Signal/Disassembling Babel
Applied German for Immigrationsanwärterkandidaten[edit]
Season I[edit]
Season I - Episode I (2010-08-26)[edit]
Link to the recording (.ogg) in our archives
Things we learned in this episode[edit]
- The very basics of the German language: Phrase == Subject + Verb + Object.
- The most difficult German term (as we know it): Oachkatzalschwoaf (Eichhörnchenschwanz)
- Greeting someone: Hallo - Hi - Ohai!
- Common introductory questions: Wie geht es dir? / Was machst du? / Woher kommst du?
- Umlaute and ß
- The male gender & its articles: der - des - dem - den | die - der - den - die
- A little good-bye: Bye - Tschüss - Baba - Ciao!
Typing German[edit]
As towo mentioned, inputting the special German characters like the umlauts and the ß isn't the easiest thing to do. Luckily enough, there's enough ways to cheat, even when using a non-German keyboard layout.
For starters, you can just add an additional German keymap with whatever your OS provides. But then you don't really know what you're typing, so there's a better way: the magical Compose key!
Well, unless you're a Windows user, where it's hard to get something like a compose key working.
Under Linux, though, it's essentially simple: either use your frontend's graphical way of defining a compose key (keyboard layout options in GNOME, for example), or use the hackety way of Xmodmap (keycode 117 = SunCompose should do the trick to map your unused Menu key to Compose). Take it as homework to find out how to do it. ;)
Compose keycodes[edit]
- Compose + " + a = ä
- Compose + " + u = ü
- Compose + " + o = ö
- Compose + s + s = ß
Links[edit]
- German language (WP)
- German grammar (WP)
- The ß
- A stuffy explanation on Umlauts
- Der Joghurt - on the German Wiktionary - articles in the upper right hand corner.
Season I - Episode II (2010-09-16)[edit]
Link to the recording (.ogg) in our archives
Things we learned in this episode[edit]
- Recap: Greeting each other, and the male gender
- The female gender
- Going to the Media Markt to zap TVs
- Where to get Legos
- Ordering burritos
- Imbißbudendeutsch
- minor tidbits.
Links[edit]
Season I - Episode III (2010-10-21)[edit]
Link to the recording (.ogg) in our archives
Things we learned in this episode[edit]
- Recap: Counting from 0 - 10, and the plural of the definite article
- Counting from 11 - 999
- The neutral article
- All indefinite articles
- astera's new fave German numeral, 'zig'
- A brief overview of the Zehn-Wortarten-Lehre
- Primary conjugation of verbs, singular
- A little round-up quiz: Plz translate, 'I make 123 things!'
Links[edit]
- The Apferschorle
- Grammatical conjugation
- and something else we forgot. What did we forget?
Don't forget to do your homework folks, and see you next time!
Send your suggestions, situation requests & all other ideas to
