High School German I

A wie Aachen

In May 2022 the German Institute for Standardization, known as DIN, published a new table for spelling words aloud over the telephone. It runs A wie Aachen, B wie Berlin, C wie Chemnitz (A as in Aachen, B as in Berlin, C as in Chemnitz) through German cities all the way to Z wie Zwickau. The table it replaced used first names, and those names carried a history. In 1934 the Nazi government struck out the biblical names it counted as Jewish: David became Dora, Nathan became Nordpol (North Pole), Samuel became Siegfried and Zacharias became Zeppelin. After the war only Samuel and Zacharias came back. The 2022 revision was prompted by Michael Blume, the state of Baden-Württemberg's commissioner against antisemitism, who pointed out what the old names still carried.

Austria and Switzerland never adopted the German city table. Swiss callers usually spell with A wie Anna and finish on Z wie Zürich. Austrians say A wie Anton and Ö wie Österreich. Three countries, one language, three ways to spell a name down a phone line. That pattern, one language with national habits layered on top, will follow you through this whole course.

By the end of this lesson you will spell your own name in German. First you need the names of the letters. Then you need their sounds, because German spelling predicts sound far more reliably than English spelling does. Once you know a few signals, you can read aloud almost any German word you have never seen.

Twenty-six letters and four extras

German uses the same twenty-six letters as English, plus four of its own: ä, ö and ü, the vowels with two dots called Umlaute (umlauts, said OOM-low-tuh), and ß, called Eszett (ess-TSET) or scharfes s (sharp s). In this course a capital syllable in a respelling is the one you stress, so OOM-low-tuh is stressed on its first syllable. Most letter names will sound familiar. A handful will trip you, because they sound like a different English letter.

The pair you will get wrong most often is E and I, which are swapped compared with English. When a German spells Ida, you hear "ee, day, ah". When you spell Eva, say "ay, fow, ah". Try a few names under your breath now. Emma is ay, emm, emm, ah. Jan is yot, ah, enn. Max is emm, ah, iks.

Key idea: a German E is called "ay" and a German I is called "ee". Swap them in your head before you spell anything aloud, and add J (yot), V (fow), W (vay) and Z (tset) to the short list of names to drill.

Five vowel letters, ten vowel sounds

Every German vowel letter stands for two sounds, a long one and a short one. The difference is not a matter of accent or style. It changes words. Beet (flower bed) has a long e and Bett (bed) has a short one. Ofen (oven) has a long o and offen (open) has a short one.

Long German vowels are also pure. English "go" slides from "oh" towards "oo", and English "say" slides from "eh" towards "ee". German holds the mouth still for the whole length of the vowel. If you say Ofen the way you say "go", a German hears an English accent at once.

One more e sound matters more than all the rest. An e in an unstressed ending is a soft, quick "uh", the sound at the end of English sofa. Name is NAH-muh. Bitte (please) is BIT-tuh. Tante (aunt) is TAHN-tuh. English speakers tend to swallow a final e, because English spelling has taught them that a final e is silent, as in name or late. In German it is always said.

How the spelling tells you long or short

You almost never have to guess. German spelling marks vowel length with a handful of signals, and you can read them straight off the page.

• A doubled vowel is long. Only a, e and o double: Staat (state), Beet, Boot (boat).
• A vowel followed by a silent h is long. The h makes no sound of its own: Jahr (year) is YAHR and Bohne (bean) is BOH-nuh. German schoolchildren learn a rhyme for it, which the Duden dictionary quotes: Das stumme h, das freut uns sehr, steht meist vor l, m, n und r. It means that the silent h mostly stands before l, m, n and r, as in Kohl (cabbage), lahm (lame), Bohne and Jahr.
• ie is a long ee. Wien (Vienna) is VEEN and vier (four) is FEER.
• A vowel followed by one consonant and then another vowel is usually long: Name, Ofen, Hüte (hats).
• A vowel followed by a doubled consonant is short: Bett, offen, Hütte (hut), Mann. German writes ck and tz where it would otherwise double k and z, so Zucker (sugar) and Katze (cat) have short vowels too.
• A vowel followed by two different consonants is usually short: Tante, fünf (five), Hund (dog).

These are strong tendencies, not laws. Obst (fruit) has a long o in front of two consonants, and the h in gehen (to go) is there by habit rather than history. But the signals are right far more often than they are wrong, which is more than English can say for bough, cough and though.

Umlauts: three vowels English does not have

The two dots change the vowel completely. They are not decoration and not a stress mark, and dropping them changes words. Schon means already and schön means beautiful. Zahlen means to pay and zählen means to count. Mutter is mother and Mütter is mothers. Here is how to build each sound with your mouth, one step at a time.

• ü: say a long "ee" as in see. Keep your tongue exactly where it is and round your lips tightly, as if to whistle. What comes out is ü. Try Tür (door) and fünf (five).
• ö: say a long "ay" as in say, with no slide. Keep the tongue there and round your lips as for "oh". That is ö. Try schön and Österreich (Austria).
• ä: the easy one. Short ä sounds like the e in bed, as in Männer (men). Long ä is an open "eh" held longer, and many speakers simply say it like a long German e. So Käse (cheese) comes out as KAY-zuh or KEH-zuh, and you will hear both.

Umlauts come in long and short versions just like the plain vowels, and the same spelling signals tell them apart: Hüte (hats, long ü) against Hütte (hut, short ü), and Höhle (cave, long ö) against Hölle (hell, short ö).

If you have no way to type an umlaut, write the vowel plus e: ae, oe, ue. Müller becomes Mueller and schön becomes schoen. Never just drop the dots, because Muller is a different surname and schon is a different word. On most phones and tablets, holding down the a, o or u key brings up the umlaut. On a computer, adding the German keyboard layout puts ä, ö, ü and ß on keys of their own.

Worth holding on to: ü is an "ee" with rounded lips and ö is an "ay" with rounded lips. Get the tongue right first and let the lips do the rest.

Vowel pairs: ei, ie, eu, äu and au

The pair English speakers confuse is ei and ie, and there is a trick for it. Say the English name of the second letter. In ei the second letter is i, whose English name is "eye", so Wein is VINE. In ie the second letter is e, whose English name is "ee", so Wien is VEEN. Wein and Wien, wine and Vienna, are a real pair, and you will hear both in this lesson's listening task.

ß, ss, and the Swiss way

ß and ss sound exactly the same: a sharp, hissing s, never a buzzing z. So why two spellings? Because the choice tells you about the vowel in front. Duden's rule is that ß follows a long vowel or a vowel pair, and ss follows a short vowel.

Two more facts about ß. First, it has no traditional capital. In capital letters Germans have long written SS, so Straße becomes STRASSE on a road sign. The official rules have also allowed a capital ẞ since 2017, and Duden lists STRAẞE as an optional alternative to STRASSE.

Second, Switzerland and Liechtenstein do not use ß at all. The Swiss Federal Chancellery's spelling guide is binding for the federal government's official texts. It says the letter faded out of Swiss use from the 1930s on, and that Swiss writers always write ss instead: Strasse, reissen (to tear), Fussball (football). The last Swiss daily paper to use ß, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, gave it up on 4 November 1974. The guide also admits the cost. On a Swiss page, Masse (mass) and Masse meaning Maße (measurements) look identical.

Capital letters on every noun

Open any German page and capital letters seem to be scattered everywhere. They are not random. German capitalises every noun, not only names: der Tisch (the table), die Straße (the street), das Haus (the house). This is a gift to a beginner, because it shows you at a glance which words are things. German also capitalises Sie when it means the polite "you", which is how you will tell it apart from small sie, meaning she or they. Languages used as nouns take a capital, but adjectives do not, even adjectives of nationality: Ich spreche Deutsch (I speak German), but das deutsche Brot (German bread).

Reading a word you have never seen

Put the signals together and you can read almost any German word aloud on sight. Take Straßenbahn (tram), a word you will see in nearly every city in Germany and Austria, and walk it through four steps.

1. Split it into its parts. Long German words are often shorter words joined together. This one is Straße (street) plus Bahn (railway), with an n to link them: Straßen-bahn. Read each part on its own.
2. Find the stress. German usually stresses the first syllable of a word, and the first part of a compound. So the weight falls on Stra.
3. Check each vowel's signal. The a in Stra is followed by ß, so it is long: STRAH. The e in ßen is unstressed, so it is a soft "uh", almost swallowed. The a in Bahn has a silent h after it, so it is long too.
4. Assemble it, giving ß its hissing s. One consonant rule from Lesson 2 belongs here already: st at the start of a word is said "sht". So the whole word is SHTRAH-sen-bahn.

Now change one letter and watch the result flip. Hüte is hats. It has one t, so the ü is long: HÜ-tuh, with the long ü you built above. Add a second t and you have Hütte, a hut or mountain cabin. The doubled consonant makes the ü short and clipped, and the word means something else entirely. One letter changes the vowel and the vowel changes the thing.

The Swiss spelling shows the limit of the method. On a street sign in Zürich, Strasse gives you no ß to signal the long a, and the double s would normally predict a short one. There you simply have to know the word. The Federal Chancellery's guide makes the same point: the cases where the missing ß actually confuses a reader are few.

Dialogue: spelling a name on the phone (written for this course)

Maya Kühn, a student from Ohio, calls a youth hostel in Cologne about her booking. Read the German aloud twice, the second time without looking at the English.

Maya spells Ü as "Umlaut Unna", exactly as the 2022 DIN table does, and the receptionist checks it back: mit ü. Germans take umlauts in names seriously, because Kühn and Kuhn are two different surnames. Notice also Langsam, bitte (slowly, please), the most useful two words a beginner can own.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Von A bis Z", and six recorded pairs

Deutsche Welle (DW) is Germany's international public broadcaster. Its free A1 video course Nicos Weg (Nico's Way) follows Nico, a young Spaniard who has just arrived in Germany. Open the episode Von A bis Z (From A to Z). Watch it once with subtitles and once without, and listen for these five things.

1. Lisa asks Nico for the address and says Straße. Is the a long or short? Answer: long, as the ß after it predicts, SHTRAH-suh (the st at the start is "sht").
2. Emma says Mein Name ist Emma. How many syllables does Name have, and what is the last one? Answer: two, NAH-muh, ending in the soft "uh".
3. Emma explains that Lisa is her Tante (aunt). Listen for the short a and the final "uh": TAHN-tuh.
4. Emma says her mother fliegt nach Amerika (is flying to America). Which sound does the ie make? Answer: a long ee, so fliegt sounds like "fleekt".
5. Nico asks whether Lisa is Emma's mom, and Emma answers Nein. Which vowel pair is it? Answer: ei, which sounds like "eye", so nein rhymes with English nine.

Then turn to Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Its German entries carry recordings by native speakers under an open licence: scroll to the German section and press play under Pronunciation. Play each pair one word after the other, and decide which word has the long vowel before you look back at the spelling signal.

• Beet and Bett
• Ofen and offen
• Hüte and Hütte
• Höhle and Hölle
• Fuß and Fluss
• Wein and Wien, which test ei against ie rather than length

Answers: Beet, Ofen, Hüte, Höhle and Fuß have the long vowels. Wein says "eye" and Wien says "ee". Some entries offer two recordings, one from Germany and one from Austria. Compare them: you are hearing the national variation this course keeps returning to.

Speaking: your name, letter by letter

Here is the full German city table from DIN 5009, as Duden prints it: A Aachen, Ä Umlaut Aachen, B Berlin, C Chemnitz, D Düsseldorf, E Essen, F Frankfurt, G Goslar, H Hamburg, I Ingelheim, J Jena, K Köln, L Leipzig, M München, N Nürnberg, O Offenbach, Ö Umlaut Offenbach, P Potsdam, Q Quickborn, R Rostock, S Salzwedel, ẞ Eszett, T Tübingen, U Unna, Ü Umlaut Unna, V Völklingen, W Wuppertal, X Xanten, Y Ypsilon, Z Zwickau.

Alone: open the voice recorder on your phone. Say Mein Name ist and your full name, then spell your first name and your surname with the table: "M wie München, A wie Aachen..." Next, read the six Wiktionary pairs aloud. Play your recording back right after the Wiktionary ones and listen for two things. Did your long vowels stay still, with no slide at the end? Did every final e come out as "uh"? Record again until both are true.

With a partner: one of you spells a German city or a classmate's name with the table, and the other writes it down and reads it back. Swap. Then spell the same names with the Swiss table, which uses first names and a few Swiss places: A wie Anna, E wie Emil, M wie Marie, Z wie Zürich.

Common misconceptions

• "The dots on ü are optional, like an accent you can skip." They change the vowel and often the word: schon and schön, Mutter and Mütter. If you cannot type them, write ue, oe and ae.
• "ß is a kind of B." It is a sharp s and never sounds like b. Reading Straße as "Strabe" is the classic first-week mistake.
• "A final e is silent, as in English." In German it is always said, as a soft "uh": Tante, bitte, Name.
• "ei and ie are two spellings of one sound." They are opposite sounds. ei is "eye" and ie is "ee", so Wein is wine and Wien is Vienna.
• "Swiss writing drops the ß by mistake." Writing ss is the Swiss standard, used by the federal government and taught in Swiss schools. A Swiss Strasse is spelled correctly.

What to carry forward

German letters have names, and E ("ay"), I ("ee"), J ("yot"), V ("fow"), W ("vay") and Z ("tset") are the ones to drill. Each vowel has a long and a short sound, and the spelling tells you which: a doubled vowel, a silent h, ie, a single consonant before another vowel, and ß all mean long; a doubled consonant, ck, tz and most consonant clusters mean short. ü, ö and ä are vowels in their own right, built by rounding the lips over an "ee" or an "ay", and you write ue, oe and ae when you cannot type them. ei is "eye", ie is "ee", eu and äu are "oy", au is "ow", and an unstressed e is always a soft "uh". ß and ss sound the same but signal a long or a short vowel in front. Switzerland and Liechtenstein write ss everywhere, and every German noun starts with a capital. The next lesson turns from vowels to consonants: the two ch sounds, the German r, and the words a German says with a k where you see a g.

Sources

1. Duden. (n.d.). s-Schreibung: s, ss und ß [Rechtschreibregeln D 159-D 160]. Cornelsen. duden.de
2. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei. (2017). Leitfaden zur deutschen Rechtschreibung (4th ed., sections 1.7-1.9 and the box on the history of the sharp s). bk.admin.ch
3. Duden. (n.d.). Das Buchstabieralphabet. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). Die Geschichte des Buchstabieralphabets. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Duden. (n.d.). Das Dehnungs-h. Cornelsen. duden.de
6. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Von A bis Z [Nicos Weg, A1, video and script]. learngerman.dw.com
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German orthography [background on vowel length, umlaut substitutes and the 2017 capital ẞ]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Volkswagen, read the English way

Most English speakers say the German word Volkswagen with three of its ten letters wrong, and every one of the mistakes is logical. They read the V as an English v, the w as an English w, and the a in "wa" as the a in wagon. A German reads the same ten letters and says FOLKS-vah-gen: an f where you see V, a v where you see w, and a long "ah" because only one consonant follows the a. Each wrong sound comes from one English habit applied to German letters.

This lesson works backwards from mistakes like that one. It takes the errors English speakers actually make, finds the habit behind each, and replaces it with the German rule. Lesson 1 covered vowels. This one covers consonants and then stress, the beat that tells you which syllable to lean on. Together they make up most of what makes German sound German.

Five famous words, five English habits

Start with five words you may already say. Each row gives the habit that misleads an English speaker and the German rule that replaces it.

Notice what is happening in every row. The English speaker is not being careless. They are reading German letters with English rules, which is exactly what a brain trained on English should do. The cure is to learn which letters German reads differently. There are not many, and you already say one of them correctly: the zz in pizza, which you pronounce "ts", is the German z.

The letters that sound like other letters

Two notes on that table. First, an s before a vowel buzzes like an English z in Germany, but in Austria, Switzerland and much of southern Germany it is usually a plain, unbuzzed s. Wiktionary's entry for sechs gives ZEKS for Germany and SEKS for Austria, southern Germany and Switzerland. Both are correct, because each region has its own standard. Second, sp and st only become "shp" and "sht" at the start of a word or of a word part. Inside a word they stay as written: Fenster (window, FEN-ster), ist (is), Wespe (wasp, VES-puh).

Remember: w is v, v is usually f, z is ts, j is y, and st or sp at the start of a word is sht or shp. Those five rules alone remove most of an English accent's consonant errors.

Two ch sounds, and neither is k

German ch is one spelling for two sounds. Which one you need depends entirely on the sound right before it. Neither is the k of English chorus, and neither is the ch of English church.

• After a, o, u and au, ch is the ach-sound: a rasp at the back of the mouth, like the end of Scottish loch or a gentle clearing of the throat. You hear it in Bach (brook), Buch (book), noch (still) and auch (also).
• Everywhere else, after e, i, ä, ö, ü, ei and eu and after consonants, ch is the ich-sound: a breathy hiss made with the middle of the tongue raised close to the roof of the mouth. You hear it in ich (I), Milch (milk), München (Munich) and Küche (kitchen).

The ich-sound is the harder one for English speakers, but you already make something close to it. Say the English word huge slowly and hold the breathy sound before the "oo". That hiss, pushed a little harder, is the ich-sound. Another route is to whisper the y of yes, long and strong. What you must not do is swap it for "sh" or for "k". Ich is not "ish", and it is not "ick".

The little ending -chen, which makes a thing small or dear, always takes the ich-sound: Mädchen (girl), Brötchen (bread roll). And at the start of a word, ch usually marks a borrowed word, where the regions part company. For China and Chemie (chemistry), the traditional standard is the ich-sound. Duden notes that southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland say a k instead, KEE-nah and keh-MEE, and that many speakers in Germany say "sh", shay-MEE. Each is normal where it is spoken.

Hard endings, and the -ig question

At the end of a word or syllable, standard German turns b, d and g into p, t and k. Linguists call this final devoicing, and the German name is Auslautverhärtung (hardening at the end). Tag (day) is TAHK. Hund (dog) is HOONT. gelb (yellow) is GELP. ab (off, from) is AHP. Put a vowel after the consonant and the soft sound comes back: Tage (days) is TAH-guh and Hunde (dogs) is HOON-duh. The spelling keeps the g and the d so that singular and plural look alike, which helps you read and trips you when you speak.

Words ending in -ig are a special case, and they show how regional standard German can be. The pronunciation dictionaries say -ig should end in the ich-sound. So König (king) is KÖ-nich, zwanzig (twenty) is TSVAN-tsich and richtig (correct) is RICH-tich. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache is a long-running online survey of everyday German, run since 2003 by the linguists Stephan Elspaß of Salzburg and Robert Möller of Liège. Its maps of König, wenig and zwanzig show the old north-south split still in place: -ich in the north and centre of Germany, -ik in the south. They also show each form spreading into the other's territory.

The same survey explains a related habit. In everyday northern speech, Tag often comes out as "Tach", but that ch ending counts as standard only in -ig words, never in Tag. Learn -ich for -ig words and k for every other final g, and do not be surprised to hear KÖ-nik in Munich or Vienna.

The German r, and the r that turns into a vowel

German has two kinds of r, and both are correct. Most speakers in Germany, and today many in Austria, use a light gargle at the back of the throat. It is made in the same place as the ach-sound, but softer, with your voice switched on. The other r is the rolled tongue-tip r of Spanish or Italian. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache notes that the throat r spread through German cities from the 18th century, and that until the middle of the 20th century the pronunciation norm for actors still demanded the rolled one. You will hear both. Pick one and use it consistently. The r to avoid is the American one, made with the tongue curled back.

After a vowel, an r at the end of a syllable usually stops being a consonant at all. It melts into a short vowel. der (the) sounds like DEH-uh, and the very common ending -er becomes a short, open "uh", close to the end of British English butter. So Vater is FAH-tuh, Mutter (mother) is MUT-tuh and Lehrer (teacher) is LAY-ruh. In this course's respellings, an "er" at the end of a word stands for that vowel, never for an American r.

The catch in the throat

Say the English "uh-oh" and notice the tiny stop in your throat between the two halves. That stop is the Knacklaut (glottal stop), and German puts one, in careful speech, in front of every word or word part that begins with a vowel. English runs words together, so "an apple" can sound like "a napple". German keeps them apart: ein Apfel (an apple) is "ein | Apfel", and be-enden (to end) is "be | enden". It is more frequent in the north and often softened in fast speech, but it is a large part of why German sounds crisp, even clipped, to English ears. If your German sounds too smooth, you are probably linking words that a German would separate.

Where the stress falls

Stress is the syllable you say a little louder and longer. German stress follows four habits, and the first one covers most words you will meet this year.

1. Native German words stress the first syllable, or the first syllable of the root. VA-ter, MUT-ter, AR-bei-ten (to work), SPRA-che (language).
2. The prefixes be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent- and emp- are never stressed. be-SU-chen (to visit), ver-STE-hen (to understand), er-ZÄH-len (to tell), Ge-SPRÄCH (conversation).
3. Prefixes that can split off the verb are stressed. AN-ru-fen (to phone), AUF-ste-hen (to get up), MIT-kom-men (to come along). Lesson 15 explains why they split.
4. Many borrowed words stress the last syllable. Mu-SIK, Ho-TEL, Bü-RO (office), Stu-DENT, U-ni-ver-si-TÄT, and every verb ending in -ieren, which stresses the ie: stu-DIE-ren (to study at university), te-le-fo-NIE-ren (to phone).

Stress is also where Austria and Germany differ most audibly. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache asked where people put the stress in Kaffee (coffee). In northern Germany almost everyone says KAF-fay, and the Swiss also tend to stress the first syllable. In Austria and South Tyrol it is almost always kaf-FAY. Tabak (tobacco) splits the same way: TAH-bak in Germany and Switzerland, ta-BAK in Austria and South Tyrol. Neither is wrong. They are national standards, and an Austrian who says kaf-FAY is speaking correct Austrian German.

Dialogue: how do you say that? (written for this course)

Jordan, an American student, is on a video call with Lukas, a pen pal in Hamburg. The English column also shows how the spelled letters sound.

Read Lukas's lines aloud. Richtig gives you an ich-sound and an -ig ending in one word: RICH-tich, at least in Hamburg. A friend in Munich might well say RICH-tik.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Ich heiße Emma", and the recordings

Open the Nicos Weg episode Ich heiße Emma (My name is Emma), in which Lisa and Emma practise introductions with Nico in a traffic jam. Watch it once with subtitles, then listen again for these consonants.

1. Nico and Lisa both say Ich heiße ... (My name is ...). Which ch sound is in ich? Answer: the ich-sound, the breathy hiss, because it follows i.
2. Lisa says Ich muss noch kurz tanken (I just have to get gas quickly). Which word has the other ch sound? Answer: noch, with the ach-sound after o. Ich and noch in one sentence give you both sounds side by side.
3. Nico shouts Taxi! Stopp! How does Stopp begin? Answer: with "sht", SHTOP.
4. Lisa explains Emma spinnt gerade (Emma is being silly right now). How does spinnt begin? Answer: with "shp".
5. Emma says jetzt ist das N weg (now the N is gone). Which sound starts jetzt, and how does weg end? Answer: jetzt starts with a y sound, YETST, and weg ends in a k, VEK.

Then play these Wiktionary recordings, scrolling to the German section of each entry.

• ich against Bach, and Milch against Buch: the ich-sound and the ach-sound.
• Tag against Tage, and Hund against Hunde: listen for k and t at the end of the singular, g and d in the plural.
• verstehen: an unstressed ver-, then "sht" at the start of the stressed part.
• Kaffee: the entry has recordings from Germany and one labelled Austria. Listen for which syllable each speaker leans on. Following the pattern the Atlas found, you should hear KAF-fay from the German speakers and kaf-FAY from the Austrian one.

Speaking: two tongue twisters and a stress drill

German children practise consonants with Zungenbrecher (tongue breakers). These two are traditional, so nobody owns them.

• Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz. (Fisher's boy Fritz fishes fresh fish, fresh fish fishes Fisher's boy Fritz.) It drills sch and the f sound.
• Zwischen zwei Zwetschgenzweigen zwitschern zwei Schwalben. (Between two plum-tree branches two swallows are twittering.) It drills z as ts and w as v, which together make "tsv": TSVISH-en tsvai.

Alone: record yourself saying each twister three times: slowly, at normal speed, and fast. Then record this stress drill, leaning hard on the capitalised syllables: VA-ter, MUT-ter, be-SU-chen, ver-STE-hen, AN-ru-fen, Mu-SIK, Ho-TEL, U-ni-ver-si-TÄT, stu-DIE-ren. Play it back. Is every z a "ts"? Is every w a "v"? Did any ich slip into "ish"?

With a partner: take turns reading the twisters while the other listens for one sound only, first every z, then every w, then every sch, and calls out any slip. Then quiz each other on stress: one says a word from this lesson, the other claps on the stressed syllable.

Common misconceptions

• "German ch is basically a k, or basically an sh." It is neither. After a, o, u and au it is the throat rasp; everywhere else it is the breathy ich-sound. Ich is not "ick" and not "ish".
• "A German z sounds like an English z." It is always "ts": Zeit is TSITE, zehn is TSAYN.
• "The rolled r is the real German r." Both the throat r and the rolled r are standard. Most speakers in Germany use the throat r; the American r is the only one to avoid.
• "The g in Tag is said as in English bag." At the end of a word, standard German hardens g to k, d to t and b to p. The soft sound returns only when a vowel follows, as in Tage.
• "German stresses the last syllable, like French." Native German words stress the first syllable or the root. Only borrowed words such as Musik and Universität stress the end.
• "Regional pronunciations like KÖ-nik or kaf-FAY are mistakes." They are regional and national standards, mapped by the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. Learn one form well and recognise the others.

The short version

German consonants mislead English speakers in a small number of predictable places. W is v, v is usually f, z is always ts, j is y, and st or sp at the start of a word is sht or shp. Ch is the throat rasp after a, o, u and au and the breathy ich-sound everywhere else, including the ending -chen. B, d and g harden to p, t and k at the end of a word, while -ig ends in the ich-sound in the north and in k in the south and in Austria. The r is either a soft gargle or a rolled tongue tip, and after a vowel it melts into an "uh", as in Vater. A glottal stop keeps words that begin with vowels apart. Native words stress the first syllable or the root, be-, ge-, ver- and their relatives are never stressed, and many borrowed words stress the end. With Lessons 1 and 2 behind you, you can read any German sentence aloud. The next lesson gives you the first sentences worth saying: greetings, and the choice between du and Sie.

Sources

1. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). König, wenig und zwanzig (Aussprache -ig) [Map commentary, round 1]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
2. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Tag und Zeug (Aussprache -g) [Map commentary, round 1]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
3. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Sport und Karte (Aussprache r) [Map commentary, round 1]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
4. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Betonung: Kaffee, Tabak, Tunnel [Map commentary, round 4]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Ich heiße Emma [Nicos Weg, A1, video and script]. learngerman.dw.com
6. Duden. (n.d.). Chemie [Dictionary entry, pronunciation note on regional variants]. Cornelsen. duden.de
7. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). sechs; China; Kaffee [German pronunciation sections with regional transcriptions and recordings]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
8. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Standard German phonology [background on the two ch sounds, final devoicing, the glottal stop and unstressed prefixes]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

A map of hellos

The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache once asked people all over the German-speaking world one simple question: what do you say when you walk into a small shop in the afternoon, where they know you? The answers drew a map. In Schleswig-Holstein and the north of Lower Saxony, people say Moin or Moin moin. In southern Germany and Austria the commonest greeting is Grüß Gott. In the north and east of German-speaking Switzerland it is Grüezi, and around Bern it is Grüessech. Across the north and west of Germany, a plain Hallo has spread alongside the traditional Guten Tag, and the survey's authors call that the most striking change since the 1970s.

So a greeting in German tells people two things about you: how well you know them, and where you are. This lesson follows one exchange student through his first morning in Austria and picks up both kinds of choice as he meets them.

Scene 1, the kitchen at 7.15: a story written for this course

Sam Rivera, sixteen, from Columbus, Ohio, has just arrived for a term with a host family in Graz, in southern Austria. On his first morning he walks into the kitchen.

Sam did the right thing. He met an adult he did not know, so he used her title and surname, Frau Pichler, and waited. Andrea then offered the switch out loud: Sag doch du (just say du). That is how the change normally happens in German. Somebody offers it in words, often with Wollen wir uns duzen? (Shall we say du to each other?). German even has verbs for the two choices: duzen, to call someone du, and siezen, to call someone Sie.

The greetings change with the clock. Deutsche Welle's course gives the usual times: Guten Morgen until about eleven in the morning, Guten Tag from about eleven until six, and Guten Abend from about six in the evening. Among family and friends, people cut them down to Morgen!, Tag! and Abend!. Gute Nacht (good night) is different. You say it only when someone is going to bed, never as a greeting.

Lena's Na, wie geht's? is the informal "how are you?". The full forms are Wie geht es dir? to someone you call du, and Wie geht es Ihnen? to someone you call Sie. The answers run from Sehr gut (very well) through Gut (fine) and Es geht (so-so) to Nicht so gut (not so good). Then you send the question back: Und dir? to a du, Und Ihnen? to a Sie. The words dir and Ihnen are forms of du and Sie that Lesson 18 explains. For now, learn the phrases whole.

Scene 2, the stairwell at 7.40: Grüß Gott and Sie

In Graz, Grüß Gott is simply what you say on the stairs, in a shop or at the doctor's. It is not reserved for church. Herr Gruber is an older man and a stranger, so Sam uses Herr and his surname. The pattern is fixed: Herr plus surname for a man, Frau plus surname for a woman, married or not. Deutsche Welle's advice for anyone unsure is the right one: if you do not know whether to be formal or informal, be formal.

