Hello everyone,
and welcome to another lecture of the slowly growing German is Easy Online course.
And this time we will start to learn how to talk about:
Time
As always, our lines are open for you during the show, so feel free to call whenever you have a question. The number is 0800 – 151-vocab-4-u, I’ll repeat, 0800 – 151-vocab-4-u. We are going to discuss time today, so stay tuned… here is Prince:
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Hi Emanuel,
Thank you a lot for the effort, I only use your source and am currently B1. Amazing!
I’d like to indicate one thing, after every article I read I’m having an urge to read all the comments just in case not to miss any other related/helpful information because other readers are also pointing out awesome things and you reply them with more information which I find fascinating but also a bit tiring because some articles have a lot of comments that contain some useful info but yet, you need to find them in the context.
So, is it too much to ask maybe if you realize a good point to indicate with the help of your readers, could you amend the post itself and add them later on? In this case if you add them after we read the post, we’ll still miss them anyway but life is not perfect is it? I feel FOMO in every article, German is already scary so I’m just trying to eliminate hard parts on my end and trying my luck! Vielen Dank und Liebe Grüße von Niederland
“So, is it too much to ask maybe if you realize a good point to indicate with the help of your readers, could you amend the post itself and add them later on?”
I’m actually not sure what you mean here.
Generally, I cannot do that. I have close to 1000 articles and I can’t edit all of them to include stuff from the comments, if that’s what you meant.
No need for FOMO! You don’t have to know everything, you can’t learn everything. Maybe treat the comments as a basket of treats. You can’t eat them all sometimes, but that’s okay. And if you have a more specific question, you can use the comment search tool or just ask and I’ll reply.
Hallo Emanuel!
I got a tiny bit scared of German’s precision regarding space. Is there also a mini series on the topic, like this one?
Not yet, but I do mention it in a few articles, like the ones on “hin” or the r-version or “hinter vs hinten”.
I find both those topics quite intimidating for some reason so I haven’t checked them out yet, but I will surely(hopefully) get to them soon
Thank you!
It was a bit difficult for me to follow along with everything (although this is by far a better introduction to the topic of time than I’ve ever seen anywhere else).
With that said, would it be correct to come away from this lesson with 3 primary types of time indicators:
Is there another category that I missed? Am I oversimplifying?
Hmmm, 2 and 3 have an overlap for me.
– I do X before Y.
This is also “relative timing” and “I do X during Y” is not really condidtional.
I would maybe call both “relative” but 2 is about relative to “nouns/things” while 3 is about relative to actions (phrased with verbs).
This distinction “verbs” vs “nouns/entities” is pretty crucial because they go with different types of grammar.
That said, you can take your takeaways as a working basis and adjust them along the way if you feel like you have to.
When i am reading your article,i would normally study in a quite and lonely room,i would read the article outloud like i was giving a lecture or some sort of lesson
Then i would write down the notes and key points
Your article give me a sensation of a teacher who have such a humour but yet provide enough seriousness and material to comprehend.
Es ist wunderbar,Danke !!!
Wow, was für ein schönes Kompliment! Vielen Dank :)!
Thanks Emmanuel. It was a great article, love the humour and thanks to the sponsors, I can now study this for free!!!
Speaking of location, do you intend of making a “Talking about location” module some time? (or is all the information across posts?)
I’ll definitely do that :)!!
Idiot hah
Epxlain !
Video does not exist/play. So, here is another one related to Time…fab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQol-MyuA0
As always I love the entertaining tone of voice that you use Emmanuel! It makes my climb-up-the-huge-mountain-that-is-learning-German much more enjoyable. Here is one correction to the early section of this piece: in English it’s incorrect to say “call me 8:15”. In almost all cases, you would have to say “call me at 8:15”. Sometimes in a crime story, you might have the Chief of Police grumble angrily to the smart-mouthed detective, “Call me, 8:15” but the “at” is so longed-for in the sentence that even this tough guy needs to add a comma to stand in for the preposition. (The Police Chief’s first-grade teacher would probably correct him, but the detective would know what he means.)
Ah super, danke. Und danke auch für das schöne Feedback :)
You use (well, misquote) the expression “The exception proves the rule”.
I found a German translation of this expression written as “Ausnahmen bestätigen die Regel” wherein the use of the word ‘confirms’ is chosen over ‘test’ or as I would have expected ‘Prüfung’. The expression dates from Roman times but there is no certainty as to which Latin word is the root of the word ‘probate’ in the expression – test or confirm.
The exception confirms (the existence of) the rule is the most common meaning – eg “you may play your tuba on the weekend” is an exception which *suggests* that a general rule exists – ‘you may not play your tuba during the week’. The less common understanding is that “you may play your tuba on the weekend” tests (by putting to proof) the existence of a general rule banning the playing of tubas.
There is an unrelated but similar legal principle to the ‘confirms’ usage; by creating a list you exclude items not in that list – thereby creating a general rule and exceptions.
So either während is a single exception (but from this post it is hard to figure out a general rule) or the existence of während evidences that there is no general rule.
As a lawyer starting to learn German (at a very advanced age) I would like to thank you for your work creating this hugely educational and entertaining blog.
