Archive for 'Language'
German tenses in use: Futur I Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 22, 2011
a) The Futur I is used to express that an action will only begin after the moment of speaking, especially when you are planning something or making prognoses. You form sentences with a conjugated form of the auxiliary verb “werden” (will). Singular Plural 1st person ich werde(I will) wir werden(we will) 2nd person du…
German tenses in use: Plusquamperfekt Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 19, 2011
The German Plusquamperfekt tense is equivalent to the English Past Perfect tenses (both the simple and the progressive form). Thus, you use this tense in order to refer to an action or actions that had happened before another action in the past. But the German Plusquamperfekt is seldom used in independent statements. It is rather…
German tenses in use: Perfekt Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 16, 2011
The Perfekt is commonly used in spoken German to refer to the past. Formation: You generally form active sentences in the Perfekt by using a conjugated form of the auxiliary verbs ‘sein’ (to be) or ‘haben’ (to have) and the past participle of the verb. Here are the conjugations of sein and haben…
German tenses in use: Präteritum Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 14, 2011
The Präteritum is equivalent to the English Simple Past tense, so to speak. But usually, the Präteritum is not used in everyday language in German. It is rather used as a literary language. Germans commonly opt for the Perfekt in their speech in order to refer to the past – which will be discussed in…
German tenses in use: Präsens Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 12, 2011
The German language has six tenses: Präsens, Präteritum, Perfekt, Plusquamperfekt, Futur I, and Futur II. Unlike English, there aren’t any special continuous forms in German. For starters, let’s have a closer look to the Präsens, which is basically equivalent to the English tenses Simple Present and Present Progressive. You can use the Präsens under four…
German ‘sich fügen’ and ‘hinzufügen’ Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 7, 2011
I have recognized that some of you try to express the request that ‘other members of Facebook should add you’ while using German. This has always resulted in the phrase “Bitte fügen Sie mich”, which is ineffectual (!) because it literally means: ‘Please, conform me.’. So, I guess you have used Google Translator. Fortunately, I…
Are you really ‘boring’ or just ‘bored’? – Using German “langweilig” correctly Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 2, 2011
I have recognized that some of you who practice their German on Facebook try to convey their feeling of boredom by saying: “Ich bin langweilig.” I assume that you simply wanted to express “I am bored.” But what you really said was this: “I am boring.” Whereas English distinguishes the precise meaning of whether you…