You may meet the old word Fräulein (Miss) in older books and films. Do not use it. A research paper by the German parliament's research service records that the West German Interior Ministry told government offices, in the early 1970s, to address unmarried adult women as Frau too. Today Frau is the only respectful choice for any adult woman.

Gruber mein Name is a formal way of giving your surname, a little old-fashioned but common among older people and in offices. You will also hear Mein Name ist ... (My name is ...), Ich heiße ... (I am called ...) and simply Ich bin ... (I am ...). When someone introduces themselves, answer Freut mich (pleased to meet you) or, more warmly, Freut mich sehr.

Scene 3, the school gate at 7.55: Servus and du

Young people say du to each other from the first second, and so should you with anyone your own age. Servus is the informal hello of Austria and Bavaria, and it is also a goodbye. It comes from Latin servus, servant: the Atlas notes that it once meant, in effect, "I am your servant". Das ist ... (this is ...) is how you introduce someone else.

Jonas's oder? at the end of his sentence works like English "right?" when you are checking something you are not sure of. The Atlas found it is the most widespread tag of its kind in the whole German-speaking area. When everyone already agrees, northern Germans tend to add ne? and southerners gell?.

The point: du is not a reward for friendship. It is the normal way to speak to family, friends, children and anyone your own age. Sie is the normal way to speak to adults you do not know. Neither is warmer or colder in itself; what matters is matching the situation.

Scene 4, the classroom at 8.00: the teacher

Look at the two pronouns. Frau Wagner says du to Sam (Wie geht es dir?), and Sam says Sie to her (Und Ihnen?). The relationship is lopsided, and that is common between an adult and a teenager. Sam would be wrong to copy her du. Until a teacher invites otherwise, a student says Sie and Frau Wagner.

du, ihr and Sie: three words for you

English has one word for you. German has three, and the choice depends on two questions: how many people, and how close.

Three things to notice. First, Sie is the same for one stranger or ten. Second, the polite Sie is always written with a capital S, even in the middle of a sentence. That capital is how you tell it from small sie, meaning she or they. Third, ihr is the plural of du. It is not polite, and it is what you use to two friends at once: Woher kommt ihr? (Where are you two from?).

The verb changes with the pronoun, which is why the questions above end differently: heißt du, heißt ihr, heißen Sie. Lesson 5 sets out all those endings. For now, notice that the Sie form looks like the infinitive, the dictionary form of the verb: heißen, kommen, wohnen.

The system is younger than it looks. The Atlas notes that this two-way split between du and Sie has dominated in the German-speaking countries since roughly the French Revolution. It quotes a 2011 newspaper essay recalling that until at least 1960 young people said Sie to each other on the dance floor, and even students said Sie to fellow students. The same survey found that the "Hamburger Sie", first name plus Sie (Thomas, bringen Sie mir bitte die Post?, Thomas, would you bring me the mail?), is now heard across the whole language area. The lines move. The safe default does not: Sie for adults you do not know, until they offer du.

Scene 5, the school gate at 1.30: goodbyes

The goodbyes sort the same way as the hellos. Tschüss (bye) is informal and very common in Germany. Auf Wiedersehen (goodbye, literally until we see again) is the formal one. On the telephone it becomes Auf Wiederhören, until we hear again. Add a time and you have a whole family of see-you phrases: Bis morgen (until tomorrow), Bis bald (see you soon), Bis dann or Bis später (see you later). Mach's gut means take care, and Schönen Tag noch means have a nice day.

The regional greetings, side by side

Thanks vary too. The neutral reply to Danke is Bitte (you're welcome), and Gern geschehen or simply Gerne (my pleasure) is heard almost everywhere. The Atlas found that the Swiss prefer gern geschehen, that younger speakers say Kein Problem, and that in Hamburg, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein the typical reply is Da nich für, roughly "no need to thank me for that".

A formal greeting comes with your body too. Deutsche Welle's culture notes describe it: offer your hand for a short handshake and look the other person in the eye. Among friends and young people, a nod, a smile or a hug does the job.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Hallo!" and "Tschüss!"

Open the first episode of Nicos Weg, Hallo!. Nico arrives at the airport listening to a language course on his headphones, and you hear several short greetings, some formal and some informal. Listen without subtitles first.

1. A woman greets Herr Müller in the morning. What does she ask him? Answer: Wie geht es Ihnen?, the Sie form of how are you.
2. How does Herr Müller answer and send the question back? Answer: Danke, gut! Und Ihnen?
3. A grandfather greets his granddaughter Lena. Which short informal question does he use? Answer: Na, wie geht's? She calls him Opa (grandpa).
4. Sarah and Tom greet each other. Formal or informal, and which word proves it? Answer: informal; they say dir (Wie geht's dir? Und dir?), the du form.

Then open the third episode, Tschüss!, where travellers say goodbye around Nico.

5. Martina and Herbert say goodbye. Which words do they use? Answer: Tschüss, Mach's gut and Bis bald, with first names, so they are on du terms.
6. Herr Tillmanns and Frau Scholl part with a different word. Which one? Answer: Auf Wiedersehen, with Herr and Frau, so they are on Sie terms.
7. What do both pairs wish the traveller? Answer: Gute Reise! (Have a good trip!).

For three single words, Wiktionary has recordings in its German sections: servus (an Austrian or Bavarian speaker will not buzz the s), tschüss and duzen.

Speaking: two introductions and a greeting map

Alone: record two introductions of yourself. The formal one: Guten Tag. Mein Name ist ... Ich komme aus ... Freut mich. The informal one: Hallo! Ich heiße ... Ich bin aus ... Und du? Wie heißt du? Then say aloud the right greeting for each of these, recording as you go: a bakery in Munich at three in the afternoon; your friend in Hamburg at noon; a shop in Zürich in the morning; your friend's grandmother in Berlin at eight in the evening; a classmate in Vienna as you leave school; your host family as they go to bed. Possible answers: Grüß Gott; Moin or Hallo; Grüezi; Guten Abend; Servus or Tschüss; Gute Nacht.

With a partner: act out scenes 1 to 5 above, then swap roles. Next, improvise: one of you plays an adult stranger and the other must stay with Sie throughout, while the listener counts every slip into du. Finish by inventing a scene in Hamburg, using Moin and Da nich für.

Common misconceptions

• "Sie is only for people you respect, so du sounds rude." Du is the normal form with family, friends and anyone your age. Sie marks distance, not extra respect, and it is the default with adults you do not know.
• "ihr is the polite form." Ihr is the plural of du, for two or more people you know well. The polite form for one or many is Sie.
• "Gute Nacht is how you say good evening." Gute Nacht is only for someone going to bed. Good evening is Guten Abend.
• "Grüß Gott is only said in church." In southern Germany and Austria it is the ordinary everyday greeting, the one the Atlas found most often in shops.
• "Moin means good morning." Moin is said at any time of day, and the Atlas traces it to an older greeting, not to Morgen.
• "Fräulein is the polite word for a young woman." It is out of use. Address any adult woman as Frau and her surname.

Where this leaves us

You can now open and close a conversation anywhere in the German-speaking world. Guten Morgen, Guten Tag and Guten Abend follow the clock; Hallo is neutral; Moin, Grüß Gott, Servus and Grüezi tell people where you are; Gute Nacht is only for bedtime. You can ask Wie geht's? or Wie geht es Ihnen?, answer, and send the question back with Und dir? or Und Ihnen?. You can introduce yourself with Ich heiße, Ich bin or Mein Name ist, introduce someone else with Das ist, and reply Freut mich. Above all, you have the du, ihr and Sie system: du for one person you know well or who is your age, ihr for several of them, and Sie, always with a capital S, for any adult you do not know, until they offer du. Lesson 4 adds the numbers you need for ages, phone numbers and prices.

Sources

1. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Gruß am Nachmittag (Guten Tag/Hallo/Grüß Gott/Moin/Grüezi/Servus) [Map commentary, round 2]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
2. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Antwort auf Danke [Map commentary, round 2]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
3. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Duzen/Siezen: Chef zu Mitarbeiter [Map commentary, round 8]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
4. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). gell? / ne? / oder? [Map commentary, round 2]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Informal and formal (1) [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
6. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Greetings in German [Nicos Weg, A1, culture page]. learngerman.dw.com
7. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Hallo! and Tschüss! [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
8. Deutscher Bundestag, Wissenschaftliche Dienste. (2021). Anrede von Frauen im Deutschen Bundestag: Ausgewählte Aspekte (WD 1 - 3000 - 006/21). bundestag.de
9. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). T-V distinction [background on du among peers and plural ihr]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

38 or 83?

In the Deutsche Welle episode Zahlen von 1 bis 100, Lisa pulls up outside a house with her eight-year-old niece Emma and asks: Wie ist die Hausnummer, Emma? 38 oder 83? (What's the house number, Emma? 38 or 83?). An English speaker would never mix those two up. A German speaker easily could, because in German both numbers start with the same sound. Thirty-eight is achtunddreißig, literally "eight-and-thirty". Eighty-three is dreiundachtzig, "three-and-eighty". Say the first one aloud and listen: it begins "acht", like eighty-three's ending.

So here is this lesson's problem. When a German says a two-digit number, you hear the units first and the tens last. If you start writing as soon as you hear "acht", you will write 8 and then have to squeeze a 3 in front of it. Every learner of German makes this mistake, and the fix is a habit of listening, which this lesson builds.

The second problem comes from the same series. A radio presenter gives out a phone number like this: 0800, dann dreimal die Sieben, zweimal die Drei, zweimal die Vier, meaning 0800, then the seven three times, the three twice and the four twice. To follow that, you need the numbers, the way Germans group digits, and the little word mal (times). By the end of the lesson you will have all three.

Null to zwölf: the twelve you memorise

Three notes. First, eins is the form for counting and for the number on its own. Before a noun it shrinks to ein or eine: ein Euro, eine Cola. Second, elf and zwölf are not built from smaller numbers, just like English eleven and twelve. Third, on the telephone and over a loudspeaker you will often hear zwo instead of zwei. Duden, the standard German dictionary, explains why: people say zwo for clarity, so that zwei cannot be misheard as drei. Zwo is an old feminine form of zwei, so it is not slang that someone invented.

Thirteen to nineteen

The teens are the unit plus -zehn (ten), exactly like English thirteen to nineteen. Two of them lose letters, and spelling them in full is a classic mistake.

Sechzehn has the ich-sound in the middle: ZECH-tsayn. Siebzehn has a hardened b, so it sounds like ZEEP-tsayn. Fünfzehn is the standard form, but the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found that in everyday speech much of Germany says something easier. Eastern Germany and the west, from the Lower Rhine down to Switzerland, mostly say fuffzehn, and the south-east says fuchzehn. The full fünfzehn was reported mainly from the north of western Germany. Write fünfzehn; do not be thrown when a Berliner says fuffzehn.

The tens, and units before tens

The tens end in -zig, said TSICH in the north and TSIK in the south, as Lesson 2 described. The one exception is thirty, dreißig, which ends in -ßig. Sechzig and siebzig drop the same letters as sechzehn and siebzehn.

Now the rule behind 38 and 83. From 21 to 99, German says the unit, then und (and), then the ten, all written as one word.

1. Take the unit and use its counting form, but drop the s of eins: 21 starts with ein.
2. Add und, said OONT.
3. Add the ten: einundzwanzig (21), zweiunddreißig (32), siebenundvierzig (47), achtundneunzig (98).

Older English did the same thing, which is why old songs and poems sometimes count four-and-twenty. To listen well, hold the first number in your head and wait for the ten before you write anything. To read well, say the right-hand digit first: for 64, look at the 4, say vierund-, then look at the 6, say sechzig.

What matters here: from 21 to 99 the unit comes first and the ten comes last. Hear the whole number before you write it, and when you speak, read the right-hand digit first.

Hundreds, thousands and millions

Larger numbers stack the same pieces. You can say hundert or einhundert, and tausend or eintausend. Everything below a million is written as one word, however long it gets. Duden's own example is 1965: eintausendneunhundertfünfundsechzig or neunzehnhundertfünfundsechzig. To read a big number, split it into thousands, hundreds, then the last two digits, and say the last two units first.

From a million upwards the pieces are separate words: zwei Millionen einhundertzwanzigtausendvierhundertneunzehn is Duden's example for 2 120 419. Watch two false friends. Eine Milliarde is a thousand million, what Americans call a billion. Eine Billion is a million million, an American trillion. A German news report about a Billion euros is a thousand times bigger than it looks.

Written as digits, German groups numbers of five or more digits in threes with a small space, counting from the right: 34 500, 3 134 512. Duden adds that years and postcodes are never split. In everyday writing in Germany and Austria you will also see a full stop as the separator, as in 1.000 €. What you will not see is a comma, because in German the comma is the decimal sign. Swiss everyday writing often groups money amounts with an apostrophe, as in Fr. 1'250.00, but the Federal Chancellery tells official writers to use the space instead and calls the apostrophe a habit of the past.

Years and ages

Years before 2000 are said in hundreds, as in English: 1989 is neunzehnhundertneunundachtzig, nineteen-hundred-nine-and-eighty. From 2000 on, Germans say the full number: 2026 is zweitausendsechsundzwanzig. To say "in 2026", German uses im Jahr 2026 or simply 2026, never in 2026.

For ages, the question is Wie alt bist du? (How old are you?) to a du, and Wie alt sind Sie? to a Sie. The answer is Ich bin sechzehn Jahre alt (I am sixteen years old), or just Ich bin sechzehn. Notice what German does not do: it never uses haben (to have) for age, and you never "have" sixteen years.

Phone numbers

German phone numbers are usually read either digit by digit or in pairs. In the Deutsche Welle episode Adressen, Lisa gives her mobile number as 0173 90 76 34 29 58, and you hear null eins sieben drei, then the pairs as two-digit numbers: neunzig, sechsundsiebzig, vierunddreißig, neunundzwanzig, achtundfünfzig. So when someone reads you a number in pairs, every pair is a units-first puzzle like 38 and 83. Write each pair only after you hear its ten.

Digits used as nouns are feminine: die Sieben (the seven), eine Zwei (a two). That is why Lotte's mother can ask Ist das eine Zwei oder eine Sieben? (Is that a two or a seven?) about Lisa's handwriting, and why the radio presenter says dreimal die Sieben, the seven three times. Switzerland writes its numbers in a fixed pattern that the Federal Chancellery prescribes: a three-digit area code, three digits, then two pairs, as in 026 324 11 13.

Prices: euros, cents, francs and Rappen

Germany and Austria pay in Euro (der Euro) and Cent (der Cent). The European Central Bank's current notes run from 5 to 200 euros, and the coins from 1 cent to 2 euros. A price is written with a comma before the cents, 12,80 €, and said without the comma: zwölf Euro achtzig. In full it is zwölf Euro achtzig Cent, as in Duden's model, 742 Euro, 85 Cent. After a number, Euro and Cent take no plural ending: zwei Euro, not zwei Euros.

Switzerland and Liechtenstein pay in Franken (francs, written Fr. or CHF), divided into 100 Rappen. The Swiss National Bank issues coins of 5, 10, 20 and 50 Rappen and of 1, 2 and 5 francs, and notes of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 1000 francs. Here the writing changes too. The Federal Chancellery's rules write amounts of money with a decimal point, Fr. 327.65, while other decimals keep the comma, as in 88,5 Meter. A Swiss price tag reading Fr. 4.50 is said vier Franken fünfzig.

Even small coins have regional names. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found that north of the river Main the 10-cent coin is a Zehner or, by an old name, a Groschen. South of the Main it gets a diminutive ending: a Zehnerl in Bavaria and most of Austria, a Zehnerle in Swabia and Tyrol, and partly a Zehnerli in Switzerland. Before the euro, the Groschen was Austria's official small coin: a hundred Groschen made a Schilling.

Two sentences carry most shopping: Was kostet das? (What does that cost?) and Das kostet ... (That costs ...). For several items, the verb becomes plural: Was kosten die Äpfel? (What do the apples cost?).

Dialogue: numbers at the school kiosk (written for this course)

Sam, the exchange student from Lesson 3, swaps numbers with Lena in the break, then buys a drink. The phone number is a made-up one.

Check the arithmetic in German, aloud: fünf minus zwei Euro vierzig ist zwei Euro sechzig. Notice also that Lena uses the present tense, bin, for her birthday in March. German does that all the time when the time word already makes the future clear.

Listening: three Nicos Weg episodes

All three are short, free videos from Deutsche Welle. Watch each once with subtitles, then listen again for the numbers only.

1. Open Zahlen von 1 bis 100. Lisa asks whether the house number is 38 or 83. Which number does Emma actually say? Answer: elf, eleven. Then: how many numbers are on Nico's drawing? Answer: einunddreißig, 31. Finally, Emma counts from one to twelve; count with her, out loud.
2. Open Wichtige Nummern. How old is Lotte, whose birthday it is? Answer: acht, eight, like Emma. Then write down the radio station's number as the presenter dictates it. Answer: 0800 777 33 44, said as 0800, then dreimal die Sieben, zweimal die Drei, zweimal die Vier.
3. Open Adressen. Write down Lisa's mobile number as she reads it in pairs. Answer: 0173 90 76 34 29 58. Then: what is the house number of the police station in the Schreinerstraße? Answer: hundertvierundvierzig, 144. Notice that Lisa also spells Schreinerstraße letter by letter, as you practised in Lesson 1.

Speaking: numbers out loud

Alone: record yourself counting from null to zwanzig, then by tens to hundert. Next, read these pairs aloud, slowly and then quickly: 38 and 83, 46 and 64, 17 and 70, 16 and 60, 29 and 92. Say your own phone number in pairs, then your age and your year of birth, and finally these prices: 3,50 €; 12,99 €; 1,05 €; Fr. 4.80. Play the recording back and check every units-first number against the digits on the page.

With a partner: play number dictation. One of you reads ten numbers between 13 and 99, as fast as you like, and the other writes them down; then swap. Score a point for every correct number and two for every reversed pair you avoid. Then role-play the kiosk dialogue with new prices, and check each other's change aloud.

Common misconceptions

• "German numbers above twenty run in the same order as English ones." From 21 to 99 the unit comes first: achtunddreißig is 38, not 83.
• "Thirty ends in -zig like the other tens." It is dreißig, with ß. Every other ten ends in -zig.
• "Sixteen and seventeen keep the full words for six and seven." They are sechzehn and siebzehn, and sechzig and siebzig.
• "Two prices in euros means two Euros." After a number, Euro and Cent take no plural ending: zwei Euro, fünfzig Cent.
• "Eine Billion is a billion." It is a million million, an American trillion. A billion is eine Milliarde.
• "A comma in a German price is a typing error." The comma is the German decimal sign: 12,80 €. Switzerland writes money with a point, Fr. 12.80.

Putting it together

Twelve numbers are memorised, null to zwölf, with zwo for zwei on the phone. The teens add -zehn, with sechzehn and siebzehn shortened. The tens add -zig, except dreißig. From 21 to 99 German says the unit first, then und, then the ten, as one word: einundzwanzig, achtunddreißig. Everything below a million is one word, Million and Milliarde are separate, and a German Billion is a trillion. Years before 2000 go in hundreds, ages use sein, never haben, and phone numbers come digit by digit or in pairs, each pair a units-first number. Prices are written 12,80 € and said zwölf Euro achtzig, while Swiss prices are written Fr. 12.80 and paid in Franken and Rappen. The listening habit matters most: wait for the ten before you write. In Lesson 5 these numbers start doing work in sentences, as you learn the first verb endings and say where you are from.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Zahlen von 1 bis 100; Wichtige Nummern; Adressen [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Duden. (n.d.). Zahlen und Ziffern [Rechtschreibregeln]. Cornelsen. duden.de
3. Duden. (n.d.). Schreibung von Zahlen [Sprachratgeber]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). zwo; Milliarde; Billion [Dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei. (n.d.). Schreibweisungen (2nd ed., sections 5.1.2, 5.2 and 5.4). bk.admin.ch
6. Swiss National Bank. (n.d.). Coins; The current banknote series. snb.ch
7. European Central Bank. (n.d.). Denominations [Euro banknotes]. ecb.europa.eu
8. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Aussprache 15; 10-Cent-Stück [Map commentaries, rounds 4 and 8]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
9. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Decimal separator [background on the decimal comma and digit grouping in Germany, Austria and Switzerland]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Sevilla, not Barcelona

In the Deutsche Welle episode Woher kommst du?, Lisa's friend Max meets Nico in the street and asks him a question with two cities in it: Wohnst du in Barcelona oder in Madrid? (Do you live in Barcelona or in Madrid?). Nico answers with a third: Sevilla! Max checks, Du wohnst in Sevilla?, and Nico confirms, Ich wohne in Sevilla.

Look at the one verb in that exchange. It appears as wohnst when Max talks to Nico, and as wohne when Nico talks about himself. A minute later Lisa says that Nico's aunt wohnt here in Germany. Same verb, three endings, and the ending changes with the person doing the living. English does this only once, in the -s of "she lives". German does it for almost everyone. This lesson is a procedure for producing those endings without guessing, followed by the verb that ignores the procedure, and then the two ways German builds a question.

Six words for talking about verbs

Grammar has its own vocabulary, and a few terms save a lot of explaining. Here they are in plain English.

• A verb is a word for an action or a state: live, come, play, be.
• The subject is the person or thing doing the verb. In "Nico lives in Sevilla", Nico is the subject.
• A pronoun is a short word that stands in for a noun, like I, you, she, we, they.
• The infinitive is the dictionary form of a verb, the one you look up. German infinitives almost all end in -en or -n: wohnen (to live), kommen (to come), spielen (to play).
• The stem is what is left when you take -en off the infinitive: wohn-, komm-, spiel-.
• To conjugate a verb is to add the right ending to the stem for each subject. Deutsche Welle's grammar notes put it simply: the ending depends on which person is doing the action.

The subject pronouns

The little word sie does three jobs: she, they, and, with a capital S, the polite you. You tell them apart by the capital letter and by the verb ending, which this lesson gives you next.

Conjugating wohnen, step by step

Here is the procedure for a regular verb, worked through with wohnen (to live).

1. Start from the infinitive: wohnen.
2. Remove -en to find the stem: wohn-.
3. Pick the ending for the subject from the table below and attach it: ich wohne, du wohnst, er wohnt.

Two patterns make the table easier to hold. The wir, sie and Sie forms are identical to the infinitive. The er form and the ihr form share the ending -t. So you really need to learn three new endings: -e for ich, -st for du, -t for er, sie, es and ihr.

German has no separate continuous form. Ich wohne in Graz means "I live in Graz" and "I am living in Graz". You never translate "am" into a separate German word here, and "ich bin wohne" is a mistake every English speaker makes once.

In short: stem plus ending. Take -en off the infinitive, then add -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en for ich, du, er, wir, ihr and sie or Sie.

When the stem pushes back: arbeiten and heißen

Now run the same procedure on arbeiten (to work). The stem is arbeit-. Add -st for du and you get "arbeitst", and -t for er gives "arbeitt". Neither can be said clearly, so German inserts an extra e: du arbeitest, er arbeitet, ihr arbeitet. Duden's conjugation table shows exactly these forms. The same happens to any stem ending in -t or -d: finden (to find) gives du findest, er findet.

A second group goes the other way. When the stem already ends in an s sound, written -s, -ß, -z or -x, the du form adds only -t, because the s is already there. Deutsche Welle's grammar notes give the rule with heißen: du heißt, not "du heißst". Likewise tanzen (to dance) gives du tanzt, and reisen (to travel) gives du reist.

So the procedure has one extra check at step 3. Before you attach -st or -t, look at the end of the stem. If it ends in t or d, slip in an e. If it ends in an s sound, the du form takes only -t.

sein: the verb that breaks every rule

Deutsche Welle's advice is blunt: sein and other important verbs are irregular, so learn the forms. One spelling trap: seid, the ihr form, sounds exactly like seit, a word meaning since. They are different words. You already use sein for names (Ich bin Sam), for age (Ich bin sechzehn) and for where you are from (Ich bin aus Ohio). In Lesson 9 it carries descriptions too.

Countries, nationalities and languages

To say where you come from, use kommen aus (to come from); to say where you live, use wohnen in. Most country names need nothing more: Ich komme aus Spanien. Ich wohne in Deutschland. The German Foreign Office's official list of country names, updated in July 2026, states the rule. Most country names are neuter and are used without an article, like Argentinien and Dänemark. Feminine and plural names take an article, like die Schweiz, die Mongolei and die Vereinigten Staaten.

That article changes after aus and in, for reasons Lesson 18 explains. For now, learn these as fixed phrases: aus der Schweiz, in der Schweiz, aus der Türkei, aus den USA, in den USA.

The Swiss row has four languages because Article 4 of the Swiss Federal Constitution names four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Most women's forms add -in to the man's form, the same pattern Deutsche Welle shows for jobs: der Lehrer, die Lehrerin. Deutscher and Deutsche are the exception, because they come from an adjective. After sein, a nationality takes no article: Ich bin Amerikanerin (I am American), not "ich bin eine Amerikanerin". Languages are neuter nouns, so they take capitals: Ich spreche Deutsch und Englisch. Sprechen (to speak) changes its vowel in two forms, du sprichst and er spricht. Learn those two now; Lesson 10 explains why.

Two ways to ask a question

Question-word questions start with a question word, which German calls a W-Wort because nearly all of them begin with W. The verb comes second and the subject third: Woher kommst du? (Where are you from?). The answer is information, not ja or nein.

Three of these are false friends. Wer looks like "where" but means who. Was looks like "was" but means what. Wo is where. Learners mix up wer and wo for weeks, so drill them as a pair: wer, who; wo, where.

Yes-no questions have no question word. The verb moves to the very front, before the subject: Kommst du aus Deutschland? (Do you come from Germany?), Wohnst du in Barcelona oder in Madrid? German needs no helper like English "do": the verb itself jumps forward. Your voice rises at the end of a yes-no question and usually falls at the end of a W-question.

Dialogue: Sam meets the class (written for this course)

Find the four kinds of you in that scene. Mia asks Sam with du (Sprichst du?). Sam asks the pair with ihr (Woher kommt ihr?). Frau Wagner asks the whole class with ihr too (Habt ihr Fragen?). Sam asks his teacher with Sie (Woher kommen Sie?). Then find the extra e in Frau Wagner's last line: arbeite is fine for ich, but she would say du arbeitest to a student.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Woher kommst du?" and "Was machst du hier?"

Open Woher kommst du? and listen for verbs.

1. Max introduces himself and says where he is from. Which ending does his verb have? Answer: Ich komme aus Deutschland, with -e for ich.
2. Max asks Nico a yes-no question with two Spanish cities. Where does the verb stand? Answer: first, Wohnst du in Barcelona oder in Madrid?
3. Lisa tells Max about Nico's aunt. Which verb form does she use, and why? Answer: Nicos Tante wohnt hier in Deutschland, -t because the subject is a she.

Then open Was machst du hier?, in which Nico meets Lisa's flatmates.

4. Sebastian sees Nico and asks Lisa a question with wer. What does he ask? Answer: Wer ist denn das?, Who's that, then?
5. How old are Nico, Sebastian and Nina? Answer: 22, 25 and 23. Listen for the units-first numbers from Lesson 4.
6. Nico asks Sebastian a yes-no question about Germany. What is it? Answer: Kommst du aus Deutschland?, verb first.

Speaking: an interview in three persons

Alone: answer these questions aloud in full sentences and record them: Wie heißt du? Woher kommst du? Wo wohnst du? Wie alt bist du? Welche Sprachen sprichst du? Then imagine you are meeting an adult, and ask the same five questions in the Sie form: Wie heißen Sie? Woher kommen Sie? and so on. Finally, describe a friend or relative in the third person: Das ist ... Er kommt aus ... Sie wohnt in ... Listen back for every verb ending.

With a partner: interview each other with the five questions, then report to a third person or to your recorder: Das ist Alex. Alex kommt aus Chicago, wohnt in Denver und spricht Englisch und Spanisch. Swap, and check each other's -t endings.

Common misconceptions

• "Wer means where." Wer means who. Where is wo, and where from is woher.
• "German needs a word for am in I am living." Ich wohne means both I live and I am living. "Ich bin wohne" is never correct.
• "Every verb just adds -st for du." Stems ending in t or d add -est (du arbeitest), and stems ending in an s sound add only -t (du heißt).
• "You say ich bin eine Amerikanerin." After sein, a nationality or a job takes no article: Ich bin Amerikanerin.
• "Every country name has der, die or das." Most have no article at all. Only feminine and plural names such as die Schweiz and die USA take one.
• "Sie and sie are the same word." Small sie means she or they; capital Sie is the polite you. The verb ending and the capital letter tell you which.

What you now know

You can name the parts of a verb, the infinitive, the stem and the ending, and run the procedure for any regular verb: remove -en, then add -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en. You know the two checks that change the result: stems in t or d take an extra e (du arbeitest), and stems in an s sound take only -t for du (du heißt). You know sein by heart: bin, bist, ist, sind, seid, sind. You can say where you come from and live, with most countries bare and a few with an article, such as aus der Schweiz and in den USA. You can give your nationality without an article and name your languages with a capital. And you can ask two kinds of question: a W-word first and the verb second, or the verb first for a yes-no question. Lesson 6 puts all of this onto a calendar and a clock.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Conjugation: present tense (1) [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Woher kommst du? and Was machst du hier? [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Word formation: professions [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
4. Duden. (n.d.). Konjugation von arbeiten [Conjugation table]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Auswärtiges Amt. (2026, July 28). Verzeichnis der Staatennamen für den amtlichen Gebrauch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [with grammatical notes]. auswaertiges-amt.de
6. Swiss Confederation. (1999, status 2024). Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation (SR 101), Article 4: National languages. fedlex.admin.ch

Twenty-three o'clock

In the Deutsche Welle episode Wie spät ist es?, Tarek answers the phone at his restaurant and reads out the opening hours: von Dienstag bis Sonntag von neun bis dreiundzwanzig Uhr, from Tuesday to Sunday, from nine until twenty-three o'clock. A few minutes later his business partner Max asks Nico whether Lisa is coming um Viertel nach zwölf oder um halb eins, at a quarter past twelve or at half past twelve. Two ways of telling the time, in one scene, from the same people.

