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.

In the previous lesson we learned how to greet someone and how to say what I want. So try to say:

I want a cup of coffee. 

Ich möchte einen Kaffee.

You could also have said:

Ich möchte einen Becher Kaffee.

You are at a formal event meeting your boss, how would you greet him ? 

Guten Tag.

You are meeting your friend on the street, how would you greet him ?

Hallo.

How do you say “Thank you” ?

Dankeschön.

In our first lesson we learned that there are male and neuter nouns in German.

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

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

But if the male noun is the subject it does not need to change, let us look at an example.

The German word for “a man” is:

ein Mann

Based on the following sentence, is “man” male or female ? 

Ich hätte gerne einen Mann.

So the speaker swapped “ein” for “einen” because man is male. But this was only done because “a man” was male AND the object. Listen to a sentence with it as the subject.

Ein Mann hätte gerne einen Kaffee.

A man would like a coffee.

So as you probably already guessed, if there are male and neuter nouns there are also female nouns. But female nouns are very nice and do us a huge favor, because they have a different base article, so they are easy to distinguish.

a cola

eine Cola

a lemonade

eine Limonade

And if you ask for them you will notice there is another very nice thing about them.

Ich hätte gerne eine Cola.

Ich möchte eine Limonade.

Did you notice ? Similar to neuter nouns, female nouns have the same article whether they are the subject or the accusative object.

We already learned the German word for a man, so let us also learn the word for “a woman”:

eine Frau

Easy to remember: “a man” is male, “a woman” is female.

So try to replace “a man” with “a woman” in the sentence we learned earlier.

Ein Mann hätte gerne einen Kaffee. 

Eine Frau hätte gerne einen Kaffee.

Let us learn one more German word. 

a bottle

eine Flasche

How would you say: “a bottle of water” ?

eine Flasche Wasser

a bottle of Cola

eine Flasche Cola

a cup of coffee

einen Becher Kaffee

Please.

Bitte.

Thank you.

Dankeschön.

a bottle of lemonade

eine Flasche Limonade

Learning the gender of the words takes time and practice. But it will greatly improve how German native speakers perceive your German. With this, we will conclude this lesson.