Watching German television online

Posted on by
4

The subject came up during one of my lessons: Is it possible to watch German television online?

I definitely recommend to immerse yourself fully with anything German (listening to online radio shows, checking out German language YouTube clips, reading German language newspapers and magazines) so watching German TV would be a huge benefit for any student regardless of their skill level.

In actual fact, even if you are a complete beginner it would be helpful regardless of whether or not you understand the entire program: There will always be certain words and phrases that are being repeated and that will stick in your memory.

The good news is that it is indeed possible to view German TV programs online and from what I can tell (living in Ireland) there do not appear to be any restrictions in viewing those from a foreign internet connection.

Both of the main public TV channels have their online players if you missed a show:

The ZDF is the most easily accessible one. Just click on this link and all the programs are showing up for the previous week. Some (all?) of their programs also have German subtitles (“Untertitel”) available. Just click on the link underneath the screen that show an ear with hearing aid. This really beneficial if your German is not yet up to scratch to catch it all without this aid.

The ARD as well as all the regional channels associated with it also have their own player. Once you access this website you will see a heading that says “Sendung verpasst?”. Click on this and it gives you the option to sort the shows by “Sendedatum” (date) and by name (“Sendungen A-Z”). Once you choose which show you want to watch you then also have to click the camera icon. It takes a bit getting used to but once done, you should be flying.

The private stations I checked only appear to show clips of their shows and are often introduced by commercials but if you really can’t wait for the next season of I’M A CELEBRITY feel free to view clips of the German equivalent and marvel at how stiffly the presenters are trying to be funny. Ant and Dec they sure ain’t.

Looking for Freedom on the Road South

Posted on by
Reply

OK, time to switch off your taste buds, but recently I discussed with an Irish friend of mine who is fluent in German how helpful some of the 1970s German Schlager (pop songs) are when it comes to learning the lingo. They can be pretty annoying, but because they quickly burn their way into your memory will help to remember certain phrases much easier than if you just tried to remember the individual words and sentences. (Also check out Daliah Lavi’s OH WANN KOMMST DU? for learning the days of the week amongst other things.)

He mentioned Tony Marshall’s Auf der Straße nach Süden, a song I hadn’t listened to in ages, and then emphasised that this was quite clearly the model that David Hasselhoff’s Looking for Freedom was based on.

Of course, he was spot on. How could I never have noticed the fact that both songs sound virtually identical? Judge for yourself: Look at the first video from 1978. Marvel at the fact that singers as tone deaf as Tony Marshall became Schlager Stars. Then notice how badly the audience clap to the rhythm and tell yourself: “That explains a lot.” Do not, however, forget to also have one ironic eye scan the lyrics that are also printed on the YouTube page as they will help you e.g. with some of the prepositions (“Auf der Straße nach Süden/mit der Sonne als Ziel”) as well as with some general vocabulary.

Then listen to The Hoff’s video and salute the man who was single handedly responsible for bringing the Berlin wall down. (You did know it was him, didn’t you?)

Easy German on YouTube

Posted on by
Reply

The fun videos on YouTube are teaching (or better: demonstrating) the use of practical German. They were created by Solarnet.tv and are meant to complement any regular German language course. They were filmed in Muenster and are bringing back memories from my own time in the university there. In case you’re wondering: Lesson 5 appears to have been deleted by YouTube.

Common Mistake #2 – Incorrect translation of “when”

Posted on by
Reply

One thing that I hear time and again by even my more advanced students are sentences like: “Ich werde dich besuchen, wann ich wieder in Irland bin” or “Wenn ich 10 Jahre alt war….”.

The English word “when” has three different translations in German.

The most well known is wann.

“Wann” is only ever used in questions?

Wann kommst Du mich wieder besuchen? (When will you visit me again?)

Wenn of course looks and sounds very similar and can therefore easily be mixed up, but is used in sentences (not questions) for future events or when talking about regular occurences:

Wenn ich nach Dublin fahre, werde ich dich auch besuchen. (When I travel to Dublin I will also visit you.)
Immer wenn ich Kopfschmerzen habe, nehme ich eine Tablette. (Whenever I have a headache I take a tablet.)

Last but not least we have als which again is used in sentences when discussing past events such as:

Als ich 10 Jahre alt war, habe ich erstmals in einem Flugzeug gesessen. (When I was 10 years old I sat in a plane for the very first time.)

