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 onAugust 7, 2012by

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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 (bald, gleich, demnächst, später…). If you don’t know the correct order then you should (re)read the part 4.1.
Today, we’ll go the other direction and look at time words that refer to the past. So let’s jump right into it…

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Posted onOctober 1, 2012by

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Time 5 – Prepositions

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to the German is Easy Learn German Online Course… and today, it’s time for THEM.
Prepare yourself for the 5th part of the Time Mini Series,
get ready for:

German Time Prepositions

Now, if you’re like „Oh god oh god, prepositions… this one is going to be so hard, I don’t know if I can handle it“ (which, on an unrelated note, is in fact what she said back when this was still funny) I have good news for you:

German time prepositions are neither hard nor numerous. #fact

The reason why we are talking about them this late in the series is NOT the level of difficulty. It’s the mere fact that many examples with prepositions use words we’ve learned in the parts before.
And we need to be able to correctly address points in time first before you can use a preposition to put this point in time in a relation with something. Because that’s what prepositions do… they express relations between stuff (read more about prepositions in general here).

Anyway, today we’ll talk about von, in, seit, bisand ab, see what idea they express and what common mistakes to watch out for. And of course, there will be LOADS of audio examples, so let’s friggin’ jump into it…

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Posted onOctober 22, 2012by

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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 all about the big picture and we learned what different categories of time indications there are in general (not just in German). This kind of was the road map for the whole mini series and I strongly recommend that you read that theoretical monster… uhm article (find it here)

The second part was dedicated to telling the time of day. And it was soooo lame. No, seriously… you have no idea how lame that part was.
If you want to read something really lame, then that is your post (find it here).

After the lame part came the tough part. In the third part, we looked at all those “names” for times like Monday, June, morning, last weekand so forth. Of course we had to deal with the prepositions… and man oh man, were there many exceptions there…. so many. If you like exceptions, then that is your post (3rd find it here).

And while all three parts have quite different subjects, they have something in common: they are incredibly long.
And the burning question is: will part 4 live up to its predecessors and be as long, as complicated and as bestrewn with exceptions?

No!

Here is what we’ll do. We’ll look at some words.
You will say some things 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 onSeptember 19, 2012by

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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, währendand herbut 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 onNovember 29, 2012by

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