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Simple!
Now, let’s see how we can use these new words to begin expanding our range of expression in German!
In Chapter 1, we created words, like “park”, “camp”, “begin”, and so on, simply by taking English words and adding “en” onto the end of them – and there are, in fact, many more English words that we can also do this with.
For some of them, you simply add an “en” onto the end, as we’ve already been doing. For others, however, we will also need to make some additional changes – for instance, we might need to use the letter swap above and start changing Ds into Ts!
I’ll show you what I mean.
We’ll do this the first time with “drink”.
Now, we can see that there’s a letter “d” at the beginning of “drink”. So, let’s swap that for a “t”.
Do that now and tell me – what do you get?
trink
Good, now let’s add an “en” onto the end of this and, by doing so, create the word that means “drink” / “to drink” in German.
So, what will “drink” / “to drink” be in German?
trinken
(trink-urn)
And what is “I can”?
ich kann
(ikh kan)
So how would you say “I can drink”?
Ich kann trinken.
(ikh kan trink-urn)
Turn it into a question now and ask “can I drink?”
Kann ich trinken?
(kan ikh trink-urn)
How about “Can I drink here?”
Kann ich hier trinken?
(kan ikh hear trink-urn)
Converting “drink” into “trinken” has worked out well, so let’s try this swapping Ds for Ts trick again. This time, we’ll do it with the English word “dance”.
So, first of all, let’s swap the “d” in “dance” for a “t”.What does that give us?
tance
And, as before, to make this into “dance” / “to dance” in German, we will want to add an “en” onto the end.
So, how do you think you would say “dance” / “to dance” in German?
tancen
Good, that’s very nearly correct, except that there is just one more thing: German uses a “z” in “dance” instead of a “c”. So, change the “c” in “dance” to a “z” and tell me, finally, what is “dance” / “to dance” in German?
tanzen
(tants-urn)
Excellent. So, how would you say “I can dance”?
Ich kann tanzen.
(ikh kan tants-urn)
And “I can dance here”?
Ich kann hier tanzen.
(ikh kan hear tants-urn)
What about “can I dance here?”
Kann ich hier tanzen?
(kan ikh hear tants-urn)
“I would like” in German is:
ich möchte
(ikh murkh-ter)
So how would you say “I would like to dance”?
Ich möchte tanzen.
(ikh murkh-ter tants-urn)
How about “I would like to dance here”?
Ich möchte hier tanzen.
(ikh murkh-ter hear tants-urn)
So, just as before when you were using “can”, the thing you’re saying that you can or would like to do, whether it’s to drink, to dance, or whatever, goes right at the end of the sentence.
What is “today”?
heute
(hoy-ter)
So how would you say “I would like to dance today”?
Ich möchte heute tanzen.
(ikh murkh-ter hoy-ter tants-urn)
“It” in German is:
es
(es)
Now again, what is “I would like”?
ich möchte
(ikh murkh-ter)
So, how would you say “I would like it”?
Ich möchte es.
(ikh murkh-ter es)
What is “to drink”?
trinken
(trink-urn)
So, how would you say “I would like to drink it”, keeping in mind that the word meaning “to drink” will still go at the very end?
Ich möchte es trinken.
(ikh murkh-ter es trink-urn)
What is “to bring”?
bringen
(bring-urn)
So how would you say “I would like to bring it”?
Ich möchte es bringen.
(ikh murkh-ter es bring-urn)
And how would you say simply “I would like it”?
Ich möchte es.
(ikh murkh-ter es)
What is “not” in German?
nicht
(nikht)
Now, if you want to say “I wouldn’t like it” in German, you will literally say “I would like it not”. How would you say that?
Ich möchte es nicht.
(ikh murkh-ter es nikht)
And so how would you say “I wouldn’t like to bring it”, again keeping in mind that the word meaning “to bring” will still go at the very end of the sentence?
Ich möchte es nicht bringen.
(ikh murkh-ter es nikht bring-urn)
So, literally, this is “I would like it not to bring”.
How would you say “I wouldn’t like to drink it”?
Ich möchte es nicht trinken.
(ikh murkh-ter es nikht trink-urn)
“To