1. Welcome
Hello, welcome to the Better German podcast. My name is Susi and I’m your host. I’m a German teacher, and my mission and vision are to help all learners of German, you, to learn German without any super complicated rules and without the things that have made German learning difficult sometimes. Okay, so here we go, the first wordlist we’re going to do together.
If you’ve felt lost trying to learn German, you’re not alone. In the Better German Community, we skip the unnecessary rules and help you truly get the language—step by step, no stress. In there, you will find the PDF worksheet for this episode, all with translation and some information what to do to practice them.
2. Wordlist
[00:00:46] This is a very basic wordlist about body parts. I’m going to include a few explanations of what we’re doing. So this is a wordlist of nouns – Words that refer to objects or things, or even feelings, conditions. In German, when we learn a word list, we always include articles. Don’t worry, we’re going to repeat this information just so you understand why they’re there: For every noun we need to learn with it, it’s the article “der”, “die”, or “das”. If you haven’t heard, or if you don’t know what I’m talking about and what’s with the “der”, “die” and “das” and you don’t know what an article is: I’ve recorded an episode, and it’s titled Introduction to Articles, and you can find it on the Podcast Page of our Homepage. It’s going to be in the course as well. So, it’s a good idea that you listen to that first, so you know what we’re talking about. Basically, very simply, we’re going to do repeating things.
If you cannot speak right now, like if you’re in the tram and you’re listening to this episode, and maybe you can’t say anything, okay fine, you can listen to it. However, ideally, you say these out loud. As much as you can, don’t be afraid and just do it. You can even do it together with a partner. If you have a friend who also wants to learn German, grab him (or her), get hold of him (or her), and do the whole thing together. We’re going to do some exercises, which I think are more fun if you do them together.
You can download this list. So if you want to have the written-up list for practicing, go to my homepage on bettergerman.info slash (/) and then the episode number (6). This is episode number six, so you do www.bettergerman.info/6. There you will find the entire show notes, you will find a transcript to download, and you will find the link where you can get the body parts list. This will take you to my course platform. You will have to register once; it’s completely free, and then you will have access to all of the additional materials that you can get for free with the podcast.
[00:03:44] So let’s get started. I’m going to say the German word, and I want you to repeat it, and then for this step, I’m going to say the translation, and you’re going to repeat it. So I’ll always leave a little bit of space in between, hopefully enough for you to repeat it.
🎧 Missed the episode? Listen to Episode 6 of the Better German Podcast and follow along as you explore the body parts in German!
der Körper – Body
der Teil – Part
der Körperteil – Body part
der Kopf – It’s the head
das Gesicht – the face
die Stirn – forehead.
das Auge – Eye
die Nase – The nose
der Mund – It’s the mouth
die Zunge – It’s the tongue
das Kinn – Chin
der Arm – arm.
die Hand – Hand.
der Finger – it’s the finger
der Daumen – That’s the thumb or the biggest finger.
der Bauch – It’s your belly
der Nabel – It’s the belly button. Like the little hole or hole-ish kind of thing in the middle of your belly
das Bein – the leg.
der Fuß – Foot.
die Zehe – It’s the toe
By the way, I have to apologize to all native English speakers. I’m sometimes keeping things intentionally simple because not all of my students have English as their native language, and I want to be as understandable for everybody as possible. So “a toe” maybe, depending on your language these are the fingers of your feet.
So, “die Zehe” – it’s a finger of your foot or a toe.
das Knie – the knee.
die Schulter – the shoulder
die Augenbraue – Eyebrow
das Ohr – the ear
das Haar – It’s the hair. Can be used to mean all of the hair together. das Haar – Can also be one single hair.
der Hals – It’s the neck.
der Rücken – The back, the part of your body behind on the backside. Der Bart – It’s the beard, the facial hair of men. A beard. Good.
If you’re still a little bit confused, go back and do this one more time, particularly if you only hear this, if you hear it on the podcast, go to the beginning of the list, and just listen to it again.