So make sure to become aware anytime you want to use the English “when” and use
*Wann in questions
*Wenn in sentences discussing the future or regular occurences
*Als in sentences discussing the past

Common German mistakes # 1 – Improper use of the tenses

Posted on by
Reply

I’d like to start a little irregular series of blog posts about common mistakes often made by English language speakers learning the German language.

One of the most common though erroneous conceptions is that everything can be translated 1:1 from one language to the other. False Friends are an area in this regard that we have already explored.

What tenses can be used at what times in a way also falls into a similar area as the main tenses are available in both the English and the German language and it is therefore assumed that the usage will be identical, however, there are a number of discrepancies.

So let’s have a look at those.

PRESENT

The good news is that the English Present tense is also translated with the German Present.

The car is fast.
Das Auto ist schnell.

FUTURE

One way of translating the English Future tense is by using the correct form of werden plus the Infinitive.

Tomorrow we will drive to Dublin.
Morgen werden wir nach Dublin fahren.

This is a very easy form to learn and is generally considered to be the only way to handle that tense, however, there is a second way. Have you ever heard German language speakers use the English present tense to describe events in the future (“Tomorrow we drive to Dublin.”)? That is because they make the error of translating the proper German equivalent incorrectly into English as in German it is quite normal to use the German Present tense to translate the English Future!

Morgen fahren wir nach Dublin.

This way of describing the future in German is generally used when it is quite clear from the context (Morgen) that we are talking about future events. The werden form of the future is used primarily if this is not clear from the context or if we really want to emphasise that we *will* definitely be doing something.

SIMPLE PAST

So what’s the score on the English Präteritum?

He went to the cinema last night.

It can be translated as either a German Präteritum (Er ging gestern Abend ins Kino.) or a German Perfekt (Er ist gestern Abend ins Kino gegangen.)

The difference is that the German Präteritum is primarily used in the written language (e.g. journalistic, non-fiction etc) and the German Perfekt mainly in normal everyday spoken language (incl “quoted” text in narratives). The only exceptions are the German modal verbs (dürfen, können, müssen, mögen, sollen, wollen) that are generally always translated with the German Präteritum.

PERFEKT

The English Perfekt tense through the use of since or for generally describes events that started in the past and continue into the present, e.g. I have been living in Ireland for six years indicates that this started six years ago and continues to this day.

In order to express the same in German you will need to use the German Present tense.

Ich lebe (schon) seit sechs Jahren in Irland.

If you were to use the German Perfect tense form instead (Ich habe sechs Jahre lang in Irland gelebt.) you would indicate on the other hand that you lived in Ireland for six years, but now no longer do.

PLUSQUAMPERFEKT

I don’t want to go too much into this tense. Though not too complex, it is one of the last tenses you’d learn when studying German and the good news is that the usage is the same in both languages.

Mark Twain on learning German

Posted on by
Reply

While preparing some material for a lesson I came across a piece by Mark Twain about learning the German language and got sidetracked reading it. The title of it, The Awful German Language, will already reveal some lines of his thought. It is often painfully funny. Don’t read it if you haven’t started learning German yet (it just may discourage you), but do read it when you already had a few lessons. I’d be very surprised if his line of reasoning doesn’t ring a bell or two with you.

Flow chart for the four German cases

Posted on by
Reply

One of the most difficult aspect of learning German grammar – especially for native English speakers who are not really exposed to that concept – is the idea of having four cases for nouns (Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ).

There is a good overview available about those at About.com and their list of Dative verbs can also be found here. Do yourself a favour and copy the text of those lessons into a Word document and save it on your computer. My understanding is that the previous About.com writer is no longer involved in it and as soon as they find a replacement the old documents that are really quite helpful will be taken offline and no longer be available, so download anything you need from there to your computer to save you disappointment at a possible later stage.

Despite having a good overview of the four different German cases knowing when to use them can still be a bit intimidating. The truth is that there are really only a handful of major reasons for picking one case over the other. I therefore decided to put a little basic flow chart together to help you identify when what case is used. That chart should cover probably about 80-90% of all scenarios you are going to encounter. Scenarios not included in this one are e.g. the use of the Akkusativ in certain time and distance expressions (Jeden Montag fahre ich zur Arbeit. Das Krankenhaus ist einen Kilometer entfernt.)

Click on the image to get the full sized version. Any comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. A PDF file of this document has also been made available on the Training Material section of this site.