Lesson 1

Wie heißt du?

This lesson will deal with simple conversation topics such as greeting people, saying goodbye, and asking people how they are feeling, the alphabet, and nominative case pronouns and articles. This lesson also has soundbites so that you can learn how to pronounce everything, including the alphabet and some introductory verbs.

Dialogue

German Dialogue • Wie heißt du? What’s your name? Wie heißt du?
Franz	Hallo, ich bin Franz. Wie heißt du?
Greta	Hallo, Franz. Ich heiße Greta. Wie geht’s?
Franz	Es geht mir gut. Kennst du den Lehrer?
Greta	Ja, er heißt Herr Weiß.
Franz	Oh, danke, Greta. Bis dann!
Greta	Auf Wiedersehen!
	Next Dialogue
Franz	Guten Morgen. Sind Sie Herr Weiß?
Herr Schwarz	Nein, ich bin Herr Schwarz. Wie heißt du?
Franz	Ich heiße Franz. Danke Herr Schwarz. Ich bin spät dran.
Herr Schwarz	Bitte, Franz. Ich bin auch spät dran. Bis später!
Franz	Auf Wiedersehen!

Hellos and Goodbyes in German

German Vocabulary • Wie heißt du? Greetings Grüße
Hello!	Hallo!*
	Moin Moin! (used in northern Germany)
	Moin! (used in northern Germany, shorter)
	Grüß Gott! (used in southern Germany, Austria and South Tyrol)
	Glück auf! (used from miners)
	Servus! (used in eastern austria, informal)
	Hi! (pronounced as in English, although colloquial and only used by the younger generation)
Good morning!	Guten Morgen!*
	Morgen! (shorter)
Good day!	Guten Tag!*
	Tag! (used in Germany, shorter)
	Tagchen! (used in Germany, shorter)
Good evening!	Guten Abend!*
Goodbye!	Auf Wiedersehen!*
Bye!	Tschüss!*
	Ciao! (pronounced as in Italian)
	Servus! (used in eastern austria, informal)
	Tschöö! (used around Cologne)
	Ade! (used in Swabia)
	Auf Wiedersehen!
	Leb wohl! (normally used if meeting again is not expected!)
See you later!	Bis später!*, Bis dann!*
Good night!	Gute Nacht!*

You will need to know each expression with an asterisk (*) after it. The others, of course, would be useful to know if you are traveling to regions where they are used. (As you can see, the different German-speaking regions often have their own ways of saying hello and goodbye. However, you will not be required to know any of these less common phrases for any problems or tests.)

Formal and Informal Greetings in German

Germans respect higher authority with their choice of certain phrases. The more formal phrases above are Guten Morgen, Guten Tag, and Auf Wiedersehen (as well as Grüß Gott). The least formal one is Tschüss. The others are neutral on the formal – informal scale.
Note: In Germany nowadays, “Tschüss” is also used with people who are not on first name terms.
Here are some examples:

• Claudia: Guten Morgen, Herr Wagner!
• Herr Wagner: Hallo, Claudia!

• Birgit: Tschüss, Susi!
• Susi: Bis später, Birgit!

German Vocabulary • Wie heißt du? Mr. & Ms. Herr und Frau
Mr.	Herr
Ms.	Frau

The German Alphabet

German Grammar • Wie heißt du? The Alphabet Das Alphabet
Characters	Aa	Ää	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii
Pronunciation	ah	äh	beh	tseh	deh	eh	ef	geh	hah	ee
Characters	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Öö	Pp	Qq	Rr
Pronunciation	yot	kah	el	em	en	oh	öh	peh	coo	är
Characters	Ss	ß	Tt	Uu	Üü	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Pronunciation	ess	eszett	tay	oo	üh	fow	veh	iks	ypsilon	tset

The 26 letters in both German and English are shown above. One the ligature ß (eszett, ess-tset) is used for (voiceless) ‘s’. It is used in case two s’s (ss) or when a single s can’t be used: between vowels or in the end of words when the preceding vowel is long. Example: “der Fluss” (short u, English river), but “der Fuß” (long u, English foot). Note that the eszett is not used in Switzerland. You always write double s instead, even after long vowels. Therefore you write “Fluss” and “Fuss”.
Another difference between German and English is the Umlaut. The vowels a, o, and u can take an Umlaut (double dots above), becoming ä, ö, and ü. The Umlaut changes the sound of the vowel. For pronunciations of all the letters, go to the Pronunciation Guide.
Notes:

