beginners. So yes, when you're learning a language as a beginner, German, or any other language, the most traditional way of teaching it, is with a lot of grammar terms and grammar rules, big words, and for most students this is quite confusing. It can happen that you don't understand these words in your own language, and now these words, these grammar terms are used to explain to you a different language, and then it could become very hard. So because of that, and also because of the fact that I am a true believer of a more practical approach so you learn much less theory, like 20% theory, 80% practice, I don't use a lot of grammar terms in my classes. However, first of all, you are probably not one of my students, and you have run across these terms. Second of all, you will need these terms sooner or later, and also, these are what you will find in dictionaries, so that's why I'm covering these parts of speech for your reference. And when you come across any of those words, you can go back. So let's jump into parts of speech. So what are parts of speech? Parts of speech, as I said before very shortly, are categories that words are being put into and each of them are used in a different way. Fun fact, grammarians or language scientists do not 100% agree on how many parts of speech there are. That's why I keep saying, I'm going to go over the most important ones, the most important ones for learners. In English most of the time they say we have eight. I'm going to give you examples in German and English. A part of speech in German is "Wortart". So a part of speech in German is "Wortart" In German this is one word, and it means literally "kind of word" or "word-kind", actually. So the first part of speech is a noun. A noun is the name of a person place thing or an idea. So it could be something that you can touch like "table, man, woman, window, house," or it could be an idea or a place. "Vienna, love, space," things like that, or "hope." These are nouns. In German, a noun it's called "Nomen" or "Substaniv". Sometimes it's also called "Hauptwort" Nouns in German can change according to how they're used in a sentence. Good. The next one that I'm going to tell you is an article. I've actually made a whole episode about articles. It's the Episode 5 of this podcast, you can find it in bettergerman.info/5 if you want to know more about articles. Articles are little words, there are not many of them. In English, it's just "a" and "the". In German, it's a couple of more and they are used with nouns, and they basically have different functions. One of the functions is depending on whether you say, "a" or "the", that's the same in German, you know if you're referring to any of whatever the noun is, or of a specific one. I'm going to give you an example. If you say, "a table,"— "I need a table," then you just basically say you need any table. It doesn't matter which one. If you say "I need the table," then it, this would only make sense if we know which table. It's a specific table that you're talking about, like the table that is, that you're looking at, or the table that you talked about, or the table that you ordered. So in Germany, it's the same. These sentences would be, "Ich brauche einen Tisch". " I need a table." oder (or) " Ich brauche den Tisch." " I need the table." Now in German articles also show the gender. As I said, I made this episode number 5 about an Introduction to Articles, and you can hear more about the gender there, just to say there's a very short summary. In German, every object or every noun is is considered to be either male or female or neutral. And you can see that through the articles. And then they change. According to how we use them in a sentence. This is not something, yeah. Okay, good. So that's an article. They're important. If you want to hear more about the articles, go to Episode 5 and also I'm going to make an episode which is kind of like the more advanced thing of articles where I'm going to go into all the different articles, and what they mean. Okay, the next part of speech that I'm going to tell you is the verb. A verb is in German. a "Verb" or it "Zeitwort." Now, a verb is a word like "walk, jump, sit, like" and so on. Every and verbs can show actions like "walk, jump." They can also show a state of being like "be." "I am at home." So these are verbs. In German, they're called "Verbum" Basically you write it the same way, or "Zeitwort." That means literally "time words," or "tense words" is probably the better translation in this case. And because they show, they give you an idea about time, and in the verb you can see, is it something that is happening now or, did it happen in the past or will it happen in the future? So these are verbs. German examples would be "spielen" "play." "walk," "arbeiten" —"work." One thing that is good to know is like, the basic form of a verb in German, always has an "en" at the end. " arbeiten"— "work." "play." "schauen" —"look." " sprechen" — "speak." So that's a verb. The next part of speech, in— so it can describe a person or a thing, or a place — in German, you can use an adjective more or less also to describe an action, like a verb. However they describe. That's the important part. And yeah, basically, that's an adjective. Adjectives in German change a lot. Adjectives change very much according to where they're used, and also what noun are