Hanse Study

Welcome to this German course. Please note that these courses are cumulative, so if you did not complete the previous courses you might face some difficulties in understanding.

We will start with learning a few cognates. Cognates are words which sound very similar in different languages. For example the word “Doctor” or the word “Engineer”.

So imagine you are in Germany visiting the Oktoberfest and you would like a beer. The german word for beer is:

Bier

Similar to English, German also has articles. One of them is the indefinite article, which does not specify the thing we are talking about in any way. In english we have “a” and “an”, so if we want to say a beer, we would say:

ein Bier

One more time.

ein Bier

So the german word for “a” is: 

ein

Let us try another very easy cognate, the word for glass.

a glass

ein Glas

One more time.

ein Glas

Similar to the english word glass, the german word Glas can refer to the material glass as in windows are made of Glas or to the container for a beverage. Let us look at an example for that.  In English we would say a glass of beer. In German we do not need to say of, we literally say a glass beer, meaning a glass of beer. Now try just adding the three words you already learned.

a glass of beer

ein Glas Bier

And one more time.

ein Glas Bier

But maybe you want to drink something warm instead, coffee for example. The german word for coffee is:

Kaffee

a coffee

ein Kaffee

Now although you could order a glass of coffee, most coffee is served in cups. A cup is:

ein Becher

Again.

ein Becher

In German ein Becher can be used to refer to cups made from ceramics or glass, but it is mostly used for cups made from paper or plastic.

Now as we learned, try to say a cup of coffee.

ein Becher Kaffee

One more time

ein Becher Kaffee

Ok. Only drinking does not fill our stomach, so now let us try to learn to ask for something to eat. Let us ask for a burger:

ein Burger

It is basically the same word as in English.

So if we walk into a restaurant and order we do not just say ein Burger. You would not do that in English either. You would be understood but you would come across as rude or impolite. So the polite way of asking for something is: 

Ich hätte gerne …

If you were to translate it into English you would say: I want … or I would like …

Ich hätte gerne …

One more time.

Ich hätte gerne …

(The word hätte has an “ä”, which is one of the German special letters. It can also be replaced by “ae”)

Now let us order something to drink first:

I would like a beer.

Ich hätte gerne ein Bier.

Repeat one more time.

Ich hätte gerne ein Bier.

Now the girl behind the counter asks you if you are gonna drink from the bottle or if you want a glass. How would you say: I would like a glass.

Ich hätte gerne ein Glas.

Now listen closely.

Ich hätte gerne ein Glas.

Compare the two sentences you just learned to how one would say:

I would like a Burger.

Ich hätte gerne einen Burger.

Did you notice something ? Listen again.

Ich hätte gerne einen Burger.

The speaker said einen instead of ein. This is because even though both words normally get the article ein, the word for burger is male and the words for glass and beer are neuter.

Neuter words, like a beer  or a glass, do not need to change their article.

Opposed to them, if you are asking for a male noun, like burger, you have to swap “ein” for “einen”.

This is because in the sentence:

Ich hätte gerne SOMETHING.

This something is the object, to check if a word is the object, we can try using the same words from the sentence and the word “what” to ask for it. Like this:

I would like SOMETHING.

What would I like ?

There are other kinds of objects, with different questions like “Whose something is that ?”

We call this object, which we ask for with “what” the accusative object or “Akkusativ Objekt”

A mnemonic bridge to help you remember: If you ACCUSE somebody you need to say WHAT your ACCUSATION is.  You could also think of it as the what-object, for all the phrases “What do you have there ?”, “What do you need ?” or  “What would you like ?” the object in its accusative form would be the answer. 

“What do you have there ?” 

Ein Bier.

“What do you need ?” 

Ein Glas.

“What would you like ?”

Einen Burger.

Ask one more time for a Beer.

Ich hätte gerne ein Bier.

Do you remember the other two words we learned ?

A coffee

ein Kaffee

A cup

ein Becher

Both of those words are classified as male, so they are treated similar to the word Burger.

Now try to ask for those things.

I would like a coffee.

Ich hätte gerne einen Kaffee.

I would like a cup.

Ich hätte gerne einen Becher.

Did you remember to exchange the article ? 

If you did, that is great. Using the right article is one of the biggest difficulties people face when learning german. Especially for native english speakers, because they do not have gendered nouns.

That concludes this episode, I hope you could follow well and see you in the next episode.