German Course Notes 6

I felt today that I like the male lecturer more. He is more energetic, and really emphasize on pronunciation, corrects us one by one. I like the feeling of precise when I practice. 

First we practice the possess form of a third person. I'm not familiar with grammatical terms in English, so maybe I will be somehow unclear when describing grammar. The possess form is shown below. 

	maskulin und neutrum	femilin und Plural
ich ( I )	mein	meine
du (you informal)	dein	deine
er (der words)	sein	seine
sie (die words)	ihr	ihre
es (das words)	sein	seine
Sie (you formal)	Ihr	Ihre

Just remember to add 'e' for femilin and plural words. 

Another grammatical phenomenon is the difference between Nominativ and Akkusativ, which is basically subject and object. In English, the difference is marked by the order of words. Like "I eat an egg", we know that it is me eating the egg. "An egg eats me", which makes no sense, but we understand who eats who, it lies in the order of the words. German is different. To make a difference, the Akkusativ form of "der" words changes. 

-Der Hund beißt den Briefträger. [The dog bites the postman]

We change the order,

-Den Briefträger beißt der Hund. [also means the dog bites the postman, the Akkusativ is marked with den]

Things get complicate here because only the "der" words need to make a change. "die" words and "das" words remain the same.

-Ich esse einen Hamburger. (an "en" is added)

-Ich esse eine Pizza. ("e" because it is die Pizza)

-Ich esse ein Eis. (das Eis, ice cream) 

Then we come to "essen", eat. 

-Morgens esse ich einen Hamburger. (I eat a Hamburger this morning)

The word "essen" is irregular. 

ich esse,    du isst,    er/sie isst

So there are words we learn for time, which are 

morgens=am Morgen ( in the morning )    mittags (at noon)

abends ( in the evening )

das Frühstück [breakfast]    das Mittagessen [lunch]    das Abendessen    die Kaffeepause 

And words for food and drink, and there are lots of them.

der Apfel [apple]    der Zucker [sugar]    das Salz [salt]    die Tomate    die Banane    die Gurke [cucumber] 

das Obst [fruit]    die Orange    die Zitrone [lemond]   das Fleisch [meat]    der Vegetarier    das Eis    

die Pizza    der Saft(e) [juice]    das Keks [cookie]    der Kebab   der Quark [white cheese] 

das Huhn [chicken]    die Hühner [pl. chichen]   das Hähnchen [chicken meat]    die Kartoffel(n) [potato]   

der Salat    der Käse     die Wurst [sausage]     der Reis [rice]    die Milch [milk]    das Wasser [water] 

der Wein    die Butter    der Fisch [fish]    das Brot [bread]    das Bier    das Ei [egg]    der Kuchen [cake] 

() marked the pl. form.

Also container and cutlery.

die Gabel [folks]    der Löffel [spoon]    der Teller [plate]    das Messer [knife]    das Glas    die Gläser

die Flasche(n) [bottle]        die Dose(n) [can,tin]    die Tasse(n) [cup] 

Some other words.

der Buchstabe [letter, remember Buchstabieren]    der Fehler [mistake]    der Rucksack  [backpack]  

die Brille [glasses, for eyes]    das Geschäft [shop]    sonder [not A but B]    warum [why]    

Sag mal [tell me]    leer [empty]     das Kabel [cable]    Abfall [waste]    die Tafel(n) [blackboard]  

das Fenster [window]  voll [full, sounds also like full]   ehrlich [honest]    billig [cheap]

Guten Appetit! [ :-)]

German Course Notes 5

I've been a bit lazy these days. So the lecture on Friday, we had a lot of grammar coming. First is the different genders of German words.

	maskulin	feminin	neutrum	Plural
Bestimmte Artikel	der	die	das	die
Unbestimmter Artikel	ein	eine	ein	-
	kein	keine	kein	keine
Personalpronomen	mein	meine	mein	meine

For the possess form of a person I use "ich", which is "I" as an example. The pattern is easily seen, we use "der" and "das" for "maskulin" and "neutrum" words, and use adjective as the way they are when adding before them. We use "die" for "feminin" and "Plural" words, and when adding adjective words to them, we also add "-e".

There are some rules that we can tell which word is maskulin and which is feminin, but according to the teacher, they are not so make sense. So the suggested way is to remember the word with its article. Like you should always remember "Hamburger" as "der Hamburger". It is the same with turning singular words to their plural form. There are 8 ways of doing it, you should pretty much remember for every word which category it belongs to.

