Learning German

Whether you learn German well or not, it is very important for beginners. I was not very good at German when I first learned it. Later, I gradually caught up with it through a period of supplementation, so I have a better understanding of it. I wrote it out today, hoping it will be helpful to netizens who have just come into contact with German.

The first thing to make clear is that German is the same as other foreign languages. There is no shortcut when learning German. Therefore, no matter what method you use to learn German, you must thoroughly understand and master every grammar and knowledge point. The purpose of writing how to learn German for beginners is not to teach shortcuts, but to help beginners avoid detours.

1) Some digressions

The purpose of choosing a good school is to meet a good teacher. Usually good teachers are in good schools. I recommend friends in Shanghai to study German in Tongji. SISU also has very good German teachers. The German teacher I had when I started was from Shanghai International Studies University. The teacher surnamed Chen (unfortunately I can’t remember his full name) taught very well and was very patient with underachieving students like me. I later persisted all because of his encouragement, but he changed jobs from SISU about six months ago.

By the way, a good foundation in English is more or less helpful for learning German.

2) Voice

Let’s get to the point. Pronunciation is very important, like the cornerstone of a house, on which all grammar and vocabulary are built. Because German pronunciation is much more regular than English. Therefore, in the early stages of learning German, beginners must practice the pronunciation rules solidly, which will be helpful for advancement; on the contrary, if the pronunciation is inaccurate, the result is: they cannot read it, they cannot pronounce it accurately, they cannot pronounce it accurately, and they cannot remember it. Can't live. ein Beispiel: The classmates in the intensive class I am studying now have at least 200 credit hours, but their pronunciation is also very different. As a boy, I have to admit that there are many students in my class. Girls' pronunciation is much more standard than other boys'. One of the boys would pronounce at least three of the four words incorrectly when reading the words. Listening to him read the words had an indescribable and unique feeling. It was impossible to tell whether he enjoyed reading the words or tortured him. In fact, there is no talent in pronunciation, it just requires more practice. Generally speaking, all issues regarding the rising and falling intonation of words and sentences should be resolved before the 100th lesson. If this is not possible, it is recommended that you go back to your old profession and learn English. There are many books on the market that teach German pronunciation. As long as it helps your pronunciation, it is a good book.

Common errors in pronunciation:

a) Inability to distinguish between long and short sounds. Those who make such mistakes have more serious voice problems, so it is recommended that they be corrected. Situations that are easy to confuse: stellen, stehen; bestellen, bestehen

b) Confusion between a, o, u and their changed vowels ?, ?, ü. There is no excuse for this mistake other than carelessness. However, some people pronounce the vowel change "impurely", with the sound embedded between the vowel change and its vowel. In response to this situation, I borrowed the words of Teacher Li Yang, "The vowels should be full." In the future, when reading, just pronounce the changed vowels "full".

c) The "fixed collocation" in pronunciation is not mastered well:

For example: ismus, tion, sion, ment. As the old saying goes: read more, practice more.

d) Many friends will ask how to pronounce the uvular sound "r". In fact, I personally think that there is no need to overly pursue the production of a very pure uvular sound, because many friends have not had the concept of "uvular sound" before, so it is normal for the uvular sound not to be very pure, and I have not been exposed to it. There are German teachers who require students to pronounce the standard uvular sounds. How to practice uvular tone: face the ceiling and swish mouthwash while brushing your teeth.

e) Light consonantation of voiced consonants b, d, and g

As long as the voiced consonants b, d, and g are not followed by a vowel, they can be devoiced accordingly. Become p, t, k. There is only one exception: -The pronunciation of ig has its pronunciation rule /?/. The consonant combinations -th- and -dt only produce a /t/ sound.

3) Word order

Whether the sentence is a single sentence or a clause, please first find out the subject, predicate and object of the sentence (in a few cases there is no object). Beginners will not be exposed to the situation where the first and second participles are used as adjectives, so it should not be difficult to find the subject, predicate and object of the sentence. Usually the subject noun or personal pronoun takes the first case, and the object noun or personal pronoun takes the third and fourth cases. The situation of es as the formal subject will not be repeated here. It is roughly the same as the "antecedent" it in English.