German speakers switch between an official clock and an everyday one without thinking. The official clock runs from 0 to 24, like a train timetable. The everyday clock runs from 1 to 12 and counts in halves and quarters, and one of its words, halb, catches nearly every English speaker. This lesson is built around a comparison of the two clocks, read row by row, after the calendar words you need to say when anything happens.

Days of the week

Every day is masculine, and "on Monday" is am Montag. Add -s and drop the capital for a habit: montags means on Mondays. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache explains the two Saturdays. Samstag spread from the south, and Sonnabend, first meaning the evening before Sunday, from the centre and north. Until the early 2000s, the national news programme Tagesschau announced Friday's weather forecast for "morgen, Sonnabend". Then it switched to Samstag. Today Samstag is the only word in most regions, and Sonnabend still dominates only in parts of eastern Germany.

Around the days sit the words for relative time: heute (today), morgen (tomorrow), übermorgen (the day after tomorrow), gestern (yesterday) and vorgestern (the day before yesterday). The weekend is das Wochenende, and "at the weekend" is am Wochenende.

Months and seasons

Months and seasons are all masculine too, and "in" is im: im Mai (in May), im Winter (in winter). In Austria, January has its own name. Duden lists Jänner as Austrian, and less often southern German, for Januar. An Austrian calendar, school timetable or train ticket will say Jänner, and you should too if you live there. Three things to watch: März has an umlaut, Mai is spelled with ai, and Juni and Juli differ by a single sound, so say them carefully on the phone.

Dates: der Dritte, am Dritten

A date uses an ordinal number, the kind that puts things in order: first, second, third. German makes them from the numbers of Lesson 4.

• From 2 to 19, add -te: zweite, vierte, fünfte, zehnte, neunzehnte.
• Four are irregular: erste (first), dritte (third), siebte (seventh) and achte (eighth, which keeps a single t).
• From 20 on, add -ste: zwanzigste, einundzwanzigste, dreißigste.

Say the date with der: Heute ist der dritte Oktober (Today is the third of October). Say "on" a date with am, and the ending becomes -en: am dritten Oktober (on the third of October). To ask the date, Deutsche Welle teaches the neat question Der Wievielte ist heute?, literally "the how-many-th is today?".

Written in digits, an ordinal takes a full stop, as Duden's rules require: 3. Oktober, or all in numbers 3.10.2026. The order is always day, month, year. That is the trap for Americans: 3.10. is the third of October, never March the tenth. The Swiss Federal Chancellery's rules make the same order binding for official Swiss texts.

Worth holding on to: German dates run small to large, day then month then year, and an ordinal in digits carries a full stop: der 3. Oktober, am 3.10.

The two clocks, side by side

Here is the comparison this lesson is built around. The official column is what you read on timetables, tickets, opening hours and television. The everyday column is what friends say to each other.

Read the table one column at a time.

1. The official clock is just numbers. Hours, the word Uhr, then minutes: vierzehn Uhr dreißig. It never uses halb or Viertel, and nobody can misunderstand it, which is why Tarek uses it for opening hours. In Germany you will often see it written with a colon, 12:45 Uhr, as Deutsche Welle writes it. Official Swiss texts use a full stop instead, 14.30 Uhr, under the Federal Chancellery's rules.
2. Halb looks forward, not back. Halb acht is half to eight, 7:30, not half past eight. English speakers get this wrong more than any other time expression, so test it every time: halb drei is 2:30, halb eins is 12:30.
3. Viertel nach and Viertel vor work like English quarter past and quarter to: Viertel nach sieben is 7:15, Viertel vor acht is 7:45. Minutes work the same way, with nach (past) and vor (to): fünf nach sieben, zehn vor acht.
4. The regional column counts towards the next hour. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found that for 10:15, people in the north-west and south-east of Germany and in western Austria say viertel nach zehn, but a broad strip in between, plus eastern Austria and Carinthia, says viertel elf: a quarter of the way to eleven. Where people say viertel elf, 10:45 is dreiviertel elf. The same survey found that the Swiss mostly say viertel ab zehn and fünf ab sieben, with ab where Germans say nach.

Germans themselves get tangled when they make appointments across regions, which is exactly what the Atlas says. If someone gives you a time you are unsure of, ask for the official version: Also um zehn Uhr fünfzehn? (So at 10:15?).

Asking and answering about time

To ask the time, say Wie spät ist es? (literally, how late is it?) or Wie viel Uhr ist es?. The answer starts Es ist ...: Es ist halb drei. To ask when something happens, use Wann ...? or Um wie viel Uhr ...?, and answer with um: Um acht. For a stretch of time, use von ... bis ...: in the episode Emmas Tag, Sebastian works von acht bis zwölf, from eight to twelve.

Two words are easy to confuse. Die Uhr means the clock or watch, and in times it means o'clock: drei Uhr. Die Stunde means an hour as a length of time: drei Stunden, three hours. So the film lasts zwei Stunden and starts um acht Uhr.

Parts of the day add -s for a habit, just like the days: morgens (in the mornings), vormittags (in the late morning), mittags (at midday), nachmittags, abends and nachts. For this morning say heute Morgen. For tomorrow morning, the Atlas notes, everybody says morgen früh; "morgen Morgen" is unusual. It also found a clean east-west split for a vaguer appointment. The west says am Dienstagmorgen, while the east, including Bavaria, most of Austria and South Tyrol, says Dienstag früh or Dienstag in der Früh.

Dialogue: three ways to say 10:15 (written for this course)

In Graz, Sam, Lena and Mia, whose family is from Bern, plan a Saturday trip to a museum.

Lena counts towards eleven, Mia uses the Swiss ab, and Sam rescues the plan with the official clock, the one nobody can misread. Read the date aloud as am Samstag, dem vierundzwanzigsten Oktober. And check Sam's last line: halb eins is 12:30.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Wie spät ist es?" and "Hast du morgen Zeit?"

Open Wie spät ist es?, set in Max and Tarek's restaurant.

1. On which days is the restaurant open, and when is it closed? Answer: Tuesday to Sunday, from 9 to 23 o'clock; closed on Monday, am Montag.
2. Nico asks Entschuldigung, wie viel Uhr ist es? What does Max answer? Answer: Es ist zwölf Uhr.
3. Max asks whether Lisa is coming um Viertel nach zwölf oder um halb eins. Write both times in digits. Answer: 12:15 and 12:30.
4. When was Lisa supposed to come, and when is she coming now? Answer: um halb zwölf, 11:30; now um Viertel vor eins, which Tarek repeats officially as 12:45 Uhr.

Then open Hast du morgen Zeit?.

5. What is tomorrow's date, according to Tarek? Answer: der Zweiundzwanzigste, the 22nd; so the day after tomorrow is the 23rd.
6. When is Max on the early shift? Answer: vom ersten bis zum siebten November, from the 1st to the 7th of November.
7. A caller wants to reserve a table. Which time does the caller ask for, and which is free? Answer: Viertel vor sieben, 6:45, is asked for; only Viertel vor acht, 7:45, is free.

Speaking: your week aloud

Alone: say today's day and date aloud: Heute ist Mittwoch, der einundzwanzigste Oktober. Then say your birthday: Mein Geburtstag ist am .... Next, read these times both ways, official and everyday, and record yourself: 6:30, 8:15, 9:45, 13:30, 17:20, 21:00. Finally, describe your school day with von and bis: Von acht bis drei bin ich in der Schule. Check your recording for halb: every halb must point to the next hour.

With a partner: one of you draws a clock time on paper, and the other says it in everyday German; the first person repeats it officially. Then plan a meeting for next week by phone, using a day, a date, a time and a place, and finish by confirming the time officially, as Sam did.

Common misconceptions

• "Halb drei means half past three." It means half to three, 2:30. Halb always points to the coming hour.
• "Uhr and Stunde both just mean hour." Uhr names a time on the clock, drei Uhr; Stunde measures a length of time, drei Stunden.
• "3.10. is the tenth of March." German dates run day, month, year, so 3.10. is the third of October.
• "Germans use the 24-hour clock when chatting." In conversation most people use halb, Viertel and nach; the 24-hour clock is for timetables, tickets, opening hours and formal arrangements.
• "Viertel elf is a mistake for Viertel nach elf." In much of central and eastern Germany and eastern Austria it is the normal way to say 10:15.
• "Tomorrow morning is morgen Morgen." Germans say morgen früh.

Summing up

Days, months and seasons are all masculine: am Montag, im Mai, im Winter, and montags for every Monday. Austria says Jänner for January, and Saturday is Samstag almost everywhere, Sonnabend in parts of the east. Dates use ordinals, -te up to 19 and -ste from 20, with erste, dritte, siebte and achte irregular: Heute ist der dritte Oktober, am dritten Oktober, written 3.10. with day before month. The official clock is plain numbers, vierzehn Uhr dreißig, and appears on every timetable. The everyday clock counts halves and quarters, and halb drei is 2:30. Regional speech adds viertel elf and dreiviertel elf in parts of Germany and Austria, and ab in Switzerland. When in doubt, ask for the official time. With numbers, verbs and the calendar in hand, Module 3 turns to the nouns themselves, and to der, die and das.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Wie spät ist es?; Hast du morgen Zeit?; Emmas Tag [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Uhrzeit: 10.15 [Map commentary, round 7]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
3. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Uhrzeit: 7.20, 7.40, 7.05 [Map commentary]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
4. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Samstag/Sonnabend [Map commentary, round 13]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
5. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). (am) Morgen / (in der) Früh(e) [Map commentary, round 12]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
6. Duden. (n.d.). Jänner; Dienstag [Dictionary entries, usage and origin]; Zahlen und Ziffern [Rechtschreibregeln, ordinal numbers]. Cornelsen. duden.de
7. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei. (n.d.). Schreibweisungen (2nd ed., sections 5.3.5 Uhrzeit and 5.3.6 Datum). bk.admin.ch

Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

In 1880 Mark Twain published A Tramp Abroad, and in its appendix, "The Awful German Language", he took his revenge on the language he had been trying to learn. "Every noun has a gender," he wrote, "and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart." Then came his most famous line: "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has." To prove it, he offered a translated scrap of conversation:

• "Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
• Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
• Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
• Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."

The joke works because Twain translated the German pronouns literally. The German word for turnip, die Rübe, is feminine, so it is referred to as sie, which can mean she. The German word for girl, das Mädchen, is neuter, so it is referred to as es, it. Twain's text is more than 140 years old and in the public domain, and his complaint is still the first thing every English speaker feels about German nouns. This lesson takes his complaint as its problem. Is there really no sense or system? Half of his claim survives, and half collapses.

Gender belongs to the word, not the thing

Every German noun has a grammatical gender: masculine, feminine or neuter. You can see it in the definite article, the word for "the": der for masculine, die for feminine and das for neuter. Duden's grammar notes for learners put it plainly: each noun normally has a fixed gender, and you recognise it by its article, as in die Blume (the flower), das Haus (the house) and der Baum (the tree).

The word "gender" misleads English speakers, because in English it means male or female. In German grammar it is closer to a word class. Words for people mostly match the person: der Mann (the man), die Frau (the woman), der Vater (the father), die Mutter (the mother). For things, gender is a property of the word. A table is not male, but der Tisch is masculine. Twain listed more, and his list checks out: der Baum (tree), das Blatt (leaf), das Pferd (horse), der Hund (dog), die Katze (cat). He was right about the words. He was wrong that nothing explains any of them.

Solving the girl and the turnip

Start with the girl. Duden's dictionary gives the history of Mädchen: it comes from an older form, Mägdchen, which is the small form of Magd, maid. The ending -chen makes a word small or affectionate, and Duden's entry for the ending lists it as neuter. Every noun ending in -chen is neuter, whatever it names: das Mädchen, das Brötchen (bread roll), das Häuschen (little house). The ending -lein does the same job, as in the old word das Fräulein. So the girl is "it" because of a suffix, and the grammar says nothing about girls.

Now the turnip. Die Rübe ends in -e, and many nouns ending in -e are feminine: die Lampe (lamp), die Tasche (bag), die Schule (school). Many, not all: der Name (name), der Junge (boy) and das Ende (end) also end in -e. So the turnip has a strong clue, while the girl has a certain one.

The core of it: Twain was right that you must learn each noun's gender. He was wrong that there is no system. Some endings fix the gender completely, and the article is part of the word you learn.

Endings you can trust

Duden's dictionary entries for these endings give each one a fixed gender. Learn them as a short list, because they cover thousands of words.

A second rule covers the long words German builds by joining nouns. A compound takes the gender of its last part, because that part names what the thing is. Die Hand plus der Schuh (shoe) makes der Handschuh, a glove. Das Haus plus die Tür (door) makes die Haustür, the front door. Der Apfel plus der Saft (juice) makes der Apfelsaft. Look at the end of the word, and you know the article.

Even native speakers do not agree on every word. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found that Germany says die E-Mail almost without exception, Switzerland says das E-Mail, and Austria and South Tyrol use both. Germany mostly says der Joghurt, while Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol say das Joghurt. Duden accepts both genders for these two words. Such cases are rare, and they are regional standards, not mistakes.

How to learn genders

Deutsche Welle's grammar notes say what every teacher says: there are few general rules, so learn each noun together with its article. A dictionary shows the gender with the article or with the letters m., f. and n. In practice that means one habit, kept from today. Never write a German noun on its own in your notes. Write der Tisch, die Tische, never just Tisch. When you meet a noun in a text, say its article before you say the word. Deutsche Welle also offers a free online Artikeltrainer (article trainer) for drilling der, die and das.

Plurals: several patterns and one article

English makes almost every plural with -s. German has several patterns, and the plural is one more thing to learn with each noun. Here are the main ones.

A few habits help. Nouns ending in -ung, -heit, -keit and -schaft add -en, as Duden's entries show: die Zeitungen. Women's words ending in -in add -nen, as Deutsche Welle shows: die Lehrerin, die Lehrerinnen. Masculine and neuter nouns ending in -er, -el or -chen often add nothing at all. And one rule has no exceptions: in the plural, every noun takes the article die, whatever its gender. So die can mean feminine singular or any plural, and the noun and the verb tell you which: die Lampe ist, die Lampen sind.

The nominative: the first case

Now the idea that makes German grammar German. A case is a form a noun phrase takes to show its job in the sentence. English shows case only in a few pronouns: he sees the dog, but the dog sees him. German shows it in the articles in front of every noun. German has four cases, and Duden lists them as Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ and Genitiv. This course introduces them one at a time: the nominative now, the accusative in Lesson 14, the dative in Lesson 18, and a short look at the genitive in Lesson 25.

The nominative is the case of the subject, the person or thing doing the verb. It is the form you find in the dictionary. Duden suggests a test question: the nominative answers Wer oder was? (Who or what?). In Der Hund schläft (The dog is sleeping), ask "who or what is sleeping?" The answer, der Hund, is the subject. The noun after sein also stays in the nominative: Das ist ein Hund.

Two details. Ein has no plural, just as English "a" has none: Das sind Bücher (Those are books). And kein is ein with a k in front, meaning "no" or "not a": Das ist kein Buch (That is not a book). Deutsche Welle's grammar notes explain when to use the definite article. When Lisa asks Wo ist die Brille? (Where are the glasses?), she means her own particular pair. Eine Brille would be any pair at all.

er, sie and es for things

Here is the payoff for Twain's turnip. When a pronoun replaces a noun, it follows the noun's grammatical gender, not the sex of the thing. A masculine noun becomes er, a feminine one sie, a neuter one es, and any plural sie.

• Der Tisch ist neu. Er ist neu. (The table is new. It is new.)
• Die Lampe ist kaputt. Sie ist kaputt. (The lamp is broken. It is broken.)
• Das Buch ist hier. Es ist hier. (The book is here. It is here.)
• Die Bücher sind hier. Sie sind hier. (The books are here. They are here.)

So a German speaker really does say "he" about a table, with no sense of personifying it. Wilhelm's answer, read in German, is completely ordinary: Wo ist die Rübe? Sie ist in der Küche. Translated word for word, it sounds absurd. In German it is just correct.

Dialogue: Sam's new room (written for this course)

Check the genders against the rules. Der Kühlschrank (fridge) is cool plus der Schrank (cupboard), so it takes der from its last part. Das Handtuch (towel) is hand plus das Tuch (cloth), so it is neuter, and its plural is die Handtücher. And every pronoun follows its noun: the lamp is sie, the towels are sie.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Was ist das?" and "Wem gehört das?"

Open Was ist das?. On Nico's first morning in the flat, Lisa is late and searching for her things.

1. Which three things is Lisa looking for? Write each with its article. Answer: die Brille (glasses), die Stifte (pens) and das Buch.
2. Which of those is a plural, and how can you tell from the verb? Answer: die Stifte; Lisa asks wo sind, with the plural verb sind.
3. What does Nina hand Lisa as she leaves? Answer: der Schlüssel, the key.

Then open Wem gehört das?, set in Lisa's German class.

4. A student, Rana, spells T-A-F-E-L and then guesses two wrong articles. Which ones, and what is correct? Answer: she tries der Tafel and das Tafel; the board is die Tafel.
5. What rule does Lisa give the class? Answer: Nomen und Artikel gehören immer zusammen, nouns and articles always belong together.
6. Lisa says Das ist eine Tasche and then das ist die Tasche von Jenny. Why does the article change? Answer: eine is any bag; die is one particular bag, Jenny's.

Speaking: name your room

Alone: walk around your room or kitchen with your phone recording. For each thing, say what it is with its article, then replace it with a pronoun: Das ist der Stuhl. Er ist alt. Das ist die Uhr. Sie ist neu. Look up any gender you do not know in a dictionary before you say it, and aim for fifteen nouns. Then say five of them in the plural: Das sind die Stühle.

With a partner: play Was ist das? One of you points at an object and asks Was ist das?, and the other answers with ein, eine or ein: Das ist eine Lampe. The asker then tries to trick them: Ist das ein Buch? The answer must use kein: Nein, das ist kein Buch. Das ist ein Heft. Score a point for every correct article.

Common misconceptions

• "Grammatical gender follows real sex, so anything female is die." Gender belongs to the word. Das Mädchen is neuter because of -chen, and a table is masculine.
• "There is no system at all, as Twain said." Endings such as -chen, -ung, -heit, -keit and -schaft fix the gender, and compounds take the gender of their last part.
• "German plurals end in -s, like English." Only some nouns, mostly borrowed ones like Auto and Kino, take -s. Most use -e, -er, -(e)n or no ending.
• "Die always means feminine." Die is also the article of every plural, whatever the noun's gender.
• "Things are always es, like English it." A pronoun follows the noun's gender: der Tisch becomes er, die Lampe becomes sie.
• "The plural of ein is eine." Ein has no plural: Das ist ein Buch, Das sind Bücher.

Recap

Every German noun has a gender, masculine der, feminine die or neuter das, and the gender belongs to the word, not to the thing. Learn each noun with its article and its plural, but use the endings that settle the question: -chen and -lein are neuter; -ung, -heit, -keit and -schaft are feminine; -ling and -ismus are masculine. A compound takes the gender of its last part. Plurals follow several patterns, -e, -er, -(e)n, -s or nothing, often with an umlaut, and every plural takes die. The nominative is the case of the subject and of the noun after sein: der, die, das and die; ein, eine, ein and no article in the plural; kein, keine, kein and keine. Pronouns follow grammatical gender, so a table is er and a lamp is sie. Twain's girl is es because of her ending, and his turnip is sie because it is die Rübe. Lesson 8 puts these articles to work on the people closest to you, with haben and the words for my and your.

Sources

1. Twain, M. (1880). Appendix D: The awful German language. In A Tramp Abroad. American Publishing Company. Public domain text, Project Gutenberg eBook 119. gutenberg.org
2. Duden. (n.d.). Mädchen; Rübe; -chen; -lein; -ung; -heit; -keit; -schaft; -ling; -ismus [Dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de
3. Duden. (n.d.). Nomen [Sprachwissen für Lernende: Genus, Numerus und Kasus]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Nouns: gender; Articles: definite; Articles [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Was ist das? and Wem gehört das? [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
6. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Genus: Tunnel, Joghurt, Kommentar, Nutella, E-Mail, Laptop, Dialekt [Map commentary, round 4]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German nouns [background on compound gender and plural classes]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

654 241 births

On 1 July 2026, Germany's Federal Statistical Office, Destatis, reported that 654 241 children had been born in Germany in 2025. That was the lowest number of births since the end of the Second World War, and the birth rate had fallen to 1.32 children per woman. Read that first number aloud, as practice from Lesson 4: sechshundertvierundfünfzigtausendzweihunderteinundvierzig.

Behind every one of those births is a family, and families are what Germans talk about with anyone they meet: Hast du Geschwister? (Do you have brothers and sisters?), Wo wohnen deine Eltern? (Where do your parents live?). This lesson follows one family photo, Sam's host sister Lena explaining who is who, and picks up the grammar on the way. You need the family words, the verb haben (to have), and the small words that say whose: my, your, his, her.

The photo: a story written for this course

Lena shows Sam a photo on her phone, taken at her grandmother's eightieth birthday.

Lena's family has two children, a little more than the national rate of 1.32. Count the possessive words in the scene: meine, mein, seine, ihr, ihre, unser, eure, deine. By the end of this lesson you will know exactly why each one has the form it has.

The family words

Four notes. Die Eltern and die Geschwister are plural words with no everyday singular; Duden lists Geschwister as plural only, with the example ich habe drei Geschwister, although Swiss usage also allows a singular, das Geschwister. Mein Mann and meine Frau mean my husband and my wife, not "my man" and "my woman". The prefixes Stief- (step-) and Halb- (half-) build the rest: der Stiefvater, die Halbschwester. And German has a word for a family like Sam's: die Patchworkfamilie, which Duden defines as a family in which children of different parents live together, from the partners' current or earlier relationships.

What you call your grandparents depends on where you grow up. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found Oma and Opa to be the standard words in Germany and Austria. The pet forms Omi and Opi are noticeably common in eastern Germany. Switzerland goes its own way, with words like Grossmami and Grosspapi, and in places Nani and Neni.

haben: the verb of having

Haben is only slightly irregular: the b disappears in du hast and er hat, as Duden's conjugation table shows. Notice one thing in the examples. After haben, a masculine noun takes einen, not ein: Ich habe einen Bruder. Feminine and neuter nouns do not change: eine Schwester, ein Kind. Lesson 14 explains why; for now, learn einen Bruder and einen Hund as phrases. To say you have none, use keine for plurals and feminine nouns: Ich habe keine Geschwister.

One more use matters for birthdays. German says you "have" your birthday: Ich habe am 14. Mai Geburtstag (My birthday is on 14 May). But age is never had: Ich bin sechzehn, as Lesson 4 showed.

Whose? Two decisions for every possessive

A possessive is a word that says whose something is: my, your, his, her, our, their. In German, every possessive needs two decisions, and keeping them apart is the whole skill.

Decision 1: who owns it? That chooses the word.

Decision 2: what is owned? That chooses the ending. Duden's notes for learners put it exactly: a possessive takes its gender, number and case from the noun it stands in front of. In the nominative, the possessive behaves like ein. Masculine and neuter nouns take no ending, while feminine and plural nouns add -e.

Euer drops an e when it takes an ending: eure, not "euere". Duden's own example is Ihr habt eine Meinung. Das ist eure Meinung. (You have an opinion. That is your opinion.)

The upshot: the owner picks the word, and the thing owned picks the ending. "His sister" is seine Schwester: sein because the owner is a he, -e because Schwester is feminine.

The his-or-her trap, worked through

English speakers make one mistake with possessives more than any other: they let the noun choose the word. Walk through three cases with the two decisions.

1. Max and his sister. Owner: Max, a he, so sein. Owned: die Schwester, feminine, so -e. Result: Max und seine Schwester. The tempting mistake is "Max und ihre Schwester", because sister is female. But ihr would mean her, and Max is not a her.
2. Anna and her brother. Owner: Anna, a she, so ihr. Owned: der Bruder, masculine, so no ending. Result: Anna und ihr Bruder. The tempting mistakes are "sein Bruder" (the brother is male, but the owner is not) and "ihre Bruder" (the ending belongs to the noun, and Bruder is masculine).
3. Mr and Mrs Pichler and their children. Owner: they, so ihr. Owned: die Kinder, plural, so -e. Result: ihre Kinder. Speaking to them politely, it becomes Ihre Kinder, your children, with a capital I.

So ihr can mean her, their, or, with a capital, your. In speech, the context tells you which; in writing, the capital letter helps with the polite form.

Describing relatives

You now have everything for a simple description, with sein for names, ages, jobs and origins, and haben for what people have.

• Mein Bruder heißt Felix. Er ist neunzehn. (My brother is called Felix. He is nineteen.)
• Meine Mutter ist Ärztin. Mein Vater ist Lehrer. (My mother is a doctor. My father is a teacher.) As in Lesson 5, a job after sein takes no article.
• Meine Großeltern wohnen in Leoben. Sie haben einen Garten. (My grandparents live in Leoben. They have a garden.)
• Unser Hund heißt Bruno. Er ist sehr lieb. (Our dog is called Bruno. He is very sweet.)

Notice er for the dog: der Hund is masculine, so the pronoun follows the noun, as Lesson 7 showed.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Meine Familie" and "Meine Eltern"

Open Meine Familie. A young woman, Selma, comes to Inge's door looking for her purse, and Inge asks about her family.

1. Where does Selma come from, and how long has she lived in Germany? Answer: from Syria, aus Syrien, for almost a year, seit fast einem Jahr.
2. Is she in Germany alone? Answer: no, she is there with her parents.
3. Inge asks Und hast du Geschwister? What does Selma answer? Answer: Ja, ich habe zwei ältere Brüder, two older brothers, who live in Hamburg.
4. Where do her grandparents live? Answer: Meine Großeltern leben noch in Syrien, still in Syria.

Then open Meine Eltern, in which Lisa's father questions Nico.

5. Nico shows a photo and says Das sind meine Eltern. What do his parents do? Answer: Mein Vater ist Anwalt und meine Mutter Ingenieurin: his father is a lawyer and his mother an engineer, both without an article.
6. Lisa's father asks Was machen denn Ihre Eltern? Why Ihre, with a capital I? Answer: he speaks to Nico with Sie, so your parents is Ihre Eltern.
7. Where do Nico's parents live? Answer: Meine Eltern wohnen in Sevilla.

Speaking: your family, out loud

Alone: choose a real family photo, or invent a family if you prefer. Record eight to ten sentences describing it, using at least five different possessives and at least three forms of haben: Das ist meine Mutter. Sie heißt ... Sie hat ... Das ist mein Onkel. Seine Frau heißt ... Play it back and check each possessive twice: does the word match the owner, and does the ending match the noun?

With a partner: interview each other: Hast du Geschwister? Wie heißt dein Bruder? Wie alt ist deine Schwester? Wo wohnen deine Großeltern? Hast du ein Haustier? Then introduce your partner's family to a third person or to your recorder, which forces sein and ihr: Das ist Alex. Sein Bruder heißt ... Ihre Schwester ist ...

Common misconceptions

• "Sein and ihr agree with the thing owned." They depend on the owner: his is sein, her is ihr. Only the ending depends on the thing owned: seine Schwester, ihr Bruder.
• "Eltern and Geschwister have singular forms like parent and sibling." In everyday German both are plural only: meine Eltern sind, meine Geschwister sind.
• "Meine Frau means my woman." It means my wife, and mein Mann means my husband.
• "Ich habe sechzehn Jahre." Age uses sein: Ich bin sechzehn. Haben is for siblings, pets and birthdays.
• "Ihr and ihr are the same word." Capital Ihr is the polite your; small ihr is her, their, or the plural you.
• "Oma and Opa are baby talk." The Atlas found them to be the standard words for grandparents in Germany and Austria.

Looking back

You can name a whole family, from die Eltern and die Geschwister to der Cousin, die Tante and the Patchworkfamilie, and you know that Eltern and Geschwister are plural words. You can conjugate haben, habe, hast, hat, haben, habt, haben, and use it for siblings, pets and birthdays while keeping age with sein. Above all, you can build any possessive with two decisions. The owner chooses the word: mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, ihr, Ihr. The thing owned chooses the ending: none for masculine and neuter, -e for feminine and plural in the nominative, with euer shortening to eure. That rule is the one that rescues "Max und seine Schwester" and "Anna und ihr Bruder". Lesson 9 adds the adjectives that describe your relatives, and the two different ways German says no.

Sources

1. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). (2026, July 1). Zusammengefasste Geburtenziffer sinkt im Jahr 2025 auf 1,32 Kinder je Frau (Press release No. 230). destatis.de
2. Duden. (n.d.). Pronomen [Sprachwissen für Lernende: Possessivpronomen]. Cornelsen. duden.de
3. Duden. (n.d.). Konjugation von haben; Geschwister; Patchworkfamilie [Conjugation table and dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Großeltern [Map commentary, round 1]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Meine Familie and Meine Eltern [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com

Ich bin ein Berliner

On 26 June 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke at the Rudolph Wilde Platz in West Berlin, a city divided by the Wall he condemned in the same speech. Twice he used one four-word German sentence. The proudest boast in the free world, he said, was "Ich bin ein Berliner", and he closed by saying that as a free man he took pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner." The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library publishes both the text and a recording.

