• Passive Voice

    Passive 1

    In this module, you will learn more about the Passive Voice. Just like in English, action is typically expressed in German using transitive verbs in the Active Voice with the subject of the sentence indicating the agent (i.e., who is doing the action). For example: In an active sentence (1), you will see an acting subject in the nominative case and an object in the accusative case: Die Studenten lesen das Buch. The students are reading the book. In a passive sentence (2), the object from (1) becomes the subject in the nominative case, and the active subject from (1) becomes a prepositional object with von / durch or can…

  • Connectors

    Connectors 3: before and after in German

    The words bevor and vorher (‘before’) and nachdem and danach (‘after’) were among the connectors that we reviewed in the module Connectors 1. Additionally, vor can also mean ‘before’, and nachher and nach can also mean ‘after’. It is important to know that all these vor-words and nach-words cannot be used interchangeably. They are used in distinct contexts, perform distinct functions, and express slightly different meanings. Activity 1 bevor – vorher – vor Read corpus examples below. Pay attention to what words follow the bolded connectors, and to the position of the bolded verb.  If you find the text hard to read, you can click on the image to get…

  • Connectors

    Connectors 2: doch

    In the module Connectors 1, you have learned that there are three main types of words that connect German clauses: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and connecting adverbs. The connector type affects the word order in the German sentence, especially the position of the verb. One of the frequently used connectors is doch (‘still, but, however, yet’). Let’s explore examples with doch using Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS), a large electronic collection of German texts known as a corpus.  Below you will see two images that show example sentences. They are presented in form of a concordance – stacked lines of examples with the search words bolded and centered. Read…

  • Vocabulary

    Vocabulary Module 16: feiern

    In this module, you will learn some vocabulary to talk about celebrating (feiern) using Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS), a large electronic collection of German texts known as a corpus. Let’s explore what words German speakers use to talk about celebrating. Go to DWDS homepage and type feiern in the search box. You will be taken to a page that gives you a lot of information about this word, but we will focus on the so-called ‘word cloud’ which is available in the Typische Verbindungen section. DWDS word profile for “feiern” retrieved June 27, 2022. This word cloud shows the words that commonly occur with the word feiern;…

  • Vocabulary

    Vocabulary Module 13: Umwelt

    In this module, you will learn some vocabulary to talk about the environment (die Umwelt) using Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS), a large electronic collection of German texts known as a corpus. Let’s explore what words German speakers use to talk about the environment. Go to DWDS homepage and type Umwelt in the search box. You will be taken to a page that gives you a lot of information about this word, but we will focus on the so-called ‘word cloud’ which is available in the Typische Verbindungen section. The word cloud above shows words that commonly occur with the word Umwelt. They are called collocates of Umwelt.…

  • Vocabulary

    Vocabulary Module 5: behaglich

    In this module, you will learn how to use the adjective behaglich (‘cosy’, ‘comfortable’, ‘snug’) using Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS), a large electronic collection of German texts known as a corpus. Go to the DWDS homepage and type behaglich in the search box. You will be taken to a page that gives you a lot of information about this word, but we will focus on the word cloud, which is available in the Typische Verbindungen section. The word cloud above shows words that commonly occur with the word behaglich; such words are known as collocates. The larger the word in the image is, the more often it…

  • Collocations with Prepositions

    Verb-Preposition Collocations 5

    Da – Compounds In Verb-Preposition Collocation modules 1-4, you learned about da-compounds (pronominal adverbs) that are very frequent in German. They are formed with da – dar plus a preposition to refer back to something previously mentioned or to refer forward to something mentioned in the next clause. These da– compounds can only refer to a thing or a situation, but not a person or an animal. Er sitzt auf einem Sessel [a thing]. Er sitzt darauf. Ich schreibe darüber, wie ich die Ferien verbracht habe [a situation]. As you learned in previous modules, specific verbs require specific prepositions and corresponding da-compounds. Let’s learn some more of those verb-da-compound collocations.…

  • Collocations with Prepositions

    Verb-Preposition Collocations 3

    In the previous modules VPC 1 and VPC 2, you practiced using VPCs with nouns. In this module, we focus on how VPCs are used with personal pronouns and the so-called da-compounds (pronominal adverbs). Note that da-compounds (davon, dabei…) are extremely frequent in German, unlike their English counterparts (‘thereof’, ‘thereby’…).