German GrammarPod

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This podcast gives you a wide range of tips and tricks for learning a language. It focuses on German, but these tips and tricks could be applied to learning any language.To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here.

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This podcast covers relative pronouns after prepositions and some other special cases.To listen to this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

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This episode is about more of the really practical stuff you need to know about the conditional. To listen to the episode directly on your computer, click here.

The conditional basically means sentences with a would. For instance, if I were rich, I would buy a house. To download this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

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Word order has a highly complex set of rules in any language. So many, that I'm not convinced anyone has ever managed to write them all down for any given language. For pretty well every rule there is an exception, and there are even exceptions to exceptions.This podcast focuses on the most productive rules about exceptions to standard word order, the ones that have a big effect on sentence structure and apply to lots of sentences. It also gives suggestions about what approach to take if you want to be right all of the time instead of most of the time (plus a guide to the level of effort that could take), or what to do to be right enough of the time to be fully understood, without attempting perfection (learning the most productive rules). It also gives some further detail on how standard word order works.To listen to the podcast on your computer, click here.

German word order in a completely standard, neutral main clause is a follows:* nominative subject,* conjugated verb,* accusative then dative pronoun,* nouns with definite determiners, in the order dative, accusative* most adverbials* nicht – or other negation particles* adverbials of manner* nouns with indefinite determiners, in the order dative, accusative* the complement, and finally* any other verbs.My podcast on German word order contains more information about what those terms mean, and also a more detailed version of word order. You can listen to the podcast directly on your computer by clicking here.

The pluperfect is the ich hatte es getan or I had done tense. You make the pluperfect in German by taking the perfect tense (the ich habe es getan tense) and changing the auxiliary verb (the habe or the bin etc.) into the simple past version of itself (hatte or war etc.). So instead of ich habe ein Eis gegessen – I have eaten an ice cream you get ich hatte ein Eis gegessen – I had eaten an ice cream. And instead of ich bin im Ozean geschwommen – I have swum in the ocean you get ich war im Ozean geschwommen – I had swum in the ocean.Basically, where you would use the pluperfect in English, you also use it in German. There's one exception to this though. Where you are referring to a situation that started in the distant past, but which is still ongoing at a point in the nearer past that you are talking about, although you'd use the pluperfect in English, in German you'd use the simple past. For instance: Since I had lived in Munich, I had been visiting him every Saturday = Seitdem ich in München wohnte, besuchte ich ihn jeden Samstag.To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here.

The simple past - also known as the preterite or the imperfect tense - is equivalent in form to the English I did form (ich tat es). The way that regular verbs form their simple past is by a or being inserted into the present tense ending. For instance ich kaufe - I buy becomes ich kaufte - I bought and du kaufst - you buy becomes du kauftest - you bought.The German simple past is mainly used in written German, where it can express most past tenses expressed in English by either the I have done or the I did forms. It also crops up in spoken German, where it is preferred over the perfect tense for the auxiliary verbs (particularly haben and sein) and the modal verbs (müssen, sollen, mögen, können, dürfen, wollen) and also - in Central and Northern Germany - for some other common verbs.To listen to my podcast on your computer, click here.

This podcast is about when to use the perfect tense. The perfect tense is the ich habe es getan tense and corresponds in form to the I have done it tense in English. But the rules on when you use the tense are rather different in German. The German one is often interchangeable with the simple past tense (the ich tat es tense), whereas in English, past tenses are usually not interchangeable with each other.As a rule of thumb, Germans use the perfect tense to express the past tense in spoken German, except with certain verbs and except in certain situations. The verbs with which the perfect tense is usually not used (apart from for situations for which the perfect tense is the preferred tense) are the auxiliary verbs, modal verbs and, in Central and Northern Germany, also certain other common verbs. These are used in the simple past instead.If you'd like to listen to this podcast on your computer, you can do so by clicking here.I've put a list of which verbs aren't generally used in the perfect tense on my geocities site, where I put grammar tables and transcripts of the episodes: http://sites.google.com/site/germangrammarpod/past. The website also includes a table showing the information I've given in my podcasts so far about when to use which tense.It's always tricky to describe when a tense should be used in a foreign language, and there's a lot of seemingly contradictory information out there. To compile this episode, I mainly used German-language Wikipedia:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfekt andhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A4teritumwhich, slightly disturbingly, both seem to have been rewritten since I used them for information (although a native speaker did recommend the sites at the time I used them, so at least one native speaker did think they were supplying correct information as they were).I also used the book Hammer's German Grammar and Usage (in my case the second edition). Here's a link to the fourth edition on Amazon: Hammer Grammar, although I recommend any edition of it that you can get your hands on.I also liked the information in about.com on this topic: http://german.about.com/library/verbs/blverb_past.htm