Food & Drink: Grammar & Phonics (AQA GCSE German): Revision Note

To say what you eat and drink, use negatives to say what you don't eat or drink, and express your food preferences, you need to know three important grammar points - the present tense of the verbs essen and trinken, how to use nicht and kein/keine to make sentences negative, and how to use gern, lieber and am liebsten to say what you like, prefer and like most. Let's look at these in more detail.

The verbs essen & trinken

• The verb essen means 'to eat' and the verb trinken means 'to drink'

• Both verbs are irregular - be careful with the spelling changes!

• Essen has a vowel change in the du and er/sie/es forms: the e changes to i

• The du form of essen also loses one s: du isst

Nicht & kein/keine

• In German there are two main ways to make a sentence negative: nicht and kein/keine

• Choosing the right one depends on what you are negating

• Use nicht for verbs and adjectives

• Use kein/keine for nouns

  • Ich esse kein Gemüse. - I don't eat vegetables.

  • Ich trinke keinen Kaffee. - I don't drink coffee.

• The ending of kein/keine follows the same pattern as ein/eine when used in the accusative form

Gern, lieber, am liebsten

• Use gern, lieber and am liebsten after essen and trinken to express how much you like eating and drinking something

• These are adverbs - they describe the verb, so their ending never changes

• Gern means 'like', lieber means 'prefer', and am liebsten means 'like the most'

• They are placed directly after the verb in a sentence, e.g. ich esse gern Kuchen - 'I like eating cake'

• To say you dislike something, use nicht gern, e.g. ich esse nicht gern Gemüse - 'I don't like eating vegetables'

• Gern, lieber and am liebsten work with any verb, not just essen and trinken

• Here are a few examples

Food & drink: phonics

• In German, the letter w is pronounced like the English 'v' sound, never like the English 'w'
  Wein
  Wasser
  Wurst