you using it with? Is it a male, a female or neutral noun? And what is the function in the sentence? So there's a lot of changes, and if you first see that and if you get a table with adjectives, this could be very overwhelming. But if you break it down, then it's not so hard. So I will make an, an extra episode just about adjectives and tell you a little bit more. And so if you're interested in that, You can subscribe to my podcast and then you will run into it. As soon, and you will be informed as soon as it's out. Okay. Next part of speech is a pronoun, in German, "Pronomen." Or "FĂŒrwort" and "FĂŒrwort" literally means a " pro word." So a pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun. I'm not going to go into all of the different kinds of pronouns. I'm just going to give you a few examples. Why we need pronouns is because we don't want to keep repeating what we're talking about. So if I say, "My brother is a nice guy. My brother's name is Peter. My brother works in the bank. My brother, blah, blah, blah." So instead of saying "my brother" or "the brother," you can say "he." And that's a pronoun. So it's used instead of a noun there, that's what it means. "Pro" in this case means, "instead of," or "used for a "noun." And in German, this is the same thing. So this is the most basic form of pronoun. "He, she, it, I, you they," these are the personal pronouns, And overall pronouns are pretty similar in their use in German and they're in English and in their functions. There may be a little bit different forms The next part of speech that I'm going to tell you is an adverb. Now adverbs between German and English have a different definition. If you look into it very deeply, you see it's not all that different, but I'm still just going to give you the definition. In English an adverb is a word, that describes or changes another verb. That's why it's called adverb. An adjective or another adverb. A verb, an adjective, or an adverb. I hope I said it correctly. So, if you want to say "he is a big guy." Then "big" is an adjective, "guy" is a noun. And if you want to change this "big," and you say "he's a quiet, big guy," or "he's a relatively big guy," or "he's a very big guy," "quiet, relatively" or "very" are adverbs. That's the English definition. Now, some of them, some of the English adverbs will be adverbs in German, too. However in German, the definition of an adverb is something that gives the conditions. Describes like the conditions of how something is happening. They're describing something about time, something about places, something about how something's happening. So I'm going to give you an example, like "here." "Hier" in German, "here" in English, would be an adverb. Or, "very." Now "very" is an adverb, both in German and in English. And for example, " Trotzdem." "Nevertheless." That is an adverb in German, giving a reason. So that's the definition of an adverb in German. Adverbs in German do not change by the way. So far, all of the parts of speech we've had, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. They change. They change according to certain rules. Now we have some parts of speech. The first of them, I just told you. That would be the adverb that doesn't change. Okay. And then, the next one we have is a preposition. By the way, I generally, like when you learn in one of my courses, for a very long time you will not have to worry about adverbs and preposition, and the next one that I'm going to tell you. And that will just sum them up as small words, and small words are super important, And it's very important to learn them. And they usually have very, very many meanings. The classification into what is their function is not as important as to learn the individual meanings. Anyway. So a preposition, is a word that's, it's before a noun, or pronoun, and it tells you a position. That's why it's called preposition. So, for example, if you imagine you have a book, and a table and you want to describe the relationship of that book and the table to each other, then you will use prepositions. So preposition, preposition in Germany's "eine PrĂ€position" Sometimes they also call it "ein VerhĂ€ltniswort." that's a "relationship" or "relation word," literally, because they give a relationship. So, for example, you have this book and this table, and you say, "The book is on the table." "auf dem Tisch." So "on," in German "auf" is a "PrĂ€position." "The book is under the table." or, "neben dem Tisch," "next to the table." "Next to" is a preposition, "neben" in German. Or, "ĂŒber dem Tisch" —"above the table." So these are prepositions, and they are very important. And in German, both in German and English, they're very important and they very often have a lot of meaning, and if you don't get those meanings precisely, then you may not understand the sentence. However, for example, the word "in" in English has like, depending on which dictionary you look at, somewhere between 20 and 40 different definitions. And, in German. It is very, very similar. Unfortunately, they don't have the exact same definitions. So these are actual meanings that these words have, and in order to really, be good, even in your own language, you need to know those meanings. So in German, they have a different, an the additional function. They are very important. to form a sentence correctly. So, nouns for example, and