And don’t worry about the prudes who can’t find humour in the use of occasional profanity – fuck ’em. Onwards, to Time 2 …
I don’t even know why I wrote “make” :)… and I never thought about the saying on such a logical level. To me, it was always just kind of a joke, like… “A rule is only a good rule if there are exceptions”. Then,one day, it occurred to me that the German translation might actually be wrong because “prove” can also be “test” as you said. That made a lot more sense to me. But I asked in a discussion board and I got a very interesting and enlightening answer that mentioned who coined the phrase and that it was indeed a topic of discussions about law. So pretty much what you said, too:
https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/11227/herkunft-von-ausnahmen-bestätigen-die-regel
As for “während”… I think that there is a tendency that German uses different words for different functions especially when it comes to prepositons vs. adverbs (aus vs. raus, in vs rein etc.)
“Während” is one of the rare cases where German uses one word while English has two… which is good actually because it makes it much easier to explain why it matters whether you say “bevor” or “vor”. So it’s not really a rule but there is something :).
Thanks for your kind feedback by the way und viel Glück beim Lernen!
Thank you for the explanation. Obviously I know which one to use in English but although I can readily see “while” as a subordinating conjunction I have difficulty thinking of “before” as a preposition. I vaguely thought that prepositions modified/related to verbs.
I think it is probably best to let me brood over it for a while. (no pun intended)
The way I look at prepositions is that they connect what I call entities (things, persons, pronouns) to the sentence (or another entity). Conjunctions, at their very core, connect activities.
Here are some examples for “before” as a preposition:
– Before diner…
– Before the meeting…
– Before class…
OK here we go:
into (the) past tense
we will take our… time … (with) it
miniseries You have this everywhere but I believe it should be two words although when I Googled it there where some entries that were one word. I always try to read it as Missionaries or Ministries which could both roughly fit the context.
rather mechanic(al) this …
no(-)one No hyphen
that allow (for) you to use the Take “for” out
Just translat(ing) the words should …
All the stuff below is correct, I just cannot understand the distinctions you are making and I therefore could not transfer the concept.
“Take the word during. If you arrange 2 actions in time you’d use while. If you arrange one action and one “thing” in time you’d use during.
•During the phone call with his mom, Thomas was doing the dishes.
•While he was on the phone with his mom, Thomas was doing the dishes.
”
There were not as many as I thought on first reading but finally
hence BE SCARED … So when is the scary episode appearing
Firstly, thanks for the corrections. There were indeed some others in there which were really confusing (to instead of 2) but I removed them before you re-read it :).
Now on to the part that was unclear. My point is basically to illustrate that there is distinction between subordinating conjunctions, prepositions and temporal adverbs. The words “before” or “after” can be used in all 3 functions and many people do not realize that those functions are very different. German will have different words for most of those functions and I want people to see how that works. And during/while is an example where English has different words for different functions. Both, during and while, express that things happen simultaneously. However, during is a preposition and while is a subordinating conjunction. During tells us that something happened at the same time as another THING… for instance a concert or a meeting. While on the other hand talks about activities. You can’t say
– During I was on the phone…
and you can’t say
– While my phone call…
And that is exactly why it is important to realize that “before” can mean “bevor”, “vor” and “vorher” and you must not mix them up. Understanding the function is the key to picking the correct word.
Let me know if that is more clear now. If not, please tell me and I’ll try to express my thought better.
Finally for the scary episode…
it won’t be a scary episode but a scary mini series. And I call it scary because you need to distinguish between cases for that and learn all kinds of prepositions and when to use which. But I have a lot of loose ends to tie up in the course section first (past, adjectives, participle constructions, sentence structure)… so I think I won’t talk about place for a while.
This particular piece has more than the usual number of typos and on occasions has things that an English native speaker just would not say. For that English native speaker it does not matter but it possibly could concern others. Do you want them corrected and if so what is the best way to give you the info?
Oh god, I am afraid to read it now :). I don’t ever prove-read my stuff although I should,mainly because of the very reason you said … to avoid confusing others. I will read it again and see what I can purge myself. But I guess I won’t find the things that are not idiomatic so having them pointed out would be infinitely helpful and I’d really appreciate that. You could just leave the really bad blunders in a comment and tausend Dank im voraus!!!
Cuss words such as “shit” and “fucking” don’t make you any hip or cooler. They merely coarsen what is otherwise a witty and enjoyable experience for the reader. Please don’t get angry with me. I just don’t understand why it is necessary to lace your lessons with base language.
No, why should I get angry… you are right in that it is not really necessary, and there are other ways and words to use to still have the article being somewhat conversational and casual. It is okay you point that out, I did change the 2 instances in this post and I will pay more attention to it in the future..
Spot on with this write-up, I truly believe this website needs
far more attention. I’ll probably be back again to read more, thanks for the info!
Emanuel, good job buddy!
I’ve just missed more examples in German.
Keep it up!
I’m looking forward to the next post.
Hey Eddie, thanks man for the feedback… sorry for the lack of German in that post but it is really more of an introduction to lay the foundations … it is not specifically for German… putting German examples would have raised question that I wasn’t going to answer at that point but … we’ll do all of that in German in the upcoming posts :)