• Umlaute are even used when spelling. Common words used to clarify a given letter are Ärger (anger), Ökonom (economist) and Übermut (high spirits). To say “Umlaut” after the letter is an English custom used when spelling German words in English.
• In writing, the Umlaute are sometimes substituted with the vowel plus e, i.e ae, oe and ue. You find this in names as Goethe or in crosswords, but you don’t use it in normal texts (Goethe is an exception to the rules governing Umlaute, always written with “oe”). However, if you have no way to type Umlaute you must use vowel-plus-e.
• In most search engines and online dictionaries, a vowel with Umlaut can be entered as either the simple vowel or in vowel-plus-e form. For example, if you wish to find “Ärger” you may enter any of the following three search strings: “Ärger”, “Aerger”, “Arger” (the last is actually incorrect, because “Arger” means “grimmer”). Unless you have a German keyboard, to get the special German letters you will have to do one of two things. On a Macintosh, hold down the “option” key and type “u” (this will create an Umlaut), then let go of “option” and type the vowel you want to put the Umlaut on. In Windows, you will need to use the Alt key and numbers from the right side of your keyboard.

German Ect. • Wie heißt du? Alt keys for German characters
ß	alt + 0223
ü	alt + 0252
Ü	alt + 0220
ö	alt + 0246
Ö	alt + 0214
ä	alt + 0228
Ä	alt + 0196

If you use Mac OS X these will work only if you choose “Unicode” keyboard layout, but you can add umlauts with option-u and the ß with option-S.

Bitte buchstabieren Sie

Look at this short phone conversation. Try to read it aloud. The translation of words and phrases is given below the text.

German Dialogue • Wie heißt du? Directory Assistance Fernsprechauskunft
Man A	Auskunft, Guten Tag.
Man B	Guten Tag. Ich hätte gern die Telefonnummer von Frau Claudia Bolliger aus Bern.
Man A	Wie schreibt man das? Bitte buchstabieren Sie.
Man B	Natürlich. Claudia: C wie Cäsar, L wie Ludwig, A wie Anton, U wie Ursula, D wie Dora, I wie Ida, A
	wie Anton. Bolliger: B wie Berta, O wie Otto, zweimal L wie Ludwig, I wie Ida, G wie Gustav, E wie
	Emil und R wie Richard.
Man A	Danke. Die Nummer lautet …

Vocabulary and Phrases (from above)

German Vocabulary • Wie heißt du? Vocabulary Wortschatz
English	German
Information Desk	die Auskunft (no plural)
I would like to have	Ich hätte gern(e)
Phone Number	die Telefonnummer
from Berne	aus Bern
How do you spell this?	Wie buchstabiert man das?
Please	bitte
Spell	buchstabieren
Of course	natürlich
“A” as in Anton	A wie Anton
Twice	zweimal
The number is	die Nummer lautet

Nominative Case

Cases describe what a noun or pronoun does in a sentence. When a noun or pronoun is the subject of a sentence, it is considered to be in the nominative case. For example, in the sentence “I ate an apple”, I is the subject and the apple is the direct object. You will learn more about cases as the course continues.

German Grammar • Wie heißt du? Subject Pronouns Subjekt-Pronomina
1st person	singular	ich	I
	plural	wir	we
2nd person	singular	du, *Sie	you
	plural	ihr, *Sie	you
3rd person	singular	er, sie, es	he, she, it
	plural	sie	they

* – Sie is the formal (polite) version of du and ihr. In all conjugations, it acts exactly like sie (plural)

Names

German Grammar • Wie heißt du? Names Namen
English	German
My name is…	Ich heiße…
His/Her/Its name is…	Er/Sie/Es heißt…
Their names are…	Sie heißen…
Our names are…	Wir heißen…
Your name is…	Du heißt…
Your names are…	Ihr heißt…
What is your name?	Wie heißt du?
What are your names?	Wie heißt ihr?

• Remember, the formal way to ask someone’s name is to ask “Wie heißen Sie?”

• For more than one person, “Wie heißen…”

Note: There are possessive pronouns in German, they just don’t apply here. For instance, “Mein Name ist…” would not be considered correct.

Verbs

You have already learned one verb: heißen, to be called.