I won’t talk about single sentences

In the declarative sentence in the subordinate clause (some textbooks also call it the "direct statement"), the verb predicate firmly occupies the second component of the main clause. That is to say: there is another component before the verb, which may be a subject, an adverbial, or an object, and then it is followed by the predicate verb. This is consistent with the single-sentence indicative form. In a clause, the verb is usually placed at the end of the sentence.

Another: If the predicate verb controls both a third case and a fourth case in the sentence, and both are personal pronouns, the fourth case personal pronoun is placed before the third case personal pronoun.

Erst am n?chsten Tag hat er es mir gemeldet.

4) Gender and singular and plural changes of nouns

Most nouns in German have Sex, it is normal to sometimes misremember sex, just remember to correct it in time. When memorizing words, you should read the definite article and the noun together (most academic friends can do this, I have never seen anyone who is too lazy to even read the definite article when reading a noun), so remember It is not difficult to determine the gender of a noun. There are some tips:

Loanwords (if a noun starts with C, the word must be a foreign word, and its pronunciation is often irregular and needs to be compared. phonetic symbol) is a masculine noun when it refers to an occupation or a type of person. In a semantic context, it will be used as a feminine noun if the object indicating such a profession or belonging to this set is female:

der Student, die Studentin (student student) der Kunde, die Kundin ( Customer) der Chemiker (chemist) der Passant (passer-by)

The foreign words in German nouns have special changes in the fourth case of the singular and the first and fourth cases of the plural, that is, adding - (e) n

Die Studenten fragen einen Passanten nach dem Weg.

The suffix ismus of the masculine noun, lismus means "ism"

Geh?ren Sozialismus und Kommunismus dem Marxismus

Are socialism and communism Marxism?

As feminine nouns, foreign words will have their fixed endings:

-e:

die Chemie (chemistry) die Chance (opportunity, possibility) die Note (score) die Periode (era)

There are exceptions: der Chinese/die Chinasin (Chinese) der Charme (charm, charm) das Cafe (coffee shop)

Foreign Word suffixes -e and -ik:

Nouns with -ik -ie suffixes generally indicate knowledge fields or study majors.

The stress on such nouns is at the end of the word

Mathematik (mathematics) Mathematiker (mathematician)

Physik (physics) Physiker (physicist)

Politik (politics) Politiker (Political Scientist)

Psychologie (Psychology) Psychologe (Psychologist)

Biologie (Biology) Biologe (Biologist)

Geographie (Geography) Geograph (Geographer)

Philosophie (Philosophy) Philosoph (Philosopher)

-ion, -tion; -sion, -ssion:

Union, Lektion, Station, Produktion, Nation, Aktion, Revolution, Delegation

Prozession, Impression, Kommission

Explosion, Revision

Other loanwords and nouns Mostly neuter or masculine nouns

der/das Bonbon (candy) das Theater (theater) das Tempo (beat, speed) das Tennis (tennis) der Test -e/-s (test, test) der Text-e (text, text) der Typ (type, model, typical)

The following is a table of noun suffixes, each suffix has a corresponding "gender"

⑴ Masculine noun suffix

－er der Lehrer der Schüler der Arbeiter-ist der Kommunist der Kapitalist

－ent der Student der Dozent der Moment (moment, moment)

－or der Professor der Faktor der Motor

－ismus, －lismus (omitted)

⑵ Neutral noun suffix

－chen

－lein

－ment das Experiment das

Contains ument das Fundament das Moment (factor, impulse, opportunity)

⑶ Feminine noun suffix< /p>

－ion

－tion

－t?t die Universit?t die Qualit?t die Kapazit?t

－ik die Musik die Fabrik

-ie

I hope beginners who are learning German can forget it as quickly as possible after reading this list of common noun suffixes. As BB said, it is easier for learners to remember the rules of noun suffixes if they are summarized by themselves. Only in this way can you master the changes in sex, number and pattern skillfully.