Repeat Twice
Other than that, for the next step. I’m gonna say it in German and you’ll repeat it.
[00:08:14] We’re going to do this twice for every word:
der Körper, der Körper
der Teil, der Teil
der Körperteil, der Körperteil
der Kopf, der Kopf
das Gesicht, das Gesicht
die Stirn, die Stirn
das Auge, das Auge
die Nase, die Nase
der Mund, der Mund
die Zunge, die Zunge
das Kinn, das Kinn
der Arm, der Arm
By the way, if you are wondering about this letter, r, I get asked a lot by my students. This letter, “r” in German. An episode and a lesson are coming up very soon about the alphabet, and there is going to be an entire pronunciation course where we go into this in detail. However, this “r” is not always pronounced as “r”. So you can say in this particular word, you could say “Arm”. But honestly, at least people in Austria and probably most of Germany will not usually say “Arm” (with a rolled “r”), they will just say “Arm”. So it becomes almost silent.
Similarly, like if you have an er” at the end of a word, it is very correctly pronounced as “ah”, “der FingA”, and there was another example that we just had, just wanted to mention that. “Stirn” same thing. “die StiRn” you can say that, but frankly, people in the theatre, on stage will maybe do that, but most people in day-to-day language, they will not see “die StiRn”, they will just say “die Stirn”. So in case you’re wondering, don’t be surprised, when I do these exercises with you, I just try to speak kind of “normal” German, so you get used to normal German, so you will soon be able to go out and talk to people.
Okay. Let’s carry on.
der Arm, der Arm.
die Hand, die Hand
der Finger, der Finger
der Daumen, der Daumen
der Bauch, der Bauch
der Nabel, der Nabel
das Bein, das Bein
der Fuß, der Fuß
die Zehe, die Zehe
das Knie, das Knie
die Schulter, die Schulter
die Augenbraue, die Augenbraue
das Ohr, das Ohr
das Haar, das Haar
der Hals, der Hals
der Rücken, der Rücken
der Bart, der Bart
OK, good. So, before we go to the next step, what I would like you to know and understand is a little bit about how to use these exercises. So whenever you do this, you do it as well as you can, you don’t have to worry about it. However, if you’ve done it and then you still are not sure if you’re saying it correctly, or you still think it’s quite difficult to say them (the words), then you just do it again and you do it again until you’re sure or you feel really good about this part of the exercise. Same thing with the first part of the exercise. If you are still confused. “Wait, what, what, what is this one? What does it mean?” Then you go back and you do the whole thing again. There’s no stress about it, and you can just do it as many times as you need.
[00:14:16] Don’t worry about it, please. Relax, it takes as long as it takes. I can guarantee you that you will be faster if you do it that way.
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German to English
Good! The next step is, I’m gonna say the German word, and you’re going to say the English word. So if you’re just listening to this, I really highly recommend it, I hope you got yourself the wordlist because this is going to be much easier. So I’m gonna say it, and then you’re gonna say the English translation:
der Körper
der Teil
der Körperteil
der Kopf
das Gesicht
die Stirn
das Auge
die Nase
der Mund
die Zunge
das Kinn
der Arm
die Hand
der Finger
der Daumen
der Bauch
der Nabel
das Bein
der Fuß
die Zehe
das Knie
die Schulter
die Augenbraue
das Ohr
das Haar
der Hals
der Rücken
der Bart
All right. So the next step for this word list will be to practice it, and there is going to be a sentence pattern.
3. Reminder
[00:16:50] The next episode on the podcast is a sentence pattern to practice these exact words. See you there. Before I go, I’ll tell you, you can repeat this, repeat it over and over until you have no worries, and you feel very good about it, and you know what these mean, and also how to say them. You will need more practice to actually use them, and this is what we are going to learn next time. Thank you for listening to this episode. You can find a transcript of this episode at www.bettergerman.info and slash (/) and then the number of the episode.
