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About Me
- Laura
- I learnt German at school and hated it - no one wanted to explain the structures to me. Back then I thought that there couldn't be any structures in German, otherwise people would explain how they work to me to save me a lot of time and effort. So I gave up German. Fortunately, I ended up doing my gap year in Germany, learning German in classes for foreigners, and then studying German at university. And finally, people wanted to teach me grammar. I was lucky, I get grammar, it stuck in my head, and I graduated with a first class degree with distinction in the spoken and written language. Since then, I've worked as a translation checker and a financial analyst with a focus on German-speaking regions, and I'm now a financial translator. I also had a brief go at teacher training, but quit, partly because 30 11-year-olds in a room really give me stage fright, but partly because teaching theory dictated that teachers focus on speaking and avoid teaching the interesting bit: the grammar. So now, I'm making German GrammarPod, to try and pass on the love and understanding of grammar, but without the bit where I need to stand up in front of 30 11-year-olds to deliver it.
3 comments:
You say it is neccesary to use the posseive pronouns when doing something to a part of ourselves, but a sentence like "I hit myself on the head" is prefectly grammatical.
@Myrtone,
Your sentence is correct and if it helps you to understand the German, that's a useful thing. But be careful, it's not quite the same as the sentences I was looking at. Unlike the German examples I gave you, the verb in your sentence is linked to the body part through a preposition ("on"). Also you can't extend its usage to sentences about, say, washing your hands or cutting your hair, whereas German is perfectly comfortable talking about these things by using a dative personal pronoun instead of a possessive pronoun.
Reflexive verbs are verbs where the object (the person or thing the action is done to) is the same as the subject (the person or thing doing the action), for instance to hurt yourself. Reflexive verbs are a lot more common in German than English. This podcast explores why and looks at the most important reflexive verbs. It also looks at when reflexive verbs take an accusative reflexive pronoun, when they take a dative one and why.
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