German Verb • Wie heißt du? heißen to be called
	Singular		Plural
first person	ich heiße	my name is	wir heißen	our names are
second person	du heißt	your name is	ihr heißt	your names are
third person	er heißt	his name is	sie heißen	their names are
	sie heißt	her name is
	es heißt	its name is

Two more extremely common verbs are the German translations for ‘to be’ and ‘to have’: sein and haben. They are conjugated like this:

German Verb • Wie heißt du? sein to be
	Singular		Plural
first person	ich bin	I am	wir sind	we are
second person	du bist	you are	ihr seid	you are
third person	er ist	he is	sie sind	they are
	sie ist	she is
	es ist	it is

German Verb • Wie heißt du? haben to have
	Singular		Plural
first person	ich habe	I have	wir haben	we have
second person	du hast	you have	ihr habt	you have
third person	er hat	he has	sie haben	they have
	sie hat	she has
	es hat	it has

Wie geht’s?

German Vocabulary • Wie heißt du? How are you? Wie geht’s?
English	German
How are you?	Wie geht’s?
How are you?(formal)	Wie geht es Ihnen?
Responses for	Good
Great	Prima
Good	Gut
Very good	Sehr gut
Responses for	Bad
Miserable	Miserabel
Bad	Schlecht
Not good	Nicht gut
Responses for	Okay
Okay	Ganz gut
	Okay (comes from English “Okay”)
All right	Es geht (so) / Geht so
So-so	So lala

In Ordnung is also sometimes used for OK or Fine

Articles

German, like many other languages, gives each noun a gender: Masculine, Feminine or Neuter. Plural is easy; the definite nominative Article is always die. And as in English there is no indefinite article in plural. Nouns in plural form require different verb forms than nouns in singular.
In English, there are two different types of articles: definite (the) and indefinite (a and an). German is the same, except that there are five different articles of each type. The nominitive case articles are as follows:

Definite Articles

German Grammar • Wie heißt du? The Definite Article in the Nominative Case Der definitive Artikel des Nominativ
singular	masculine	der	der Junge	the boy
	feminine	die	die Frau	the woman
	neuter	das	das Mädchen	the girl
plural		die	die Jungen	the boys
			die Frauen	the women
			die Mädchen	the girls

• Note that girl is neuter.

Indefinite Articles

German Grammar • Wie heißt du? The Indefinite Article in the Nominative Case Der unbestimmte Artikel des Nominativ
singular	masculine	ein	ein Mann	a man
	feminine	eine	eine Frau	a woman
	neuter	ein	ein Mädchen	a girl

Forming Questions

The basic word order in a German sentence is the same as in English: Subject verb Objects. (SvO)

• Der Junge spielt Fußball.

The boy plays football.

This sentence is in the indicative mood, the mood that states a fact. The interrogative mood asks a question. To change the English sentence “The boy throws the ball” to the interrogative mood, we insert the helper verb “does” before “boy,” ending with,”?”. “Does the boy throw the ball?”
The process is very similar in German. However, since German verbs express both the simple and progressive aspects, we switch the whole verb with the subject, ending up with,

• “Spielt der Junge Fußball?“

Does the boy play football?

You have learned two questions so far: “Wie heißt…?” and “Wie geht’s?”. In German, there are two basic ways of forming a question. The first is the method described above. In addition to this, you can use an interrogative adverb…

German Vocabulary • Wie heißt du? Questions Fragen
English	German
Who?	Wer?
What?	Was?
Where?	Wo?
When?	Wann?
Why?	Warum?
How?	Wie?
Which	Welches?

The question “Wie heißt…?”, literally translated, means “How is … called?”, though the latter is a sentence no native-English speaker would ever say (the correct English equivalent of the German being “What is … called?”). That is why it does not contain Was (“Was heißt…?” means something like “What do you mean…?!”) . These words come first in the sentence; the word order is: Interr. Adverb Verb Subject Object. For example:

• Warum spielt der Junge Fußball?

Why does the boy play football?

You should note at this point that in German, the verb always comes second in the sentence, except in the case of a question as described above. The subject is always next to the verb, if not in front of it then following it. For example:

• Der Junge spielte am Montag Fußball.

The boy played football on Monday.

• Am Montag spielte der Junge Fußball.

On Monday, the boy played football.

At this point, you should know the words for “yes”, ja and “no”, nein respectively. There is also an emphatic “Yes!” called Jawohl!, although Jawohl! has military connotations and is often used as an answer to an order.