5) Changes

You must spend energy to memorize them when you are a beginner. Try to find the rules yourself. For example, in the definite article, in addition to the masculine first case, der will only appear in the feminine form of the second and third cases and the plural form of the second case.

For another example, den always appears only in the masculine form of the fourth case and the plural form of the third case. If des appears, it will only be the second grid, and if dem appears, it will only be the third grid.

In addition, if you carefully compare the definite article list and the indefinite article list, you can find that in addition to the masculine definite article and indefinite article der/ein in the first case, and the neutral ein/das, Outside the neutral ein/das of the fourth figure. The other definite articles in the table have exactly the same endings as their corresponding indefinite articles.

M N F

N - - die/eine

G des/eines des/eines der/einer

D dem/einem dem /einem der/einer

A den/einen - die/eine

The adjective conjugation table is based on the above-mentioned definite and indefinite article tables. It is difficult to memorize adjective conjugations by just reciting them. Even if you use the Ettinghaus method of memorizing them seven times in ten days, it is difficult to remember them for life. To remember all the strong, weak, and mixed adjectives at the same time, I think practicing German writing regularly is the best way.

6) Pronouns

There is nothing particularly difficult, just pay attention to the following two points:

⑴ The indefinite pronoun derived from ein, this grammatical point seems to be used in many have been ignored in basic textbooks. Mention it here:

M N F pL.

N einer eines eine welche

G eines eines einer welchen

D einem einem einer welchen

A einen eines eine welche

Example 1) - Habt ihr schon Tickets? - Nein, wir müssen noch fur welche besorgen.

welche replaces none The plural form of the noun Tickets.

Example 2) - Inge, der Kaffee ist fertig. - Danke, ich m?chte jetzt keinen

keinen is the fourth masculine substitution der Kaffee here.

Example 3) Er ist einer der besten Studenten dieser Klass.

einer replaces ein Student.

⑵ Relative pronouns

The case of a relative pronoun depends on its position in the clause

7) Prepositions

Prepositions are used to It connects the components of a sentence and can determine the juxtaposition, opposition, accompaniment, extension and even subordination of the various components in the sentence. It is for this reason that prepositions are extremely important. What I want to say here is that because there are a large number of verb-preposition collocation combinations in German, beginners need to remember the collocation forms of the verbs they have learned and their possible prepositions from the beginning. Like me, because of exams It is not worth the gain to hastily grasp this important test point from scratch just because of the needs.

Phrases formed by matching the same verb with different prepositions can have completely different meanings

bestehen aus D consists of...

bestehen auf D insist... …

bestehen in A lies in...

jm. über etw. klagen complain to jm etwas gegen jn. klagen sue, accuse jn

um A klagen sigh

8) Numbers, time and prices

Please firmly establish the concepts of numbers and time. This is because: whether in your usual reading choices or at all levels Among the exam questions (not just German, but also English, etc.), there are listening and other questions. The concept of numbers and time will appear repeatedly, and its expression may be: time, moment, day of the week, date, price or change of goods, phone number or even room or house number. This type of question usually accounts for as little as two points in listening, and as many as three or four points. The score may not seem big, but for a score hovering around the passing mark, it is definitely worth spielen eine gro?e Rolle's.

Why is this issue raised? Because I think I did a very bad job in this regard. When I clearly hear ?bermorgen, I accidentally choose Vorgestern. After hearing clearly vier Mark und fünf Pfennig plus zwei Mark, I would choose 7.50 Mark.

I've been reflecting recently, and this may be related to my living habits: I never have a sense of time in my daily life, I don't bring a watch when I go out, I always let the salesperson calculate the change when I buy things, and I can't even add or subtract two-digit numbers in my daily life. I’m too lazy to forget it, so it’s no wonder it affects my math and foreign language listening scores.