The final DaF lesson was a bit of fun, a challenge and left me with something to think about as I head away from Germany, and ultimately back to the UK.
First, we were talking about Tagesrhythmus and did a survey to go with it. ‘What sort of things do you eat?’, ‘How much sleep do you get each night?’ and the like were questions that were asked. Our group was, it seemed early birds, whereas the other group were night owls.
Then, in the second half, we began with the Konjunktiv I or reported speech tense. This is used in German by news reporters and the like (and in everyday speech too, of course).
An example (to use the one I saw the other day) may be: ‘Er sagt, dass mindestens 3 erschossen (worden seien), mit weiteren 27 verletzt worden seien’. – He says that three people have been shot, along with a further 27 having been injured.
‘Sandra sagt, dass sie ein Workaholic sei und dass, sie damit nicht zufrieden sei’ – Sandra says that she’s a workaholic and isn’t happy with that.
‘Sie sagt, sie wolle sich auf ihr Studium konzentrieren ohne in einem Nebenjob zu arbeiten’ – ‘She says, she wants to concentrate on her studies without having to work in a part-time job.’
‘Er sagt, dass er keine Lust habe’ – ‘He says that he doesn’t have the inclination to do it’ / ‘Es wurde gesagt, dass sie gelangweilt sei’ – I was said that she was bored’ and so on.
Relatively easy (to begin with) – bin / bist / ist and such, is replaced by ‘sei’, declined in the same way, along with the verb taking an ‘e’ rather than ‘t’ in the third person singular. It gets more complicated though – I need to work on it!
Thencewards, it was onto the passive. I’ve no real problem with it in its basic form: “Es wird gesagt / es wurde gesagt / es ist gesagt worden” and such (it is being / was / has been said) – but when it comes to passive with modal verbs. How I hate it!
As a friend of mine said (who can do it with no problem), ‘It’s like a puzzle’. That it is.
“Die Gemuese haetten gegessen werden muessen” = The vegetables should have been eaten.
Still – it gives me things to think about and work on, and that’s always good.
All in all, this has been a brilliant resource – I’ve enjoyed every minute of the ol’ DaF, and it’ll be a real shame not to have it from now on. I’ll have uni though, but I won’t be in Germany …
