Tag Archives: talking about time german

Learn German Online – Time 3 – “Words”

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Hi everyone,

and welcome to the third part of what is going to be a 5 or 6 part epic mini series on “How to talk about time in German”. In part 1, we have taken a more general look at what ways there are to talk about time and in part 2 we learned how to say the time of day in German… wow … that one was really boring.
So, todays lecture is going to be called:

Time 3 – Kittens are cute

What’s that ? The title is stupid and random? Well maybe, but it is definitely true and it is something people can relate to. “You Bloggers need to get people invested by pulling their emotional strings”, is what the guy at the successful-blogging-seminar said, continuing with “Facts are for nerds. Now do you wanne write for nerds???? DO YOU???”. Of course the whole audience was shouting “NOOOOOO” and someone shouted “Screw nerds!”, upon which our blogging coach said “No, that is JUST what they want.”
Man… that guy really is a genius… oh and I see we have a call here, if you guys want to be live on the show, call 0800-151-vocab-4-u, and we have Shane from Durban, hi Shane:

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Posted on August 7, 2012 by

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Time 4.2 – Words for the past

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Hallo everyone,

and welcome back to our mini course on Talking about Time in German.
Today, we’ll continue what we started last time – talking all about those vague words that indicate a point in time without being too specific. Or in grammar jargon

German Adverbs of time

Last time, we talk about German time adverbs that refer to the future, so we learned bald, gleich, demnächst, später and more, so if you want to check that out, you can find link the navigation above.
And today, we’ll look in the other direction and learn the most important time words that refer to the past.
So let’s jump right into it…

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Posted on October 1, 2012 by

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Time 5 – Prepositions

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Hello everyone,

and welcome back of our epic series on how to talk about time in German, today with part 5. And today, we’ll start talking about the really interesting parts of the field because today it’s time for… drumroll…

German Time Prepositions

Now, if you’re not sure what a preposition actually is, then don’t worry. You’re not alone.
The long and short of it is that prepositions are words that relate entities in a sentences to each other.
Here’s a really iconic example:

“The table is on the cup”.

Here, the preposition tells us what the spatial relation is between the cup and the table… which is really messed up, by the way.
But of course there are all kinds of domains besides space and one important one is time.
So time prepositions basically relate things in the time domain and today, we’ll look at the important German ones, see what they express and also go over a few really common mistakes English speakers tend to make.
If you want to know more about prepositions in general, I recommend my article about them. I’ll leave a link below.
But now, let’s jump right in and learn some time prepositions. Yeay!

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Posted on October 22, 2012 by

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Time 4 – gleich, bald, später, nachher and more

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to the forth part of our (not so) mini series on how to talk about time in German.

The first part was and overview over what the different ways to indicate time, not just in German but in language in general, and I strongly recommend that you read that theoretical monster… uhm article (find it here)

The second part was about saying the time of day in German, and it was pretty boring. Like… REALLY boring. But you still have to know this stuff, so have to read it sooner or later (find it here).

In the third part, we looked at all those “names” for times like Monday, June, morning, last week and so forth and if you like exceptions (who doesn’t) then that’s gonna be your favorite article. (find it here).

And while all three parts have quite different subjects, they have one thing in common:
they are incredibly long.
So will part four live up to its predecessors and be as long and tiring?
The answer is… No!

The first three parts were like the 2020 of talking about time, and now slowly, we’ll start the fun again.
Here is what’ll happen today:
We’ll look at a bunch of words, I’ll say a few things about them, you will go like “Oh my god, I always used that the wrong way”, “Oh cool, that is really good to know.” and “Oh cool this is also really good to know.” and “Oh cool, this is also really really good to know.”
And then we’ll be done.
Sounds great? Cool. The let’s jump right in and look at

German time adverbs

Yeay…

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Posted on September 19, 2012 by

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Time 6 – Actions

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Hello everyone,

welcome to part 6, the part with a kick start. No boring recap, no witty banter and most importantly .. no flippin’ part 5.2. That’s right. I am skipping it.
I know… we still have to talk .. excuse me… (yaaaaaaaaaaawn)…. about von-bis, vor, nach, während and her but frankly… I don’t wan’t to… I just hate leftovers.
All throughout the time mini series I have been looking forward to the part we are going to do today. It is the most interesting, most useful and most eye-opening, insightful part of all plus the picture has a baby polar bear in it. Those little black eyes and that fluffy fur. So cute. Would you be able to resist? I am not… so we’ll do part 6 today and as for part 5.2 … well, we’ll see.

 

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Posted on November 29, 2012 by

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