Two decades later a story began to circulate in English that Kennedy had embarrassed himself. A Berliner, the story goes, is a jam doughnut, so he had told Berlin "I am a jelly doughnut". The Wikipedia article on the speech traces the claim to a 1983 spy novel and to newspaper pieces that repeated it, and calls it a widespread false belief. It is a perfect example of the kind of reasoning this lesson is about: an answer that sounds right and is wrong. So let us debug it, step by step, and find exactly where it fails.

1. Check the word. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache mapped what people call a round, sugared, jam-filled pastry. In the west of Germany and in Switzerland it is a Berliner. In Bavaria and Austria it is a Krapfen. In Berlin itself, and almost everywhere in eastern Germany, it is a Pfannkuchen. Nobody in that Berlin crowd thought of a doughnut, because Berliners do not call it a Berliner.
2. Check the grammar. Lesson 5 taught that origin and nationality after sein take no article: a man born in Berlin says Ich bin Berliner. Kennedy was not born there. With ein, his sentence means "I am one of the Berliners", a declaration of solidarity rather than a fact from a passport. The Wikipedia article notes that grammarians consider the phrase correct.

The myth fails at both steps. Keep that habit of checking each step, because the rest of this lesson debugs six sentences that learners really do get wrong when they describe people and say no.

Describing with sein

The simplest description is a noun or pronoun, a form of sein, and an adjective: Das Haus ist alt. (The house is old.) Deutsche Welle's grammar notes stress two points. The adjective comes after the conjugated form of sein, and it is written in small letters. It also takes no ending at all in this position: Er ist groß, sie ist groß, die Kinder sind groß. Endings appear only when an adjective stands before its noun, which belongs to a later course. Deutsche Welle also suggests learning adjectives in opposite pairs.

Colours work the same way after sein: rot (red), blau (blue), grün (green), gelb (yellow), schwarz (black), weiß (white), grau (grey), braun (brown), orange, lila (purple) and rosa (pink). For hair and eyes, keep the adjective after sein and you never need an ending: Ihre Haare sind lang und braun. Seine Augen sind blau. (Her hair is long and brown. His eyes are blue.) Haare is usually plural in German.

To adjust the strength, put a small word in front: sehr (very), ziemlich (quite, fairly), ein bisschen (a bit). And there is zu, too. Deutsche Welle explains that zu with an adjective says that something is not right or not acceptable: Das Haus ist zu teuer means the price is too high, or at least too high for you.

Debugging six sentences

Each sentence below is wrong in the way English speakers are wrong. Read the faulty version, find the step that fails, then read the fix.

1. "Ich bin nicht ein Lehrer." The thinking: not plus a plus teacher, word by word. The failure: German fuses nicht and ein into one word, kein. Fix: Ich bin kein Lehrer.
2. "Er ist kein groß." The thinking: kein means not, so it can go anywhere. The failure: kein belongs only in front of nouns, and groß is an adjective. Deutsche Welle's rule is that adjectives are negated with nicht. Fix: Er ist nicht groß.
3. "Ich habe nicht Geschwister." The thinking: nicht is the word for not. The failure: Geschwister is a noun with no article, and nouns without an article are negated with kein. Fix: Ich habe keine Geschwister.
4. "Das ist kein mein Buch." The thinking: it is a noun, so use kein. The failure: kein replaces ein or an empty slot, but this noun already has a possessive in front of it, mein, and there is no room for a second word in that slot. Fix: Das ist nicht mein Buch. The same goes for der, die and das: Das ist nicht der Bus.
5. "Ich nicht verstehe." The thinking: English puts not before the verb, as in I do not understand. The failure: the conjugated verb must stay in second place, as Lesson 11 explains in full, and nicht cannot push in front of it. Fix: Ich verstehe nicht, or Ich verstehe das nicht.
6. "Hast du keine Zeit?" "Ja, ich habe Zeit." The thinking: yes, I do have time. The failure: after a negative question, ja sounds as if you agree with the negative. German has a special word for contradicting it, doch. Fix: Doch, ich habe Zeit!

The rule behind the fixes

Duden's advice on negation states the core distinction in one line: kein belongs to noun phrases, while nicht negates the sentence, or one part of it. Deutsche Welle's version for learners is practical: use kein when the noun would otherwise have ein, eine or no article at all.

Kein takes the same endings as ein: kein, keine, kein in the singular and keine in the plural. As Lesson 8 warned, a masculine noun after haben needs keinen: Ich habe keinen Bruder, which Lesson 14 explains.

Why this matters: a German listener notices "nicht ein" and "kein groß" at once, because they break one of the first rules German children absorb. One question fixes almost every case: is there a noun here that would have ein or no article? If so, kein. If not, nicht.

Where nicht goes

English puts not right after the first verb. German is different, and for a beginner four rules of thumb cover most sentences.

• To deny the whole statement, nicht goes near the end of a simple sentence, after the verb, its object and any time words: Ich kenne ihn nicht. Das stimmt nicht. Er kommt heute nicht.
• Before an adjective or a noun after sein: Sie ist nicht müde. Das ist nicht Lisa.
• Before a place: Sie wohnt nicht in Wien.
• Before the one part you want to contrast, usually followed by sondern (but rather): Ich komme nicht aus Wien, sondern aus Graz. Duden gives the same pattern, in which nicht picks out a single part of the sentence and a sondern clause supplies the correction.

Sondern is not the same as aber. Use sondern after a negative, to replace what you denied. Use aber (but) to add something unexpected: Das Haus ist schön, aber es ist zu teuer.

Ja, nein and doch

English yes and no get muddled after a negative question. "Aren't you tired?" "Yes" could mean either thing. German avoids the muddle with doch, which Duden describes as the stressed answer that contradicts a negative statement or question.

Say doch with weight. It is a small word that ends arguments.

Dialogue: who's who at the party (written for this course)

Find the four kinds of no: nicht before a possessive (nicht mein Bruder), kein before a job with no article (kein Schüler), doch after a negative question, and nicht at the end of the sentence (Ich kenne sie nicht). Notice too that Schüler means a school student and Student a university student.

Listening: Kennedy in Berlin, and Deutsche Welle's "Das Auto ist rot"

Open the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library's page for the Remarks at the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin, June 26, 1963 and play the recording. The Library notes that the recording leaves out the interpreter's German, so you hear only Kennedy.

1. How many times does Kennedy say Ich bin ein Berliner, and where? Answer: twice, once early in the speech and once in its very last sentence.
2. Which other German sentence does he use? Answer: Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen, let them come to Berlin.
3. Listen to his ei in ein and his r in Berliner. Compare them with Lesson 1 and Lesson 2. Answer: you should hear the ei as "eye"; the r is an American one, the r this course asked you to avoid.

Then open the Nicos Weg episode Das Auto ist rot. Lisa and Nico play the German I-spy game, Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst (I see something that you don't see), while looking for Yara's shop.

4. Lisa's first clue is groß und rot. Nico guesses the car. How does Lisa correct him? Answer: Das Auto ist rot, aber es ist nicht groß, es ist klein; nicht comes before the adjective.
5. When they reach the address, what does Nico say? Answer: Hier ist kein Fahrradladen, there is no bike shop here, with kein before the noun.
6. What does Lisa conclude? Answer: Die Adresse ist falsch, the address is wrong.

Speaking: I spy, and three portraits

Alone: describe three people you know in eight to ten sentences, using sein, at least six adjectives, and at least two negatives with nicht and two with kein. Then record your answers to these questions, using doch or nein each time: Bist du nicht sechzehn? Hast du keine Geschwister? Wohnst du nicht in Deutschland? Ist dein Zimmer nicht groß? Sprichst du kein Deutsch?

With a partner: play Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst, und das ist ... with colours and adjectives: ... und das ist rot und klein. The guesser asks Ist es das Buch? and the answer must be a full sentence: Nein, das ist nicht das Buch or Nein, das ist kein Buch. Then describe a famous person in five sentences and let your partner guess who it is.

Common misconceptions

• "Not a is nicht ein." German fuses them into kein: Ich bin kein Lehrer.
• "Kein can negate anything, like no in English." Kein goes only before nouns. Adjectives, verbs, names and whole sentences take nicht.
• "Nicht goes right after the subject, like not in English." The verb keeps second place, and nicht usually goes near the end, or before an adjective or a place.
• "Ja answers a negative question with yes." To contradict a negative question, German uses doch.
• "Adjectives after sein take endings." After sein they take none: Die Kinder sind groß.
• "Kennedy called himself a jelly doughnut." Berliners call that pastry a Pfannkuchen, and his sentence was correct German meaning I am one of the Berliners.

What to remember

Describe with sein plus an adjective, and the adjective takes no ending: Er ist groß, die Kinder sind groß. Learn adjectives in pairs, keep colours and descriptions of hair and eyes after sein, and shade them with sehr, ziemlich, ein bisschen and zu. For no, ask one question: does this noun have ein or no article? Then use kein, keine or kein: kein Lehrer, keine Zeit, keine Geschwister. Everything else takes nicht: adjectives, verbs, names, and nouns with der, die, das or a possessive. Put nicht near the end to deny the whole sentence, before an adjective or a place, or before the one part you contrast with sondern. Answer a negative question with doch when you mean yes. And when an explanation sounds too good, as the doughnut story did, check each step. Module 4 begins with the rest of the present tense: the verbs that change their vowel.

Sources

1. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (n.d.). Remarks of President John F. Kennedy at the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin, June 26, 1963 [Text from the Public Papers of the Presidents, with audio]. jfklibrary.org
2. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Berliner/Krapfen [Map commentary, round 4]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
3. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Ich bin ein Berliner [background on the speech and the origin of the doughnut myth]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Duden. (n.d.). Die Verneinung mit kein und nicht [Sprachratgeber]; doch [Dictionary entry, particle]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Adjectives following sein; Negatives: nicht; zu + adjective (1); Articles [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
6. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Das Auto ist rot [Nicos Weg, A1, video and script]. learngerman.dw.com

Ich nehme, sie nimmt

In the Deutsche Welle episode Eine Pizza, bitte!, five flatmates order dinner. Lisa says Ich nehme auch eine Pizza mit Salami (I'll have a salami pizza too). Then she explains why Nina always orders a Hawaiian pizza without ham: Nina is a vegetarian, und deshalb nimmt sie die Pizza jedes Mal ohne Schinken, so she takes the pizza without ham every time. Look at the verb. Lisa's nehme becomes nimmt for Nina. The vowel has changed from e to i, and the single h has become a double m.

Lesson 5 gave you a procedure for regular verbs: take off -en, add the ending. It works for most verbs. But a group of very common verbs also changes the vowel in the middle, and only in two places. This lesson extends the procedure to those verbs, adds the four irregular verbs you need daily, and then shows what the present tense can do, which is a good deal more than in English.

Which verbs change, and where

Deutsche Welle's grammar notes put the rule simply: with some irregular verbs, the stem vowel changes in the second and third person singular, and the other forms remain regular. In plain words, the change appears only with du and with er, sie, es. Ich, wir, ihr and sie or Sie stay regular. There are three patterns.

How can you tell that a verb belongs to this group? You cannot guess it from the infinitive: gehen (to go) and kommen never change, while sehen and nehmen do. So you learn it with the verb. Dictionaries and Deutsche Welle's vocabulary lists give the er form right after the infinitive, as in nehmen: nimmt, nahm, hat genommen. Copy that habit into your notes: fahren, fährt; sehen, sieht.

The procedure, worked twice

Here is the Lesson 5 procedure with one new step added, run on fahren.

1. Infinitive: fahren.
2. Stem: fahr-.
3. New step: check the er form. The dictionary gives fährt, so this verb changes a to ä.
4. Apply the change only to du and er, sie, es, then add the usual endings: du fährst, er fährt. Everyone else uses the plain stem: ich fahre, wir fahren, ihr fahrt, sie fahren.

Now run it on nehmen, where step 3 hides a surprise. The er form is nimmt, so the vowel changes e to i. But Deutsche Welle points out a second change: the h disappears and the m doubles. A short i before a doubled consonant, exactly as Lesson 1 predicted, gives du nimmst, er nimmt. The procedure still works, as long as you copy the er form exactly instead of building it yourself.

One more interaction with Lesson 5. When the stem ends in an s sound, the du form adds only -t. So essen gives du isst, the same as er isst. Lesen gives du liest, the same as er liest. Write isst with ss, because the i is short. You may meet ißt in older books: it comes from before the spelling reform agreed in 1996, which allows ß only after long vowels and vowel pairs, just as Lesson 1 described.

Bottom line: the vowel change lives only in du and er, sie, es. Learn every stem-changing verb as a pair, the infinitive and the er form, and the rest of its forms follow the regular pattern.

The word man

German has a pronoun English lacks: man, meaning one, people in general, or the general "you". It always takes the er, sie, es form of the verb, stem change included. In Frankreich isst man gern Käse means people in France like eating cheese. Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch? means how do you say that in German? Do not confuse it with der Mann, the man: man is written with one n and a small m.

Four irregular verbs to own

Sein and haben you already know from Lessons 5 and 8. Wissen is odd in two ways, as Duden's table shows: the singular uses a different vowel, and ich weiß and er weiß have no ending at all. Werden means to become or to get: Ich werde im März sechzehn (I'm turning sixteen in March), Es wird kalt (It's getting cold).

English "know" splits into two German verbs. Wissen is knowing a fact, something you could write down: Ich weiß, wo sie wohnt (I know where she lives), Ich weiß es nicht (I don't know). Kennen is knowing a person, a place or a thing because you have met it: Ich kenne Lena. Kennst du Wien? If you could say "be familiar with", use kennen.

What the present tense can do

German uses one present tense where English needs several. That is good news: one set of forms covers four jobs.

• Now. Ich lese ein Buch: I am reading a book. Add gerade (right now) if you need to stress it: Ich lese gerade.
• Habits. Ich lese jeden Abend: I read every evening.
• The future, with a time word. Morgen fahre ich nach Wien: tomorrow I'm going to Vienna. As long as a word like morgen, nächste Woche (next week) or im März makes the time clear, German rarely needs a separate future form.
• Something that began in the past and is still going on, with seit. Duden defines seit as marking the start of a state or process that is still continuing. So German keeps the present tense: Ich lerne seit zwei Monaten Deutsch, I have been learning German for two months. In the Deutsche Welle episode Meine Familie, Selma says she lebt seit fast einem Jahr in Deutschland, has lived in Germany for almost a year, in the present.

That last use catches almost every English speaker, who reaches for a past form because English uses "have been". In German, if it is still true now, it stays in the present.

Dialogue: weekend plans (written for this course)

Collect the verbs. Fahren appears as fahre and fährst, and with Mia as fährt. Treffen appears as trifft, schlafen as schlafe, wissen as weißt, and essen as isst after man. Every future plan is in the present tense, carried by a time word: am Samstag, um acht, am Sonntag. And seit einem Jahr keeps Felix's music studies in the present, because he is still studying.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "In Europa" and "Andere Länder"

Open In Europa. After a party, the flatmates match dishes to countries.

1. Which verb form do you hear again and again, and with which pronoun? Answer: isst man, as in Köttbullar isst man in Schweden and in Italien isst man Pizza; man takes the er form with its vowel change.
2. Nina says where she is going next year. Which tense does she use? Answer: the present, ich fahr nächstes Jahr nach Norwegen, with fahr as a casual short form of fahre; the time words carry the future.
3. Sebastian asks Nina to take him along. Which form of nehmen does he use? Answer: Nimmst du mich mit?, the du form with i and a double m.

Then open Andere Länder.

4. What does Nico say about Selma's German? Answer: Sie spricht sehr gut Deutsch!, with spricht for sie.
5. Which question does Lisa ask Nico about languages? Answer: Welche Sprachen sprichst du?, with sprichst for du.
6. Which languages does Nawin speak? Answer: Thai, Chinese, English, German, French and Italian. Count them as you listen.

Speaking: a week in the present tense

Alone: record a description of your week, using at least six stem-changing verbs in the du or er, sie, es forms. Talk about a friend or a family member: Mein Vater fährt jeden Tag ... Meine Schwester liest ... Mein Freund isst .... Add one sentence with seit about something you still do: Ich spiele seit drei Jahren Gitarre. Then say three things you know with wissen and three people or places you know with kennen.

With a partner: ask each other questions with du, which forces the stem change: Was isst du gern? Was liest du gerade? Wann schläfst du am Wochenende? Siehst du oft Filme? Fährst du Rad? Then report your partner's answers to a third person or to the recorder, which forces the er or sie form.

Common misconceptions

• "If a verb changes its vowel, it changes everywhere." The change appears only with du and er, sie, es: ich fahre, du fährst, wir fahren.
• "You can tell from the infinitive which verbs change." You cannot: sehen changes and gehen does not. Learn the er form with the infinitive.
• "Nehmen just changes its vowel." It also doubles the m and loses the h: du nimmst, er nimmt.
• "Wissen and kennen both just mean know." Wissen is knowing a fact; kennen is being familiar with a person, place or thing.
• "I have been living here for a year needs a past tense." With seit, German uses the present for anything still going on: Ich wohne seit einem Jahr hier.
• "German needs a future tense for tomorrow's plans." The present with a time word is the normal way: Morgen fahre ich nach Wien.

The takeaway

Stem-changing verbs change their vowel only with du and with er, sie and es: a to ä (fahren, fährt), au to äu (laufen, läuft), e to i (sprechen, spricht; essen, isst; nehmen, nimmt) and e to ie (lesen, liest; sehen, sieht). Learn each as a pair, the infinitive with its er form, and run the Lesson 5 procedure with that one extra check. Man, meaning people in general, takes the er form. Four irregular verbs need learning by heart: sein, haben, wissen and werden. Wissen is for facts, kennen for people and places. And the German present tense does four jobs: now, habits, the future with a time word, and with seit anything that started in the past and is still going on. Lesson 11 asks where in the sentence all these verbs must stand, and the answer is the rule that makes German sentences German.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Vowel change: e to i [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Eine Pizza, bitte!; In Europa; Andere Länder; Meine Familie [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Duden. (n.d.). Konjugation von fahren; laufen; lesen; sehen; wissen; werden; kennen [Conjugation tables]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). seit [Dictionary entry, preposition]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German orthography reform of 1996 [background on the ß and ss rule]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Morgen ich spiele Fußball

In the Deutsche Welle episode Am Sonntag koche ich, eight-year-old Emma reads out her plan for the school holidays. Am Montag spiele ich mit Tante Lisa draußen Fußball. Am Dienstag gehe ich zum Musikkurs. Am Mittwoch wasche ich mit Opa das Auto. (On Monday I'm playing football outside with Aunt Lisa. On Tuesday I'm going to music class. On Wednesday I'm washing the car with Grandpa.) Every sentence starts with the day, and in every one the verb comes next and ich comes after the verb.

Now try it the English way. "Tomorrow I play football" becomes, word for word, "Morgen ich spiele Fußball." Every word is right and the sentence is wrong, and any German speaker hears it at once. Here is this lesson's problem: what rule makes Morgen spiele ich Fußball correct and the word-for-word version wrong? Once you have the rule, you will also know why questions, commands and sentences joined with und or weil look the way they do.

Position two, not word two

The rule is the most important one in German word order. In a statement, the conjugated verb, the one with the personal ending, stands in second position. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache, describing what the grammars require, puts it as plainly as anyone: in a main clause the finite verb stands in second place.

The catch is the word "position". A position is not a word but a sentence part. Am Montag is two words but one part, a time phrase. Mein Bruder Felix is three words but one part, the subject. Position 1 can hold any one part, whatever its length. So count parts, not words.

Read the table and the problem solves itself. When the subject is in position 1, it comes before the verb, as in English. When anything else takes position 1, a time, a place or an object, the subject cannot stay in front, because the verb has to be second. So the subject moves to just after the verb. "Morgen ich spiele" fails because it puts two parts, morgen and ich, before the verb. The fix is Morgen spiele ich Fußball.

Key idea: in a German statement the conjugated verb is always the second part. Whatever you put first, the verb comes next, and the subject follows the verb if it is not first itself.

What position 1 is for

Why start with something other than the subject? Because position 1 is where you put the starting point: the thing that links to what was just said, or what you want to stress. Telling a sequence of events is the commonest case. Deutsche Welle's grammar notes show the sequence words zuerst (first), dann (then) and danach (after that) often standing at the start, before the conjugated verb: Zuerst sehen Nico und Emma fern. Dann essen sie Eis. Each time-word takes position 1, so the verb is second and the subject third.

In English you can put a time first too, but the verb stays after the subject: "Then they eat ice cream." That is the one habit you must break. In German, "then" plus subject plus verb is wrong: it must be Dann essen sie, never "Dann sie essen".

Questions and commands: verb first

Notice that a W-question still obeys the second-position rule: the W-word is position 1 and the verb comes next. Only yes-no questions and commands put the verb first. Lesson 19 shows how commands are built for du, ihr and Sie.

Words that do not count: und, aber, oder, denn, sondern

Five short words join sentences without taking up a position: und (and), aber (but), oder (or), denn (because, for) and sondern (but rather). Duden's notes for learners call them coordinating conjunctions: they link parts of equal rank, and they cannot themselves be a part of the sentence. So they sit in front of position 1, in a kind of position zero, and the sentence after them keeps its normal order.

• Ich bin müde, aber ich gehe ins Kino. (I'm tired, but I'm going to the cinema.)
• Ich lerne Deutsch, denn meine Oma kommt aus Graz. (I'm learning German, because my grandma comes from Graz.)
• Wir kochen, oder wir bestellen eine Pizza. (We'll cook, or we'll order a pizza.)

Compare words like dann, deshalb (that's why) and danach, which are parts of the sentence and do take position 1. Deutsche Welle's scripts show the two kinds together. Emma says Ich lese gleich noch ein Buch für die Schule und dann gehe ich ins Bett: und sits at zero, dann takes position 1, gehe is second. In Eine Pizza, bitte!, Lisa explains ... und deshalb nimmt sie die Pizza jedes Mal ohne Schinken: und at zero, deshalb first, nimmt second. Many teachers sum up the five zero words with the made-up word ADUSO: aber, denn, und, sondern, oder.

The middle: time before place

After the verb, the other parts have more freedom, but there are strong habits. The most useful one for a beginner is that a time expression usually comes before a place: Ich fahre morgen nach Wien (I'm going to Vienna tomorrow). English tends the other way, place then time, so "Ich fahre nach Wien morgen" is a typical English-speaker order. When you also say how you travel, the usual sequence is time, then manner, then place: Ich fahre morgen mit dem Zug nach Wien. Teachers call this TeKaMoLo: temporal, kausal (reason), modal (manner), lokal (place). Treat it as a strong default, not a law, because Germans shift parts around for emphasis.

A first look at the verb at the end

One more word order exists, and you will meet it everywhere. After weil (because) and dass (that), the conjugated verb goes to the end of its clause. The Atlas sums up what the grammars say: in clauses introduced by such a conjunction, the finite verb moves to the end.

• Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil ich müde bin. (I'm staying at home because I'm tired.)
• Ich weiß, dass sie in Graz wohnt. (I know that she lives in Graz.)

Denn and weil both mean because, but they behave differently: denn leaves the order alone, while weil sends the verb to the end. A whole weil clause can even fill position 1 of the main sentence, and then the main verb follows straight after it. The Atlas's own example is Weil er jetzt nicht mitmacht, sind wir morgen nur sieben (Because he's not taking part now, there will be only seven of us tomorrow). The clause is position 1 and sind is position 2. This course uses weil only in short, simple sentences; the full system of verb-final clauses belongs to the next level.

Dialogue: weekend timetables (written for this course)

Mark the verb in each sentence and count the parts before it. Every statement has exactly one part before its verb: Am Samstag, Danach, Am Abend, Am Sonntag. The yes-no question Kommst du mit? puts the verb first. And denn and aber leave the order of the next clause untouched: denn meine Gastfamilie fährt, aber ich schlafe.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Am Sonntag koche ich" and "Emmas Wochenende"

Open Am Sonntag koche ich. Emma reads out her holiday week. Write down each day and what she does, and listen for the verb straight after the day.

1. What does Emma do on Monday, and with whom? Answer: Am Montag spiele ich mit Tante Lisa draußen Fußball, football outside with Aunt Lisa.
2. On Wednesday? Answer: Am Mittwoch wasche ich mit Opa das Auto, she washes the car with Grandpa.
3. On Friday? Answer: Am Freitag sehe ich fern, she watches TV.
4. What is the plan for Sunday, the day in the episode's title? Answer: Am Sonntag koche ich mit Nico Paella, cooking paella with Nico; listen for koche straight after Am Sonntag.
5. Emma's last line has und in it. Which word follows und in position 1? Answer: dann, in und dann gehe ich ins Bett.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday Emma uses verbs whose small part flies to the end of the sentence: räume ... auf, sehe ... fern and stehe ... auf. Lesson 15 explains them. Then open Emmas Wochenende and listen for Nico's plan. Answer: Zuerst machen wir die Hausaufgaben, dann räumen wir auf und dann sehen wir fern; each zuerst and dann takes position 1, and the verb follows.

Speaking: one fact, five ways

Alone: take the sentence Ich spiele am Samstag in Graz Fußball and say it four more times, each time starting with a different part: Am Samstag spiele ich in Graz Fußball. In Graz spiele ich am Samstag Fußball. Fußball spiele ich am Samstag in Graz. Record all five and check that the verb is always second. Then describe your own week as Emma did, starting every sentence with the day.

With a partner: one of you says a sentence starting with the subject, and the other must repeat it starting with a time or a place. Then play "and, but, because": the first person says a sentence, and the second continues it with und, aber or denn plus a new clause. Finish with three sentences joined by weil, checking that the verb has gone to the end.

Common misconceptions

• "Second place means the second word." It means the second part. Am Montag or Mein Bruder Felix fills position 1 on its own.
• "The subject always comes before the verb." Only when the subject is in position 1. Otherwise it follows the verb: Morgen spiele ich.
• "Und and aber change the word order, like dann." Und, aber, oder, denn and sondern take no position, so the order after them is unchanged.
• "German word order is free." The position of the conjugated verb is strict. Only the other parts move around it.
• "Every question puts the verb first." Yes-no questions do; W-questions keep the verb second, after the W-word.
• "Denn and weil are interchangeable." They both mean because, but weil sends the verb to the end and denn does not.

Pulling it together

The conjugated verb is the fixed point of a German sentence. In a statement it is the second part, whatever stands first, and if position 1 holds a time, a place or an object, the subject moves to just after the verb: Morgen spiele ich Fußball. Count parts, not words. A W-question keeps the verb second, while yes-no questions and commands put it first. Und, aber, oder, denn and sondern take no position, while dann, deshalb and danach take position 1 and pull the verb straight after them. In the middle of the sentence, time usually comes before place, and before manner and place together. After weil and dass, the verb goes to the end. Lesson 12 uses all of this to describe a German, Austrian or Swiss school day, where almost every sentence starts with a time.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Am Sonntag koche ich; Emmas Wochenende; Eine Pizza, bitte! [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Adverbs: sequence [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Verbstellungen; weil/da [Map commentaries, round 3]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). Konjunktionen [Sprachwissen für Lernende]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German sentence structure; V2 word order [background on the fields of the German clause and the order of adverbials]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

One number, opposite meanings

On a German school report, a 6 means ungenügend, very poor, the lowest mark there is. Take the same 6 across the border into Switzerland and it becomes the best mark a student can get. Austria, in between, has no 6 at all: its scale stops at 5, and a 5 there means Nicht genügend, failed. These facts come from the official descriptions of the three school systems that the education authorities publish through Eurydice, the European Union's network for information on education, and from Austria's own grading ordinance.

Three countries share one language, and they run three different school systems. This lesson is built around a comparison of them, read row by row. First, though, you need the words every German-speaking student uses every day: subjects, lessons, breaks, homework, and the things in your school bag.

Subjects and the school day

A subject is das Fach, plural die Fächer, and your favourite is your Lieblingsfach. After haben, subjects take no article: Heute habe ich Mathe und Bio (Today I have maths and biology). The rest of the day has its own words.

• die Stunde: a lesson or period. In Germany a period normally lasts 45 minutes, according to the Eurydice description of German schools; in Austria a lesson typically lasts 50 minutes.
• die Pause: the break. der Stundenplan: the timetable.
• die Hausaufgaben: homework, almost always plural.
• die Note: a mark or grade, and das Zeugnis: the school report.
• der Schüler, die Schülerin: a school student. Der Student, die Studentin is a university student. A sixteen-year-old in Graz is a Schülerin, never a Studentin.
• A written class test is a Schularbeit in Austria, the word the Austrian grading ordinance itself uses.

School starts early. For German lower secondary schools, Eurydice gives core lesson times of 7.30 or 8.30 in the morning until 1.30 in the afternoon, Monday to Friday, with afternoon lessons in many schools on top. The German school year officially runs from 1 August to 31 July, and the six-week summer holidays rotate between the Länder so that not everyone is on the road at once.

What is in your school bag

Inside the bag: der Kuli (ballpoint pen), der Bleistift (pencil), der Radiergummi (eraser), der Spitzer (sharpener), das Heft (exercise book), das Buch, das Lineal (ruler), die Schere (scissors) and der Taschenrechner (calculator). The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found that the sharpener is a Spitzer in the south and an Anspitzer in the north, and that the line between them is a regional one, not a national one.

The bag itself is a better example of national variation. In most of Germany it is a Schulranzen or simply a Ranzen, and in Westphalia and the Rhineland north of Cologne a Tornister. In Austria, South Tyrol and East Belgium it is a Schultasche. In western Switzerland and Graubünden it is a Schulsack, and in and around Zürich a Schulthek, from a Greek word for a box. As the Atlas says, the words differ the way the school systems do: mainly by country.

