Instant! German. Nick Ph.D Theobald
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Speak German in seconds
Instant! German
Nick Theobald & Jan Adams
Published for the Internet by eBookIt.com
© 2011 Nick Theobald & Jan Adams
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0653-4
Cover design: Russell Chambers, [email protected]
A Writer & Writer book.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. So watch it, because we’ll be on to you in an Instant!
Speak German in seconds
This little book is your passport to speaking German, Instantly!
Instant! German is packed full of practical, everyday, street-wise phrases and words. For the more down-to-earth reader, we’ve included a few carefully chosen, internationally-recognisable swear words too. Why…here are but some examples:
“Does my bum look big in this?”
“My German is not very good.”
“Some porknuckles please.”
“Do you have any vegetarian food?”
“Follow that cab!”
“Hi honey, I’m home.”
“I’ll see you in court”
“Stick it up your arse.”
“Can I see you again?”
“Where is the toilet?”
“Stop your dog barking.”
“What a wanker.”
“I’ve been mugged.”
“Honey, have I got a clean shirt?”
Instant! German uses phonetics - Fon-net-ix. We keep it simple.
German is a challenging language and some pronunciations are difficult to explain in print. However, in our experience, if you seem to be at least making an effort to speak German, you’ll gain Instant! respect.
Thanks for buying our book: one author is saving up for a 2,000sqm apartment on The Peak in Hong Kong, while the other one urgently needs more conflict-free diamonds to grace his imaginary girlfriends’ fingers.
How our stupendously simple phonetics work.
Please read the following care-full-lee…
English: Sorry, my German is not very good.
German: Tut mir leid, mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut.
Phonetics: Toot mere light, mine Doytch ist nisht zeer goot.
Toot - what boats do
mere - a mere handful
light - the opposite of dark
mine - it’s mine, not yours
Doytch - kind of as you’d expect
ist - same sound as list
nisht - nish + a ‘t’ at the end
zeer - same sound as beer
goot - same sound as foot
English: What’s new?
German: Was gibt's neues?
Phonetics: Vass gibs noy-iss?
Vass - like pass
gibs - like ribs
noy-iss - noy + iss
English: How much please?
German: Was kostet ess bitte?
Phonetics: Vass cost-est ess bitter?
Vass - like pass
cost-est - cost + est
ess - same sound as less
bitter - as in bitter
English: Do you have an English menu?
German: Haben sie eine englische Karte?
Phonetics: Ha-ben zee eye-ner Englisher carter?
Ha-ben - Ha + ben
zee - as you’d expect
eye-ner - same sound as miner
Englisher - as you’d expect
carter - as in get carter
English: May I ask who’s calling?
German: Wer ist dort?
Phonetics: Vair ist dort?
Vair - same sound as fair
ist - like list
dort - like sort
Pronouncing the “Ich” word & other Teutonic technicalities
Ich is the first person singular in German.
Ich can be hard to pronounce, so we’ve cheated slightly and phoneticised it throughout as Ish. Ich and all German words with an ich or ch in them, are pronounced like the end of Bach. Ish is close enough, and in some parts of Germany, Ich is in fact pronounced as Ish.
• You’ll see that some phrases vary slightly when addressing friends, or strangers.
• We hyphenate many words so the the component parts are easier to sound out. Always run hy-phen-ated words together. OK?
Essential phrases
English: Hello.
German: Hallo.
Phonetics: Hello.
Goodbye.
Auf Wiedersehen. (formal)
Owf vee-der-zay-en.
Goodbye.
Tschüss. (casual)
Chews.
Yes.
Ja.
Yah.
No.
Nein.
Nine.
Please.
Bitte.
Bitter.
Thank you.
Danke.
Dun-kah.
Excuse me.
Entschuldigung.
Ent-shull-dee-gung.
How are you?
Wie geht es dir? (friend)
Vee gate ess dear?
How are you?
Wie geht es ihnen? (stranger)
Vee gate ess ee-nen?
Good-natured