Sun, 22 July 2007  The students know when to conjugate verbs with "haben" and when with "sein" in the present and past perfect tenses, active voice, indicative mood. They are confused, however, when they see or hear what they perceive to be "haben-verbs" used with "sein" and "sein-verbs" used with "haben." Why are they confused? What confuses them? The teacher tries to explain some of the reasons in this podcast. Comments[1] |
I have been listening to your podcasts ever since I discovered them in mid-December. They are excellent. I have an amusing story to tell you. This is a long story, but bear with me...
I considered myself fairly proficient in German, as I had a minor in German literature in college, and still read German novels -- some of them 800 pages.
Within the last year or so I started to learn Russian. (I don't know why. Maybe I'm a masochist.)
I was just explaining to my husband last night why Russian is so very different than German: Instead of having the verb tenses that we are used to (present, simple past, past perfect, etc.), it has an entirely different verb system. For every verb there are two versions: imperfective and perfective. Each one of the versions has only a present, simple past and future.
One uses the imperfective version of the verb when the action is unfinished, repetitive, or continuous. Example: We were walking along the street.
One uses the perfective version of the verb when there was a single, completed event. Example: Last night, I walked home.
I had just finished telling my husband that this is a totally different method of handling verbs than in German.
Then, this afternoon, I listened to this podcast about haben and sein. In your example "I know what you did last summer", you contrasted "Ich habe gesegelt." with "Wir sind über den See bis nach Buffalo gesegelt."
Your description of "unlimited action" versus "limited action" was new to me. In all my years of studying German, I never knew this! But I was also thinking about how the "unlimited action" is very similar to what the Russian language calls "ongoing, continuous" action: I sailed (nowhere in particular specified). Whereas, the sentence "I sailed over the sea to Buffalo" names a single, completed event.
The moral of my story is that I lied when I told my husband that German doesn't have anything similar to the Russian verb constructions!
I considered myself fairly proficient in German, as I had a minor in German literature in college, and still read German novels -- some of them 800 pages.
Within the last year or so I started to learn Russian. (I don't know why. Maybe I'm a masochist.)
I was just explaining to my husband last night why Russian is so very different than German: Instead of having the verb tenses that we are used to (present, simple past, past perfect, etc.), it has an entirely different verb system. For every verb there are two versions: imperfective and perfective. Each one of the versions has only a present, simple past and future.
One uses the imperfective version of the verb when the action is unfinished, repetitive, or continuous. Example: We were walking along the street.
One uses the perfective version of the verb when there was a single, completed event. Example: Last night, I walked home.
I had just finished telling my husband that this is a totally different method of handling verbs than in German.
Then, this afternoon, I listened to this podcast about haben and sein. In your example "I know what you did last summer", you contrasted "Ich habe gesegelt." with "Wir sind über den See bis nach Buffalo gesegelt."
Your description of "unlimited action" versus "limited action" was new to me. In all my years of studying German, I never knew this! But I was also thinking about how the "unlimited action" is very similar to what the Russian language calls "ongoing, continuous" action: I sailed (nowhere in particular specified). Whereas, the sentence "I sailed over the sea to Buffalo" names a single, completed event.
The moral of my story is that I lied when I told my husband that German doesn't have anything similar to the Russian verb constructions!
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