Three school systems, side by side

Reading the table

The grades run in opposite directions. In Germany and Austria, 1 is the top mark and a bigger number is worse. In Switzerland, 6 is the top mark, and Eurydice notes that anything below 4 counts as unsatisfactory. In Germany, Eurydice explains, a pupil normally needs at least a 4, ausreichend, in the subjects that count for moving up a year. So "Ich habe eine Vier" is a narrow pass in Berlin, a pass in Vienna, and a pass in Bern too, but "Ich habe eine Sechs" is a disaster in Berlin and a triumph in Bern.

The split comes at different ages. German children move on after primary school at about ten, or twelve in Berlin and Brandenburg, into school types that vary from Land to Land. Eurydice notes that the Hauptschule and the Realschule now exist in appreciable numbers in only five of the sixteen Länder, while comprehensive schools exist in most. Austrian children choose at ten between the Mittelschule and the academic AHS. Swiss children stay together longer, through eight years of primary level counted from kindergarten.

University is not the only road. The Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation states that two-thirds of young people in Switzerland go through vocational education and training, an apprenticeship combining work in a company with classes at a vocational school. Only a minority take the Matura at a Gymnasium. In all three countries the leaving exam, Abitur or Matura, is a school exam, not a university degree.

So what?: if a German, Austrian or Swiss teenager tells you their grade, ask which country before you congratulate them. And if someone says they are doing an apprenticeship rather than the Matura, in Switzerland that is the majority path.

Talking about your timetable

School talk is full of time phrases, so it is the perfect place to practise the verb-second rule of Lesson 11. Put the day or the lesson first, then the verb, then the subject.

• Am Montag habe ich in der ersten Stunde Mathe. (On Monday I have maths in the first lesson.)
• Die Schule beginnt um Viertel vor acht. (School starts at a quarter to eight.)
• Um zehn haben wir zwanzig Minuten Pause. (At ten we have a twenty-minute break.)
• Am Freitag haben wir nur vier Stunden. (On Friday we have only four lessons.)
• Mein Lieblingsfach ist Kunst, aber Chemie mag ich nicht. (My favourite subject is art, but I don't like chemistry.)

The periods are counted with ordinals: in der ersten, zweiten, dritten Stunde. Learn in der ersten Stunde as a phrase; the -en ending is explained in Lesson 18.

Dialogue: a 1, a 6 and a timetable (written for this course)

Check the verb in every statement: In der ersten Stunde habe ich, in der vierten Stunde haben wir, Dann mache ich. Each time a time phrase fills position 1, the verb is second and the subject third. Notice also that grades are feminine nouns, like digits in Lesson 4: eine Eins, die Sechs.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Emmas Tag" and "Ich bin Lehrerin"

Open Emmas Tag. Lisa has to teach a course tomorrow and needs someone to look after Emma, so she asks her flatmates about their timetables.

1. When does the course Lisa has to teach begin? Answer: um neun, at nine.
2. When does Sebastian work tomorrow, and what does he have after lunch? Answer: von acht bis zwölf, from eight to twelve, then volleyball training from two to four.
3. How long is Nawin at the university? Answer: von neun bis fünf, the whole day.
4. Where is Nina after her doctor's appointment, and for how long? Answer: at school, von zehn bis drei in der Schule.

Then open Ich bin Lehrerin.

5. Nico asks Arbeitest du nicht als Lehrerin? How does Lisa answer, and why that word? Answer: Doch, because she contradicts a negative question, as in Lesson 9.
6. Which subjects does Lisa teach? Answer: Ich bin Lehrerin für Deutsch und Englisch, with no article before Lehrerin.
7. What are Max's and Tarek's real jobs? Answer: Max is a Bankkaufmann, a qualified bank clerk, and Tarek is an Elektriker, an electrician; together they run a restaurant.

Speaking: your timetable

Alone: record a description of your real school week in eight to ten sentences, starting every sentence with a day or a lesson: Am Montag habe ich in der ersten Stunde ... Am Dienstag beginnt die Schule um .... Give your favourite subject and one subject you do not like, and explain your own grading system in German: Bei uns ist A die beste Note. Listen back and check that the verb is second in every sentence.

With a partner: interview each other: Welche Fächer hast du am Montag? Wann beginnt die Schule? Was ist dein Lieblingsfach? Wie viele Stunden hast du am Freitag? Then one of you plays a student from Germany and the other a student from Switzerland, and each describes a good mark and a bad mark in their own system.

Common misconceptions

• "A 1 is a bad mark." In Germany and Austria a 1 is the best mark. Only in Switzerland does the scale run the other way, with 6 at the top.
• "Gymnasium means a sports hall." It is an academic secondary school. A school's sports hall is a Turnhalle.
• "Student means any pupil." A school student is a Schüler or Schülerin; Student and Studentin are for university.
• "The Abitur and the Matura are university degrees." They are school-leaving exams that give access to university.
• "Every German-speaking country has the same school system." School is run by the 16 German Länder and the 26 Swiss cantons, and the systems differ in structure, in the age of the split and in grading.
• "Apprenticeships are a second-best choice." In Switzerland two-thirds of young people take the vocational route, according to the federal education office.

What to carry forward

You have the vocabulary of a school day: das Fach and the subjects, die Stunde, die Pause, der Stundenplan, die Hausaufgaben, die Note, das Zeugnis, and the contents of a school bag, which is a Schulranzen in most of Germany, a Schultasche in Austria and a Schulthek in Zürich. You can describe a timetable with a time phrase in position 1 and the verb second: Am Montag habe ich in der ersten Stunde Mathe. And you can compare three systems. Germany grades from 1, sehr gut, to 6, ungenügend; Austria from 1, Sehr gut, to 5, Nicht genügend; Switzerland from 6 at the top down to 1, with 4 as the pass line. The leaving exams are the Abitur in Germany, the Matura in Austria and the gymnasiale Maturität in Switzerland, where two-thirds of young people choose vocational training instead. Module 5 moves from school to free time, and to the second of German's cases.

Sources

1. Eurydice. (2025). Germany: Assessment in general lower secondary education; Organisation of primary education; Organisation of general lower secondary education [National education system descriptions, written by the KMK Eurydice unit]. European Commission. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
2. Eurydice. (2025). Germany: Leistungsbeurteilung in der allgemeinbildenden Sekundarstufe I [German-language version, grade names]. European Commission. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
3. Eurydice. (2025). Austria: Organisation of general lower secondary education; Assessment in general upper secondary education. European Commission. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
4. Republik Österreich. (1974, consolidated version of 21 October 2026). Leistungsbeurteilungsverordnung (BGBl. Nr. 371/1974), § 14 Beurteilungsstufen (Noten). Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes. ris.bka.gv.at
5. Eurydice. (2025). Switzerland: Assessment in general lower secondary education; Organisation of primary education; Organisation of general lower secondary education. European Commission. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
6. State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). (n.d.). Vocational Education and Training (VET); Gymnasiale Maturität. Swiss Confederation. sbfi.admin.ch
7. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Schulranzen/-tasche [round 12]; Spitzer/Anspitzer [round 5] [Map commentaries]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
8. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Emmas Tag and Ich bin Lehrerin [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com

29.3 million memberships

On 11 November 2025, the German Olympic Sports Confederation, the DOSB, announced a record. On 1 January 2025 Germany's sports clubs had about 29.3 million memberships, more than at any time since the count began in 1954, spread across roughly 86,000 clubs. The DOSB calls organised sport the largest citizens' movement in the country. Count carefully, though: those are memberships, not people, and one person can belong to two clubs.

A club is der Verein, and for millions of German teenagers free time is organised around one. This lesson follows a week in the life of one of them, a sixteen-year-old in Hamburg, and picks up the language of free time as it appears: the little word gern that turns any activity into something you like, the verb mögen, and the words for how often.

Finn's week: a blog post written for this course

Finn writes a short post for his school's German-American exchange blog. Read the German aloud, then check the English.

Finn's post is full of patterns you know: a time in position 1 and the verb second (Am Montag und am Mittwoch spiele ich), the present tense for routines, and treffe from treffen. It also has three new tools, and the rest of this lesson takes them in the order Finn uses them.

gern: liking an activity

English says "I like playing". German says, in effect, "I play gladly": Ich spiele gern Handball. Gern is not a verb but an adverb, a word that adds information to the verb. You conjugate the real verb as usual and add gern after it.

• Ich lese gern. (I like reading.)
• Spielst du gern Gitarre? (Do you like playing the guitar?)
• Wir gehen gern ins Kino. (We like going to the cinema.)
• Ich singe nicht gern. (I don't like singing.) Nicht goes straight in front of gern.

You will also hear gerne, the same word with an extra e. Deutsche Welle's scripts use both, as when Inge asks Nico Joggst du gerne? and he answers Nein, ich jogge nicht gern. Add sehr for emphasis: Ich spiele sehr gern Handball.

lieber and am liebsten

Gern has a comparative and a superlative, a "more" and a "most" form, and they look nothing like it. Duden and Deutsche Welle give the same scale: gern, lieber, am liebsten. Gut works the same way: gut, besser, am besten.

Am liebsten often goes first, to give it weight, and then the verb-second rule applies as always: Am liebsten lese ich Krimis, never "Am liebsten ich lese". Deutsche Welle's Max says exactly this about his hobby: aber am liebsten angeln wir, but most of all we go fishing.

Remember: gern goes with a verb, to like doing something. Lieber is to prefer doing it, and am liebsten is to like doing it most of all. When am liebsten comes first, the verb comes second.

mögen: liking things and people

To like a thing or a person rather than an activity, German uses the verb mögen, which is irregular in the singular, as Duden's table shows.

Like wissen in Lesson 10, ich mag and er mag have no ending. The rough division of labour is simple: gern with a verb for activities, mögen with a noun for things and people. Ich esse gern Pizza; Ich mag Pizza. Both are fine and mean much the same.

Finn's last line, Ich mag keinen Fisch, shows something Lesson 14 explains. After mögen, as after haben, a masculine noun takes keinen or einen. Another way to give an opinion is finden plus an adjective: Ich finde Handball super. Ich finde Kohlrabi nicht so lecker. (I find handball great. I don't find kohlrabi very tasty.)

How often

Frequency words usually sit right after the verb, like gern: Wir gehen oft ins Kino. Like any other part, they can also move into position 1, and then the verb follows them: Manchmal schwimme ich. Donnerstags treffe ich meine Freunde. Do not confuse nie, never, with nicht, not: Ich schwimme nie means I never swim.

Clubs and favourites

In Germany you do a sport im Verein, in a club, more often than at school, and the DOSB's figures show how big that world is. In its 2025 count, football, gymnastics, tennis and athletics drove most of the growth, together adding a good 500,000 memberships, while smaller sports grew fastest: darts by 59 per cent and cheerleading by 17 per cent. To say you belong, use Ich bin im Verein or Ich spiele im Verein Handball.

For favourites, German glues Lieblings- onto a noun: der Lieblingssport, die Lieblingsband, das Lieblingsessen (favourite food), der Lieblingsfilm. Lesson 7's compound rule tells you the gender: the last part decides, so die Band gives die Lieblingsband.

Dialogue: what do you like doing? (written for this course)

Pick out the three tools: gern and nicht so gern with verbs, mögen with a noun (Magst du Krimis?), and am liebsten in position 1 with the verb straight after it. Rad fahren means to ride a bike, and fahren keeps its stem change: ich fahre gern Rad, aber er fährt nicht gern Rad.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Was macht dir Spaß?" and "Ich mag (nicht)!"

Open Was macht dir Spaß? (What do you enjoy?). Over lunch, Inge asks Nico about his free time.

1. Inge asks Joggst du gerne? What does Nico answer? Answer: Nein, ich jogge nicht gern.
2. Which three things does he do instead, and how often does he swim? Answer: he swims manchmal, sometimes; he listens to a lot of music and cycles a lot.
3. What does Nico like doing best of all? Answer: angeln, fishing: Ich gehe gern angeln.
4. What do Max and Tarek like, and what do they like best? Answer: theatre and cinema, aber am liebsten angeln wir; fishing is their favourite too.

Then open Ich mag (nicht)!, in which Inge asks Nico about food.

5. Which question with mögen does Inge ask? Answer: Was magst du denn?, and later Magst du Karotten?
6. Inge likes carrots. What does Nico prefer? Answer: tomatoes; Inge says Du isst lieber Tomaten and he agrees, Ja, ich esse lieber Tomaten.
7. What does Nico think of kohlrabi? Answer: Ich finde Kohlrabi nicht so lecker, he doesn't find it very tasty.

Speaking: your free-time ranking

Alone: record a short post like Finn's: who you are, then five activities with days or frequency words, at least one thing you do not like doing, one thing you prefer with lieber, and your favourite with am liebsten in position 1. Add three things you like with mögen and one favourite with Lieblings-. Listen back for the verb in second place after every time word.

With a partner: interview each other: Was machst du gern? Was machst du nicht gern? Was machst du am liebsten? Wie oft machst du Sport? Was ist dein Lieblingsfilm? Then find three things you both like and say them together: Wir spielen beide gern ... Wir mögen beide ...

Common misconceptions

• "Gern is a verb meaning to like." Gern is an adverb that goes with another verb: Ich spiele gern. The verb is the one you conjugate.
• "The comparative of gern is gerner." The scale is irregular: gern, lieber, am liebsten.
• "Am liebsten ich lese is fine, because am liebsten is just an adverb." Anything in position 1 pulls the verb into second place: Am liebsten lese ich.
• "Ich mag ends in -e, like other ich forms." Mögen is irregular: ich mag and er mag have no ending.
• "Nie and nicht mean the same." Nie means never and nicht means not.
• "29.3 million Germans play sport in clubs." The DOSB counts memberships, and one person can hold several.

The short version

To like doing something, add gern after the verb: Ich spiele gern Handball; not liking it is nicht gern. To prefer, use lieber; for the very favourite, am liebsten, often in position 1 with the verb straight after it: Am liebsten lese ich. To like a thing or a person, use mögen: ich mag, du magst, er mag, wir mögen, ihr mögt, sie mögen, or give an opinion with finden plus an adjective. Frequency words, from immer through oft, manchmal and selten to nie, sit after the verb or move into position 1. Favourites are compounds with Lieblings-, which take the gender of their last part. And in Germany, free time often means a Verein: about 86,000 sports clubs with about 29.3 million memberships at the start of 2025. Finn's "Ich mag keinen Fisch" points to the next lesson, the accusative case.

Sources

1. Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB). (2025, November 11). Nächster Mitgliederrekord im deutschen Sport [Press release on the Bestandserhebung 2025]. dosb.de
2. Duden. (n.d.). gern [Dictionary entry, comparison lieber, am liebsten]; Konjugation von mögen. Cornelsen. duden.de
3. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Comparative (1) [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar page]. learngerman.dw.com
4. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Was macht dir Spaß? and Ich mag (nicht)! [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com

Hast du einen Stift?

In the Deutsche Welle episode Ich habe kein ..., Lisa is on the phone with someone who wants the free room in her flat. She needs to write down a time, cannot find her pen, and asks Nico: Hast du einen Stift? (Have you got a pen?) Nico answers: Nein, ich hab keinen Stift. A moment later she says Ich brauche einen Zettel (I need a slip of paper), and Nico hands her one: Hier, ein Zettel.

Notice the shapes: einen and keinen when Lisa needs or has the thing, plain ein when Nico simply presents it. The noun is the same and so is its gender. What changed is the noun's job in the sentence, and German shows that job in the article. This is the second of German's cases, the accusative. This lesson gives you a procedure for using it that works every time, and the good news is in the details: most of the time, nothing changes at all.

Subject and direct object

Most sentences have a subject, the person or thing doing the verb, and many also have a direct object, the person or thing the action is done to. In "the dog sees the cat", the dog is the subject and the cat is the direct object. English shows the difference only in a few pronouns: he sees her, she sees him. German shows it in the article in front of every noun.

Lesson 7 introduced the nominative, the case of the subject. The direct object goes into the accusative. Duden's notes for learners give a question for each case: the subject answers Wer oder was? (Who or what?), and the direct object answers Wen oder was? (Whom or what?). The little difference between wer and wen is the whole idea in miniature.

Only the masculine changes

Here is the table that makes the accusative easy. Deutsche Welle's grammar summary sets the two cases side by side, and three of the four columns do not change at all.

So the accusative is a masculine problem. If the object is feminine, neuter or plural, it looks exactly like the subject form you already know. If it is masculine and singular, der becomes den, and ein, kein and every possessive add -en: einen, keinen, meinen, deinen, seinen, ihren, unseren, euren.

The point: in the accusative, only masculine singular articles change, from der to den and from ein to einen. Everything else stays as it is.

The four-step test

Here is a procedure that never fails, worked through on Ich sehe ___ Hund (I see the dog).

1. Find the conjugated verb. Sehe.
2. Find the subject: ask Wer oder was sieht? Ich. That is nominative, and it is already in place.
3. Find the direct object: ask Wen oder was sehe ich? The dog. That is accusative.
4. Check the gender of the object. Der Hund is masculine, so der becomes den: Ich sehe den Hund.

Now change one input and watch the result flip. Ich sehe ___ Katze. Steps 1 to 3 are identical, and the cat is the direct object. But at step 4, die Katze is feminine, so nothing changes: Ich sehe die Katze. The procedure was the same; only the gender decided whether you saw any change.

The test pays off in a third case, because German word order is more flexible than English. Lesson 11 showed that position 1 can hold an object. So Den Hund sieht die Katze means "the cat sees the dog": den marks the dog as the object, even though it comes first, and the cat is the subject. English would need the passive or a change of order to say the same thing. With feminine or neuter nouns both forms look alike, and then the normal order, subject first, settles who does what.

Pronouns in the accusative

Deutsche Welle's grammar page gives the full table and a good example: Haben Max und Tarek den Schlüssel? Ja, sie haben ihn. (Do Max and Tarek have the key? Yes, they have it.) Notice that ihn means "it" here, because der Schlüssel is masculine. Pronouns follow grammatical gender, as in Lesson 7, in every case. More examples: Kennst du mich? (Do you know me?) Ich liebe dich. (I love you.) Wir besuchen euch. (We're visiting you.)

Verbs and es gibt

Many everyday verbs take a direct object. Deutsche Welle lists essen, trinken, nehmen, suchen, kennen, machen, lieben, anrufen, besuchen and besichtigen, and you can add haben, brauchen (to need), sehen, kaufen (to buy), mögen, finden, lesen, hören and bekommen (to get). That is why Lesson 8 asked you to learn Ich habe einen Bruder and Lesson 13 Ich mag keinen Fisch: haben and mögen take the accusative.

The phrase es gibt (there is, there are) always takes the accusative too. Lisa says it in Das Auto ist rot: Es gibt hier wirklich keinen Fahrradladen. (There really is no bike shop here.)

The verb sein is the great exception: it does not take an object at all, because what follows it is the same thing as the subject. So the noun after sein stays nominative, as Lesson 7 showed: Das ist ein Hund, never "Das ist einen Hund". The episode Ich habe kein ... shows both side by side. Lisa tells the caller im Haus ist kein Aufzug (there is no lift in the building), nominative after ist, and Nico says ich hab keinen Stift, accusative after haben.

Five prepositions that take the accusative

A preposition is a small word like for, through or without that links a noun to the rest of the sentence. In German each preposition decides the case of the noun after it. Five common ones always take the accusative: durch (through), für (for), gegen (against), ohne (without) and um (around, and at with clock times). Duden's notes for learners list durch, für and gegen with the accusative, and ohne and bis (until) as well, and Duden's dictionary marks um as a preposition with the accusative.

• Das Geschenk ist für meinen Bruder. (The present is for my brother.)
• Wir gehen durch den Park. (We're walking through the park.)
• Ich trinke Kaffee ohne Zucker. (I drink coffee without sugar.)
• Der Bus fährt um den See. (The bus goes around the lake.)

Deutsche Welle's scripts use them naturally. Lisa orders Für mich bitte einen Kaffee (A coffee for me, please), with both mich and einen in the accusative, and Tarek thanks Nico für deine Hilfe (for your help). Teachers often bundle the five as DOGFU: durch, ohne, gegen, für, um.

Wen? and a few nouns that change

To ask about a person as the object, use wen, the accusative of wer: Wen besuchst du? (Whom are you visiting?) compared with Wer besucht dich? (Who is visiting you?). Do not confuse wen with wenn, which means if or when.

A small group of masculine nouns also changes the noun itself, adding -n or -en outside the nominative. Most of them end in -e and name people or animals: der Junge, den Jungen (the boy), der Name, den Namen, and also der Student, den Studenten and der Herr, den Herrn. So you write Ich kenne Herrn Gruber. Grammars call these weak nouns. You need only these few for now.

Dialogue: before handball (written for this course)

Run the four-step test on each object. Deinen Rucksack and einen Ball change because der Rucksack and der Ball are masculine; deine Schuhe and mein Trikot do not, because they are plural and neuter. Ihn stands for the backpack. Die Schuhe habe ich puts the object in position 1, and the verb stays second. And ohne and für take the accusative pronouns mich and dich.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Ich habe kein ..." and "Was trinkst du?"

Open Ich habe kein .... Lisa is on the phone after her class.

1. What does Lisa ask Nico for, and what does he answer? Answer: Hast du einen Stift?; Nein, ich hab keinen Stift. Both are accusative after haben.
2. What else does she need? Answer: einen Zettel, a slip of paper; Nico gives her one with Hier, ein Zettel.
3. What is missing in the building, according to Lisa? Answer: a lift; im Haus ist kein Aufzug, nominative after ist.
4. Who are the flatmates looking for? Answer: a tenant, Wir suchen also einen Mieter, accusative after suchen.

Then open Was trinkst du?.

5. What does Lisa order, and how does she say it? Answer: Für mich bitte einen Kaffee, with mich after für and einen for der Kaffee.
6. What does Sebastian order? Answer: Also, ich nehm ein Bier; das Bier is neuter, so ein does not change.

Speaking: what is in your bag?

Alone: empty your school bag and record a list: Ich habe einen Kuli, eine Flasche Wasser, ein Heft und zwei Bücher. Ich habe keinen Laptop. Look up the gender of anything you are unsure of, and say each masculine noun twice, once with der and once with einen. Then describe three things you need for your favourite hobby with brauchen, and one present you would like to give, with für: Ich kaufe einen Ball für meinen Bruder.

With a partner: play twenty questions with a hidden object. The guesser asks Hast du einen ...? Hast du eine ...?, and the answer must use a pronoun or kein: Ja, ich habe ihn or Nein, ich habe keinen. Swap after each object.

Common misconceptions

• "In the accusative, every article changes." Only masculine singular articles change: der to den, ein to einen. Feminine, neuter and plural stay the same.
• "The object is whatever comes after the verb." German can put the object first. Find it by asking Wen oder was?, not by its position.
• "Sein takes the accusative: Das ist einen Hund." After sein the noun stays nominative: Das ist ein Hund.
• "Ihn only means him." It also means it, for any masculine noun: Ich habe den Schlüssel. Ich habe ihn.
• "Wen and wenn are the same word." Wen means whom; wenn means if or when.
• "Es gibt takes the nominative, like there is in English." Es gibt always takes the accusative: Es gibt einen Park.

Where this leaves us

You now have two of German's four cases. The nominative is the subject and the noun after sein; the accusative is the direct object, the answer to Wen oder was?. Only masculine singular articles show the change: der becomes den, and ein, kein and every possessive add -en, as in einen, keinen and meinen. Feminine, neuter and plural forms look the same in both cases. The pronouns change more: mich, dich, ihn, sie, es, uns, euch, sie, Sie. The accusative follows haben, es gibt and most everyday verbs, and the prepositions durch, für, gegen, ohne and um. Because the article carries the case, German can put an object first: Den Hund sieht die Katze. Lesson 15 adds the verbs that let you make plans, and shows where a second verb goes when a sentence needs two.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Articles [summary of the nominative and accusative]; Personal pronouns: accusative [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Ich habe kein ...; Was trinkst du?; Das Auto ist rot [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Duden. (n.d.). Nomen; Präpositionen [Sprachwissen für Lernende: Kasus, Fragen nach den Fällen, Rektion]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). um [Dictionary entry: Präposition mit Akkusativ]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German nouns [background on weak masculine nouns]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Diese Woche kann ich nicht

In the Deutsche Welle episode Wann spielen wir?, Max and Tarek try to fix a date for a football match with their friend Yanis. When will they play? Max: Nein, diese Woche kann ich nicht. Aber nächste Woche geht's. (No, I can't this week. But next week works.) When Yanis suggests one o'clock: Das ist zu früh. Ich kann erst um zwei. (That's too early. I can't make it until two.)

Max's sentences are short because the second verb, spielen, is understood. As soon as an English speaker adds it, the trouble starts: "I can play on Friday" turns into "Ich kann spielen am Freitag", and "I'll call you tomorrow" into "Ich anrufe dich morgen". Both are wrong, and both are wrong for the same reason. This lesson debugs the sentences learners really produce with two verbs, finds the single rule behind every fix, and then puts it to work making plans.

Six sentences to debug

1. "Ich kann gehen ins Kino." The thinking: can go to the cinema, word for word. The failure: with a modal verb such as können, only the modal stands in second position; the second verb goes to the very end. Fix: Ich kann ins Kino gehen.
2. "Er kannt gut Gitarre spielen." The thinking: er takes -t, as Lesson 5 taught. The failure: modal verbs break that rule. Deutsche Welle's grammar notes point out that the ich and er forms are the same and have no ending. Fix: Er kann gut Gitarre spielen.
3. "Ich anrufe dich morgen." The thinking: anrufen means to phone, so conjugate it as one word. The failure: anrufen is a separable verb. In a simple statement the main part, rufe, stands second and the prefix an goes to the end. Fix: Ich rufe dich morgen an.
4. "Ich muss stehe um sieben auf." The thinking: combine fixes 1 and 3. The failure: with a modal, the separable verb is the second verb, so it goes to the end as a whole infinitive, prefix attached. Fix: Ich muss um sieben aufstehen.
5. "Du musst hier nicht rauchen," meant as "you mustn't smoke here". The thinking: must not is muss nicht. The failure: in standard German, nicht müssen means do not have to. A ban uses nicht dürfen. Fix: Du darfst hier nicht rauchen.
6. "Ich stehe das nicht ver," for "I don't understand that". The thinking: verstehen looks like aufstehen, so split it the same way. The failure: ver- is one of the prefixes that never separate. Fix: Ich verstehe das nicht.

Fixes 1, 3 and 4 all come from one idea, the verb bracket, which the next sections explain. Fixes 2, 5 and 6 come from knowing the individual verbs. Take the verbs first.

The modal verbs

A modal verb adds an attitude to another verb: ability, necessity, wish, permission or obligation. Deutsche Welle defines it the same way: modal verbs refer to a second verb, which stays in the infinitive. Duden's tables give the forms.

Two patterns cover almost everything. First, ich and er, sie, es are identical and take no ending: ich kann, er kann. Second, most modals have a different vowel in the singular from the plural: kann against können, muss against müssen, will against wollen, darf against dürfen. Deutsche Welle notes that sollen is the exception, with no vowel change. Möchten is the odd one out in a different way: Duden lists möchte as a form of mögen, the polite "would like", and it keeps the -e in ich möchte and er möchte.

Choose your wish word carefully. Ich möchte einen Tee (I'd like a tea) is the polite way to ask for something. Ich will einen Tee (I want a tea) states your will and sounds blunt in a café. Sollen passes on what someone else wants: Deutsche Welle's example is Nico's brother repeating their mother's order, Du sollst dein Zimmer aufräumen! (You're supposed to tidy your room!)

The verb bracket

Here is the rule behind fixes 1 and 4. When a sentence has a modal verb, the modal is the conjugated verb, so it takes position 2. The second verb stays in the infinitive and goes to the very end. Everything else sits between them, like books between two bookends. Grammars call this the Satzklammer, the sentence bracket. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache states the rule the grammars give: the finite verb stands in second place and the infinitive at the end of the sentence.

In a yes-no question the modal moves to position 1, and the infinitive still waits at the end: Kannst du morgen kommen? When the meaning is obvious, Germans drop the infinitive altogether, which is why Max can say diese Woche kann ich nicht and why Ich muss nach Hause means I have to go home.

In short: a modal takes the verb slot in position 2, and the second verb waits, unchanged, at the very end.

nicht müssen and nicht dürfen

English "must not" is a prohibition, so English speakers reach for "muss nicht" and say the opposite of what they mean. In standard German, a ban is nicht dürfen: Duden's example is du darfst jetzt nicht aufgeben! (you mustn't give up now!). Duden also records a northern German use in which müssen with nicht comes close to "shouldn't": ihr müsst das nicht so ernst nehmen (you shouldn't take it so seriously). For a clear ban, use dürfen everywhere.

Separable verbs

Fix 3 involved a verb with a detachable front. Deutsche Welle's grammar page explains how they work: many German verbs are made by adding a prefix to a simple verb, as in fernsehen (fern + sehen, to watch TV) and einkaufen (ein + kaufen, to shop). In a simple present statement, the simple verb is conjugated and stands second, and the prefix goes to the end: Lisa kauft immer im Supermarkt ein.

How do you know whether a verb separates? Deutsche Welle gives the prefixes. Verbs beginning with ab-, an-, auf-, aus-, ein-, mit-, nach-, weg- and zu- always separate. Verbs beginning with be-, ent-, er-, ver- and zer- never do: besuchen, erzählen, verstehen. A few, such as durch-, über-, um- and unter-, can go either way. You can also hear it, as Lesson 2 showed: a separable prefix carries the stress, AUF-ste-hen, while an inseparable one never does, ver-STE-hen.

