Relative Pronouns 2

This podcast covers relative pronouns after prepositions and some other special cases.

To listen to this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

New Web Address

As I hope most of you know, German GrammarPod doesn't just have a blog, it also has a separate website with tables of all the information from my podcasts that lends itself to that sort of format. Until now, that website has been hosted by Yahoo Geocities. Unfortunately, Yahoo has decided to close Geocities in October 2009. Because of this I've moved the site.

I decided to move to Google Sites, because I'm hoping that a big company like Google will hang on to its free webhosting (and if it doesn't, will at least give me a decent period of notice to get things moved again like Yahoo did). So the new website is at http://sites.google.com/site/germangrammarpod/home.

If anyone spots any errors or missing bits, please can you email me and let me know? Google and Yahoo run rather different systems, and I had to think up new ways of doing some things on Google, which meant I couldn't just do a straight transfer. Because of that, it's possible that some bits got lost in transit, some links might not work or some transcripts accidentally got replaced by the wrong version. Let me know by email if you find any problems, and I'll put them right.

Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns link a noun or clause to a relative clause, like the relative pronoun which in I saw a film which made me laugh links the noun film to the relative clause which made me laugh. This podcast tells you the basics of how to use relative pronouns and relative clauses in German.

Tolisten to this podcase directly on you computer, click here.

The Conditional 3

This podcast is very very brief and contains just a note about a correction I've made to my first conditional podcast (if you've downloaded it after 26 April 2009, you've downloaded the already corrected version) and an additional useful sentence I hadn't previously inclued: I should have done something - ich hätte etwas tun sollen.

To listen to the podcast on your computer, click here.

The Conditional - Part 2

This episode is about more of the really practical stuff you need to know about the conditional.

To listen to the episode directly on your computer, click here.

The Conditional and Umlauts

The conditional basically means sentences with a would. For instance, if I were rich, I would buy a house (or as it is for other speakers of English: if I was rich, I would buy a house). German has the verb würde which corresponds to would. For most verbs, you use würde plus the infinitive, but for haben, sein and the modal verbs you use a single-word conditional form of the verb.

This podcast also discusses umlauts - two dots over some vowels which change their sound in German.

To download this podcast directly on your computer, click here.

Word Order - Multi-Clause Sentences

Simple sentences only have one clause, for instance I'm buying a sandwich. To make more complex sentences, you have to use more than one clause. An example of a sentence with two clauses is: I'm buying a sandwich because I'm hungry. In this sentence, I'm buying a sandwich is one clause and because I'm hungry is the second. Most long sentences have two or more clauses.

This podcast teaches you how to identify where one clause should end and another begin. It also teaches you what you need to know about German word order to construct your own multi-clause sentences. In particular it covers the conjunctions that often stand between two clauses and the impact they have on word order.

To listen to this podcast on your computer, click here.