New words and their articles.
der Hamburger     der Wein    der Kaffee    der Cartoon    der Kugelschreiber [pen]  
der Radiergummi [eraser]    die Uhr    die Flasche Wein    die Tasse Wein    das Auto    das Schwein [pig]
das Glas Bier    das Buch [book]     der Stuhl [stool]    der Tisch [table]    die Batterie [battery]
die Lampe    der Steaker [plug]    der Steakdose [socket]    die Kamera     die Postkarte    der Wasserhahn [water tap]    das Waschbecken [washbasin]    der Taschenrech [hand calculator]    das Klavier [piano]
der Elektroherd [electric cooker]    der Topf [pot]    der Schrank [cabin]    das Regal [shelf]  
das Kochfeld [cooking field]    die Rentnerin [retired woman]   der Rentner [retired man]
der Foßball     der Teddybär [teddy bear]    der Käse [cheese]    die Glühbirne [bulb]    die Spüle [sink]

German Course Notes 4

The course vier went slower as a new teacher coming and we introduced ourselves again.  And here's mine.

Ich heiße Karl. Ich komme aus China. Ich studiere physik an der Universität hier. Ich bin 23 Jahre alt und ich bin ledig. Meine Hobbys sind Musik hören, reisen und schach spielen.

Wir studieren vier Satzstrukturen(sentence structures).

1)  Aussagesatz (clause of statement)
- Ich nehme eine Bier.
We should note that the verb should always be in the second position. It is the same in Nertherlands. We could change the position of other parts. But the verb always comes in second place.
- Eine Bier nehme ich.
- Morgen Arbend nehme ich eine Bier. (Morgen Arbend is time, counts as one part).

2) Satzfrage
These are the type of questions that should be answered with "Ja" or "Nein". Simply we put the verb in front.
- Nehme ich eine Bier?

3) Wortfrage
Starting with a word indicating what is asking.
- Was nehmen Sie?

4) Imperatio
Asking people to do something.
- Nehmen Sie bette!

Then there comes the change in form of verbs according to the subjects.
"Sein" has five forms.
Ich bin ...      Er/Sie/Es ist ...    Du bist ....   Wir/Sie/Sie sind ....   Ihr seid ...
What may be confusing here is "sie", "sie" has three meaning, when means "she", "sie ist", means "they", "sie sind", and with a capital 'S', "Sie" is the formal way of saying "you", "Sie sind".
"möchten" has four forms.
Ich möchte ....   Er/Sie/Es möchte ...  Du möchtest ...   Wir/Sie/Sie möchten ...  Ihr möchtet ...

Then come to the vocabulary part.
die Türkei und die Schweiz
Turns out that Germans will add infinite article to certain countries, Turkey and Switzerland are examples.

jagen [hunting]    der Hase(n) [rabbit]    der Vogel [bird]    der Verteitiger und der Torwart [position in football]     Schach [chess]    Badminton    das Augeln [fishing]    das Essen [eating]    das Metall [metal]
der Boss= der Chef     die Autobahn [highway]    woher [where from]    wohin [where to]    liegen [lie]
der Geburtstag! [birthday]    Klavier [piano]      

German Course Notes 3

The course becomes a suffer for me because my throat hurts. I don't know exactly why, but I feel uncomfortable after a few talking. I drank cola every 10 minute to make myself feel better, which make my classmates think I'm addicted to it.

Okay, weekend is two days away, just hang on.

The course started with listening practice, the words we heard are names of place in Stuttgart, which I find a good idea for it helps us get familiar with this city. But I suck at this practice. Anyway, for pronunciation I only note TH could also pronounced as "t".

More questions on personal information
-Wie alt ist du? ( How old are you)
-Was ist sie von Beruf? ( What does she do for job)
-Sie haben zwei Kinder. ( They have two kids)
-Ist sie verheiratet? ( Is she married)
-Wie viele Kinder hat sie? ( How many kids does she have)
-Was sind Ihr/Sein Hobbeys? ( What are her/his hobbys)
-Ich weiß nicht. ( I don't know ) very useful on class :-)

-Entschuldigung! (sorry)
-Macht nichts.

So "wie" has the meaning of "how", "was" means "what", "woher" or "wo" means "where", "wer" means "who". Perhaps you will notice in changing forms of the verbs, it is one big theme in learning German, the gender of words, we just got in touch with it. I will write it when the teacher introduce it systematically.

