seit zwei Jahren, seit ich in Berlin wohne, seitdem: three words, three different jobs. Seit and seitdem look similar, but they are different types of words. In this lesson you learn the three jobs: seit as a preposition, seit (or seitdem) as a conjunction, and seitdem as an adverb. Plus a simple ...

Der laufende Mann, das geöffnete Fenster: do you know how these adjectives are made? In German you can turn verbs into adjectives with the Partizip 1 and the Partizip 2. This lesson shows you how to form both, how to add the adjective endings, what to do with two adjectives and when a relative cla...

Während ich das Abendessen koche, höre ich oft Podcasts. The word während can be a conjunction and a preposition, and both mean "while" or "during". But the grammar is completely different. In this lesson you learn how to tell them apart, which case you need and which version is right in an exam.

Entweder du isst jetzt dein Essen oder du gehst sofort ins Bett! Life is full of choices, and entweder ... oder is how you express them in German. In this B1 lesson you learn how this two-part conjunction works with the same verb or with two verbs, when you can leave out the subject, and what chan...

Machen and tun both translate as "to do", but in most cases you cannot swap them. This lesson shows when to use machen and when to use tun, with example sentences for every case: two separable verbs with tun, five fixed expressions and a colloquial bonus phrase. The quick rule comes first: machen ...

"I feel cold" is not Ich fühle kalt, and "I am bored" is not Ich bin langweilig. The correct sentences are Mir ist (es) kalt, Mir ist (es) langweilig and Mir ist (es) schlecht. This lesson explains the grammar behind Mir ist ..., shows how the wrong case changes the meaning, and lists the six adje...

Antworten and beantworten both mean "to answer" or "to reply", but they are not interchangeable. The difference is in the grammar: antworten goes with a person in the dative or with the preposition auf, while beantworten always needs a direct object in the accusative. Both verbs are very common in...

The German word noch has four different meanings: still, not yet, another and even. You hear it all the time in spoken German and see it in written German too, and many learners struggle to tell which meaning is which. This lesson goes through all four with examples, shows where noch goes in the s...

German has a special way to talk about things that aren't real — wishes, hypotheticals, "if I could fly..." situations — and it all comes down to one small word plus one important verb form: wenn + Konjunktiv 2. In this lesson we'll quickly review Konjunktiv 2 and then focus on exactly how to comb...

To answer questions like Wie war dein Wochenende? or Was ist passiert? you need words that put events in order. German calls these Abläufe (procedures) and Reihenfolgen (sequences). This lesson gives you the words for the beginning, the middle and the end of a story, shows them in a short story ab...