Thursday 19 February 2009

Here and there

There really are a lot of perfect cognates in German and English. Say a word in English and there is a good chance that it comes from the German. I have already given quite a few examples, but of course it is a little more difficult than that if you want to speak fluent German.

Take the words for here and there. You can say here and with a slight difference in accent you could be saying the German word hier. It is a little more difficult to say 'there' as you have to learn the word dort or da. Now if you want to say come here you can guess the verb to come - kommen. So the command is kommen Sie but you can't say hier. In this case the German word has to have a sense of movement and you say hierher. So you could say 'kommen Sie hierher' or 'Bringen Sie es hierher'.

If you want to say something is not far from here then you are back to hier. Es ist nicht weit von hier. Das museum ist nicht weit von dort.

Bis bald

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