Stem changes still apply to the main part: fernsehen gives du siehst fern, er sieht fern. And when a modal is present, the separable verb is the infinitive at the end, written as one word again: Ich muss um sieben aufstehen. Willst du mitkommen?

Making plans

• Asking: Hast du am Samstag Zeit? (Are you free on Saturday?) Hast du Lust? (Do you feel like it?) Kommst du mit? Wollen wir ins Kino gehen? (Shall we go to the cinema?)
• Saying yes: Ja, gern! Gute Idee! Das geht. (That works.)
• Saying no: Leider kann ich nicht. (Unfortunately I can't.) Ich muss ... (I have to ...) Das geht leider nicht.
• Fixing details: Wann treffen wir uns? (When shall we meet?) Um wie viel Uhr? Wo?

A refusal sounds friendlier with a reason, and a reason usually needs müssen: Leider kann ich nicht, ich muss für den Test lernen. (Unfortunately I can't, I have to study for the test.)

Dialogue: arranging Saturday (written for this course)

Find the brackets: Wir wollen ... gehen, Ich muss ... einkaufen, Darf ich ... mitbringen, Soll ich ... kaufen. Find the separable verbs split in two: fängt ... an, holt ... ab, rufe ... an. And notice du musst keine Tickets kaufen: you don't have to, which is a kindness, not a ban.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Wann spielen wir?" and "Tageszeiten"

Open Wann spielen wir?, where the friends try to arrange a match.

1. Why can't Yanis play on Saturday? Answer: Samstag kann ich nicht. Da treffe ich Anna nachmittags im Schwimmbad, he is meeting Anna at the swimming pool.
2. What problem does Tarek count out? Answer: they are only seven, wir brauchen eine achte Person, they need an eighth person.
3. How does Max invite Nico? Answer: Spielst du mit uns Fußball? Hast du Lust?
4. When do they finally meet, and why not at one? Answer: next Friday at two; Max says Das ist zu früh. Ich kann erst um zwei.

Then open Tageszeiten, in which Lisa describes Emma's day to Nico.

5. When does Emma get up? Answer: Emma steht um halb sieben auf, with the prefix auf at the end.
6. Which two separable verbs does Lisa use as instructions to Emma? Answer: du siehst nicht fern (no TV) and nach dem Spielen räumst du auf (tidy up after playing).

Speaking: a day and a plan

Alone: describe your school day with at least five separable verbs: Ich stehe um ... auf. Ich kaufe ... ein. Ich sehe ... fern. Ich rufe ... an. Then say five things you have to do, can do, want to do, may not do and should do this week, one with each modal. Record it, and check every sentence for the bracket: modal second, infinitive last.

With a partner: arrange a meeting by phone. One of you invites, the other turns down the first suggestion with a reason using müssen, then accepts a second. Agree on a day, a time and a place. Then swap roles, and finish by telling each other one thing you are not allowed to do at home, with dürfen.

Common misconceptions

• "The second verb goes right after the modal, as in English." The modal stands second and the infinitive goes to the very end: Ich kann heute nicht ins Kino gehen.
• "Er kannt and ich kanne follow the regular endings." Modals have no ending in the ich and er forms: ich kann, er kann.
• "Muss nicht means must not." In standard German nicht müssen means do not have to; a ban is nicht dürfen.
• "Every verb with a prefix splits." Be-, ent-, er-, ver- and zer- never separate: Ich verstehe das.
• "With a modal, the separable verb still splits." With a modal it is the infinitive at the end, in one piece: Ich muss früh aufstehen.
• "Ich will is the normal way to order." Ich will sounds blunt; ich möchte is the polite form.

Putting it together

Six modal verbs add attitude to another verb: können, müssen, wollen, möchten, dürfen and sollen. In the singular most of them change vowel, and ich and er share one form with no ending: ich kann, er kann. A modal takes position 2, and the second verb waits as an infinitive at the very end, the verb bracket: Am Samstag muss ich um sieben aufstehen. Nicht müssen means do not have to, and a ban is nicht dürfen. Separable verbs put their prefix at the end of a simple statement, Ich rufe dich morgen an, but stay whole as infinitives after a modal. Ab-, an-, auf-, aus-, ein-, mit-, nach-, weg- and zu- separate and carry the stress, while be-, ent-, er-, ver- and zer- never do. With these tools you can make plans: Hast du Zeit? Kommst du mit? Leider kann ich nicht, ich muss lernen. Module 6 takes your plans to the café and the shops.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Conjugation: können; Modal verbs: sollen (1); Separable verbs (1) [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Wann spielen wir? and Tageszeiten [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Duden. (n.d.). Konjugation von können; müssen; wollen; dürfen; sollen; mögen [Conjugation tables, including möchte]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). müssen; dürfen [Dictionary entries, meanings and regional use]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Verbstellungen [Map commentary, round 3]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de

Only the coffee on the bill

In 2011 the Austrian Commission for UNESCO added Viennese coffee-house culture to Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage. Its description lists what makes a Viennese café: small marble tables on which the coffee is served, Thonet bentwood chairs, booths, tables of newspapers. It also quotes a famous definition of the coffee house as a place in dem Zeit und Raum konsumiert werden, aber nur der Kaffee auf der Rechnung steht, where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee appears on the bill. In other words, nobody will hurry you out.

The same entry gives the history. The first Viennese coffee houses opened at the end of the 17th century. The Kramer coffee house on the Graben laid out newspapers for its guests from 1720. Women were admitted only from 1856. Three years after Austria's listing, in 2014, the German UNESCO Commission added German bread culture to Germany's own national inventory. This lesson follows one Saturday from a breakfast table in Graz to a café in Vienna, and collects the words and phrases you need to eat, drink, order and pay along the way.

Scene 1, breakfast in Graz: a story written for this course

Andrea's breakfast is a classic one. Deutsche Welle's notes on mornings in Germany describe the same table: various breads and rolls, jam, coffee or tea, and for a heartier start cold meats and cheese, with many people eating muesli with milk or yoghurt instead. On weekdays breakfast depends on how much time people have, but at the weekend there is more variety, and cafés often serve breakfast until the afternoon.

Notice einen Tee: Sam is answering what Andrea will give him, so the masculine der Tee is accusative, as in Lesson 14. Ja, gern! is the polite yes to an offer, the opposite of the French trap where a bare merci means no.

A roll by any other name

The roll on Andrea's table is a Semmel, and its name changes as you travel. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache showed people photographs of rolls and asked what they called them. Across the west and north of Germany, and in Luxembourg and East Belgium, it is a Brötchen. In Bavaria and Austria it is a Semmel, a word borrowed from Latin simila, fine flour. In Swabia and Baden it is a Weckle, and in the Saarland and the Palatinate a Weck. In Berlin and northern Brandenburg the long roll is a Schrippe. Swiss speakers say Brötli in the east and south of the country, and elsewhere words like Mütschli and Weggli.

Bread itself matters enough in Germany that the German UNESCO Commission lists German bread culture as intangible heritage. Its entry stresses the regional variety of German bread and notes a renewed use of old grains such as einkorn, emmer and spelt, with a national Bread Day, the Tag des Deutschen Brotes, in May.

Meals across the day

The Atlas explains several of these. Znüni means "at nine", the time it is eaten, and Zvieri "at four". Austrians took Jause from Slovenian, where the word contains the root for south and for midday. Abendbrot, literally evening bread, is the usual word in the north and east, and Duden still defines it as a simpler evening meal, mostly with bread. To say you are eating a meal, use essen or frühstücken (to have breakfast): Wir essen um sieben zu Abend (We have dinner at seven).

Food and drink

Two of these behave like English uncountable nouns: das Obst and das Gemüse are singular words for fruit and vegetables in general. A Schorle is juice mixed with sparkling mineral water, as Inge explains to a puzzled Nico in Deutsche Welle's Ich mag (nicht)!: Das ist Saft mit Mineralwasser. And if you do not eat meat, say Ich esse kein Fleisch or Ich bin Vegetarier, or Vegetarierin, with no article, as Lesson 5 taught.

Scene 2, a café in Vienna: ordering

The scene uses three ways of ordering, all followed by the accusative. Ich möchte, would like, you know from Lesson 15. Ich hätte gern is equally polite and very common; in Deutsche Welle's Wann spielen wir?, Yanis orders with Wir hätten gern zweimal das Mittagsmenü mit Fisch. Ich nehme, I'll take, is what Lisa says in Eine Pizza, bitte!, and Für mich ..., for me, works with any of them. What you should not say is Ich will, which sounds like a demand, or a bare command.

What matters here: order with ich möchte, ich hätte gern or ich nehme, and put what you order in the accusative: einen Kaffee, eine Cola, ein Wasser.

Scene 3: paying and tipping

To ask for the bill, say Zahlen, bitte! or Die Rechnung, bitte. Expect the question Zusammen oder getrennt?, one bill or separate ones, and Bar oder mit Karte?, cash or card. Deutsche Welle's notes on tipping explain the rest. About 10 per cent is normal, though it is up to you. If you hand over the exact amount you want to pay, bill plus tip, you say Stimmt so, that's right, and get no change. If you need change, say the amount you want to pay: for a bill of 18.20 euros paid with a 50, say Zwanzig, bitte, and you get 30 euros back.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Zahlen, bitte!" and "Was trinkst du?"

Open Zahlen, bitte!. The pizza delivery arrives at the flat.

1. What does the delivery woman ask first? Answer: Zahlen Sie zusammen oder getrennt?; Lisa answers Zusammen.
2. What is the total? Answer: 40,50 Euro, said vierzig Euro fünfzig.
3. How does Lisa pay, and how much does she hand over? Answer: Ich zahle bar. Hier sind 45 Euro. Das stimmt so: cash, 45 euros, keep the change.
4. What does each pizza cost, according to Lisa? Answer: Zehn Euro plus Trinkgeld, ten euros plus the tip.

Then open Was trinkst du?.

5. Which six drinks does Nina offer first? Answer: apple juice, water, beer, wine, cola and lemonade: Apfelsaft, Wasser, Bier, Wein, Cola und Limonade.
6. How does Lisa want her coffee? Answer: mit viel Milch, aber wenig Zucker, with a lot of milk but little sugar.

Speaking: café role-play

Alone: write a five-item menu with prices in euros, then record yourself as a customer: greet the waiter, order a drink and something to eat with three different phrases, ask Was kostet ...? about one item, ask for the bill, and pay with a tip using Stimmt so. Then describe your own breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday in three sentences.

With a partner: one of you is the waiter, the other the guest. The waiter must use Was darf es sein?, Noch etwas?, Zusammen oder getrennt? and Bar oder mit Karte?. The guest must order in the accusative and tip correctly. Swap, then play it again in Switzerland with Grüezi and francs, or in Bavaria with Grüß Gott and a Brotzeit.

Common misconceptions

• "Ich will ... is the normal way to order." It sounds like a demand. Use ich möchte, ich hätte gern or ich nehme.
• "A Schorle is a brand of soft drink." It is juice, or wine, mixed with sparkling mineral water, as Inge explains to Nico.
• "Stimmt so means the food was good." It means keep the change, and you say it when you hand over the amount including the tip.
• "Every German says Brötchen." It is Semmel in Bavaria and Austria, Schrippe in Berlin, Weckle in Swabia and Brötli in much of Switzerland.
• "Obst and Gemüse are plurals." They are singular words for fruit and vegetables in general: das Obst ist frisch.
• "Viennese cafés were always for everyone." According to the Austrian UNESCO Commission, women were first admitted in 1856.

What you now know

You can name the meals, das Frühstück, das Mittagessen and das Abendessen, and recognise their regional cousins: Brotzeit, Jause, Znüni and Vesper in the morning, Abendbrot, Nachtmahl and Znacht in the evening. You know the roll is a Brötchen, a Semmel, a Schrippe, a Weckle or a Brötli depending on where you stand. You can order politely with ich möchte, ich hätte gern and ich nehme, always with the accusative: einen Kaffee, eine Cola, ein Wasser. You can ask for the bill, answer Zusammen oder getrennt? and Bar oder mit Karte?, and tip about 10 per cent with Stimmt so. And you know why time in a Viennese café is free: the coffee house is listed as Austrian cultural heritage, as German bread culture is listed in Germany. Lesson 17 takes you from the café to the market, the supermarket and the clothes shop.

Sources

1. Österreichische UNESCO-Kommission. (n.d.). Wiener Kaffeehauskultur [Entry in the Austrian national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, added 2011]. unesco.at
2. Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission. (n.d.). Deutsche Brotkultur [Entry in the German nationwide inventory of intangible cultural heritage, added 2014]. unesco.de
3. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Brötchen/Semmel; Abendmahlzeit; Frühstück am Arbeitsplatz [Map commentaries]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
4. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Keep the change!; Mornings in Germany [Nicos Weg, A1, culture pages]. learngerman.dw.com
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Zahlen, bitte!; Was trinkst du?; Wann spielen wir?; Ich mag (nicht)! [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com

Twenty euros and a shopping list

In the Deutsche Welle episode Mengen und Preise, Max asks Nico and Inge to do some shopping for him: ein Hähnchen, drei Gurken und ein Pfund Tomaten, a chicken, three cucumbers and a pound of tomatoes. Nico stops at the third item. A pound? Max explains: Das sind 500 Gramm, also ein halbes Kilo, that's 500 grams, so half a kilo. In the next episode, at the market, Nico buys dates, cucumbers and tomatoes, hands over a twenty-euro note, and the stallholder gives him 7,60 Euro back.

So here is this lesson's problem. You have twenty euros and a list. How do you ask for the right amount of each thing, how do you understand the prices, and how do you know your change is correct? The answers involve a German habit that saves a word, a few numbers you already know from Lesson 4, and a bottle deposit that pays you back. The second half of the lesson takes you from the market to a clothes shop.

Where to shop

The butcher is a good example of regional German. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found Metzger in the west and south, Fleischer across eastern Germany, Schlachter in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, and Fleischhacker or Fleischhauer in most of Austria. A 1966 decision of the German Bundestag made Fleischer the official name of the trade, but in everyday speech it never displaced Metzger in the west and south.

Quantities: no word for of

English says "a kilo of apples". German drops the "of" completely and puts the thing straight after the amount: ein Kilo Äpfel. Every quantity works the same way.

Two details trip learners. First, the masculine and neuter measures Kilo, Pfund, Gramm, Liter and Stück stay singular after a number: zwei Kilo, 300 Gramm, drei Pfund. In Deutsche Welle's bakery scene Inge orders zwei Stück Apfelkuchen, not "zwei Stücke". Feminine containers do take a plural: zwei Flaschen, drei Dosen, zwei Packungen. Second, things you count go into the plural after the measure: ein Kilo Äpfel, ein Pfund Tomaten.

The Pfund deserves a note. It is a traditional unit, not the British pound in weight, and as Max says, in German shops it means exactly 500 grams.

The upshot: amount plus thing, with no word in between: ein Kilo Äpfel, 200 Gramm Käse, eine Flasche Wasser.

Prices, totals and change

The questions are the ones from Lesson 4: Was kostet das? for one thing, Was kosten die Gurken? for several, and also Wie viel kostet das?. A price for each item is given with das Stück: in Deutsche Welle's market scene the cucumbers cost 90 Cent das Stück, ninety cents each, or five for four euros. Things on special offer are im Angebot, and good value is günstig.

Shop conversations follow a script, and Deutsche Welle's scenes use it word for word. The seller opens with Was darf es sein? (What can I get you?) and keeps asking Darf es sonst noch etwas sein? or just Sonst noch etwas? (Anything else?). You answer with what you want, using ich hätte gern or ich nehme, or Nein, danke, das ist alles. The total comes as Das macht ... (That comes to ...), and the change as ... zurück (... back).

Now solve the opening problem. Nico's dates, cucumbers and tomatoes come to 12,40 Euro. He pays with 20 euros. Twenty minus twelve euros forty is seven euros sixty, so 7,60 Euro zurück is right. Do the sum in German, aloud, every time you shop: zwanzig minus zwölf vierzig ist sieben sechzig.

Deposits, bags and Sunday

When you buy a drink in a plastic bottle or a can in Germany, you pay a Pfand, a deposit, on top. The DPG, which runs the German system, states that a deposit of 25 cents per single-use drink container is required by law, that the system has run since 2003, and that more than 96 per cent of containers come back, about 20 billion a year. You get the money back by feeding the empty bottle into a Rücknahmeautomat, a return machine, in the shop. Austria introduced the same 25-cent deposit on single-use plastic bottles and cans on 1 January 2025, or, as the Austrian system writes it, on 1 Jänner.

Bring a bag, or buy one. The Atlas found that the carrier bag is a Plastiktüte in Germany, while in Austria and Switzerland, where the word Tüte is not used, it is usually a Plastiksack.

And plan around Sunday. Article 140 of Germany's Basic Law takes over Article 139 of the Weimar Constitution, which says that Sundays and state-recognised holidays remain legally protected as days of rest from work. The federal Shop Closing Act puts it more bluntly: shops must be closed to customers on Sundays and public holidays. There are exceptions, for instance for shops in railway stations serving travellers. Do your shopping on Saturday.

Clothes

The verb for wearing is tragen, which also means to carry and changes its vowel: du trägst, er trägt. Deutsche Welle's Selma notices Du trägst gerne Mützen, you like wearing caps. Colours from Lesson 9 describe clothes after sein: Die Jacke ist grün.

In the shop, you need about ten phrases.

• Kann ich Ihnen helfen? (Can I help you?) Ich suche einen Pullover. (I'm looking for a sweater.)
• Welche Größe haben Sie? (What size are you?) Answer with a letter, S, M or L, or a number.
• Kann ich das anprobieren? (Can I try it on?) Anprobieren is separable: Probier mal M an! (Try the M!)
• Das ist zu groß, zu klein, zu teuer. As Lesson 9 explained, zu means too: not acceptable.
• Wie findest du den Pullover? (What do you think of the sweater?) Accusative, as in Lesson 14.
• Das passt. (It fits.) Das steht dir gut. (It suits you.) Das gefällt mir. (I like it.)
• Ich nehme ihn. (I'll take it.) The pronoun follows the noun's gender: der Pullover, ihn; die Jacke, sie; das Hemd, es.

The phrases with dir and mir use the dative case, which Lesson 18 introduces. For now, learn them whole: steht dir, suits you; gefällt mir, pleases me.

Dialogue: a sweater in Graz (written for this course)

Read the price aloud: neununddreißig Euro neunzig. Notice how often Sam uses ihn: the pronoun follows der Pullover through the whole conversation, in the accusative after anprobieren, haben and nehmen, but er when the sweater is the subject: er ist zu klein, was kostet er?

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Sonst noch etwas?" and "Das passt gut!"

Open Sonst noch etwas?, at the farmers' market.

1. How much do the dates weigh? Answer: 300 Gramm.
2. What do the bananas and the apples cost? Answer: bananas are on offer at 1,10 Euro a kilo, and apples cost 1,75 Euro a kilo.
3. What deal does the stallholder offer on cucumbers, and what does Nico take? Answer: 90 Cent das Stück, or fünf Stück für 4 Euro; Nico takes five.
4. What is the total, and how much change does Nico get from 20 euros? Answer: 12,40 Euro; 7,60 Euro zurück.

Then open Das passt gut!, in which Selma takes Nico clothes shopping.

5. What does the shirt cost? Answer: 25 Euro.
6. Selma asks which size Nico has on, and what does she tell him to try? Answer: he has an L on, and she says Probier mal M an, because Das ist zu groß.
7. Which phrase does Selma use to say the jacket suits Nico? Answer: die Jacke steht dir sehr gut.

Speaking: market and fitting room

Alone: write a shopping list of six items with quantities, as in the table above, and a price for each. Then record the whole market conversation, playing both seller and customer: Was darf es sein?, your order, Sonst noch etwas?, the total, your payment and the change. Check the arithmetic aloud. Then describe what you are wearing today: Ich trage eine blaue Jeans und ..., keeping colours after sein if adjective endings feel risky: Meine Jacke ist schwarz.

With a partner: run a clothes-shop role-play with a size problem: the first thing you try is too big or too small, and the second fits. The customer must use anprobieren, Welche Größe, zu groß or zu klein, and Ich nehme ihn, sie or es correctly for the item's gender.

Common misconceptions

• "A kilo of apples is ein Kilo von Äpfeln." German uses no word for of: ein Kilo Äpfel.
• "Two pieces of cake is zwei Stücke Kuchen." Stück, Kilo, Pfund, Gramm and Liter stay singular after a number: zwei Stück Kuchen, zwei Kilo.
• "Ein Pfund means the British pound." In a German shop it means exactly 500 grams.
• "The bottle deposit is a tax you never get back." The 25 cents are refunded when you return the empty bottle or can.
• "German shops open seven days a week." By law, shops are closed to customers on Sundays and public holidays, with exceptions such as station shops for travellers.
• "Tragen only means to carry." It also means to wear: Du trägst gerne Mützen.

Summing up

Shopping in German runs on a script: Was darf es sein?, your order with ich hätte gern or ich nehme, Sonst noch etwas?, Das macht ..., and ... zurück. Quantities need no word for of: ein Kilo Äpfel, ein Pfund Tomaten, which is 500 grams, 200 Gramm Käse, zwei Stück Kuchen, with Kilo, Pfund, Gramm, Liter and Stück staying singular after numbers. Prices use Was kostet? and Was kosten?, das Stück for each, and Lesson 4's numbers for totals and change, which you should always check aloud. In Germany and Austria you pay a 25-cent deposit on bottles and cans and get it back at the machine; the bag is a Tüte in Germany and a Sack in Austria and Switzerland; and on Sundays the shops are shut. In the clothes shop you can ask for a size, try things on with anprobieren, say zu groß or zu klein, and take what fits with ich nehme ihn, sie or es. Steht dir and gefällt mir point ahead to Module 7 and the third case, the dative.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Mengen und Preise; Was darf es sein?; Sonst noch etwas?; Mein Lieblingspulli; Das passt gut! [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. DPG Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH. (n.d.). Der DPG-Einwegpfandprozess; Wissenswertes [Information on the German single-use deposit system]. dpg-pfandsystem.de
3. EWP Recycling Pfand Österreich. (n.d.). Über Pfand [Austrian single-use deposit from 1 January 2025]. recycling-pfand.at
4. Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (1949, as amended). Grundgesetz, Article 140, incorporating Article 139 of the Weimar Constitution of 11 August 1919. gesetze-im-internet.de
5. Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (n.d.). Gesetz über den Ladenschluss, §§ 3 and 8. gesetze-im-internet.de
6. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Metzger bzw. Schlachter; Plastiktüte/-sackerl/-tasche/-beutel [Map commentaries, round 2]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de

Es schmeckt dir

In the Deutsche Welle episode Leben in Deutschland, Max and Tarek surprise Nico with a dish they think he must be missing: paella. Max serves it with Wir hoffen, es schmeckt dir (We hope you like it, literally we hope it tastes good to you). Later Tarek asks whether Nico is homesick, and Nico answers Nein, ich hab kein Heimweh. Mir gefällt es hier (No, I'm not homesick. I like it here, literally it pleases me here).

Two little words carry those sentences: dir and mir. They are not du and ich, and they are not dich and mich from Lesson 14 either. They belong to the third case, the dative. This lesson builds a comparison of all three cases in one table, reads it row by row, and then puts the dative to work with the verbs and phrases that need it.

Who gets it? The indirect object

Take the sentence "I'm giving my mother flowers". Three people or things are involved. I am doing the giving: that is the subject, in the nominative. The flowers are what is given: that is the direct object, in the accusative. My mother is the one who receives: that is the indirect object, and in German it goes into the dative.

• Ich schenke meiner Mutter Blumen. (I'm giving my mother flowers.)
• Ich gebe dem Kind einen Apfel. (I'm giving the child an apple.)
• Sie zeigt ihrem Bruder das Foto. (She's showing her brother the photo.)

Duden's notes for learners describe exactly this use: the dative often appears with verbs of giving, and for someone who gains or loses by an action. The test question is Wem?, to whom? Wem schenke ich Blumen? Meiner Mutter. So German has a question for each case so far: wer for the subject, wen for the direct object, wem for the indirect object.

The three cases side by side

The pronoun table is Deutsche Welle's, and the article forms match its grammar note on the dative: dem and einem, der and einer, dem and einem, den and no article, with an -n often added to the noun in the plural. Kein follows ein: keinem, keiner, keinem, keinen.

Reading the table

1. Masculine and neuter are identical in the dative. Both end in -m: dem, einem, meinem. If you hear an -m ending, think dative, masculine or neuter.
2. The feminine dative ends in -r. Der, einer, meiner. That means der does two jobs: masculine nominative (der Mann kommt) and feminine dative (ich helfe der Frau). The verb and the meaning tell you which.
3. The plural dative is den, and the noun adds -n. Den Kindern, den Freunden. Nouns whose plural already ends in -n or in -s add nothing, as the Wikipedia overview of German nouns notes: den Frauen, den Autos. So den also does two jobs: masculine accusative and dative plural.
4. The pronouns change most. Mir, dir, ihm, ihr, ihm, ihnen and Ihnen are new; uns and euch are the same as in the accusative.
5. Weak nouns keep their -n. The nouns from Lesson 14 add it in the dative too: dem Jungen, dem Herrn.

The core of it: in the dative, masculine and neuter end in -m, feminine in -r, and the plural is den with an -n on the noun. The question that finds it is Wem?

Verbs that take the dative

Some verbs take a dative object even though there is nothing given. Deutsche Welle's grammar note explains that the dative object is often at the receiving end of the action, and so is commonly a person. Learn these with the dative from the start.

Gefallen turns English upside down. In "I like the shirt", I am the subject. In Das Hemd gefällt mir, the shirt is the subject and I am the dative: the shirt pleases me. So the verb agrees with the thing: Die Schuhe gefallen mir, plural, because the shoes do the pleasing. Fehlen works the same way: in Du fehlst mir, you are the subject, missing from me. Lesson 13's gern and mögen remain the simpler ways to say you like something; gefallen is the usual verb for how something looks.

Phrases with the dative

• Wie geht es dir? Wie geht es Ihnen? And the answer: Mir geht es gut, or in speech Mir geht's gut, as the radio presenter says in Deutsche Welle's Adressen. You learned the question in Lesson 3; now you can see why it uses dir and Ihnen.
• Mir ist kalt. Mir ist warm. I'm cold, I'm hot, literally to me it is cold. In Emmas Wochenende, Emma says ich hab Lust auf Eis (I fancy ice cream) and soon after Oh, mir ist schlecht! (I feel sick); Lisa later finds two large empty ice cream tubs in the bin. Duden records the regional alternative ich habe kalt beside the standard mir ist kalt.
• Wie gefällt dir ...? How do you like ...? Das gehört mir. That's mine.

Two objects in one sentence

When a sentence has both a dative and an accusative object, two rules of thumb cover most cases. With two nouns, the dative usually comes first: Ich gebe meiner Mutter die Blumen. Pronouns move up close to the verb, and when both objects are pronouns, the accusative pronoun comes first. The Wikipedia overview of German sentence structure gives a matching pair: Maria gibt mir morgen das Hemd (Maria is giving me the shirt tomorrow) and Maria gibt es mir morgen (Maria is giving it to me tomorrow).

Dialogue: presents for the host family (written for this course)

Underline every dative: deiner Gastfamilie, meiner Gastmutter, meinem Gastvater, ihr, mir, dir, ihr, dir, mir. Then notice two word-order details. Meiner Gastmutter schenke ich Blumen puts the dative in position 1, and the verb stays second. And Ich danke dir für deine Hilfe combines a dative verb with für and the accusative, so one sentence holds all three cases.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Leben in Deutschland" and "Das passt gut!"

Open Leben in Deutschland.

1. What does Max say as he serves the paella? Answer: Wir hoffen, es schmeckt dir, with dir for Nico.
2. What does Nico say about German food, and what does he like best? Answer: he finds it very tasty, likes sausage, Rouladen and goulash, aber am liebsten mag ich Paella.
3. Is Nico homesick? What does he say? Answer: no, Mir gefällt es hier, though he misses his friends a little and the Spanish weather.

Then listen again to Das passt gut!, this time for datives.

4. How does Nico say he likes the first shirt? Answer: Ja, das gefällt mir.
5. Once Nico has agreed the price of 25 Euro, what does Selma say, and how does he reply? Answer: Das steht dir gut! and Ja, das passt auch. Both use a dative verb: stehen with dir, and passen, here with no person named.
6. Which sentence about the jacket do you hear twice? Answer: die Jacke steht dir sehr gut, the jacket really suits you.

Speaking: gifts and owners

Alone: plan presents for five people you know and record them, each with the right dative: Meiner Mutter schenke ich ... Meinem Freund kaufe ich ... Meinen Großeltern gebe ich .... Then say three things you like with gefallen and two foods you like with schmecken: Pizza schmeckt mir. End with how you feel today: Mir geht es ... Mir ist ...

With a partner: put a few objects on the table and play Wem gehört das? (Whose is that?). The answer must use a dative pronoun or noun: Das gehört mir. Die Uhr gehört ihr. Das Buch gehört dem Lehrer. Then ask each other Wie gefällt dir ...? about clothes or music, and answer with gefällt or gefallen in the right number.

Common misconceptions

• "I like the book is Ich gefalle das Buch." With gefallen, the thing is the subject and the person is dative: Das Buch gefällt mir.
• "Helfen takes the accusative: Ich helfe dich." Helfen takes the dative: Ich helfe dir.
• "Der is always masculine." Der is also the feminine dative: Ich helfe der Frau.
• "Den is always accusative." Den is also the dative plural, with an -n on the noun: den Kindern.
• "Every dative plural adds -n." Not if the plural already ends in -n or -s: den Frauen, den Autos.
• "I'm cold is Ich bin kalt." To say how you feel, German uses the dative: Mir ist kalt.