also adjectives and articles change according to prepositions that you are using. So, if you don't learn this prepositions correctly, including, and you understand what changes they're bringing about, you will not be able to say correct sentences to be honest. So prepositions are very, very important, and there is a course I'm working on, you will learn these different prepositions and you will practice them. The next one and that's also something that I will just sum up as a small word, is a conjunction. A conjunction, in German, is a "Konjunktion," and in English— it's a Latin word, as most of them, like all of these words are originally Latin, by the way. And "coniungere" means "to join together." So, and that's exactly what this word, this kind of word does. It's a word like "and," "or," and it connects words with each other, or even the whole sentences, and that's a conjunction. And then there's another, by the way, prepositions and conjunctions and articles, and most of the adverbs, as I said, I usually sum up particularly until you're very advanced in German and you're at least until you're fluent in German and you can speak German and you can look in a dictionary, and actually use a dictionary, not just a translation dictionary, but like a German dictionary. Until that time, I sum up these words as small words. And in most of the cases, you will be fine with them. Maybe, except for the preposition, that you may have to know separately And then the last part of speech that I'm going to go over, in this episode is an interjection. And interjection, in German is "eine Interjektion" And it is a word like "oops," or "ow," or, "oh," and these are words that are basically giving an idea and emotion, often a strong emotion. And they're very often words that can be a substitute for a whole sentence. So instead of like, "I am surprised to see you here." You say, "ah," or, "oh," " Interjektion." These are not necessarily all the parts of speech you could find, if you look into grammar. Different grammar books have different definitions, but these are the most important ones. I want to sum it up or summarize it. So you have a "noun," in German, "Nomen" or "Substantiv." A person, a thing, a place or an idea. And you have a "pronoun." That is a word in German, "Pronomen," or a "FĂŒrwort." And that is a word that's standing instead of a noun. Then you have a verb in German "Verb" or "Zeitwort" that expresses action or a state of being. And it's a word, like "walk," —"gehn." In German, you can recognize them because they always have an "—en" at the end in their basic form. Then there is an "adjective." "Adjektiv" in German, or "Eigenschaftswort" and that describes a person or thing or place. In German, it could even describe a verb. So it's a thing that describes something. Then there is an "adverb," that is in German, a word that gives you more information about— it's a, an "Umstandswort." It describes how something is. Like the place, the time. The way how something's happening We have a "PrĂ€position." "Preposition" in English, in German, "PrĂ€position," and that is a word that describes the relationship, that two things, or two words have to each other. A word like, "under" and so on. These are pretty much the same in German, like the basic idea, however, PrĂ€position, in German, give you, in addition to the information and to the meaning, a very important grammar information. Then there is a "conjunction." And "eine Konjunktionoder" oder (or) "ein Bindewort" "Bindewort" is a connecting word, and that joins two words, or phrases or entire sentences with each other. And then you have an "interjection," and that is a word that is, expresses an idea and emotion like, "ow" or "oh," or " hey." Something like that. Very often they have an exclamation point afterward. In German, they're also called "Interjektion." So these are the most important ones. Out of these, the adverb, the preposition the conjunction and the interjection, do not change. They themselves do not change. And the nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives, change according to how to use in a sentence and what the exact conditions are, they are used in. Okay, good. So this is a little bit of an introduction to parts of speech, to "Wortarten," and I hope you find it helpful. If you're looking for a German course, there's a German course coming up where you will learn those parts of speech on a need-to-know basis. You will learn a lot. You will learn a lot of nouns in the beginning and you will learn all of these things, but you will learn on a need-to-know basis, and step-by-step as you need it in your progress to learn. However, if you run across, come across any of those terms, then you can look it up here or on my homepage, and clarify what they're talking about. Also, there will be, there will be a grammar course. This is for my more advanced students, and there, we will definitely go into these things. And we will have a lot of practical exercises to practice these things and how you can use them. So, if you're interested in that, then you can sign up to my newsletter at bettergerman.info/newsletter, and then you will be informed once this is out. So I hope this was helpful to you and you will hear me. In the next, episode. I appreciate that you're here and talk to you soon.

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