Tag 02 - sein und Fragen

Tag 02 von 60 - die Umlaute, das Verb sein, die Fragewörter. Zwei Stunden.

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Yesterday you could say who you are. Today you get the verb that carries half of all beginner German - sein - in all six of its forms, and the three question words that open almost every real conversation: wie, wo, was.

The sounds today are the three umlauts. Two of them, ö and ü, do not exist in English at all. That is not a problem to postpone; it is the single thing that makes a beginner sound foreign for years if it is skipped in week one.

Everything from yesterday comes back first, before anything new is added.

How to run this page

Nine blocks, about two hours. Aufwärmen 10 minutes, Aussprache 15, Neue Bausteine 20, Drills 25, Wiederholung 10, Text und Hören 15, Bidirektional 15, Sprechen 10, Auf Papier 20. Say every answer out loud before typing. Nothing is saved - reload and every score is gone, by design.

1. Aufwärmen - gestern

Ten items from Tag 01, cold, before you look at anything. If more than three go wrong, reread yesterday’s section 2 before you carry on.

2. Aussprache - die Umlaute ä, ö, ü

Three letters, three sounds. One is easy, two are not.

ä is the easy one: it is simply an e. Long ä sounds like the ay in say held flat; short ä sounds like the e in bed. For a beginner, treating ä and e as the same sound is accurate enough. Käse and Bäcker give you both lengths.

ö and ü are built the same way, and there is a mechanical trick for each. Say a vowel, freeze your tongue, then move only your lips:

Umlaut	Start from	Then	Beispiel
ö	say e as in say	keep the tongue exactly there, round the lips as if for o	schön, hören, Köln
ü	say ee as in see	keep the tongue exactly there, round the lips as if for oo	müde, über, Tschüss

That is the whole secret: tongue forward, lips rounded. English never combines those two things, which is why there is no English equivalent to point at. If you round the lips and let the tongue slide back as well, ö collapses into oh and ü collapses into oo - that is the mistake to listen for.

The contrast that matters most in week one is ä against e, because they are close, and ü against u, because they are not:

Paar	Unterschied
Bäcker / Becker	almost none - both are the e sound
müde / Mude	ü is lips rounded, tongue forward
über / Uber	same
schön / schon	ö versus plain o, and the meaning changes
Köln / Kohlen	ö versus long o

The two-letter escape hatch, and when to stop using it

On a keyboard without umlauts you may write ae, oe, ue and ss - Tschuess, muede. The drills on this site accept that and then tell you to write it properly. It is a typing convenience only: it must never change how you say the word. Fix the keyboard this week.

3. Neue Bausteine - zwölf Stück

Das Verb sein

German has one verb you cannot avoid, and it is irregular in every person. Learn it as a block, out loud, six forms in one breath, the way you would learn a phone number:

Person	Form	Beispiel
ich	bin	Ich bin müde
du	bist	Du bist Student
er / sie / es	ist	Das ist ein Café
wir	sind	Wir sind aus Indien
ihr	seid	Ihr seid in Hamburg
sie / Sie	sind	Sind Sie aus Deutschland

Two things to notice now and stop being surprised by later. Sie with a capital is the polite you, and it takes the same form as they: sind. And German does not use an article before a job: Ich bin Student, never ich bin ein Student.

Die Fragewörter wie, wo, was

Wort	English	Frage
wie	how / what (in a name)	Wie geht es Ihnen?
wo	where	Wo ist der Bahnhof?
was	what	Was ist das?

The pattern is fixed and worth saying aloud five times: question word, then the verb, then the rest. Wo ist der Bahnhof? Never wo der Bahnhof ist.

Die zwölf Bausteine

Read each aloud twice before the drill.