Then comes a huge wave of new words.
wald [forest]  die karte [can be used for map or card]  postleitzahl [postcode]  Ort [place]  klein [small]
Landwirt(e) [farmer]  die Briefmarke [stamp]  die Postkarten [postcard]  die Hauptstadt [capital]
die Alpen [take a guess :)]  nicht [not]  zusammen [together]  werdeul [become]  der Neckar [name of river]
aber [but]  morgen [morning&tomorrow]  jetzt [now]  ledig [single]  verheiratet [married]  kaufen [buy]
verkaufen [sell]  lernen [learn]  studieren [study]  unterrichten [teach]  physiker  geschieden [divorced]
struktur [structure]  mal [multiply]  partnert [coupled, didn't found it in dictionary]  durch [divide]
verwitwet [widowed]  falsch [false]  richtig [right]  die studenten   addieren [verb add]   subtrahieren
multiplizieren   dividieren  schluss [end]  heute [today]  zählen [count]  möchen [want]  schüler [pupil]
stück [piece]  die zahl [number]  

German Course Note 2

The course start with a kind of review practice which we ask each other stuff from last class, then to how to ask about more detail of a person.

Was/Wie ist Ihr/dein Familiename/Vorname/Wohnort?
Was/Wie ist Ihre/deine Straße/Telefon/Adresse/Anschrift?

These two are very similar. Asking about family name, given name, address and so on. The big difference is Ihr vs. Ihre. They all mean "your". The difference lies in the subjective, they are of different genders. And when apply definite articles to them, it might be die, der, das according. I don't really know which one is which. But, those who should have "der" in front of them, you can put "Ihr" in front of them. And for "die" and "das" words, you should add an "e" and make "Ihr" "Ihre". The same with "dein", it's only inoffizell.

Buchstabieren Sie, bitte! (Please spell it)  IMPERATIV

When asking about spelling and telephone number, we have to learn to spell and count. German has 26 Buchstaben (letters same as English) and 4 Sonderzeichen ( ä ö ü ß, which English does not have). The letters sound  a bit different, takes time to get used to it. We even heard an ABC rap, it's like back in middle school. Luckily we don't have to learn to sing it.

Numbers are quite different from English, you can find the similarity, but not very much. And they say 21 like one and twenty, which is not that straightforward. Of course German are better than French in counting, in France, to say 88 you have to do the math and say 88 as some plus some plus some. Really stupid. So here are the numbers.

0 null  1 eins  2 zwei  3 drei  4 vier  5 fünf  6 sechs  7 sieben  8 acht  9 neun  10 zehn  11 elf  12 zwölf
13 dreizehn  14 vierzehn  15 fünfzehn   16 sechzehn  17 siebzehn  18 achtzehn  19 neunzehn  20 zwanzig
21 einundzwanzig  27 siebenundzwanzig 30 dreißig  60 sechzig  70 siebzig  100 hundert  1000 tausend

We practice a lot on numbers. Like phone number, price, plate license, math.

-Wie teuer? (how much)
-Das kostet XX €.

-Vier plus sieben ist elf. (4 + 7 = 11)
-Elf minus vier ist sieben.

Pronunciation 
Most of German look exactly they sound. So pronunciation is pretty important in German. Unfortunately I suck at it. I can't tell a lot of phonemes apart. And I'm not fully understand the rules.

EI  has the sound of "I" in English
s  has the sound of "z" in English,
ö  no corresponding sound in English, to pronunciate it, you should have the lip like when you are try to say 'o', and the tongue like you want to say 'e'
ü  another deutsch phoneme, have the lip like 'u' and the tongue like 'i'

Vocabulary
feuer (fire)  Ausländer (foreigner)  langsam (slowly)  noch einmal ( once again )  der buchstabe
Adresse=Anschrift  zahlen (numbers)  teuer (expensive)  Kennzeichen (license plate)  Hanse
die Vorwahlnummer  billig  arbeiter  etwa=circa (almost)   Zum Beispiet (for example)  schon (already)
schön (beautifully)  schaltjahr 

German Course Note 1

Yesterday was my first German class. We are level 1, which means it requires zero German knowledge. Although it seems that I'm the only "zero" one, others more or less learned a little bit by themselves. Anyway, I will put an effort to it. And I write here as a review.

The course starts with
-Ich heiße XXX. Wie heißen Sie?
Answer
-Ich heiße Karl. / Mein Name ist Karl.

The meaning is obvious. And that is the formal (offiziell) way of asking, we can go like
-Wie heißt du?
Which is informal (inoffizell).

Germans also have a habit to put definite article in front of the name. Like
-Ich bin der Karl./ Ich bin die Jane.
Just a habit, though a bit strange.

Then I will keep it quick.
-Woher kommen Sie? / Woher kommst du?
-Ich komme aus China./ Er kommt aus ... / Sie kommt aus ...
-Wer ist das?
-Das ist Karl. / Das bin ich.

