Family Celebrations: Grammar & Phonics (AQA GCSE German): Revision Note

• In the topic of family celebrations, you will often need to talk about how things used to be or what events were like in the past - for this we use the imperfect tense

• You will also need to talk about giving and receiving gifts and inviting people to events - for this it helps to know dative pronouns

• Let's look at these grammar points in more detail

The imperfect tense

• The imperfect tense (also called the simple past) is used to describe states or ongoing situations in the past

• At Foundation tier, you need to know the imperfect of sein (to be) and haben (to have)

• These two verbs are very common and appear frequently in the listening and reading exams

Sein in the imperfect

Haben in the imperfect

Some useful imperfect phrases for this topic are:

Higher tier only

• At Higher tier, you also need to be able to use and recognise the imperfect tense of

  • regular verbs - all persons, singular and plural

  • highly frequent irregular verbs whose imperfect forms are listed on the Higher tier vocabulary list

• To form the imperfect of a regular verb, take the verb stem and add the following endings:

• Irregular verbs change their stem vowel in the imperfect and must be learned individually

• Only strong verbs whose imperfect forms are explicitly listed on the Higher tier vocabulary list are required

• The following are particularly useful for this topic:

Dative pronouns

• A dative pronoun replaces a noun that is the indirect object of a sentence - that is, the person that something is done to or for

• Many key verbs in this topic take a dative object: you give someone a gift, you send someone a card, you invite someone to a party

• At Foundation tier, you need to know the singular dative pronouns:

• The dative pronoun comes directly after the verb in a normal sentence:

  • Ich gebe ihr das Geschenk. I give her the present.

  • Er schickt mir eine Karte. He sends me a card.

Higher tier only

• At Higher tier, you also need to know the plural dative pronouns:

• When a sentence has both a direct object (accusative) and an indirect object (dative), the dative pronoun comes first if it is a pronoun:

  • Ich gebe ihr das Geschenk. I give her the present. (dative pronoun, then accusative noun)

  • Ich gebe es ihr. I give it to her. (accusative pronoun, then dative pronoun)

Family celebrations: phonics

• soft vs hard -ch sound: the soft -ch sound is lighter, from the front of the mouth, whereas the hard -ch sound is deeper, from the back of the throat

• soft -ch:
  Kirche
  ich
  glücklich

• hard -ch:
  Kuchen

  lachen

  Hochzeit