Hallo ihr lieben,
und willkommen zu Tag 14 von unserem Adventskalender. Und heute müsst ihr wieder aktiv werden mit ein bisschen Training zu
Verben und Präpositionen
We all know the problem: lots of verbs function with a specific preposition and which one it is, is something you just have to pick up over time. And let me tell you… it’s a journey that NEVER ends. I’ve been learning English for almost 200 years now and still have to look up combinations in English.
The exercise today gives you some of the most common daily verbs with their preposition. And not only that.
You also get to train wo-words and da-words because they’re just so connected to the whole thing.
Let’s do an example:
- ___ wartest du? ____ den Bus.
The verb is warten, and the first step is knowing that warten works with auf. Then, you have to form the wo-word with auf – worauf – and you have the first blank filled. For the second blank you have to check whether you need a da-word or just the preposition. The da-word is what you need when the stuff you’re waiting for is phrased as an action, the preposition is what you need when it’s frames as a thing.
- Worauf wartest du? Auf den Bus.
- Worauf wartest du? Darauf, dass der Bus kommt.
Now you might feel a bit intimidated but I think it’s a pretty natural setup. If you’re new to this just go over the sheet once to check it all out and then start going for it.
Just like with the case work out we did a few days ago, the solution is right next to the sentence so you don’t have to jump to the bottom all the time. And you should do the exercise several times, either with a separate piece of paper or (and that’s the best) by reading it out loud. Ideally until it really bores you. You don’t always have to do the whole thing. Just a few sentences on the toilet or in the bus here and there will fix patterns in your mind. And don’t get mad at yourself if you get it wrong. Just keep doing it.
“Steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein.” as we say in German.
If you have any questions about this exercise or the wo-words or da-words, let me know in the comments. And also let me know if you like this kind of exercise. Oh and to enter the competition for today’s giveaway, tell us another verb-preposition combination that you’ve come across, ideally with an example.
Viel Spaß und bis morgen.
Verbs and Prepositions Work Out (pdf)
-- Download Advent Calendar 14 - "Prep School" as PDF --
Steter Tropfen “hölt” den Stein.→höhlt
Hoppla, das ist mir neu. Wie peinlich :).
Many, many thanks for this. It’s exactly the kind of exercise that I need. Also, thank you for letting us nonmembers have access to every day’s Adventskalendar. I need to ask Santa for a membership!
There are many Santas among the members. Drop me an email and I’ll see what they have in their bags.
Cool thing that you noticed that they’re all free, btw :)
’twas duly noted and deeply appreciated!
Steter Tropfen? Why is it steter and not stete? Isn’t it in the nominative case?
It is nominative, indeed. It’s “der Tropfen” but the article is not there, so the adjective takes the gender marker. All by the book. Check out the third part of my series on adjective endings for more on that.
This is a great one! Thanks Emanuel.
Hi Emanuel, I can’t get the PDF? Any ideas?
I cannot either
You have to click the big text, not the small thing that says “get this article as a…”
Do you mean the exercise pdf or the article pdf? There are no article pdfs for the calendar at the moment.
I got it!
Great post, thanks for taking the time to write this things!
One question: why is it “Steter Tropfen”? Shouldn’t it be “stete”? (I mean, strong declension, plural noun, nominative case, right?)
I assume Tropfen is singular, otherwise the verb would be höhlen, not höhlt.
You#re completely right. Good detective work :)
It’s singular.
Emanuel,
Exercises with their solution is the best for me because I can find out my weaknesses.
Thank you
This is a great exercise format. One thought – that very first one on the worksheet looks more like a “sich freuen über” than a “sich freuen auf” to me. I mean, I guess you could be looking forward to good weather as well as being happy about it, but I wondered if that was what you had in mind.
Oh crap. That’s a bad mistake. I had two examples for “freuen” there in an earlier draft, one for “auf” and one for “über”. Then I edited and I overlooked the preposition there. “auf” doesn’t make much sense here. Thanks for pointing that out!!
Another vote for these exercises. I have been able to coordinate both with my German grammar text, Die Gelbe Aktuell, for extra “value.” Really appreciate the extra effort.
I did run across a use, ausrichten auf in an article on Der Spiegel on line today–sort of an ironic subject for a German language study site though. In context the use was:
Jetzt zieht Volkswagen nach und macht Englisch zur offiziellen Konzernsprache. “Digitalisierung, Vernetzung und Elektromobilität werden unsere Branche grundlegend verändern”, sagte Personalvorstand Karlheinz Blessing. “Deshalb richten wir unsere Managementkultur rechtzeitig darauf aus.”
