German GrammarPod

This podcast covers relative pronouns after prepositions and some other special cases. To listen to this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

This podcast is about cases, which are a way of showing what role the different words are playing in a sentence. German has four cases: This podcast describes how cases work in general, then goes on to look at the nominative case in more detail. To listen to the audio file directly on your computer, click here. Or, if you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, click the link on the top left of this blog.

Please click here to listen to the adjectival nouns podcast directly on your computer.

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This episode is about more of the really practical stuff you need to know about the conditional. To listen to the episode directly on your computer, click here.

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The conditional basically means sentences with a would. For instance, if I were rich, I would buy a house. To download this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

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This podcast gives you a wide range of tips and tricks for learning a language. It focuses on German, but these tips and tricks could be applied to learning any language. To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here.

Word order has a highly complex set of rules in any language. So many, that I'm not convinced anyone has ever managed to write them all down for any given language. For pretty well every rule there is an exception, and there are even exceptions to exceptions. This podcast focuses on the most productive rules about exceptions to standard word order, the ones that have a big effect on sentence structure and apply to lots of sentences. It also gives suggestions about what approach to take if you want to be right all of the time instead of most of the time (plus a guide to the level of effort that could take), or what to do to be right enough of the time to be fully understood, without attempting perfection (learning the most productive rules). It also gives some further detail on how standard word order works. To listen to the podcast on your computer, click here.

German word order in a completely standard, neutral main clause is a follows: * nominative subject, * conjugated verb, * accusative then dative pronoun, * nouns with definite determiners, in the order dative, accusative * most adverbials * nicht – or other negation particles * adverbials of manner * nouns with indefinite determiners, in the order dative, accusative * the complement, and finally * any other verbs. My podcast on German word order contains more information about what those terms mean, and also a more detailed version of word order. You can listen to the podcast directly on your computer by clicking here.

The pluperfect is the ich hatte es getan or I had done tense. You make the pluperfect in German by taking the perfect tense (the ich habe es getan tense) and changing the auxiliary verb (the habe or the bin etc.) into the simple past version of itself (hatte or war etc.). So instead of ich habe ein Eis gegessen – I have eaten an ice cream you get ich hatte ein Eis gegessen – I had eaten an ice cream. And instead of ich bin im Ozean geschwommen – I have swum in the ocean you get ich war im Ozean geschwommen – I had swum in the ocean. Basically, where you would use the pluperfect in English, you also use it in German. There's one exception to this though. Where you are referring to a situation that started in the distant past, but which is still ongoing at a point in the nearer past that you are talking about, although you'd use the pluperfect in English, in German you'd use the simple past. For instance: Since I had lived in Munich, I had been visiting him every Saturday = Seitdem ich in München wohnte, besuchte ich ihn jeden Samstag. To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here.

The simple past - also known as the preterite or the imperfect tense - is equivalent in form to the English I did form (ich tat es). The way that regular verbs form their simple past is by a ich kaufe - I buyich kaufte -I bought du kaufst - you buydu kauftest - you bought. I have doneI did haben seinmüssen, sollen, mögen, können, dürfen, wollen here