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03 Video summaries 100% 2
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06 Glossary
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Summary

Project website learn.smartergerman.com
Instructions for translators

Translate the English instruction layer to the target language. Do NOT translate German content (German words, sentences, vocab terms, reading texts). Keep all markdown/HTML structure intact, especially mounts and {{double-brace}} tokens.
Translation process
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  • Any authenticated user can contribute.
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Repository branch main
Weblate repository https://translate.smartergerman.com/git/learn-sg-a1/04-transcripts/
File mask 04-transcripts/*.json
Monolingual base language file 04-transcripts/en.json
Translation file Download 04-transcripts/en.json
Last change May 20, 2026, 11:11 a.m.
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Language English
Language code en
Text direction Left to right
Case sensitivity Case-sensitive
Number of speakers 1,728,473,503
Number of plurals 2
Plural type One/other
Plurals Singular 1
Plural 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, …
Plural formula n != 1
05/20/2026

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Strings percent Hosted strings Words percent Hosted words Characters percent Hosted characters
Total 26 28,330 151,090
Translated 100% 26 100% 28,330 100% 151,090
Needs editing 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
Read-only 100% 26 100% 28,330 100% 151,090
Failing checks 7% 2 5% 1,559 5% 8,017
Strings with suggestions 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
Untranslated strings 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0
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File “04-transcripts/en.json” was added. 05/20/2026
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The inseparable verbs are not that easy to be recognized, but there is not too many Signals not too many prefixes that are inseparable and they're easily learned with a little trick that I will show you now Three examples to show you how they work. Ich besuche meine Eltern. I visit my parents and you see besuche the be Sticks to the rest of the world so you would never be able to say Ich suche meine Eltern B. And actually most of my students get that that it feels that way Sie entdeckt einen Schatz.

She discovers Treasure Wir vergessen dich nicht. We won't forget you There so you have B and and fair as examples, but as you can see here we have a few more Actually, it's one two, three, four five six and seven plus a few more that you will learn automatically after this So, how do you learn these? They're pretty abstract and boring and I've learned them myself like this. I can recite them any second you call me at 3 at night B and F at Sam you miss without thinking so I've learned them as magic spell imagine a magician maybe Harry Potter or Hermione or David Hasselhoff whatever magician you prefer and imagine that magician to try to cast a spell on words because he's so annoyed by Them being separable that he wants them to stick together With this spell and he's doing like B and F at Sam you miss and he's doing that a few times to make sure the Prefixes are always stuck to the stem the rest of the word yeah, one more time B and F at Sam you miss and This is how I have learned the inseparable prefixes so I can reset them anytime without thinking So go for it cast a few spells and you will be fine with this topic
The inseparable verbs are not that easy to be recognized, but there is not too many Signals not too many prefixes that are inseparable and they're easily learned with a little trick that I will show you now Three examples to show you how they work. Ich besuche meine Eltern. I visit my parents and you see besuche the be Sticks to the rest of the world so you would never be able to say Ich suche meine Eltern B. And actually most of my students get that that it feels that way Sie entdeckt einen Schatz.