Deutsch	English	Wann
Wie geht es Ihnen?	how are you	formal, the standard opener
Danke, gut	fine, thanks	the standard answer
Und Ihnen?	and you	hand the question back
Ich bin müde	I am tired	sein, ich form
Ich bin Student	I am a student	no article before a job
Sind Sie aus Deutschland?	are you from Germany	verb first in a yes-no question
Wo ist der Bahnhof?	where is the station	the most useful sentence in Germany
Was ist das?	what is that	point at the thing
Das ist ein Café	that is a cafe	the answer to the one above
Entschuldigung	excuse me	to open, or to apologise
Sprechen Sie Englisch?	do you speak English	use it late, not first
Ich verstehe nicht	I do not understand	say this instead of going silent

4. Drills

Mechanical on purpose. Speed first, thought second.

Substitutionsdrill

Keep the sentence, change the person, fix the form of sein.

Konversionsdrill

Turn the statement into the question that would produce it, or swap the question word.

Antwortdrill

Answer as yourself, in a full sentence.

Übersetzungsdrill

5. Wiederholung

Today’s twelve mixed back in with yesterday’s twelve, on the clock. Run it once now, then once more at the end of your two hours.

6. Text und Hören

Every line uses only Tag 01 and Tag 02.

A: Guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen? B: Danke, gut. Und Ihnen? A: Ich bin müde. Entschuldigung, wo ist der Bahnhof? B: Was ist das? Ich verstehe nicht. A: Der Bahnhof. Sprechen Sie Englisch? B: Nein. Ich bin Student. Ich bin aus Indien. A: Ja, genau. Auf Wiedersehen! B: Tschüss!

Read it aloud twice, both parts. Then cover the text and say A’s lines from memory - A is the one asking the questions, which is the harder half.

7. Bidirektional

Translate into German, then reveal and read the difference between your line and the model out loud. The comparison is the lesson, not the score.

8. Sprechen - zehn Minuten

Paste this into a voice AI and actually speak. Ten minutes, out loud, standing up.

Du bist eine freundliche Person an einem Bahnhof in Hamburg. Ich bin
Anfänger (Tag 2, A1). Sprich sehr langsam und nur mit diesen Wörtern:
Guten Tag, Hallo, Tschüss, Auf Wiedersehen, Entschuldigung, Wie geht es
Ihnen, Danke gut, Und Ihnen, Ich bin müde, Ich bin Student, Sind Sie aus
Deutschland, Wo ist der Bahnhof, Was ist das, Das ist ein Café, Sprechen
Sie Englisch, Ich verstehe nicht, Ich heiße, Ich wohne in, Ich bin aus,
Ja genau, Nein danke.
Stelle mir drei Fragen: wie es mir geht, woher ich komme, und ob ich
Student bin. Benutze nur die Formen von sein: bin, bist, ist, sind, seid.
Maximal sechs Wörter pro Satz. Wenn ich einen Fehler mache, wiederhole den
Satz einfach richtig, ohne Erklärung. Fang jetzt an und begrüße mich.

Use Ich verstehe nicht on purpose

Today you have the sentence that keeps a conversation alive: Ich verstehe nicht. Use it at least three times in the ten minutes, and do not follow it with English. Say it, wait, and let them say the sentence again more slowly. Learning to stay inside German while lost is a separate skill from vocabulary, and this is the day it starts.

9. Auf Papier

Diktat. Play the shadowing audio again. Write down any five German words you hear, by hand, without pausing. Then mark every umlaut you wrote, and any you think you heard but could not place.

Satz des Tages. Write the six forms of sein by hand, in order, without looking: ich, du, er, wir, ihr, Sie. Then write three sentences by hand, from memory:

1. That you are tired.
2. That you are a student and you are from India.
3. A question asking a stranger where the station is.

Check them against section 3 only after all three are on paper.

Fehlerliste. Add today’s wrong answers to the Fehler page in your notebook, in German, correctly, no English. If a mistake was an umlaut, circle the umlaut.

Genus-Farben. Still nothing to do - the first nouns arrive tomorrow. Get three coloured pens ready today: blue for der, red for die, green for das.

Goldlist. Starts tomorrow. Today, just put a dated heading on a fresh double page of your notebook and leave it empty.

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Weiter: Tag 03 - der, die, das - die Diphthonge ei, ie, eu, au, die Laute ch und sch, und die drei Geschlechter.