and welcome to our German Word of The Day.
This one is going to be a little different than usual, though, because I want to try out something new.
Usually, we take a word, talk about the origins, see how the meanings came about and do a tour through the related words.
Which is great for building vocabulary and making mental connections.
Today, I want to focus more on the practical side.
We’ll take one of the most important verbs and practice how to use it in various types of sentences.
And by practice I really mean practice, because we’ll do that…
BY ACTUALLY SPEAKING :).
No cumbersome typing, no multiple choice. Pure, raw oral word sala… I mean, spoken German.
Because that’s what actually matters.
I’m not quite sure what format to use for these, but I figured it’s best to find that out together with you, so this is like the first draft. It works, but we’ll refine it over time.
So, if you’re ready let’s warm up the tongue and jump right in.
How does it work
If you’re now here… EF Languages is developing a speech recognition AI for language learning and they allowed me to integrate that here.
The AI takes your input, compares it with the correct answer and gives you feedback how well you did for the individual words and how close you are to a native speaker.
Remember, the main goal is NOT to get 100%!! Try to get all words to a green level (about 70% native-level).
All you need to do to record is click the button once to start, and then again to stop it.
Let’s give it a try with verb we’ll look at today:
“finden”
The button should change color or pulsate, when it’s recording.
If you get an error message or no recording happens, chances are that your browser doesn’t allow me to access your mic.
Next to the address on the left, there is usually an icon (a lock or something). Click there and you should see the website options where you can allow mic access.
Let me know if you need help with that.
But now, I’d say, let’s jump right in.
A Practical Guide to “finden”
Finden means to find and the basic structure is pretty much the same as in English.
So what you find is the direct object.
- Maria findet eine Wohnung.
- Maria finds an apartment.
And now it’s your turn.
Say this sentence in German:
My version:
Good for Thomas. And now let’s do one for ourselves, with a little less work.
Say this in German:
My version:
Now, usually we talk about what we find after the fact. We use it in past tense.
So let’s do that next.
Past tense
Like most verbs, finden goes with the spoken past here, and as it’s not about us changing location, it goes with haben.
So all you need is the proper ge-form and the right structure.
My version:
If you didn’t get it right, no worries! You’re here to learn, not to know :).
Let’s do another one:
My version:
Cool!
Now, let’s make the sentence a bit longer and add the information when we found it.
We’ll start with “Ich” again, so you just need to plug in the word in the right place.
Hint: don’t forget about keeping the verb at the end.
My version:
And now, let’s also add where we found it.
There’s more than one option for the word order, but put the park behind gestern. That’s the most idiomatic choice.
My version:
Perfect!
Now let’s take it one step further and make a side sentence.
side sentences
In side sentences, ALL verbs pile up at in the rear.
It sounds daunting, but in reality, all we have to do here is move the haben from where it is and move it to the very end.
let’s start with the short version:
(Ich habe Maria erzählt, dass ….)
My version:
And now let’s do a long version:
(Ich habe Maria erzählt, dass ….)
My version:
Awesome.
Again, if you didn’t get it right, don’t worry. Just make sure you understand the mistake you made and do the exercise again tomorrow.
Now, we’ve had present tense, past tense and a side sentence.
But for the full “functional” gamut, there’s one more type of phrasing that we need… questions.
So let’s do a couple of those.
Questions
And we’ll stick with past tense here, because in present they sound just too contrived.
German doesn’t use the helper to do for its questions and instead uses the verb itself.
- Thomas hat einen Job gefunden.
- Thomas found/has found a job.
- Hat Thomas einen Job gefunden?
- Did Thomas find/has Thomas found a job?
Can you see? It’s just a switcheroo, basically.
Now you try… and we’ll switch up the example a bit :)
My version:
And now let’s do the same with a question word.
In German, that then just goes in front of what we just made.
My version:
If the “did” tripped you up… don’t worry. That’s normal.
It’s a matter of getting used to it… well… used to not using it.
Let’s do another one:
My version:
All right.
So those were the most important structures for the “normal” finden.
However, finden has a second meaning, which is also really really common in daily life.
The other meaning of “finden”
German finden is also really commonly used to express your opinion about something. English to find can also do that, but it’s WAY more common in German, and in fact, gut finden or nicht gut finden is a pretty common choice to express liking or disliking.
Here’s a couple of examples:
- I like the movie.
- Ich finde den Film gut.
- I think the movie is great.
- Ich finde den Film super.
What’s important to know about this finden is that we use WRITTEN PAST for the past tense.
That’s kind of a trend for several of the basic verbs that their “normal” use goes with spoken past and the metaphorical or abstract one uses written past.
So the sentence about the movie would NOT be
- Ich habe den Film gut gefunden… WRONG
It’s understandable, but it is NOT idiomatic. Instead, people say:
- Ich fand den Film gut.
The rest of the grammar is the same, though, so now, it’s your turn again :).
