The main theme of this lesson was how to ask questions that are directed at nobody. For example, when you say “how does one do this?”, you’re not asking any particular person how something is done, you’re more interested in knowing how the thing is done.

In German, these questions are expressed in the format “How does man do this?”. Another question of the same kind is “How do you say this in German?”, which is expressed in the form “How does man say this in German”

Note: When using the word for man (mann) in these expressions, the spelling man is used. Ex.

• How do you do it? -> wie macht man (and not mann) es?

Vocab

• how -> wie
• in -> auf
• not yet -> noch nicht

New Verbs

We learned that the base word machen (to do/make) can be combined with multiple prefixes to make completely new verbs. Unfortunately, there is no logic to what prefix makes what kind of new verb. For example. The prefix re- in English almost always means that the main verb will be executed again. For eg. redo, remake, etc. No such logic applies for German.

• to open -> aufmachen
  • It’s short form auf can also be used sometimes. Ex.
  • Ex. is it open? -> es ist auf?
• To close -> sumachen
  • Again, the short form can be used when asking a casual question. Ex.
  • is it closed? -> es ist zu?
• to turn on -> anmachen
  • Again, the short form can be used when describing something casual. Ex.
  • it is on -> es ist an
• to turn off -> ausmachen
  • Again, the short form can be used when describing something casual. Ex.
  • it is off -> es ist aus

Ways to represent intensity in expression: I have to and I must

There are 2 ways to represent positive and negative intensity in German, and this is also where it gets a bit confusing. The confusion will be made clear below:

ich darf/ich darf nicht

This is a low intensity positive expression, but a high intensity negative expression. In the positive sense, it expresses “I’m allowed to” or “I may”, but in the negative sense, it expresses “I am not allowed to” or “I must not” or “I am forbidden from”. Some examples:

• I am not allowed to park here -> ich darf hier nicht parken (high intensity)
• am I allowed to do this? -> darf ich das tun? (low intensity)

ich muss/ich muss nicht

This is a low intensity negative expression, but a high intensity positive expression. In the positive sense, it expresses “I must” or “I have to”, but in the negative sense, it expresses “I don’t have to” or “I don’t need to”. Some examples:

• You don’t have to park here -> du musst hier nicht parken (low intensity)
• you have to vote! -> du musst wählen

Gotchas

Early in the lesson, we were asked to translate the sentence “How does one do it?” I’ve always seen short words like it (es) coming before the main pronoun (man in this case), which is why I translated this as “wie macht es man?”, but the correct translation is “wir macht man es?”. I asked gemini about this and got the following:

Object pronouns like it carry less weight than fill pronouns like man (one/you), which is why they get pulled to the front of the sentence’s middle section. The main rule is: when you have both a subject and an object pronoun, the standard order is Subject + Object

Let’s test this theory with a few examples:

• How do you say it in German? -> wie sagt man es auf Deutche? (correct; es (object) comes after man (subject))
• Are they doing it? -> machen sie es? (correct; es (object) comes after sie (subject))