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Welcome to Stress Free German, Volume 1, Lesson 1. The goal of this course is to turn you into a confident speaker of German. We’re going to do that by applying advanced techniques like visual grouping, pattern recognition, construction branching and more. Each lesson has two parts: Part I uses English to explain the language, and to prompt you to speak German. Part II is the listening comprehension section, and is entirely in German.

So, who is this course for? Well, it’s for two types of students. If you’re an absolute beginner, this is definitely a great place to start. But students with experience in German are also welcome. I think most beginners quickly get frustrated trying to memorize the gender of hundreds and hundreds of German nouns. And I think they wonder, Is there a better way?

There is. There’s a much better way. It’s called Visual Grouping.

And certainly a lot of students feel overwhelmed by the German case system. The genitive, dative, accusative….And as they’re forced to memorize declension charts I imagine they’re also wondering, Is there a better way?

There is. It’s called Pattern Recognition.

If you’ve been having these kinds of problems trying to learn German, then you’re definitely in the right place and your struggle ends today. All you need to do is just follow along, and be sure to speak out loud when prompted.

(music)

Even though this is an audio course, we’re going to take a very visual approach to the language. So let’s start by trying to envision a scene. Imagine a man standing in a park. Beside the man is a dog. The man and the dog are standing beneath a large tree. I have an actual picture of this scene, which I’ll direct you to after the episode, but for now, let’s just imagine it. So our image had four elements. Here they are in German this time. Listen?

MANN… PARK… HUND.. BAUM

Can you figure out what each word was? Listen again…

MANN…is obviously the man

PARK…is park, although that German ‘R’ is kinda soft, isn’t it?

HUND…sounds like the English word “hound” doesn’t it? Which is a type of dog. And then…

BAUM…think of that old Christmas song, “Oh, Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum..” which means, “Oh, Fir tree, oh Fir Tree…” So BAUM is a tree.

As you repeat each one after our native speaker, try to envision that element of our picture. Ready?

MANN…PARK…HUND…BAUM

You might be wondering, Why start a course with those four words? Well, two reasons: They are all concrete nouns. More on that concept in a future lesson. But also, in German those four words all happen to be masculine nouns. If you’re new to German, you might be surprised that nouns have gender. But actually, most European languages do this. They assign gender to nouns. And in German, there are three gender choices: masculine, feminine or neuter.

This tends to be the first big problem that students of German have; they can’t recall the gender of German nouns. And the problem is a very serious one: If you dont know the gender, you can’t use the word properly. And again, in this course, I promise, we’re going to solve that issue for you.

Speaking of words, what were the four words that we started with today? Can you see the image in your head? Say them with our native speaker…

MANN… PARK… HUND.. BAUM

Next, listen to these German phrases. All I want you to catch is the first word in each phrase:

Der Mann ist schlau.

Der Park ist sauber.

Der Hund ist braun.

Der Baum ist hoch.

Did you hear it? DER. That’s called the article. It basically functions as the word “the” in German. The man is smart. The park is clean, and so on. Or listen to these. They’re asking, Where is the…..

Wo ist der Mann?
Wo ist der Park?
Wo ist der Hund?
Wo ist der Baum?

Can you try that? Ask…

Where is the Park?

Wo ist der Park?

So your friend points to a map and tells you…

Der Park ist hier.

Imagine again our image of that park. Imagine yourself inside the picture. Put your hand on the tree and say…

The tree is here.

Der Baum ist hier.

So we’re coming up on a key point: If you didn’t know that those words were masculine, you would not have been able to say even those very simple phrases.

Okay, pardon me while I turn on my Warning Alarm…

***KLAXON***

Why the alarm? Because this is it. This is where virtually every course gets it wrong. At this point they casually instruct you to memorize the article along with the noun. Are you kidding me? You want me to memorize thousands of ders, dies and dasses? I’m not going to do it. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to use something called visual grouping.

The thing about German…the words themselves aren’t hard. For example:

Haus Bier Pizza Garten

House, beer, pizza, garden

It’s not the vocabulary that’s tough, it’s remembering the gender of all those words. And yet you have to, because if you don’t know the gender, you can’t use the word.

But don’t worry: We are not going to memorize anything. We are going to simply see the gender of each word we learn. Tell me, what’s the gender of the following German word: Mann

Did you say masculine? Excellent. How about: Hund

Right again. Masculine. Can you think of two other masculine nouns we learned today? Hit pause. Try to see the picture…

Baum. Park.

Did you memorize them? Nope. You’re basically just seeing them in your head.

(music)

So, you’re standing there with the dog under that tree in the park. And suddenly, a woman approaches. She’s holding out her phone and showing you a photo of the dog…

Entschuldigung, das ist mein Hund.

That can’t be! I mean, it sure looks like your dog. Isn’t that right Fido? (dog panting)

So you tell the woman…

Nein, das ist mein Hund.

Let’s try those again. Say: This is my dog.

Das ist mein Hund.

Say: No, this is my dog.

Nein, das ist mein Hund.

Say that word “my” again? MEIN MEIN

Now, we’re gonna talk a lot more about this in an upcoming lesson, so all I’m going to say for now is this: Mein is one of the ways that we refer to masculine nouns as being “mine.”

So try that again: This is my dog.

Das ist mein Hund.

Let’s learn a easy new word here. In English we can refer to our dad as Papa. In German, they use the same word. Listen: Papa.

And the word Papa is masculine, of course. So say…

This is my Papa.

Das ist mein Papa.

How about: This is my tree.

Das ist mein Baum.

I know it doesn’t feel like much so far, learning words like tree or park, but actually if you’re following all this and getting the phrases right then you’ve already taken a big step forward in German. Ok..quick break..

TIP OF THE DAY

In each lesson I’ll be sharing ideas about how to learn German efficiently. For today’s tip, I’d like to return to that idea of Comprehensible Input, or C.I. for short. Usually C.I. is a video where a native speaker talks in such a way that you can mostly follow what he or she is saying. They usually have a whiteboard, and they draw whatever it is they’re talking about, so you can get the gist. A well-made C.I. video is an excellent resource, and you should definitely be watching them regularly.

The