Recap

The dative is the case of the receiver, the indirect object, found with the question Wem?: Ich schenke meiner Mutter Blumen. In the dative, masculine and neuter articles end in -m (dem, einem, meinem), feminine ones in -r (der, einer, meiner), and the plural is den with an -n on the noun unless the plural already ends in -n or -s. The pronouns are mir, dir, ihm, ihr, ihm, uns, euch, ihnen and Ihnen. Some verbs always take a dative object: helfen, danken, gehören, gefallen, schmecken, passen, stehen and fehlen, and with gefallen the thing that pleases is the subject. Set phrases use it too: Mir geht es gut, Mir ist kalt. With two noun objects the dative comes first, and two pronouns put the accusative first: Maria gibt es mir. You now have three cases, and Lesson 19 adds the prepositions that always demand the dative, the ones you need to find your way round a town.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Personal pronouns: dative; Verbs with a dative object (1) [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Leben in Deutschland; Das passt gut!; Adressen; Emmas Wochenende [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Duden. (n.d.). Nomen [Sprachwissen für Lernende: the four cases and their questions]; haben [Dictionary entry, regional ich habe kalt]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German nouns [background on the dative plural -n]; German sentence structure [background on the order of objects]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Finding Yara's shop

In the Deutsche Welle episode An der Ampel links (Left at the traffic lights), Emma's grandfather Jürgen has found the bike shop that Nico has been looking for. Lisa asks Und wie kommen wir da hin? (And how do we get there?), and Jürgen starts: Zuerst fahrt ihr mit dem Bus bis zum Grafenplatz. First you take the bus as far as the Grafenplatz. Then come streets, a crossroads, a theatre and a traffic light, until Lisa gives up and checks her phone.

Asking the way is one of the most useful things you can do at A1, and it is a short procedure. This lesson takes it step by step: the places, the polite question, the answer, the command form of the verb, and the small prepositions that hold directions together. Most of those prepositions take the dative from Lesson 18.

Step 1: Know the places

Deutsche Welle's culture note for this part of its course names the town hall, the municipal theatre, the churches and the station as important points of reference in a German town, and says the market square plays an important role in daily life. Expect to hear those words when people give you directions.

Step 2: Ask politely

• Start with Entschuldigung! (Excuse me!) or Entschuldigen Sie, .... Use Sie with strangers, as in Lesson 3.
• Wo ist der Bahnhof? Where is the station?
• Wie komme ich zum Bahnhof? Wie komme ich zur Post? How do I get to the station, to the post office? Zum and zur are explained in Step 5.
• Gibt es hier in der Nähe eine Apotheke? Is there a pharmacy near here? Es gibt takes the accusative, so a masculine place becomes einen: Gibt es hier einen Supermarkt?
• Ist das weit? Is it far? A typical answer: Nein, nur fünf Minuten zu Fuß. No, only five minutes on foot.

Step 3: Understand the answer

Deutsche Welle's grammar note shows the patterns behind these phrases. An ... vorbei wraps round a dative: am Supermarkt vorbei, an der Sprachschule vorbei. Bis zu stresses the end of a stretch: geradeaus bis zum Bahnhof. Durch takes the accusative: durch den Park.

Step 4: Give instructions with the imperative

The imperative is the form of a verb used for instructions, requests and orders. German has one for each way of saying you. Deutsche Welle explains the formal one: put the verb first, then Sie. Sie gehen geradeaus is a statement; Gehen Sie geradeaus is an instruction.

1. For du, start from the du form and drop both du and the ending -st: du gehst becomes Geh! An -e can be added, as in Gehe!
2. Umlauts from Lesson 10 drop out: du fährst, but Fahr! Duden lists both fahr and fahre.
3. The e to i change stays: du nimmst, so Nimm! In Deutsche Welle's Jahreszeiten, Julius urges his friend Nimm es mit!, take it with you.
4. For ihr, use the ihr form without ihr: ihr geht, so Geht!
5. Separable prefixes go to the end, just as in Lesson 15: Biegen Sie an der Ampel links ab.
6. Sein is irregular: Seien Sie pünktlich! Sei leise! Seid nett!

A bitte makes any of them friendlier: Nehmen Sie bitte den Bus.

Step 5: Use the prepositions that always take the dative

A preposition is a small word such as with, to or from that links a noun to the rest of the sentence. In German, each preposition decides the case of the noun after it. These eight always take the dative, as Duden's dictionary and Deutsche Welle's grammar notes record for them.

Four of them usually fuse with dem or der into one word. These short forms are normal standard German, not slang.

Worth holding on to: after aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu and gegenüber the noun is always dative, whatever the verb does. Zu dem becomes zum, zu der becomes zur.

Step 6: Say where something is

A second group of prepositions, including in, an, auf, neben, vor, hinter, über, unter and zwischen, can take two cases. Deutsche Welle calls them two-case prepositions. When they answer Wo? (where, at what place?), they take the dative. In and an fuse with dem as well: in dem becomes im, an dem becomes am.

• Der Bahnhof ist im Zentrum. The station is in the centre.
• Die Oper ist neben der Universität. The opera house is next to the university.
• Das Restaurant ist am Friedensplatz. The restaurant is on the Friedensplatz.
• Die Haltestelle ist vor dem Bahnhof. The stop is in front of the station.

When they answer Wohin? (where to?), for movement into or onto a place, the same prepositions take the accusative: Ihr geht in die Goethestraße. Duden's page on prepositions gives the pair Ich bin im Haus (dative, where I am) and Ich gehe in die Stadt (accusative, where I'm going). For now, learn the Wo? pattern; the Wohin? pattern will grow on you as you hear it.

nach, zu or in?

• Towns and most countries take nach: nach Berlin, nach Wien, nach Österreich, nach Deutschland. Deutsche Welle pairs Wo? in Dresden with Wohin? nach Dresden.
• Countries with an article take in plus the accusative. The German Foreign Office's list of country names notes that most are neuter and used without an article, but feminine and plural ones carry it: die Schweiz, die Vereinigten Staaten. So: Ich fahre in die Schweiz, and Ich wohne in der Schweiz.
• Buildings, shops and people take zu: zum Bahnhof, zur Apotheke, zu meinem Freund.
• Home is special: nach Hause means (going) home, zu Hause means at home. In Mit Bus und Bahn, Lisa asks Jürgen Und wie kommt ihr jetzt nach Hause?

Our town (written for this course)

Count the datives: zum Museum, bis zum Marktplatz, am Marktplatz, an der Kirche vorbei, gegenüber dem Stadtpark, zu Fuß, mit dem Bus, vor dem Bahnhof, neben der Post. Only one phrase shows movement into a place, and it takes the accusative: in die Schillerstraße.

Addresses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

An address gives the street first and the house number after it: Frau Kohlhaas lives in der Kälberstraße 4. Deutsche Welle notes that the four most common street names in Germany are Hauptstraße, Schulstraße, Gartenstraße and Bahnhofstraße. Each was named after a feature of the town, such as the school or the station. It adds that even house numbers are usually on the right-hand side of a street and odd numbers on the left. In Switzerland, remember Lesson 1: there is no ß, so the Swiss Federal Chancellery's style guide writes Gottfried-Keller-Strasse and Zürcher Bahnhofstrasse.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "An der Ampel links" and "Wo ist der Bahnhof?"

Open An der Ampel links and watch it twice, the second time with the script.

1. Where is the bike shop, according to Jürgen? Answer: in der Adalbert-Stifter-Straße 43, in the centre, near the job centre (in der Nähe vom Arbeitsamt).
2. How do Lisa and Nico get to the Grafenplatz? Answer: mit dem Bus bis zum Grafenplatz.
3. Jürgen tells them to walk along the Krugstraße. Which form of the verb does he use, and why? Answer: Geht die Krugstraße entlang, the ihr imperative, because he is speaking to both of them.
4. What do they pass, and where do they turn right? Answer: am Theater vorbei, then right at the next traffic light.
5. Lisa reads the route from her phone. Which form of address does it use? Answer: Sie, with the formal imperative: Gehen Sie bis zum Grafenplatz. Biegen Sie dann links in die Krugstraße.

Then open Wo ist der Bahnhof?.

6. Where does Nico live now, and where does Lisa work? Answer: bei Frau Kohlhaas in the Kälberstraße; Lisa works neben dem Theater.

Speaking: show me the way

Alone: describe your own route from home to school or to a shop in six sentences and record it: Zuerst gehe ich zur Haltestelle. Dann fahre ich mit dem Bus bis zum ... Ich gehe am ... vorbei. Then use the town table above to give directions from the station to the museum, once to a stranger (Sie) and once to a friend (du). Compare: Gehen Sie geradeaus and Geh geradeaus.

With a partner: one of you secretly picks a place in the town table. The other asks Entschuldigung, wie komme ich zum ...? or Gibt es hier ...? and follows the directions they hear. If you end up somewhere else, find the step where the directions went wrong. Then swap.

Common misconceptions

• "Zu shows movement, so it takes the accusative." Zu always takes the dative: zum Bahnhof, zur Post.
• "You can use zu for cities." Towns and most countries take nach: nach Hamburg, nach Österreich.
• "I'm going to Switzerland is Ich fahre nach Schweiz." Countries with an article take in and the accusative: in die Schweiz.
• "Zu Hause means going home." Zu Hause is at home; going home is nach Hause.
• "The du imperative keeps its ending: Gehst geradeaus!" Drop du and -st: Geh geradeaus! The umlaut of fahren drops too (Fahr!), but the i of nehmen stays (Nimm!).
• "Zum and beim are lazy speech." They are the normal written and spoken forms.

Looking back

Asking the way is a procedure. Name the place with its article, ask politely with Entschuldigung and Wie komme ich zum or zur ...?, and listen for geradeaus, links, rechts, an der Ampel, am ... vorbei and bis zum. Give directions with the imperative: verb first with Sie (Gehen Sie!), the du form without du and -st (Geh! Nimm! Fahr!), and the ihr form without ihr (Geht!). Aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu and gegenüber always take the dative, and zu dem, zu der, bei dem and von dem shrink to zum, zur, beim and vom. In, an, neben, vor and their partners take the dative when they say where something is (im Zentrum, neben der Post), and the accusative when you move into a place. Towns take nach, countries with an article take in, and buildings and people take zu. Lesson 20 takes you out of town, onto trains and into the weather.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). An der Ampel links; Wo ist der Bahnhof?; Mit Bus und Bahn; Jahreszeiten [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). The formal imperative; Prepositions of place (1); Prepositions of place: in, an; Prepositions: bei, von; Prepositions: mit; Prepositions of place: in, nach [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Shopping in town; Street names and street numbers in Germany [Nicos Weg, A1, culture pages]. learngerman.dw.com
4. Duden. (n.d.). fahren; nehmen; sein [Konjugation, imperative forms]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Duden. (n.d.). aus; bei; zu; nach; gegenüber [Dictionary entries: Präposition mit Dativ]; Präpositionen [Sprachwissen für Lernende]. Cornelsen. duden.de
6. Auswärtiges Amt. (2026). Verzeichnis der Staatennamen für den amtlichen Gebrauch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Grammatical notes on articles]. auswaertiges-amt.de
7. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei. (2017). Leitfaden zur deutschen Rechtschreibung. bk.admin.ch

The problem: a late train on a wet Saturday

It is Saturday morning and you are at the station, on your way to visit your friend Mia in a town an hour away. You need a ticket. The board says your train is about twenty minutes late. It has started to rain, and Mia texts to ask when you'll arrive and whether you have a jacket.

That small problem needs four kinds of German: how to say you are travelling by train, how to buy a ticket, how to read the board and its delay, and how to talk about the weather. This lesson solves it piece by piece and then puts the pieces together in one scene.

Piece 1: How are you travelling?

German keeps two verbs apart that English blurs. Gehen means to go on foot; fahren means to go in or on a vehicle. In Deutsche Welle's Mit Bus und Bahn, Emma's grandfather plans the way home with both: Wir fahren mit der U-Bahn bis zur Uni. Den Rest gehen wir dann zu Fuß. We'll take the underground as far as the university, then walk the rest.

The vehicle comes after mit, which always takes the dative, as Deutsche Welle's grammar note puts it.

Deutsche Welle's culture note on public transport adds some background. Germany's first underground opened in Berlin in 1902. The S-Bahn first linked the suburbs with the city centre. The bus is the most widespread form of transport, though buses in the countryside can be rare. And you buy your ticket before the journey: at a ticket office, from a machine, or online.

Piece 2: Buying a ticket

Three separable verbs from Lesson 15 run every journey. Their prefix jumps to the end: abfahren (to leave): Der Zug fährt um 9:05 Uhr ab. Ankommen (to arrive): Wir kommen um 10:03 Uhr an. Umsteigen (to change trains): Sie steigen in Waldheim um. Duden's example for Gleis is der Zug fährt von Gleis acht ab, the train leaves from platform eight.

Switzerland has its own words. Duden marks das Billett (ticket) and der Perron (platform) as Swiss, and outdated elsewhere, and das Velo as the Swiss word for a bicycle.

Piece 3: Reading the board

Here is a departure board made up for this course. Times use the 24-hour clock from Lesson 6, and ca. is short for circa, about.

Read the first row aloud: Die Regionalbahn nach Neustadt fährt um acht Uhr zweiundfünfzig von Gleis drei ab, aber sie hat ungefähr zwanzig Minuten Verspätung. Then the last row: the ICE to Hamburg leaves from platform 8 today, not 7.

Bottom line: walk with gehen and ride with fahren plus mit and the dative. A journey runs on separable verbs and the 24-hour clock: Der Zug fährt um 9:05 Uhr von Gleis 1 ab.

The Deutschlandticket

Since 1 May 2023, Germany has had a single monthly ticket for local and regional transport, the Deutschlandticket. The federal government's question-and-answer page, updated on 1 May 2026, gives the details. It has cost 63 euros a month since January 2026, and about 14.5 million people use it. It covers buses and local and regional trains throughout Germany. It does not cover long-distance trains such as the IC, EC and ICE, private operators such as FlixTrain and FlixBus, or first class. It grew out of the nine-euro ticket of summer 2022, which sold 52 million times.

Piece 4: The weather

Weather sentences in German need a subject even when nothing is doing anything. That subject is es, which Deutsche Welle calls a formal subject: Es regnet. Es schneit. Es ist sonnig. Es ist bewölkt. Es ist neblig.

To compare, add -er, and for the most, use am ... -sten. Deutsche Welle's grammar note shows that many short adjectives with a, o or u take an umlaut: warm, wärmer, am wärmsten; kalt, kälter, am kältesten. Adjectives ending in -t, -d, -s, -z, -ß, -sch or -x add an extra e, which is why it is am kältesten. Gut is irregular: gut, besser, am besten.

The seasons are all masculine, so in dem shortens to im: im Frühling (spring), im Sommer, im Herbst (autumn), im Winter. Months work the same way: im Dezember, im Januar.

What is the weather actually like? Deutsche Welle's culture note describes winter in most of Germany, December to February, as mostly cold but grey and wet rather than white, with snow in the mountains. Spring, from March to May, is milder. In summer, the temperature in the shade rises above 30 degrees on only a few days. A warm, dry spell often returns in September, called the Altweibersommer. The note even quotes the poet Heinrich Heine, in its translation: "Our summer is more of a winter painted green."

The solution: the whole scene (written for this course)

Then Jonas texts Mia:

Find the four pieces: mit and fahren in Ich nehme die S-Bahn and the timetable; the ticket words; the separable verbs umsteigen and ankommen; and the weather with es and kälter. Mia's Nimm eine Jacke mit! is a du imperative from Lesson 19 with the separable verb mitnehmen.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Wie wird das Wetter?" and "Jahreszeiten"

Open Wie wird das Wetter?. Selma is on the phone to Lisa, who is on holiday.

1. What is the weather like where Selma is? Answer: about seven degrees (so um die sieben Grad) and cloudy (bewölkt).
2. What might happen in the evening, and what about tomorrow? Answer: it may rain in the evening (Abends soll es vielleicht noch regnen), and tomorrow it will be even colder (morgen wird es noch kälter).
3. What weather is Lisa having? Answer: sun and 20 degrees, which Selma finds very unfair.

Then open Jahreszeiten, where two men have found Nico's bag.

4. Which two months does Julius say are always the coldest? Answer: Im Dezember und Januar ist es immer am kältesten!
5. Which comparative does Julius use for November? Answer: im November wird es immer kälter, it keeps getting colder.

Finally, replay Mit Bus und Bahn and note every means of transport you hear with mit: der Bus, die U-Bahn, die Straßenbahn.

Speaking: going places

Alone: record a weather report for your town for three days: Heute ist es ... Es sind ... Grad. Morgen wird es .... Then record yourself buying a ticket. Play both parts, and include a delay and a change of train.

With a partner: one of you is at the ticket office and the other is the customer; use the made-up board above. Then phone each other: one is on holiday somewhere warm, the other is at home in the rain. Compare: Bei mir ist es kälter als bei dir!

Common misconceptions

• "Gehen works for any kind of going." Gehen is on foot. By vehicle, use fahren: Ich fahre mit dem Bus.
• "Mit takes the accusative after a movement verb." Mit always takes the dative: mit dem Zug, mit der U-Bahn.
• "The weather can be the subject: Das Wetter regnet." Use es: Es regnet.
• "Gleis means the train." Das Gleis is the track or platform the train leaves from.
• "The Deutschlandticket covers every train in Germany." It covers local and regional transport, not long-distance trains such as the ICE.
• "Every comparative is just -er." Many short adjectives add an umlaut too: kälter, wärmer, and gut becomes besser.

What to remember

On foot you gehen; by vehicle you fahren, with mit and the dative: mit dem Zug, mit der S-Bahn, and zu Fuß for walking. To buy a ticket, ask for eine Fahrkarte nach ..., einfach or hin und zurück, and in Switzerland expect the word Billett. Departures are read with the 24-hour clock and separable verbs: Der Zug fährt um 9:05 Uhr von Gleis 1 ab; Sie steigen in Waldheim um; Wir kommen um 10:03 Uhr an. A delay is Verspätung. The Deutschlandticket covers local and regional transport across Germany for 63 euros a month. Weather takes es as its subject: Es regnet, es ist kalt, es sind acht Grad. Compare with -er and am -sten, often with an umlaut, and put seasons and months after im. Lesson 21 turns to the past, so that you can tell Mia afterwards how the journey went.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Mit Bus und Bahn; Wie wird das Wetter?; Jahreszeiten [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Prepositions: mit; Pronouns: es; Comparison (2); Time: seasons [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Public transportation; What's the weather like? [Nicos Weg, A1, culture pages]. learngerman.dw.com
4. Die Bundesregierung. (2026, May 1). Ein Ticket für ganz Deutschland [Fragen und Antworten zum Deutschlandticket]. bundesregierung.de
5. Duden. (n.d.). Gleis; Billett; Perron; Velo [Dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de

Selma's day by the lake

In the Deutsche Welle episode Der Ausflug (The trip), Lisa asks Selma when her last holiday was. Selma says it was not really a holiday, just a trip in May: Wir haben die Hochzeit von meinem Onkel gefeiert. We celebrated my uncle's wedding. Then the list pours out: wir haben toll gegessen und gesungen und getanzt. We ate really well and sang and danced.

Every one of those sentences uses the same tense, the Perfekt. It is the tense German speakers use most when they talk about the past, so it is the one to learn first. This lesson builds it as a procedure in five steps: haben, the end position, the participle, questions and negatives, and the time words that go with it.

Why the Perfekt?

Deutsche Welle's grammar note sums up the choice. The simple past, such as ich spielte, is used mostly in writing: newspapers and books. In spoken German and informal writing such as private emails, the Perfekt is used above all: ich habe gespielt. The exceptions are sein, haben and the modal verbs, which keep their short simple past in speech too: ich war, ich hatte. Lesson 22 deals with those.

There is good news for English speakers. Standard German has no progressive tenses, as the Wikipedia overview of German verbs notes, so ich habe gespielt can stand for I played, I have played and, in context, I was playing.

Step 1: Put haben in second place

The Perfekt has two parts. The first is a helping verb (an auxiliary): usually haben, conjugated as in the present tense and placed in position 2, as every finite verb is.

Step 2: Send the participle to the end

The second part is the past participle, a fixed form of the main verb that never changes for the person. It goes to the very end of the sentence. This is the sentence bracket from Lesson 15: the two verb parts stand like bookends, with everything else between them.

• Gestern habe ich mit meinem Bruder im Park Fußball gespielt.
• Am Samstag haben wir bei meiner Cousine übernachtet.

Key idea: the Perfekt is haben in position 2 plus a past participle at the very end. Whatever else you add goes between them.

Step 3: Build the participle

There are four patterns. Deutsche Welle's grammar notes describe each one, and the forms below match Duden's conjugation tables.

1. Regular verbs follow the rule every time: ge + stem + t. The -et version just makes the word sayable: gearbeitet, not gearbeitt.
2. Irregular verbs have to be learned. Deutsche Welle is frank about it: there are no real rules for whether and how the vowel changes. Learn each one as a pair: essen, gegessen.
3. An inseparable prefix is a prefix that never splits off and is never stressed: be-, ent-, er-, ver- and zer-. These verbs take no ge-: Ich habe meine Oma besucht.
4. Verbs in -ieren take no ge- either: Ich habe telefoniert.
5. Separable verbs put ge- in the middle, between the prefix and the rest: einkaufen becomes eingekauft.

Step 4: Ask and say no

• Yes-no questions put haben first: Hast du schon gegessen?
• W-questions put the question word first and haben second: Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?
• Nicht usually goes just before the participle: Ich habe den Film nicht gesehen.
• Kein still negates a noun: Ich habe keine Fotos gemacht.

Step 5: Say when

Two details carry over from earlier lessons. Letzte, letzten, letztes take accusative endings, because a time phrase without a preposition is accusative: der Monat becomes letzten Monat. And vor meaning ago takes the dative, so the plural adds its -n: vor zwei Tagen.

Dialogue: Montagmorgen (written for this course)

Sort the participles into the rows of the table in Step 3. Regular: gespielt, gearbeitet, gekocht, gemacht. Irregular: gegessen, gesehen, geschlafen. No ge-: besucht, vergessen. Separable: mitgebracht, which is also mixed, because bringen makes gebracht. Notice too that every time phrase in position 1, such as Am Samstag or Dann, pushes the subject behind haben.

School holidays in three countries

When school starts again, the question Was hast du in den Ferien gemacht? (What did you do in the holidays?) comes at different times in different places.

• Germany: the Kultusministerkonferenz, the conference of the states' education ministers, fixes the summer holidays years ahead. They last at least six weeks, fall between 20 June and 15 September, and are staggered: five groups of states take turns, so that not everyone sets off or returns at once. Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, which traditionally have holidays at Whitsun, always come last. Each state sets its other holidays itself.
• Austria: according to Eurydice, the EU's education information network, the summer holidays last nine weeks. In Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland the school year ends on a Friday between 28 June and 4 July; elsewhere it ends a week later.
• Switzerland: the cantons and their communes decide, so holiday dates differ between cantons and sometimes within one. The school year starts between mid-August and mid-September, depending on the canton.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Der Ausflug" and "Wie war dein Urlaub?"

Open Der Ausflug and listen to Selma.

1. When was Selma's trip, and what did her family celebrate? Answer: in May (Im Mai); her uncle's wedding.
2. Write down every past participle that goes with haben. Answer: gefeiert, gegessen, gesungen, getanzt, gegrillt, gemacht (Spaziergänge gemacht) and übernachtet.
3. Where did they stay the night? Answer: bei meiner Cousine, near Hamburg.
4. One sentence uses sind instead of haben. Which? Answer: Wir sind geschwommen. Lesson 22 explains why.

Then open Wie war dein Urlaub?, where a passenger is talking on the phone.

5. How long was the passenger's holiday, and how is the passenger travelling home? Answer: only two weeks (es waren nur zwei Wochen); by train (Mit dem Zug).
6. What did the passenger take photos of? Answer: Ich habe viele Fotos gemacht: of the mountains, of the beach, and of the hotel too.

Speaking: my weekend, your weekend

Alone: record a diary of your last weekend in eight sentences. Use at least one verb from each row of the table in Step 3, and start some sentences with a time phrase: Am Samstag habe ich ... Am Sonntag .... Then answer aloud: Was hast du gestern gemacht? Was hast du letzten Sommer gemacht?

With a partner: run a survey with Hast du schon mal ...? (Have you ever ...?): Hast du schon mal Sauerkraut gegessen? Hast du schon mal einen Film auf Deutsch gesehen? Answer Ja, schon mal or Nein, noch nie, then report back in the third person: Alex hat noch nie Sauerkraut gegessen.

Common misconceptions

• "I played is ich spielte, because that is the past tense." In speech the Perfekt is usual: ich habe gespielt. Spielte belongs mainly to writing.
• "The participle stands next to haben: Ich habe gegessen eine Pizza." It goes to the end: Ich habe eine Pizza gegessen.
• "Every participle starts with ge-." Not -ieren verbs (studiert) and not verbs with an inseparable prefix (besucht, verstanden).
• "Separable verbs put ge- in front: geeinkauft." The ge- goes inside: eingekauft.
• "You can work out irregular participles." There is no reliable rule; learn them in pairs, such as trinken, getrunken.
• "Nicht goes straight after haben." It usually comes just before the participle: Ich habe den Film nicht gesehen.

The takeaway

To talk about the past in speech, use the Perfekt: haben in position 2, conjugated as in the present, and the past participle at the very end, with everything else in between. Regular verbs make ge-...-t (gespielt, gearbeitet). Irregular verbs make ge-...-en, often with a vowel change, and must be learned (gegessen, getrunken). A few mix the two (gebracht, gewusst). Verbs in -ieren and verbs with be-, ent-, er-, ver- or zer- drop the ge- (studiert, besucht, verstanden). Separable verbs put ge- in the middle (eingekauft, ferngesehen). Questions put haben first or after the question word, and nicht usually sits just before the participle. Time words such as gestern, letzte Woche and vor zwei Tagen anchor the story. Some verbs take sein instead of haben, and that is Lesson 22.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Der Ausflug; Wie war dein Urlaub? [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Present perfect with "haben"; Past participles: regular; Simple past or present perfect? [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Past participle: irregular; Past participle: separable [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
4. Duden. (n.d.). essen; trinken; bringen; wissen; studieren; besuchen; einkaufen; mitbringen [Konjugation]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Kultusministerkonferenz. (2026). Ferienregelung der Kultusministerkonferenz. kmk.org
6. Eurydice. (n.d.). Austria: Organisation of primary education; Switzerland: Organisation of primary education [Eurypedia]. European Education and Culture Executive Agency. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
7. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German verbs [background on tenses]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Who sat where?

Mia lives in Bavaria and Jonas comes from Hamburg; both are characters written for this course. Mia texts Jonas about a long train journey: Ich bin drei Stunden im Zug gesessen! Jonas replies with a grin: Du meinst: Ich habe drei Stunden im Zug gesessen. Mia is sure she is right. So is Jonas.

Both of them know the rule from Lesson 21: most verbs form the Perfekt with haben. But a group of verbs takes sein instead, and for a few verbs the choice depends on where in the German-speaking world you are. This lesson sets out the rule, adds the short past forms war and hatte, and then returns to Mia and Jonas to settle their argument with evidence.

The rule: which verbs take sein?

Deutsche Welle's grammar note lists three groups that take sein.

1. Movement from one place to another, a change of location: gehen, fahren, fliegen, kommen, laufen, schwimmen, reisen. Wir sind im See geschwommen.
2. A change of state, or something that happens to you rather than something you do: einschlafen (fall asleep), aufwachen (wake up), aufstehen (get up), passieren (happen), werden (become). Am Sonntag bin ich erst um 11:00 Uhr aufgewacht.
3. Sein and bleiben themselves: Wir sind drei Tage bei meinem Onkel geblieben.

All other verbs take haben, especially verbs that can have an accusative object, such as machen.

The participles follow the patterns of Lesson 21; only the helping verb changes. One trap: fahren takes haben when it has a direct object, because then you are steering something. Duden's examples set wir sind Schlitten gefahren (we went sledging) against wer von euch hat das Auto gefahren? (which of you drove the car?).

war and hatte: the short past

For sein and haben, speakers usually skip the Perfekt and use the short simple past, the Präteritum. Deutsche Welle's notes say the simple past of sein, haben and the modal verbs is used in spoken language too.

Notice that ich and er share a form with no ending: ich war, er war. You already met this pattern with the modal verbs in Lesson 15. The modals have short past forms too, and Duden's tables give ich konnte (could), ich musste (had to) and ich wollte (wanted to). So a typical excuse mixes them: Tut mir leid, ich konnte nicht kommen. Der Bus hatte Verspätung. That second sentence is one of Deutsche Welle's own examples.

The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache, a survey of everyday German, adds a regional twist. In everyday speech the simple past has become unusual, except for very frequent verbs and above all war. But across the south many people say Das Fest gestern ist schön gewesen rather than war schön. In Switzerland and in Vorarlberg, Austria's westernmost state, people answered only with the gewesen version. From Franconia and the Palatinate northwards, almost everyone chose war.

The dispute: ich bin gesessen or ich habe gesessen?

Now back to Mia and Jonas. Sitzen (to sit), stehen (to stand) and liegen (to lie) describe staying still, not moving, so the rule above points to haben. Is Mia simply making a mistake?