She discovers Treasure Wir vergessen dich nicht. We won't forget you There so you have B and and fair as examples, but as you can see here we have a few more Actually, it's one two, three, four five six and seven plus a few more that you will learn automatically after this So, how do you learn these? They're pretty abstract and boring and I've learned them myself like this. I can recite them any second you call me at 3 at night B and F at Sam you miss without thinking so I've learned them as magic spell imagine a magician maybe Harry Potter or Hermione or David Hasselhoff whatever magician you prefer and imagine that magician to try to cast a spell on words because he's so annoyed by Them being separable that he wants them to stick together With this spell and he's doing like B and F at Sam you miss and he's doing that a few times to make sure the Prefixes are always stuck to the stem the rest of the word yeah, one more time B and F at Sam you miss and This is how I have learned the inseparable prefixes so I can reset them anytime without thinking So go for it cast a few spells and you will be fine with this topic
a1-l46-grammar-inseparable-verbs
05/20/2026
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Wir reden über die Inverteile, wie man sie bietet. Hier sehen wir drei Gesamte, die man in den Fahrer lesen kann, die man zu machen, zu fahren und zu reiten. Es ist sehr leicht zu schaffen, die Inverteile zu nehmen. Du schaust einfach die zweite Person der Singular, die die Beform des Doos, es wird klar, warum in der Minute, Und du wegkannst die Tür und die Ende. Also warst du weg. Was ist? Mach die Tür zu, macht das Fenster auf, lockst die Tür oder öffnet die Windel. Fahren du fest, Nein du, Nein als Tee. Aber auch eine Spezialität. Hast ein Blick. Fahr, fahr vorsichtig. Bezüglich ist das, was meine Mutter sagte. Sie sehen die Umlaut, unless man sie schon in der infinitiven Form findet. Aber in diesem Fall, das passiert nicht. Es ist nicht möglich. Lasen, zu schicken, zu lesen. Und hier habe ich ein bisschen Probleme. Das Stemm des Lasen-Ansen, wie ich das auch als ich das brauche, also habe ich die Tee eröffnet und habe mit, wie es schön ist, Das ist wie man die Info-Version des Imperativs bietet. Dann könntest du auch die Instruktionen oder Instruktionen geben, die du mit Info-Version sind. Hey, du, könntest du Essen, ja, es ist sogar mehr einfach als die Info-Version. Nur die Erleichterung, und du hast, voilà, den Imperativ. Let's do this quickly. You list the same verbs as above, as you can see. I list those bookworms. You've farred but positive, right? So, est, list and far, pretty simple. Last form, let's say you are talking or giving orders to a person that you're formal with. That's the z form, you have learned that already, I hope. Zee Essen, du tust Sürer oder Madame, alles, was du tun musst, ist die Zee und die Zee hinter dir. Die Emportive ist Essen Zee. Und das letzte ist Farben Zee. Es gibt nur sehr wenige Erachtung, es ist eine sehr normale Emportive zu sein. Aber ich frage dir ein Lehrer, google es schnell, es ist eine Form, die du von mir gelernt hast. Das ist es für die Imperative, wie man es schnell bauen kann. Jetzt kannst du Instruktionen oder Ordnungen geben, für alle, die du entkannst.
Wir reden über die Inverteile, wie man sie bietet. Hier sehen wir drei Gesamte, die man in den Fahrer lesen kann, die man zu machen, zu fahren und zu reiten. Es ist sehr leicht zu schaffen, die Inverteile zu nehmen. Du schaust einfach die zweite Person der Singular, die die Beform des Doos, es wird klar, warum in der Minute, Und du wegkannst die Tür und die Ende. Also warst du weg. Was ist? Mach die Tür zu, macht das Fenster auf, lockst die Tür oder öffnet die Windel. Fahren du fest, Nein du, Nein als Tee. Aber auch eine Spezialität. Hast ein Blick. Fahr, fahr vorsichtig. Bezüglich ist das, was meine Mutter sagte. Sie sehen die Umlaut, unless man sie schon in der infinitiven Form findet. Aber in diesem Fall, das passiert nicht. Es ist nicht möglich. Lasen, zu schicken, zu lesen. Und hier habe ich ein bisschen Probleme. Das Stemm des Lasen-Ansen, wie ich das auch als ich das brauche, also habe ich die Tee eröffnet und habe mit, wie es schön ist, Das ist wie man die Info-Version des Imperativs bietet. Dann könntest du auch die Instruktionen oder Instruktionen geben, die du mit Info-Version sind. Hey, du, könntest du Essen, ja, es ist sogar mehr einfach als die Info-Version. Nur die Erleichterung, und du hast, voilà, den Imperativ. Let's do this quickly. You list the same verbs as above, as you can see. I list those bookworms. You've farred but positive, right? So, est, list and far, pretty simple. Last form, let's say you are talking or giving orders to a person that you're formal with. That's the z form, you have learned that already, I hope. Zee Essen, du tust Sürer oder Madame, alles, was du tun musst, ist die Zee und die Zee hinter dir. Die Emportive ist Essen Zee. Und das letzte ist Farben Zee. Es gibt nur sehr wenige Erachtung, es ist eine sehr normale Emportive zu sein. Aber ich frage dir ein Lehrer, google es schnell, es ist eine Form, die du von mir gelernt hast. Das ist es für die Imperative, wie man es schnell bauen kann. Jetzt kannst du Instruktionen oder Ordnungen geben, für alle, die du entkannst.
a1-l42-grammar-the-imperative-du-the-imperative-sie-ihr
05/20/2026
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Jetzt, dass ihr die Dativ-Aberauung habt, zeig ich euch eine schöne Technik, um die Datenzüge zu lernen, um die Datenzüge zu lernen. Bei der Beziehung zu diesem Video, findet ihr eine Liste mit allen wichtigen Datenzüge, und das ist, wie ihr sie lernt. Dracula sagt ihr ab. Dracula kannst ihr eure Erinnerung, um in Deutschland Absagen zu cancelen. Das ist die Dativ. es nicht logisch ist, sondern man muss nur lernen, dass es das Datum braucht. Man lernt das einfach, um zu visualisieren, zu überlegen, wie Dracula vielleicht konsumiert, Mike, ich kann es heute nicht machen, also er ist auf dich kanzleriert. Also, um das zu tun, dass du das kanzlerierte Datum mit Kanzler hast und die Rettkühler starten mit ein D, wie Dative. Du hast die Idee? Also, zwei more Examples, und dann, ich glaube, es sollte ganz klar sein, ich helfe den Dinosaurier, ich habe den Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs starten mit ein D, und es ist ein Dative, das die Dative, die ihr hier seht, das letzte Beispiel, der Drachetut von Rösschenwe, ich habe hier zwei D-Worte, in Englisch nicht so gut funktioniert. Die Dragon hört die Schmerz. Hier ist ein D und hier auch. Um euch zu zeigen, dass ihr die englischen Stabilität mit den Stabilitäten verwendet. Also bitte, alles, was ihr dazu habt, ist die Augen zu nahe, für ein paar Sekunden, und imagine die Stabilität, die ich dir mit der Material provide, und es dauert eine halbe Stunde, um alle Daten zu halten.
Jetzt, dass ihr die Dativ-Aberauung habt, zeig ich euch eine schöne Technik, um die Datenzüge zu lernen, um die Datenzüge zu lernen. Bei der Beziehung zu diesem Video, findet ihr eine Liste mit allen wichtigen Datenzüge, und das ist, wie ihr sie lernt. Dracula sagt ihr ab. Dracula kannst ihr eure Erinnerung, um in Deutschland Absagen zu cancelen. Das ist die Dativ. es nicht logisch ist, sondern man muss nur lernen, dass es das Datum braucht. Man lernt das einfach, um zu visualisieren, zu überlegen, wie Dracula vielleicht konsumiert, Mike, ich kann es heute nicht machen, also er ist auf dich kanzleriert. Also, um das zu tun, dass du das kanzlerierte Datum mit Kanzler hast und die Rettkühler starten mit ein D, wie Dative. Du hast die Idee? Also, zwei more Examples, und dann, ich glaube, es sollte ganz klar sein, ich helfe den Dinosaurier, ich habe den Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs starten mit ein D, und es ist ein Dative, das die Dative, die ihr hier seht, das letzte Beispiel, der Drachetut von Rösschenwe, ich habe hier zwei D-Worte, in Englisch nicht so gut funktioniert. Die Dragon hört die Schmerz. Hier ist ein D und hier auch. Um euch zu zeigen, dass ihr die englischen Stabilität mit den Stabilitäten verwendet. Also bitte, alles, was ihr dazu habt, ist die Augen zu nahe, für ein paar Sekunden, und imagine die Stabilität, die ich dir mit der Material provide, und es dauert eine halbe Stunde, um alle Daten zu halten.
a1-l39-grammar-dative-verbs
05/20/2026
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The accusative and dative personal pronouns. You already know ich, du, er, sie, wir, ihr, sie. And you might already know these forms, so I would like to make it a bit more simple to remember which belongs to which. If you take a look here, the forms are not really an issue.