Say this in German using finden.
My version:
And another one
My version:
And now let’s try one in past tense.
My version:
And one as a side sentence:
My version:
And last but not least, let’s do the questions.
My version:
And that’s actually it for today.
Yeay!
This was our little overview of the most important patterns for finden.
And the idea is actually to do this exercise a few times over a week or so to really get a feel for the patterns.
You don’t have to get 100% on the pronunciation. Just try to get like 80%, all words correct and feel comfy while doing it :).
As I said, this is just the first draft of the format and my plan is to include hints and maybe a typing option.
So let me know in the comments please how you liked it, and what suggestions you have to make it better and more helpful.
i’m really curious for your feedback.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this and learned something.
Have a great day, and I’ll see you next week.
First page I have visited. I have been trying to learn German and came across this site. It looked very promising and entertaining. Thank you, Emanuel and the team for making it possible to use this site. I appreciate the very kind gesture allowing me the free membership for a year!
I can’t get this to work. The icon on the left does nothing when I tap it. I love the concept of speaking, recording and practicing. Any tips on how to enable?
Hi hi, what do you mean by “icon on the left”?
Are you using it on mobile or desktop and which browser and device are you using?
For me it works on Chrome, Firefox and Brave.
Help me out with a few more details and I’ll look into it :)
Ich fand es gut, vielen dank.
Fabulous! Really liked it. Always so helpful to practice speaking. I liked the slow progression from easy to harder as well. Thanks for the effort of putting this together!
Glad you enjoyed it. More to come soon :)!
Diese sind perfekte Übungen! I love that the prompt is in English and we have to verbally translate. That is my biggest problem- turning my mental translation to spoken language. The little stem and vocab helpers are great, too. I want to do this at least a few times in every post:).
Glad you like it !! I’m already working on more and I want to make it into a series. It’s got a lot of potential to actually make a difference in people’s progress, I feel like.
Sehr gut! And I like the idea of including writing exercises too :)
Sher Geehrter Emmanuel, Dass ist sher gut…Cool..Ich fand dieses System sher gut. Danke..
I LOVE this new feature. I’ve spent too much time just on this page trying to get the yellow marked words in my recording to turn green, and getting great satisfaction out of watching the percentage of correctness tick up slowly.
It’s also good practice because I’m trying to record each sentence three times. Once before listening to you, to see if I can get the translation/word order correct on my own. Once again to correct any order mistakes I made the first time, and a third time after listening to you to match the sounds.
My main issue is learning a word and then being able to actually use it. This is a really amazing way of teaching vocab!
Vielen Dank :)
Ich fand die Idee von syperk ( if there is a way to hide the vocabulary hints until we press “hint) sehr gut. I remember better if I try first by myself then find out later what my mistakes are. This is the format of learning I like best, out of all the exercises in your blog! i hope you can do this with the 100 most important verbs.
Yeah, that’d be great, actually. Quite a bit of work, bit I’ll consider doing it. It’s worth it, imo
Vielen Dank Emanuel. Ich fand das sehr nützlich! Even when I know the vocabulary, putting complicated sentences in the right order is one of the hardest things for me (as an example, I just tried writing this sentence in German and utterly failed!).
One suggestion: is there a way to hide the vocabulary hints, e.g. until you press a “hint” button, so that we can try to get the whole thing by ourselves at first?
Ich fand die Übung sehr verständlich und hilfreich
It’s possible, for sure, but I would need to do quite a bit of coding first, since this is pretty much all custom made.
Also, in some instances, it WILL frustrate you.
Like, with “job” for instance, half the people will translate that as “Arbeit” only to get rejected.
For these ambiguous things, I’d actually like to make them clear, because otherwise, I’ll constantly be in the comments answering questions if XYZ is also possible.
The focus of this really is on using the verb quickly and without thinking.
But yeah, I’ll probably add a hint feature to the the final version of this series.
Ich fand diese Übungen sehr gut :)
Super, freut mich!
sehr sehr nuetzlich!
sehr gute idee
I love the pronunciation practice!!!!!!!!!!! What a great addition to an already great blog. :)
Thank you :)!
Sehr gut, ich mag es.
The exercise was great and all functioned perfectly for me. I found it very satisfying to repeat the sentences and see the percentages (mostly) creeping up. Looking forward to more ☺️
Danke schön… :)
I loved the exercise! I can’t wait to try more of them! I am having trouble when I login to my account though. As soon as I log in, I get a huge pop up that covers most of my screen telling me to subscribe (which I clearly already have), and there is no way to see the site because of it. If I don’t log in, this doesn’t happen.
That is weird! I had that switched on for like 10 minutes but then decided I didn’t like it and switched it off again.
Could you do a full refresh of the page maybe (ctrl+F5 on pc, no idea for mac).
It’s also quite possible that the issue solves itself automatically.
Ich fand diese Übung super, dankeschön!