As a German speaking English tutor, I have many German students who seem to struggle with the same mistakes. I might add through no fault of their own. So I decided to compile a list of these issues so that they can be worked on in the future.
So what are these common mistakes? I have separated these into sub-categories below
(I haven't mentioned all of the mistakes, but these are a few which seem to be the most common)
The Tenses
Many students ask me "why do the English use 'was' so frequently?". I'll give you an example;
"Ich bin in Berlin geboren"
Let's break this sentence apart
Ich bin (I am) Present Tense
geboren (born) Past Tense
However, in English we use (pronoun + past tense auxiliary verb + past tense verb)
I was born
"Vor (For)" & "Ago"
Another question I get asked is, what does "ago" mean & when is it used?
"Ago" is used as a time phrase when speaking about how long in the past something happened
A common mistake my students make is "I started here before 6 years". What they mean to say is "I started here 6 years ago"
Let me give you some more useful examples;
I moved here 5 years ago (Ich bin vor 5 Jahren hierher gezogen)
I started learning German 10 years ago. (Ich habe vor 10 Jahren angefangen, Deutsch zu lernen.)
I will...
I call you today at 4pm.
I will call you today at 4pm.
I know in German it would be translated as "Ich rufe Sie heute um 16 Uhr an"
I (+verb)...
Common English structure;
I will call
I will go
The verb "will" is commonly used when showing intent of doing something
Pronunciation
I have recently started working with students from all over the world who would like to better their pronunciation. In this post I will name some of the common pronunciation errors of German speakers.
"Th"
This has to be #1 in the list.
Many German speakers pronounce this as a "z" or "s" sound.
The method I teach students to replicate this sound is by placing their tongue between their front top & bottom teeth and allowing the sound to be created through this.
Of course this is better explained in a lesson.
V/W
As the "w" sound doesn't appear in the German language, it is commonly pronounced using a "v" sound
I always tell my students that the BEST way to improve pronunciation is by copying how a native speaker talks. You can do this by copying dialogue from English shows/films or by working with an online tutor to replicate their speech.
I hope you found this short article interesting. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts below
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