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Lena asks Alex what a normal day looks like.
German divides the day more finely than English. der Morgen is early morning, der Vormittag the stretch from about nine to noon, der Mittag midday and lunch, der Nachmittag the afternoon, der Abend the evening, and die Nacht the night. All take am — am Vormittag, am Abend — except night, which takes in der Nacht. Notice that morgen without an article means "tomorrow", and morgen früh is "tomorrow morning", not "tomorrow early". frühstücken is a verb meaning "to have breakfast", so Ich frühstücke is a complete sentence where English needs three words. German does this often, and it is why compound verbs look so long. The noun is das Frühstück; lunch is das Mittagessen and dinner das Abendessen — which is why das Essen appears in both, and why the vocabulary here lists the verb essen rather than the noun. Uni is the everyday short form of Universität, in the way English shortens to "uni" outside America. It is informal but entirely standard, used by students and professors alike.
How do I read these pronunciations? See the pronunciation guide.
1. Separable verbs, properly
Many German verbs are built from a plain verb plus a prefix: stehen (to stand) becomes aufstehen (to get up), kaufen (to buy) becomes einkaufen (to do the shopping). In the infinitive they are written as one word. But when the verb is conjugated in a main clause, the prefix detaches and goes to the very end: Ich stehe um sieben Uhr auf. Everything else in the sentence sits between the two halves, which can be a long way — and the listener does not know which verb you meant until the last word. This is not a quirk at the edge of the language; separable verbs are everywhere.
2. Spotting a separable verb
The common separable prefixes are auf-, an-, ein-, mit-, vor-, zu-, aus-, ab-, nach- and her-/hin-. They are all words you already know as prepositions, and they carry the stress: AUFstehen, EINkaufen. That stress is the reliable test. A second group of prefixes — be-, ver-, er-, ent-, ge-, emp-, miss- — never separate and are never stressed: verstehen, bekommen. When you learn a new verb, learn where the stress falls and you have learned whether it splits.
3. Putting a day in order
zuerst (first), dann (then), danach (after that), später (later) and schließlich (finally) string events together, and each of them can open a sentence — which, by the verb-second rule from Lesson 6, pushes the subject behind the verb: Danach kaufe ich ein. For how often, use immer (always), meistens (mostly), oft (often), manchmal (sometimes) and nie (never), which normally sit just after the verb.
4. Time before place
When a sentence says both when and where, German puts the time first and the place second — the opposite of the usual English order. Ich gehe um neun in die Uni, not "in die Uni um neun". The fuller rule, which German teachers abbreviate as TeKaMoLo, orders the middle of a sentence as time, cause, manner, place. You do not need the whole of it yet; time before place will carry you a long way and is the half that English speakers get wrong.
5. A first look at reflexive verbs
Some German verbs turn back on the person doing them, and take a pronoun English would leave out: Ich wasche mich — "I wash myself." Ich ziehe mich an is "I get dressed". The pronoun is mich for ich, dich for du, sich for everyone else. duschen in this lesson can go either way — Ich dusche and Ich dusche mich are both said — but many verbs have no choice. They arrive in force in Lesson 24; for now, notice the mich and do not try to translate it.
A. Fill in the Blank · Ergänzen Sie
Complete each sentence with the separated prefix or the missing word.
- 1.Ich stehe um sieben Uhr .the prefix of aufstehen
- 2.Der Unterricht fängt um zehn .the prefix of anfangen
- 3.Danach kaufe ich .the prefix of einkaufen
- 4. um elf gehe ich ins Bett.mostly, usually
B. Multiple Choice · Wählen Sie
Choose the correct German.
- 1.Where does the prefix of aufstehen go?
- 2.Which sentence puts time before place?
- 3.How do you ask when someone gets up?
- 4.Which is correct for "I do the shopping"?
C. Word Order · Bilden Sie Sätze
Put the words in the right order.
- 1.Tap tiles below…
- 2.Tap tiles below…
- 3.Tap tiles below…
- 4.Tap tiles below…
D. True or False · Richtig oder falsch
Decide whether each statement about the dialogue is true.
- 1.Alex gets up at seven.
- 2.Class starts at nine.
- 3.Alex studies in the library in the afternoon.
- 4.Alex usually goes to bed at eleven.
E. Matching · Ordnen Sie zu
Match each question to the answer that fits it.
F. Translation · Übersetzen Sie
Translate between German and English.
- 1.I get up at seven o'clock.
- 2.After that I do the shopping.
- 3.Wann gehst du ins Bett?
- 4.Der Unterricht fängt um zehn an.
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Bread for dinner
The German day is built around a hot lunch and a cold supper, which is the reverse of the British and North American pattern. Mittagessen is the main meal, eaten early — often between twelve and one — and the reason schools and many workplaces have a proper canteen. The evening meal is Abendbrot, literally "evening bread": cold cuts, cheese, pickles and good bread, eaten at six or seven and requiring no cooking at all. Plenty of households now cook in the evening instead, but the word survives and so does the habit. Breakfast on a weekday is quick, but the weekend version is an event — rolls fetched warm from the bakery, soft-boiled eggs, several cheeses, and two hours at the table. Germany takes its bread more seriously than almost anything else: there are somewhere north of three thousand registered varieties, the craft of it is on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list, and a German abroad will complain about the bread within a week.