Hahaha… literally 15 minutes ago I read that headline on Spiegel online and I was like “Peeeeinlich”. Gosh, I imagine all those German CEOs in Wolfburg in a board meeting speaking English to ietsch aza. VW… what suckers. i mean come on… “German car” is a world wide thing, so whoever can speak German in the company, should do so, if only for the brand.
Have you read the article, by the way?
Yes I did read it. I agree about the peinlich, sehr peinlich. Absurd at so many levels. I try to find one or two articles everyday in Der Spiegel or Taggesshau to read–one at least to glean the “essence” of the news, another to work through the grammar to help understand “rules” from Gelbe. It is also fascinating that in many instances the “news” is reported earlier and in many cases more thoroughly than on US online news services.
Earlier? That’s weird indeed. Is it European focused news? Then, I can see how the US would be lagging. Europe is just not that interesting, after all. But if Spiegel had an edge also on US related stuff, that would be strange.
Not really, The US sources [NYT, Washington Post, Reuters] often wait until they have a confirming source. This early reporting is most surprising when it is US news–but then US sources rarely report in any significant manner on European news matters unless it has a relatively direct influence on current US news events–the whole US-centric attitude. Spiegel has a time edge many times on US news and reports on a more consistent and in depth matter on US news without a direct European or German aspect.
You should know that many people in Germany actually hate SPON (Spiegel Online) saying that it’s shallow and has shitty written articles. I can’t really judge, but have you ever tried FAZ.net or Zeit.de?
I particularly liked A Case for a Coffee and today’s exercise. I added them to Voice Flashcards. Very helpful. Thank you.
I love these exercises! This one is a bit too advanced for this beginner because I have no idea when to use those terms or even what each of them means. I am using Duolingo to learn German, and these expressions are not explained clearly or used much in the program. Any place you can point me to for some help on this?
Have you read my article on da-words?
No, I am fairly new to your site. Where would I find it? Thanks!
Here:
https://yourdailygerman.com/2012/06/19/da-words-meaning-german/
It’s about da-words. What they’re for and how to use them. The wo-words are the question version. BerlinGrabers explained it really well in his comment here.
Thank you—I will take a look!
I can’t seem to reply to Berlingraber’s comment so I hope she/he sees this. THANK YOU! Those are great tips, and I really appreciate your help.
Yeah, I limited comment “depth” to 3 because the columns get more narrow with each level. I’ll put that on my list of design reworks and then I can allow direct answering with no limit :)
I saw it. Happy to help out. :)
I don’t know anything about Duolingo, but it’s worth poking through the Word of the Day archives on here. I know “freuen,” “ausmachen,” “nachdenken,” and probably several other of the verbs on the worksheet have their own articles. It shouldn’t be too long (relatively speaking) before you get to a lot of the vocab from the worksheet – the sentences are all pretty ordinary everyday things to be talking about. Failing that, it would be worth your time just to toil your way through translating the sentences, looking up each word.
Just to help you get the basic way these sentences work: as you learn different verbs, you might often see them in the format {[sich]} + [infinitive] + [preposition]. Sich is a reflexive pronoun, meaning basically “oneself” (so a reflexive verb is something that’s always done, if only in some very abstract way, TO the subject). Warten is never reflexive, but erinnern can be, as in its very common meaning of “remember”: sich erinnern an can be literally translated as “remind oneself of,” but it really just means “remember” or “recall.”
That example is reasonably intuitive, but sich freuen is a little more difficult for an English speaker, because there’s no really literal way to translate it that makes any sense in modern English. It would come out as something like “rejoice oneself,” but again, the actual meaning is “be happy” or “be glad.”
Then the other tricky part – the focus of this exercise – is the change in meaning that prepositions can bring about. Here, the parallels to English aren’t too hard to find. The verb in “look out for someone” means something different from the one in “look down on someone.” In the same sort of way, sich über etwas freuen (super-woodenly-literally: “rejoice oneself over something”) means “be happy about something,” while sich auf etwas freuen (“rejoice oneself onto something” – see what I mean about not being able to translate literally?) means “look forward to something.”
The “wo-” words are preposition question words: “auf was” (“on[to] what”) turns into “worauf,” “über was” (“over/about what”) becomes “worüber,” “nach was” (“after/to what”) becomes “wonach,” etc. It can be helpful to think of German as more similar to Shakespearean English: “worauf freust du dich?” is something like “whereon rejoicest thou thyself?” or, in actual real English, “what are you looking forward to?”
