German A1 Mini Course: Lesson 1

In this first lesson of this free German mini course, we will look at the first simple sentence structures, verb conjugations in the present tense, and personal pronouns.

Presentation

Let’s listen to a short introductory dialogue. This simple dialogue will be the basis of our first lesson.

Hallo, ich bin Toni und will Deutsch sprechen
• Hallo Toni, ich bin Julia, die neue Deutschlehrerin
• Julia du bist meine letzte Chance
• Toni du bist ein hoffnungsloser Fall. Ich versuche es aber trotzdem!

And here is the phrase-by-phrase translation from German to Italian.

Let’s analyze this simple dialogue in German step by step.

Introducing Yourself in German

The first character we meet is Toni, who introduces himself by saying:

Hallo, ich bin Toni

Hallo is the most commonly used greeting in German and is an informal way of saying hello.

More formal greetings are Guten Tag and Guten Abend, which respectively mean Good Morning and Good Evening:

Perhaps the most famous German greeting abroad is auf Wiedersehen (goodbye). On the phone, you can use auf Wiederhören (goodbye) instead. Let’s repeat:

When introducing himself, Toni said Ich bin Toni, I am Toni. This is the first time we see the verb “to be,” in German sein.

The verb sein conjugated in the first person is ich bin. The conjugations of the verb “to be” in the singular present tense are:

The German personal pronoun “es”

es ist doesn’t have a direct translation because it corresponds to a neuter subject that doesn’t have an equivalent in English.

The definite articles in German are the famous der, die, and das, which we will discuss in detail later.

For now, it’s enough to know that der is the masculine article, for example, der Mann (the man), die is the feminine article, for example, die Frau (the woman), das is the neuter subject, for example, das Kind (the child).

Let’s see some examples using the verb sein:

Note again, because the child, das Kind, is neuter, we must use the personal pronoun es, not er as might be spontaneous.

The German verb for “to want”

At the beginning of the lesson, we saw the verb “to be,” sein. The second verb we see is the verb “to want,” wollen.

In the sentence ich will Deutsch sprechen, the verb wollen is conjugated in the first person singular: ich will = I want.

The conjugation in the singular present tense is:

For example, we can say:

Moving on, in the dialogue, you heard Julia greeting (Hallo) and introducing herself (ich bin…):

Hallo Toni ich bin Julia

and then adding

ich bin die neue Deutschlehrerin

translated piece by piece

Deutschlehrerin is a classic compound word as there are many in German. It is composed of Deutsch, German, and (die) Lehrerin, teacher (female):

Deutschlehrerin = Deutsch + Lehrerin

In German, it is possible to combine an adjective and a noun to form a single word. In this case, the adjective deutsch is combined with the noun Lehrerin (teacher) to form the compound word Deutschlehrerin.

RULE: In the case of a compound word, the article that the compound word takes is that of the noun at the end.

For example, die Schinkensemmel, the ham sandwich, is composed of der Schinken, the ham, and die Semmel, the roll (but only in the south of Germany). The article of the final noun is die, so the article of the compound word is die.

There are countless examples in German of compound words .

You might have also noticed that we specified Lehrerin as the female teacher; indeed, in German, the male teacher is (der) Lehrer, and to form the feminine, you add -in to the end of the word.

So: the (male) teacher is der Lehrer, the (female) teacher is die Lehrerin.

Other examples of professions are:

In most cases, to form the feminine of a profession or category, you just add -in to the end of the word. In some cases…

Last, Last

At this point, Toni expresses all his frustration by telling Julia that she is his last chance, saying:

du bist meine letzte Chance

du bist, you are, we already know

(die) Chance is common to many languages and means opportunity.

die letzte Chance means the last opportunity; remember that you have to use die because Chance is feminine: die Chance.

One thing we will delve into in detail later, but hinting at now, the adjective letzte needs to be declined, and the declination depends on the gender of the noun, feminine in this case (die Chance), and the case, accusative in our dialogue.

Another example to use letzte is, for instance, when you’re in a line, the last person arriving will ask:

Wer ist der letzte? Who is the last?

Even if you are at the front of the line for practice, you’d respond:

Ich bin der Letzte, I am the last.

In this case, you use the masculine gender der Letzte, also in German, in the generic case where men and women are present, you use the masculine der Letzte, if it were a line of only women, I could have asked:

Wer ist die Letzte? Who is the last?

Returning to the dialogue, Julia responds

du bist ein hoffnungsloser Fall

which literally means you are a hopeless case.

And then adds ich versuche es trotzdem, I’ll try anyway.

Versuchen is the verb “to try,” which is a regular verb and conjugates simply:

Let’s stick to the singular cases.

Note, Julia says ich versuche es, which means I will try, i.e., I will try to do what we just talked about. This es summarizes the entire preceding conversation: teaching Toni German.

Finally, trotzdem means anyway, and you can place it at the end or beginning of the sentence. For now, let’s see 2 examples of using trotzdem; we’ll cover more details later:

In this lesson

What have we learned in this German lesson:

• The personal pronouns ich, du, er, sie, es
• Conjugations in the present tense of verbs German verbs sein, wollen, versuchen
• How to form the feminine of professions and jobs

Next lesson

Will our hero manage to learn German with our online course? Go to the next lesson to find out.