To have or to be: Conjugations

German and English share a common ancestry, and as such there are many similar things about the two languages that make learning one from the other easier than it could otherwise be. This shared root branched off many years ago though, so for all the similarities there are also a number of differences some of them really quite stark.

One of the main differences is the level of conjugation of the verbs in the language. Conjugation is just a fancy name for changing the end of a verb (a doing word such as 'go' or 'play') depending on what is 'doing' the verb. So looking at 'play' as an example; in English we would say:

• I play
• You play
• He/She/It plays
• They play
• We play

So if we are talking in the third person singular (He/She/It) we add an 's' to the end of the verb to make the verb match the noun. In German the concept is the same but there are more endings, and instead of simply adding letters to the infinitive (The fancy name for the verb in it's original form, in English this will strictly include the word 'to' as in 'to play') you must first take some letters off. In German the way to say 'to play' is 'spielen' and it is conjugated like so:

• Ich spiele
• Du spielst
• Er/sie/es spielt
• Sie spielen
• Wir Spielen
• Ihr Spielt

So as you can see it's a little more complicated, but it's really not so bad. The majority of verbs that I have seen so far in German end in 'en' and of those, most follow this pattern. There are though one or two more awkward ones and two in particular that you will use a lot. The verbs 'to have' (haben) and 'to be' (sein).

Let's look at 'haben' first:

Ich habe	I have
Du hast	You have
Sie haben	You have (formal)
Er hat	He has
Sie hat	She has
Es hat	It has
Ihr habt	You have (plural)
Wir haben	We have
Sie haben	They have

It's a little weird, but not too out there. If you can remember the rules from the standard conjugations then the endings will at least work as a prod to the correct answer, even if they don't get you all the way there. 

What about the verb 'to be'?:

• I am
• You are
• He/she/it is
• We are
• They are

'Wait a second, that's not German!' I hear you cry. Well, no it isn't, it's clearly English, but I wanted to draw your attention to how odd it would look if it was a foreign language. I mean they all in essence provide the same meaning, but the form completely changes depending on who or what you are talking about. Hopefully with that in mind, the German equivalent won't be so scary. 

ich bin	I am
du bist	You are
Sie sind	You are (formal)
er ist	He is
sie ist	She is
es ist	It is
Ihr seid	You are (plural)
wir sind	We are
sie sind	They are

So, there you have it, haben and sein, to have and to be. Once you have learned these your German journey (like mine) will be well underway! Well kinda... I'll explain one of the things that's causing me a little more grief in my next post. 

Duolingo

One of the aims of this blog is to flag and gather together all the useful resources that are out there on the big wide web for anyone trying to learn German. I'll note the strengths and weaknesses of any utilities and also mark anything that should be avoided.

the first such resource I'd like to talk about is Duolingo. When I first read about it I was amazed that it existed. A structured, gamified learning material that is completely free, and available on web and mobile? It sounded far too good to be true, but real it is. The resource is not specifically for German, but features a range of languages that can be learnt by a speaker of any of the others. The range at the moment includes French, Portuguese and Spanish and there appear to be others in the pipeline.

So how does it work? First you create an account, and tell it what language you want to learn, and which language you can already speak. Once you have done this you get taken to the skills tree.

The start of the skill tree

The skill tree a a tiered set of subjects. All of which need to be completed to advance to the next step, so on completing 'Basics 1', you get access to 'Basics 2' and 'Phrases', but you must compete both of these to move on to the next tier. The subjects then contain anything from two to seven (or maybe more, but seven is the highest I have seen) lessons. 

The lessons themselves are each formed of around 15 to 20 questions. These will often be to translate (in my case) an English phrase into German, or a German phrase into English. The translations give a little bit of wiggle room as to the interpretations of a sentence or any individual word. However it pays strict attention to those things that are harder to remember, such as the gender of nouns or pluralisations. 

During each level you have a number of lives. If you answer all the questions without losing all of your lives you complete the lesson and can move on to the next. If you lose all of your lives then an owl does a sad face and you have to start from the beginning. 

There are incentives along the way in the form of lingots, an in game currency that can be used to unlock bonus lessons and XP that is given for every competed level. This XP is effectively your running score, that you can track against other users, if you are of a competitive bent. It also provides gentle nudges via e-mail (that can be turned off) to keep your streak of consecutive days played going.

A sample question

The whole adds up to engaging experience that, when at its best enables you to learn without realising it, your desire to get to the next level being more of a driving force than the growth in your vocabulary. It isn't all good however. Much of the wiggle room surrounding particular sentences is crowd sourced (by a user not having a correct answer accepted). As a result I have read of the interpretations becoming more mechanical towards the end of the skill tree. As more people use the tool though, this may become less of a problem. 

A more serious pedagogical issue is that although it takes pluralisation, cases and gender quite seriously in the answers there isn't a structured way of learning them, instead it is a case of translating enough sentences that you learn the concepts through osmosis. There are some tips and hints on the subject pages, but they often lack the detail required to get the ideas stuck in your mind.

That doesn't stop Duolingo being a great learning tool, but it does mean that it's probably not sufficient on it's own to learn an entire language. That said, it doesn't truly stand alone though, as anyone using it can access the internet and thus all the other resources. If you are planning or currently attempting to learn German it should definitely be part of your repertoire, even if only for a quick lesson or two while on the bus.

Mission statement

So here it is, a statement of intent. My good lady wife and I have spoken for a while of potentially moving abroad for a bit. It's still not something we are certain about, and yet may be all pie in the sky, but after a number of these conversations we decided that if we were to go anywhere it would probably be Germany.
Of course one thing that would make living Germany a harder task than say Australia or Canada (for example) is the language. It's different, you see. And thus if this is ever to become more than a pipe dream, the language barrier will need to be broken.
So why the blog? Such a task takes a motivation that can't always be achieved by telling yourself 'I must do this'. So I've decided to write about it, hoping at the shame of having nothing to write about will force me to re-double my efforts should I get lazy. There is a more altruistic edge to writing about this plan too. There are a huge number of free resources online to aid in any language-learning journey. I hope that over time I can document and review a number of these resources, as well as providing a few tips (should I encounter any) for any one else that may be attempting the same thing.
That is all for another time though. For now, thanks for reading.