German/Level I/Bitte buchstabieren Sie

Lesson I.3: Bitte buchstabieren Sie

This lesson is about the German alphabet. We also have a closer look at the word order in questions and at articles.

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

The German Alphabet
The 26 letters in both German and English are shown above. One, the ligature ß (eszett or scharfes s), is written as SS if capitalized; however, it is pronounced just like a normal s. It is only used when the preceding vowel is long, for example: der Fuß (the foot). Note that the ß is not used in Switzerland. There you always write double s instead, even after long vowels. For example: der Fuss (the foot).

Another difference between German and English is the umlaut. The vowels a, o, and u can take an umlaut (the 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:
 * In English, the word umlaut refers to the two dots. The German word Umlaut usually refers to one of the vowels ä, ö, or ü.
 * In German, the vowels ä, ö, and ü are even used when spelling; i.e., you make the sound of an ö (like the "u" in "turn") instead of saying "o umlaut". 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.
 * If there is no way to type the umlaut, the vowels ä, ö, and ü must be substituted with ae, oe, and ue. This spelling is also used in some names, e.g. Goethe, or in crosswords.
 * 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, or even the incorrect Arger.
 * Unless you have a German keyboard with the special German letters, you will have to use one of the following ways to type the umlaut.
 * On a Macintosh, hold down the Option key and type “u” (this will create an umlaut), then let go of the Option key and type the vowel you want to put the umlaut on. The Option key and “s” will produce ß.
 * In Windows, you will need to use the Alt key and numbers from the right side of your keyboard. Windows users also have the option of setting their keyboard settings to “English-international”, which allows them to create umlauts by typing a quotation mark before the umlauted vowel.
 * Linux users can generally designate a Compose key using their keyboard configuration options in their system settings (or alternatively if such menu is not available may use commandline programs xmodmap, or setxkbmap), from then on allow the user to enter umlaut letters by pressing the Compose key plus the Double Quotation Mark key and then the designated letter. The ß can also be created by pressing the Compose key and then pressing the “s” key twice.

Articles
In English and German, there are two different types of articles: definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a and an). In German, however, there are different forms of each type of article. Here we discuss only the articles of subject nouns (the most important nouns in sentences, which are in the so-called nominative case). In this case, the form of the article depends only on the gender and number (singular or plural) of the noun.

The three genders of German nouns are: masculine (examples for masculine nouns are Junge (boy) or Mann (man)), feminine (e.g., Frau (woman) or Blume (flower)) and neuter (e.g., Haus (house) or Mädchen (girl)). The forms of the definite and indefinite articles for nouns of the three genders are given in the following table. For plural nouns the definite article is always die and (as in English) there is no indefinite article for plural nouns.

* Note that Mädchen is neuter. (In fact, almost all words with the ending -chen are neuter.)

* Note that Mädchen is neuter.

=Test=

The test consists of three parts: grammar, vocabulary, and translation. The grammar part is about articles, the vocabulary about question words, and the translation is very similar to the dialogue of this lesson.