-Wie geht es Ihnen? / Wie geht es dir?
-Es geht. Und Ihnen? / Und dir?
-Gut, danke.

-Guten Morgen/Abend/...

The last sentence pattern is
Ich lese gern.
"lese" means read. This is how to say I like reading.

An important part is pronunciation. I kind of fall asleep during this part (shame on me). Here is what's on my notebook.

-SCH  together sounds like "sh" in English
-PH  sounds just like English "ph"
-AU sounds like ao
-Z  sounds like ci ( It is more Chinese way of marking the sounds, I don't know how English would mark it, and it is too troublesome to phonetic symbols ).
-CH  has the sound of "k", just like English "c"
-ÄU/EU sounds like oi
-S  when leading a word, sounds like z
-ß  verz German, sounds like s, and the vowel before it always have longer sound. (how to put this).

Vocabulary
sind heiße lesen fahrrad/rad(mountain bike) fahren(ride) fußball(football) spielen(play) musik hören(listen) dichiter(poet) seite(page)

An interesting word is DENGLISH. Turn out that nowadays more and more English words show up in Germany, turning German in to Denglish, D stands for "deutschland" or "deutsch", which means Germany and German. And it seems that proud Germans are not happy about it.

So much for now. And time for class. :-)

Course review: Death

I just got the open course Death removed from my iPod. It is a course provided by Professor Shelly Kegan in Yale University. I downloaded it to my iPod so I will not waste the time when I was jogging.

It is a good course, I have to say, and also it is introductory level, which is suitable for a non-philosophy student like me. Nevertheless I failed to finish it. First of all, I need something funnier than this for jogging. Secondly, also one reason for the funny thing, up to now Professor Kegan is mainly talking about physicialism which is not new for me. Another course I've watched talked about this in a more persuasive way.

It is not to say that I don't like this course, I got several ideas that I would appreciate for the few lectures I've listened to, mainly about physicialism and dualism, do we have a soul or can I survive my death.

Shelly started by examine the question, what does it mean by asking can I survive my death. Very impressive, typical philosopher. It is a good habit that before you are trying to answering something, find out what the question about first. And it is not always clear.

Then comes a long debate for dualism. Three ideas left an impression. First is Descartes' argument that if we can think of something separately, they must be two different things. We can think about a body without a soul and we can think about a soul without body, so body and soul must be two things. This argument, from my point of view, is obviously wrong. I know that there are some ideas about how powerful merely thinking or naming is, and I appreciate those idea. But not this one here. Human imagination has its own limitation, you can easily find it when studying physics, like quantum mechanics or high dimensional world. On the contrary, we can think about various things that are not there, like dragons. So human imagination, interesting as it may be, can not be used as a way of judgment.

Then is Platonic forms. It is an interesting idea which separate beauty, just, and in Plato's view, soul from our everyday object. Platonic forms, they are perfect, they are pure. It occurs to me that perfect and pure should also be platonic forms. So, don't worry about death, Plato says, it only makes you better because you will get rid of your body, and what remains, is the essence, is what is pure, namely your soul.

The third one is Shelly's view of how to prove the non-existence of something. We could only do it by proving the evidences for the existence of something do not stand. And as we can see, even if we did that, we can only reach the conclusion that something tend to be non-existing, I think to that extend, mathematics is unique.

What would also worth recording is my feeling towards philosophy. I like their way of thinking, and I admit that the best physics is about philosophy, about how we view our world. But, I don't see that other than brain storm, what would philosophers bring us. Shelly fights a long way for physicialism, but his best proof comes from psychology or computer science. So why don't we just appeal to these subjects for answers? After all, from my point of view, what can really move this seems eternal question ahead is the advance of neuroscience. 

New Start

New semester,new place, new home, new university, and I want a new me.

That's why this blog exist. I'm the kind of guy who won't think about something unless he has to. And now I have to. No longer a first year, I will graduate, I have to think about my life afterwards.

Different time, different thoughts. I remember just 2 months ago, I was exciting about the summer event and the coming thesis. I told myself, PhD is what I wanted, fusion is the area to devote. I want to go to America, and I want do fusion. But now it is "wanted".

I always think that physics is the kind of stuff that when you quit, it is hard to get in. But 5 years studying it, I still don't get the feeling of "in". If life is about experience, I could use these years for more other stuff. That's when I started thinking about jump out. Not because I'm not interested, just there may be more outside.

So while exploring the new city, I am here, to dig out that within me, what I have and what I want. I will try to write my understanding about nuclear fusion and my thinking about life. There are several times that my view of life changed dramatically, I also want to record those, before I forget.

I name the blog "seeeking", hope I can find something here.