The Shakespeare-y comparison can help with the “da-” words, too:
– Worauf wartest du?
– Wherefor waitest thou? (What are you waiting for?)
– Darauf, dass der Bus kommt.
– Therefor, that the bus come. (For the bus to come.)
Like I say, there are articles on the site here that explain all this stuff in more fun ways, but that’s basically what’s going on. The actual expressions and vocab on the exercise are definitely things to learn by heart, so if they’re not popping up in Duolingo, I’d make flashcards or find some other way to supplement your learning to include them.
Hi Emanuel
I’m trying to do the verb+prep exercise and I think the best for me is to memorize your examples to help me remember the preposition plus the structure… not easy but there is nothing easy in german anyway.
In my searches I found a clever idea, to use a noun that includes the preposition in its name. For instance, Aufzug can be used with aufwarten to help in the brain-wiring process.
You may want to consider that idea when possible.
Great to have workouts even when the every body is in party mood
That is a really clever idea!!!!
– Ich warte auf den Aufzug.
– Ich erinnere mich an den Anfang.
Do you have more of these? Would you like to write a guest article by any chance? Or can I steal your idea? I think that’s really really cool and I’ve never heard that before.
Please steal ‘the idea’ which is not mine by the way. Google gave it to me so it is in public domain.
I’m sure you will find the rhyming words faster than me.
Thank you for considering it.
I got so many more wrong than right. A bit disappointing, but clearly an important grammar lesson :/
Well, it really doesn’t matter how you do the first time. What matters is how you do after going over it for a week.
Thank you for the great exercise! Love these Advent posts, I hope to start subscribing to the regular posts in the new year.
Here’s a verb/preposition pair I came across recently and flagged as possibly good to know (maybe?):
“Psychologin: Darum scheitern so viele Eltern daran, ihren Kindern Disziplin beizubringen”
Ich hab in letzter Zeit total daran gescheitert, Deutsch regelmässig zu üben. (“I’ve been failing miserably at studying lately”, is roughly what I was trying to say, anyway.)
LOL! I couldn’t reply to your comment about your commenting policy! :) Also, I assume you have disabled replying through WordPress. Usually I see comments when I look at my own blog and can reply without returning to the other person’s blog, but with yours, the comments don’t go through, and I have to return to your page. Is that intentional?
Thanks!
Not at all. I don’t have any such settings. Maybe it’s because you’re at WordPress.com and I’m at wordpress.org. I do use Jetpack though, so I do have his neat comment feed you have at WordPress.com.
Yes, I am at .com That’s probably why. But I do see your comments in my blog feed—just can’t send replies.
In the entry
worauf bist du stolz? darauf, dass ich den B1 Test geschafft habe. (Entry number 8 down)
I don’t find the meaning of ‘sein auf’ or ‘auf sein’ if I didn’t have the answer already how could I find out that ‘auf’ is the preposition for this case?
Also, I don’t find the meaning for ‘auf schaffen’, to build the reply sentence.
So in this exercise, I don’t see how I could’ve done without Emanuel’s help. In other words, I don’t see how to apply the quasi-rule I am lerning.
Could someone give me some ideas please.
Thank you in anticipation
There’s no real way of knowing. Of course you could just enter “bin stolz” or “ist stolz” in Google and see what preposition follows it in the examples. That#s what I do when I’m not sure about a preposition in English.
As for “schaffen auf”… that combination doesn’t exist. “darauf” comes from “stolz sein auf”.
The sheet isn’t really about learning a “rule”. Sure, you learn to use wo-words and da-words but WHICH ones to use when, that’s the actual main point of the exercise and that’s something you have to learn by heart for a given phrasing. “stolz sein auf” is one, “traurig sein über” would be another (which is not on the sheet). So there isn’t even a consistent “[adjective] sein” phrasing.
I didn’t do so hot on this one…
I was practically 100% on whether or not it’s a wo word, a da word or neither, but I was 50% or less on which preposition. I guess this is pure memorization……..right?
I love the idea of nouns with prepositions in names!! Would love to see a article there…I could try to make a few, but not sure my vocabulary is large enough, or my grammar good enough…maybe we can start a reader collection?
I’ll try one:
Ich habe mich gestern mit meiner neuen Mitbewohnerin verabredet.
Hopefully that works…..
Perfect example!! I think I’ll collect some when I have a bit of free time and then make an exercise with it. I really love the idea.
Don’t worry about how you did in the exercise… it’s not about how you do the first time. It’s about how you do after you’ve worked with it for a couple of weeks.
I like these workouts.