Progress Report Week 2 – Wie geht’s?

Wow. Has it only been a week? It feels like so much longer. And, guys, I honestly didn’t think I could possibly learn what I have in the last seven days. It gives me hope for the rest of this outrageous endeavour. This week, I’ve watched TV shows, played games, and listened to music in German (unfortunately I don’t have quite enough vocabulary to read much of anything). I learned about gendered words, about plural nouns, and even how to conjugate. And if I can be made to conjugate verbs…well, I must be doing something right. I also learned a ton of words/phrases. I’m almost at 100! A lot of them are the basic phrases, i.e., hello, how are you, my name is, etc. But hopefully going into next week I’ll have the basic foundations to start putting together useful sentences on my own. Anyway, here they are, this week’s words:

1. violett = purple (violet)
2. lila = purple (lilac)
3. der Rucksack = the backpack
4. und = and
5. das = that
6. die Köchin = the female cook
7. die Kartofell = the potato
8. das Haar = the hair
9. lang/lange = long
10. der Fisch = the fish
11. die Liebe = the love
12. nein = no
13. ja = yes
14. tschüss = bye
15. hallo = hello
16. danke = thank you
17. bitte = please/you’re welcome/pardon?
18. gern geschehen = you’re welcome
19. Guten Morgen = good morning
20. Guten Tag = good day/afternoon
21. Guten Abend = good evening
22. Gute Nacht = goodnight
23. Wie geht’s? (or, Wie geht es Ihnen) = How are you?
24. Mir = me
25. Mir geht’s gut = I’m doing well
26. gehen = to walk, to go
27. wilkommen = welcome
28. auf wiedersehen = goodbye
29. bis bald = see you soon
30. bis später = see you later
31. bis morgen = see you in the morning
32. wir heißen sie? = what is your name?
33. ich heißen…= my name is…
34. kommen = to come
35. woher kommen zie? = where do you come from?
36. Ich komme aus… = I come from…
37. entschuldigung = excuse me / sorry
38. leider = unfortunately
39. Es tut mir leid = I’m sorry
40. schuld sein = to be at fault
41. genau = exactly
42. die Zeitung = the newspaper
43. das Früstück = the breakfast
44. die Milch = the milk
45. das Brötchen = the bun
46. das Ei = the egg
47. der Mittwoch = the Wednesday
48. die Welt = the world
49. verstehen = to understand
50. lernen = to learn
51. machen = to make
52. hören = to hear
53. wo = where
54. einfach = easy
55. dein/deine = your
56. mein/meine = my
57. seinen/seine = his
58. ihr/ihre = her/their
59. unser/unsere = our
60. das Geld = the money
61. die Freundin = the girlfriend
62. die Rechnung = the bill

Add these to last week’s and we get a grand total of 87 words. Woot! A few of the nouns even made it onto the German word wall. Next week, I think my schedule has the pace stepped up even more…

 

Progress Report Week One – Brot und Wasser

 

Wow! First post! That’s exciting. And, I admit it, I’m cheating a little bit. It hasn’t really been a week. In fact, it’s been just under 48 hours since I first picked up my notebook, pencil, and flashcards and started learning German. But, it’s also a Sunday, so it’s time for the weekly update. This week: German movie fail and my first 25 words.

The German movie fail you can read about in a later post, but, without further ado, I give you: Saskia’s first 25 words in German!

1. der = the (masculine)
2. die = the (feminine)
3. das = the (neuter)
4. ein = a/an (masculine/neuter)
5. eine = a/an (feminine)
6. ich = I
7. du = you
8. er = he
9. sie = she
10. es = it
11. wir = we
12. ihr = y’all (aka. you, plural informal)
13. sie = you (formal)
14. sie = they
15. sein = to be
16. mann = man (masculine)
17. junge = boy
18. frau = woman (feminine)
19. mädchen = girl
20. kind = child
21. mutter = mother
22. trinkt = to drink
23. wasser = water
24. brot = bread
25. hungrig = hungry

So, yeah. I’m pretty limited for what I can say right now – Ich bir eine frau? Now how is that helpful? – but, hey, it’s a start! I’m a little daunted by the whole triple-gender thing. The gendered nouns in French are my kryptonite, and that was when I only had to contend with masculine-feminine. The anthropology student in me is curious about the implications of a tri-gendered language for gender roles in German society. Are people who identify as neither male nor female, or as both, or as something else entirely, a little bit less stigmatized than in Canada? Meanwhile, the part of me that remembers I have to learn this all in 10 months is terrified. At least I won’t go hungry – I can always find a way to ask for some of that good ol’ brot and wasser.

…Okay honestly I’m a little excited. It took me nearly all summer to get my first 25 words when I was learning Turkish. I must be motivated by my impending sense of German University courses of doom.

Yes. That’s definitely it – motivation. Not that fact that “sie” repeats three times. Or that “the” also appears in three different variations…