Jonas's case: the rule says sein is for movement and change, and sitting is neither. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache notes that grammars treat the sein forms of these three verbs as an exception, because sein today appears mainly with verbs of movement. Across northern Germany, haben is normal.

Mia's case: Duden's dictionary entry for sitzen gives ich habe (süddeutsch, österreichisch, schweizerisch: bin) gesessen, and the entry for stehen gives ist gestanden with the same three labels. The Atlas's map for stehen shows a clear split. North of the river Main, and in eastern Belgium and Luxembourg, haben is usual. In southern Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria and South Tyrol, sein is used. The Atlas adds that this picture has not changed in essence for forty years. It also reports that grammarians regard the sein forms as the historically older ones, and that Duden's guide to doubtful cases counts both forms as standard.

The verdict: neither of them is wrong. Ich bin gesessen is standard German in the south, and ich habe gesessen is standard German in the north. A learner can choose either, as long as they stay consistent and recognise the other when they hear it.

Why this matters: German is not one rulebook handed down from Berlin. Germany, Austria and Switzerland each have standard forms of their own, and real speakers will not always match your textbook. Knowing that a difference is regional, not an error, keeps you from correcting people who are right.

Dialogue: after the visit (written for this course)

Sort the verbs. With sein because of movement: umgestiegen, gefahren, angekommen, gegangen. With sein because of a change of state: aufgestanden. With sein because the verb is bleiben: geblieben. Short past: hatte, war. And one sentence where only the region decides: Wir sind gesessen, said in Bavaria.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Der Ausflug" and "Ich war schon in Berlin"

Replay Der Ausflug.

1. How does Selma sum up Nawin's party in her first line? Answer: Nawins Party war super!
2. Which Perfekt with sind does Selma use, and why sein? Answer: Wir sind geschwommen; swimming is movement.
3. How does she describe the weather? Answer: Wir hatten super Wetter und viel Spaß, with the short past of haben.

Then open Ich war schon in Berlin, set at Nawin's farewell party.

4. Which question does Sebastian ask Nico about Cologne? Answer: Warst du schon mal in Köln?
5. Which cities has Nawin been to, and which not yet? Answer: Ich war schon mal in Hamburg und in Köln. In Heidelberg war ich noch nie.
6. Who has been to Berlin? Answer: Nina and Sebastian: Wir beide waren schon mal in Berlin, even at the Brandenburg Gate.

Speaking: tell a journey

Alone: tell the story of a real or invented journey in eight sentences and record it. Use at least four verbs with sein (such as bin gefahren, bin angekommen, bin umgestiegen, bin geblieben), at least two with haben, and war or hatte at least twice. Then decide whether you will say ich bin gesessen or ich habe gesessen, and use your choice once.

With a partner: interview each other with Wo warst du schon mal? Wie bist du dahin gekommen? Was hast du gemacht? Wie war das Wetter? Then swap roles and report your partner's answers: Sam war schon mal in Kanada. Er ist geflogen.

Common misconceptions

• "Only movement verbs take sein." Changes of state take sein too (eingeschlafen, aufgewacht, geworden), and so do sein and bleiben.
• "Fahren always takes sein." With a direct object it takes haben: Wer hat das Auto gefahren?
• "Bleiben takes haben, because nothing moves." Bleiben takes sein: Ich bin zu Hause geblieben.
• "Ich bin gesessen is a mistake." It is standard in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as Duden's entries show.
• "The Perfekt of sein is ich habe gewesen." Sein takes sein: ich bin gewesen. In conversation, ich war is usually shorter and more common.
• "War and hatte sound too formal for speech." Both are normal in conversation, as Deutsche Welle notes.

Pulling it together

Most verbs build the Perfekt with haben, but verbs of movement from one place to another (gehen, fahren, fliegen, kommen, ankommen, umsteigen), verbs of a change of state (aufstehen, einschlafen, aufwachen, werden, passieren), and sein and bleiben take sein: Ich bin gefahren, ich bin geblieben. Fahren with a direct object switches back to haben. For sein and haben themselves, speakers usually prefer the short past: ich war, ich hatte, with no ending for ich and er. The modal verbs have short past forms too: konnte, musste, wollte. In the south, ist gewesen often replaces war, and stehen, sitzen and liegen take sein: ich bin gesessen. In the north, the same verbs take haben. Duden and the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache treat both as standard, so recognise both and choose one. Module 9 now widens the view from grammar to the countries where German is spoken.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Der Ausflug; Ich war schon in Berlin [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Present perfect with "sein"; Simple past: sein; Simple past: haben; Simple past or present perfect? [Nicos Weg, A1, grammar pages]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Duden. (n.d.). sitzen; stehen; fahren; aufstehen; umsteigen [Dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de
4. Duden. (n.d.). gehen; kommen; bleiben; können; müssen [Konjugation]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Hilfsverb beim Perfekt von stehen [Map commentary, round 9]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
6. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). ist/war gewesen [Map commentary, round 13]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de

One day, one country

Amira is an exchange student from Toronto, and she is a character written for this course. On her last weekend in Germany she gives herself a challenge: one day on the train, from Flensburg at the Danish border to Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the foot of the Alps, with changes in Hamburg and Munich. Her story is told stop by stop, with the facts she meets along the way. Connections and times are left out on purpose; check a real timetable before you copy her.

Morning: Flensburg and the far north

At the station in Flensburg, a man greets Amira with Moin!, the northern greeting you met on the map in Lesson 3. Flensburg is a border town, and the language around her is not only German. The Minority Secretariat, which speaks for Germany's traditional minorities, describes the border with Denmark as barely noticeable, with many people speaking both German and Danish. Members of the Danish minority, who are German citizens, live in Flensburg and the districts around it, an area they call South Schleswig. Across the border, a German minority lives in North Schleswig, in Denmark.

The Danes are one of four autochthonous national minorities in Germany, meaning groups that have lived in their region for centuries rather than arriving more recently. The others are the Frisians, the German Sinti and Roma, and the Lusatian Sorbs. The north also has a regional language, Low German (Plattdeutsch or Niederdeutsch), which Germany has recognised since 1999 under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Deutsche Welle's culture note adds that the north coast, with the Wadden Sea, its islands and its wind, is the country's most popular holiday region, including among Germans themselves.

Late morning: Hamburg

Amira changes trains in Hamburg, which Deutsche Welle describes as Germany's second-biggest city. Two rivers run through it, the Elbe and the Alster, and the Elbe flows on into the North Sea. The port and its Speicherstadt, which Deutsche Welle calls the largest warehouse district in the world, are on every visitor's list. So is the Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall that opened at the beginning of 2017. Amira buys a Brötchen for the journey.

Midday: across the middle

Somewhere in the middle of the country the train crosses the river Main, the line you met in Lesson 22, where haben gesessen gives way to bin gesessen. Food words change too. The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache asked people across the German-speaking area what they call a small breakfast roll made of wheat flour.

The Atlas also found that small local words, such as the northern Rundstück, have become much rarer over the decades.

A detour east: since 1990

Amira's route runs north to south, but a friend from Leipzig texts her to say she should have come east. Eastern Germany covers the area of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), the state that existed until 1990. After the fall of the Wall, Deutsche Welle notes, many run-down buildings, squares and bridges in cities such as Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar were carefully restored. Germany's national holiday, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit (Day of German Unity), falls on 3 October, the day reunification was completed in 1990. The Berlin Wall had fallen on 9 November 1989. That date was not chosen for the holiday, because 9 November is also the anniversary of the Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938. Berlin, the capital, is Germany's biggest city.

A detour west: the Rhine and the Ruhr

Many of the larger cities in the west, such as Cologne and Düsseldorf, are in or around the Ruhr region, which used to be a centre of industry. Cologne's cathedral, with its twin spires, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Along the Rhine, carnival officially begins on 11 November and ends with street celebrations in February or March.

Evening: Munich and the mountains

In Munich the greeting changes to Grüß Gott, and the bread roll is now a Semmel. Deutsche Welle notes that Weißwurst, a veal sausage often eaten for breakfast with sweet mustard and a pretzel, is famous but typical only of Bavaria. The last train climbs to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, below the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain at 2,962 metres. The south also has Lake Constance, the Black Forest and the Bavarian Forest.

Germany in numbers

Germany is a federal republic of sixteen states, the Bundesländer. Three of them are city-states: Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen. On 30 June 2026, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 83.3 million people lived in Germany. That was 168,000 fewer than at the start of the year, continuing a fall that began in 2025.

To say where a place is, use liegen (to lie, to be situated) with im, because the compass points are masculine: Kiel liegt im Norden. Dresden liegt im Osten von Deutschland. For the centre, use in der Mitte.

So what? There is no single picture of Germany. A Brötchen in Hamburg is a Semmel in Munich, Moin turns into Grüß Gott, and Danish, Frisian, Sorbian, Romani and Low German are spoken alongside German. All of it is part of the country you are learning about.

Amira's postcard (written for this course)

Liebe Mia,
heute bin ich mit dem Zug von Flensburg nach Garmisch-Partenkirchen gefahren, einmal durch ganz Deutschland! In Flensburg hat ein Mann am Bahnhof Moin gesagt. In Hamburg bin ich umgestiegen und habe ein Brötchen gekauft. Dann sind wir über den Main gefahren. In München habe ich eine Semmel gegessen. Das ist ein Brötchen, nur mit einem anderen Namen! Am Abend bin ich in Garmisch angekommen. Die Berge sind fantastisch. Morgen fahre ich auf die Zugspitze.
Viele Grüße
Amira

Count the tenses: Amira uses the Perfekt for what happened (bin gefahren, hat gesagt, habe gekauft), the present for how things are now (sind fantastisch), and the present with Morgen for tomorrow's plan.

Checking a cliché

Deutsche Welle has a culture note on clichés that starts with a list of them: lederhosen, sausage with sauerkraut, beer every day. It then explains that clichés are outdated and very general ideas, and that stereotypes are fixed opinions about groups, often not based on experience. Its advice is to check your own opinions regularly, ask questions carefully, and explain things kindly when there is a misunderstanding. Amira's journey is one way to check: the Weißwurst she saw in Munich is, by Deutsche Welle's own account, a Bavarian dish, not a German one.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Wo liegt das?" and "Ich war schon in Berlin"

Open Wo liegt das?, where the friends play a party game in teams.

1. What are the four teams called? Answer: Team Osten, Team Süden, Team Westen and Team Norden.
2. Where is Sevilla, according to Nico? Answer: im Süden von Spanien.
3. Where is Damascus, according to Selma? Answer: Im Süden von Syrien.

Then replay Ich war schon in Berlin.

4. Which sight in Cologne does Sebastian show Nico? Answer: der Kölner Dom, Cologne Cathedral.
5. Which sight does Nawin name in Berlin? Answer: das Brandenburger Tor.
6. Where is Nawin going next week? Answer: Nächste Woche fahre ich nach München!

Speaking: my journey

Alone: plan a journey through your own country or state, like Amira's, with five stops. For each stop, say where it is (... liegt im Norden), one thing you would see, and one local word or greeting if you know one. Record it in the Perfekt, as if you had already made the trip: Zuerst bin ich nach ... gefahren.

With a partner: play Wo liegt das? with the table of states. One of you names a capital; the other answers with the state and where it lies: Erfurt ist die Hauptstadt von Thüringen. Thüringen liegt in der Mitte. Swap after five turns.

Common misconceptions

• "There is one German word for a bread roll." The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache found Brötchen, Schrippe, Weck, Weckle, Semmel and several Swiss words.
• "Germany's national day is 9 November, when the Wall fell." It is 3 October, the day of reunification in 1990.
• "Everyone in Germany speaks only German." Danish, Frisian, Sorbian and Romani belong to recognised minorities, Low German is a recognised regional language, and many other languages arrived with immigration.
• "Weißwurst and lederhosen are what Germany eats and wears." Deutsche Welle calls Weißwurst typical only of Bavaria, and lists lederhosen among the clichés.
• "Germany's population keeps growing." Destatis reports that it has been falling since 2025.
• "In the north is in Norden." Compass points are masculine, so in dem becomes im: im Norden.

What to carry forward

Germany is a federal republic of sixteen states, three of them city-states, with Berlin as its capital and 83.3 million people in mid-2026, a number now slowly falling. It has celebrated 3 October as its national day since reunification in 1990. Its four autochthonous minorities are the Danes, the Frisians, the German Sinti and Roma and the Lusatian Sorbs, and Low German is a recognised regional language. Everyday words change across the map: Brötchen in the north and west, Schrippe in Berlin, Semmel in Bavaria. To place things, use liegen with im Norden, im Süden, im Osten, im Westen or in der Mitte. And when you meet a cliché, check it against a source. Lesson 24 crosses the borders into Austria, Switzerland and the wider German-speaking world.

Sources

1. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Wo liegt das?; Ich war schon in Berlin [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]. learngerman.dw.com
2. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). North, South, East and West; Have you ever been to ...?; German specialities; Cliches [Nicos Weg, A1, culture pages]. learngerman.dw.com
3. Minderheitensekretariat. (n.d.). Which minorities?; The Danish minority. minderheitensekretariat.de
4. Elspaß, S., and Möller, R. (2003-). Brötchen/Semmel [Map commentary, round 9]. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. atlas-alltagssprache.de
5. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). (2026, September 22). Bevölkerungsstand: Amtliche Einwohnerzahl Deutschlands. destatis.de
6. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). German Unity Day; States of Germany; Low German [background]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Jänner or Januar?

Statistik Austria, Austria's national statistics office, publishes the population on four dates a year, and it names them 1. Jänner, 1. April, 1. Juli und 1. Oktober. Not Januar: Jänner. Meanwhile Duden, the best-known dictionary in Germany, labels Jänner as österreichisch, seltener süddeutsch: Austrian, and less often southern German.

So what is Jänner? Is it a word of Austrian Standard German, which happens to be heard in Bavaria too? Or is it a word of the south, which happens to cross a border? Linguists disagree, and the disagreement says a lot about how German works. This lesson first visits Austria, Switzerland and the wider German-speaking world, and then lays out both sides.

Austria

Austria is a federal republic of nine states, with Vienna (Wien) as its capital. On 1 January 2026, according to Statistik Austria, 9,215,956 people lived there. Austria's standard German has its own reference book: since 1951, the Österreichisches Wörterbuch (Austrian Dictionary) has defined the standard for schools and for government use. When Austria joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, its accession treaty listed 23 Austrian food words, in Protocol No. 10. These have the same legal status as the matching words used in Germany; examples are the words for potato, tomato and Brussels sprouts.

Notice the last column. Even Paradeiser, a word people think of as typically Austrian, is labelled by Duden as south and east Austrian, not Austrian everywhere.

Switzerland

Switzerland has four national languages under Article 4 of its constitution: German, French, Italian and Romansh. In 2024, according to the Federal Statistical Office, 61.1 percent of the population named German as a main language, 22.6 percent French, 7.8 percent Italian and 0.4 percent Romansh. People can name more than one main language, so the figures add up to more than 100. Twelve percent named no national language at all; the most common other languages are English, Albanian and Portuguese.

In German-speaking Switzerland, two forms of German divide the work. Swiss German dialects (Schweizerdeutsch) are the usual spoken language, in every social class. Swiss Standard German is the usual written language: in books, laws, newspapers and most advertising. Linguists call such a split diglossia, two varieties for two kinds of use; this one is sometimes called a medial diglossia, because the split runs between speech and writing. Swiss Standard German is also the official written language of Liechtenstein.

Swiss Standard German has its own features, called Helvetisms, many of them borrowed from French. You met das Velo (bicycle), das Billett (ticket) and der Perron (platform) in Lesson 20. Duden also labels parkieren (to park) as Swiss, and in Swiss Standard German a chicken on the menu is Poulet. And as Lesson 1 explained, Swiss spelling has no ß: Strasse, gross, Fussball.

German around the world

• In Europe, German is also an official language in Luxembourg, in Belgium, where the German-speaking Community lives in the far east of the country, and in South Tyrol, an autonomous province of Italy.
• In Namibia, German is a recognised national language. Namibia was a German colony from 1884 to 1915, a period that included the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples by the German Empire from 1904 to 1908. About 30,000 people there speak German as their first language today, mostly descendants of colonial settlers.
• In the United States and Canada, Pennsylvania Dutch, a variety of the German of the Palatinate, is spoken above all in Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities. Texas German is still spoken too.
• In Brazil, the largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, where a variety called Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed, Santa Catarina and Espírito Santo.

Altogether, the Wikipedia overview of the language counts about 95 million first-language speakers, and estimated 80 to 85 million second-language speakers in 2014.

Remember: Austrian and Swiss Standard German are not dialects and not mistakes. A Swiss newspaper that writes Strasse is spelled correctly, and an Austrian form that says Jänner is filled in correctly.

E-pals compare notes (written for this course)

Look at the grammar first: all three write in the Perfekt from Lessons 21 and 22. Nora's parkiert has no ge-, because parkieren ends in -ieren. Then look at the words: Jänner and Paradeiser, Velo, Billett and the Swiss spelling Bahnhofstrasse. Jonas does not share these words, but he understands them, and that is the normal experience across the German-speaking world.

The dispute: one language, how many standards?

The pluricentric view. This view is closely linked with the Australian linguist Michael Clyne, whose 1992 book was called Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. A pluricentric language has several centres, each with its own standard norms. On this view German has national standard varieties, for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the dictionary Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen records the standard language of Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, eastern Belgium and South Tyrol side by side. Supporters point to national institutions: the Österreichisches Wörterbuch, Protocol No. 10, Jänner in official Austrian statistics, and Swiss spelling without ß. The Wikipedia overview adds that German is often called an asymmetric pluricentric language, because the standard of Germany dominates through sheer numbers of speakers.

The pluri-areal view. In 1996 the linguist Hermann Scheuringer described German instead as a pluri-areal language, in an article arguing against horizons limited by state borders. On this view, variation follows regions, and regions cross borders. The evidence from this course is strong. Semmel is the word in Bavaria and in Austria (Lesson 23). Ich bin gesessen is standard from southern Germany through Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria to South Tyrol (Lesson 22). Wiktionary labels Marille as used in Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol and Liechtenstein, and Duden's own label for Paradeiser covers only part of Austria.

The criticism on each side. According to the German-language Wikipedia article on pluricentric languages, supporters of pluri-areality accuse the pluricentric model of "methodological nationalism", treating languages as if they followed national borders; its supporters reject the charge. Critics of pluri-areality reply that it contradicts international sociolinguistic theory, and some regard it as anti-pluricentric, in effect a return to a single centre.

Listening: hear the difference

Wiktionary, the free dictionary, has recordings made by volunteers and labelled by where the speaker comes from.

1. Open Marille. There are two recordings, one labelled Austria and one labelled Germany (Berlin). Play each three times and write down one difference you hear, in the r or in the last vowel. Then compare with the entry's pronunciation line, which writes out two versions: one with the throaty r of Lesson 2, and one with an r made by the tip of the tongue. Which places does the entry list for the word? Answer: Austria, Bavaria, southern Germany, South Tyrol and Liechtenstein.
2. Open Jänner and play the Austrian recording. Which places does the entry list where the word is used? Answer: Austria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Bavaria.
3. Open Paradeiser and play the Austrian recording. Where does Wiktionary say the word is used? Answer: Austria. Compare Duden's narrower label: south and east Austria.

Then replay Deutsche Welle's In Europa, where the friends match food to countries.

4. Where is Nina going next year? Answer: nach Norwegen, with nach because Norwegen has no article.
5. Why is Nawin going to France? Answer: Ich habe da einen Job.

Speaking: where German lives

Alone: choose one German-speaking place from this lesson and present it in six sentences. Say where it is, which languages people speak there, one word or spelling that is typical of it, and one sentence about its history. Record it, then check your prepositions: in der Schweiz, in Österreich, nach Wien.

With a partner: play the e-pals. One of you is from Vienna, one from Zurich, one (if you are three) from Hamburg. Ask each other Wie sagt man bei euch ...? (What do you call ... where you are?) and answer Bei uns sagt man .... Use at least four words from this lesson.

Common misconceptions

• "Swiss German and Swiss Standard German are the same thing." Swiss German dialects are mainly spoken; Swiss Standard German is mainly written.
• "Austrian words are slang or dialect." Many are standard in Austria, recorded in the Österreichisches Wörterbuch and, for some food words, in EU law.
• "Writing Strasse in Switzerland is a spelling mistake." Swiss spelling has no ß; ss is correct there.
• "Every Austrian says Paradeiser." Duden labels it south and east Austrian.
• "Switzerland is a German-speaking country." It has four national languages, and German is a main language for about 61 percent of people.
• "German is spoken only in Europe." There are German-speaking communities in Namibia, North America and Brazil.

Where this leaves us

German has more than one standard. Austria defines its own in the Österreichisches Wörterbuch and gave 23 food words legal status in EU law; Switzerland writes without ß, uses Helvetisms such as Velo, Billett and parkieren, and speaks Swiss German dialects while writing Swiss Standard German. German is also official in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, eastern Belgium and South Tyrol, a recognised national language in Namibia, and alive in communities in North and South America. The pluricentric view sees national standards; the pluri-areal view sees regions that cross borders, and the evidence supports a bit of both. Some differences stop at the border, such as Swiss spelling and Austrian official terms; others ignore it, such as Semmel and bin gesessen. For a learner, the practical rule is simple: pick the standard of the place you are going, and treat the others as different, not wrong. Lesson 25 brings the whole course together.

Sources

1. Statistik Austria. (2026). Bevölkerung zu Jahres-/Quartalsanfang. statistik.at
2. Bundesamt für Statistik. (2026). Sprachen [Hauptsprachen, 1970 to 2024]. bfs.admin.ch
3. Swiss Confederation. (1999, status 2024). Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation (SR 101), Article 4: National languages. fedlex.admin.ch
4. Duden. (n.d.). Jänner; Paradeiser; Erdapfel; Marille; parkieren [Dictionary entries]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Austrian German; Swiss Standard German; German language; Pluricentric language [background]. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
6. Wikipedia-Autoren. (2026). Plurizentrische Sprache [Abschnitt Pluriarealität]. Wikipedia. de.wikipedia.org
7. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). Marille; Jänner; Paradeiser [Entries with audio]. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
8. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). In Europa [Nicos Weg, A1, video and script]. learngerman.dw.com

The last procedure

Twenty-four lessons ago you were learning how to say ä. Since then you have greeted people in three countries, counted, ordered, shopped, asked the way, bought a ticket and told stories about the past. This last lesson is a procedure for pulling it together, in five steps: find out what level you have reached, review the system in two tables, meet the fourth case briefly, take a practice speaking test, and plan what comes next.

Step 1: Know what A1 means

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), published by the Council of Europe, describes six levels from A1 to C2. In summary, its global scale says that at A1 you can use everyday expressions and very simple phrases to meet concrete needs, introduce yourself and others, and ask and answer simple personal questions, for example about where you live, who you know and what you own. The last condition matters most: you can interact in a simple way "provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help."

In the United States, the 2026 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements describe the Novice range in the same spirit. A Novice learner can pick out the general topic and a few basic details when the context is very familiar. They can join in conversations about very familiar, everyday things, using words, phrases, simple sentences and questions. And they can present information about such topics with words, phrases and simple sentences they have practised or memorised. ACTFL's own guide to assigning CEFR ratings to its tests lines up a Novice High rating in speaking or writing with A1.

The point: A1 does not mean speaking without mistakes. It means getting simple, everyday things done in German with a patient partner, and every row of that table is something you can now try.

Step 2: Review the system in two tables

Step 3: A first look at the genitive

German has a fourth case, the genitive. It shows that something belongs to someone or something, like the English 's or of. Duden's notes for learners say it is the most noticeable case, because many masculine and neuter nouns take the ending -s or -es. It appears mainly when one noun describes another, and the question that finds it is Wessen?, whose?

The example forms come from Duden's table. Notice that der now has yet another job: masculine nominative, feminine dative, and now feminine and plural genitive too. You will meet the genitive most often in three ways.

1. With names, add -s and no apostrophe. Deutsche Welle's scripts are full of them: Nicos Tasche (Nico's bag), Yaras Laden (Yara's shop), Nawins Party. Duden's rule is that normally no apostrophe goes before the genitive -s.
2. Names ending in s, ss, ß, tz, z or x take an apostrophe instead of the -s, as long as no article comes first. Duden's examples include Marx' Philosophie; so Max's sister is Max' Schwester.
3. In everyday speech, von with the dative often does the same job: Selma says die Hochzeit von meinem Onkel in Der Ausflug, and Lena worked im Café von meiner Tante in Lesson 21. In writing you will also see das Café meiner Tante.

At A1, recognising the genitive is enough. Producing it with confidence is a goal for the next stage.

Step 4: A practice speaking test (written for this course)

This test is the course's own, built on the A1 description in Step 1. Official exams exist too. The ÖSD Zertifikat A1 from Austria, for example, is aimed at learners aged 14 and over and has a written module (reading, listening, writing) and an oral module (speaking); its website offers a model set to practise with. Deutsche Welle also has an online final test for its A1 course, with a certificate. For now, record yourself doing these three parts, alone or with a partner playing the examiner.

Part 1: Introduce yourself. Use these cue words, one or two sentences each: Name? Alter? Land? Wohnort? Sprachen? Schule? Hobby? Familie? Then add one sentence about something you did last summer.

Part 2: Ask and answer. Choose a topic, Freizeit (free time) or Essen (food). For each cue word, ask a question and answer it. Freizeit: Wochenende, Sport, Musik, Ferien. Essen: Frühstück, Lieblingsessen, Restaurant, Getränk.

Part 3: Make and answer requests. For each situation, make a polite request, then answer it as the other person: a stuffy room with a closed window; you need a pen; you have finished eating in a café; you are lost and need the station.

Then play your recording back and check it against this list. Is the conjugated verb second in every statement? Do the participles and infinitives sit at the end? Are the cases right after mit, zu and aus? Did you stay with du or with Sie? Are ü, ö and the two ch sounds clear? And did you keep going after a mistake? At A1, carrying on matters more than being perfect.

Listening: Deutsche Welle's "Meine Heimat"

For a last review, open Meine Heimat (My home). Selma tells Lisa about her family's home in Syria. Listen once without the script, then once with it.

1. How does Selma describe the family's home in Damascus? Answer: in einem großen Haus, on the edge of the city (am Stadtrand).
2. Who else lives with the family? Answer: her grandmother and grandfather: Meine Großmutter und mein Großvater wohnen auch bei uns.
3. What pet do they have, and what is it called? Answer: einen kleinen Vogel, einen Papagei, called Leli. Notice the accusative endings.
4. Which sentence uses the Perfekt with sein? Answer: Aber am Ende sind viele weggegangen.
5. What news does Selma's mother bring at the end? Answer: the residence permit has come through: Wir dürfen in Deutschland bleiben! Notice the modal verb with bleiben at the end.

Speaking: the whole test, twice

Alone: record the practice test from Step 4 from start to finish without stopping. A week later, record it again without looking at the model answers, and compare the two recordings.

With a partner: take turns as examiner and candidate. The examiner asks the Part 1 cue questions (Wie heißt du? Wie alt bist du? Woher kommst du?), shows the Part 2 cue words, and answers the Part 3 requests. Afterwards, tell each other one thing that went well and one thing to practise.

Step 5: Plan what comes next

• Keep listening. Replay the Deutsche Welle episodes from this course without the script, and note how much more you understand than the first time.
• Keep speaking. Record one minute of German a week, about your week, in the Perfekt.
• Keep a word list by topic. Learn every noun with its article and plural, and every irregular verb with its participle.
• Choose your standard. If you plan to visit Austria or Switzerland, start noticing their words and spellings now.

Common misconceptions

• "A1 means fluent beginner German without mistakes." The CEFR's A1 expects simple interaction with a partner who speaks slowly and helps.
• "The genitive has disappeared from German." It is alive in names (Nicos Tasche) and in writing, even though speech often uses von with the dative.
• "Nico's Tasche needs an apostrophe, as in English." Normally no apostrophe goes before the genitive -s: Nicos Tasche.
• "Von with the dative is wrong." It is the normal spoken alternative: die Hochzeit von meinem Onkel.
• "Der is always masculine." Der is also feminine dative and feminine and plural genitive.
• "You have to know every case perfectly before you speak." Speak first and correct as you go; that is how the speaking tasks in this course are designed.

Looking back

A1 means using everyday expressions and simple sentences to introduce yourself, ask and answer personal questions and get things done, with a partner who speaks slowly and helps. ACTFL lines up a Novice High rating in speaking and writing with that level. Your toolkit is three cases (nominative, accusative and dative, with Wer?, Wen? and Wem?) and a verb that stays in position 2, with infinitives, prefixes and participles at the end. The fourth case, the genitive, shows belonging: des Hundes, der Katze, Nicos Tasche with no apostrophe, Max' Schwester after an x. In speech, von with the dative usually takes its place. You can now take a three-part speaking test of your own, and you know where to find free official model tests. Viel Erfolg, and keep speaking!

Sources

1. Council of Europe. (n.d.). Global scale: Table 1 (CEFR 3.3), Common Reference Levels. coe.int
2. NCSSFL and ACTFL. (2026). NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements: Novice level [Proficiency benchmarks]. actfl.org
3. ACTFL. (n.d.). Assigning CEFR Ratings to ACTFL Assessments. actfl.org
4. Duden. (n.d.). Nomen [Sprachwissen für Lernende: the four cases]; Apostroph [Rechtschreibregeln D 16]. Cornelsen. duden.de
5. Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). Meine Heimat; Der Ausflug; An der Ampel links; Leben in Deutschland [Nicos Weg, A1, videos and scripts]; Final Test A1. learngerman.dw.com
6. Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch (ÖSD). (2025). ÖSD Zertifikat A1 (ZA1). osd.at