It's like three, six, seven different, yeah, pronouns for each case. And you see, the wir and ihr form, the wir and ihr form in the plural, are even identical, which is just lovely. I want to show you a little trick on how to recognize what to use for er, es and sie. As you can see, the ich is contained in the mish of the accusative, so that might help you to remember.

Or the mir, there is no real clue here, but I think that comes naturally. But you might remember the video from fours where I gave you some tips on how to know how to replace the articles der, das, die. And I've marked the endings of the articles because they resemble or they remind me of the pronoun that I have to use. And this actually works the same way with the accusative and the dative.

So, let me just give you a few clues and then this topic should be no problem for you. You remember the article of the masculine in accusative? And that was den. And you can see, den ends in an n, so does ihn.

So if you know the article, and that's what I always say, know your articles, then you know which pronoun to use. You would never mistake it for im, because you know the article is den and the pronoun im. The same with s and z, as the articles are identical to the nominative, I don't write them down here, they work the same way. For the dative, the same.

It's beautiful. You remember the dative masculine article, dem, and now you're thinking, damn, what personal pronoun to use? And you see dem, you have the m, in the im of the dative pronoun. The same for the neuter, it's the same article in the dative.

Im gives away, or dem gives away the pronoun im. And for the feminine, the article, as you might know, is der. And you find the air of this article in er again. So as you can see, the clues are pretty clear if you know the articles.

That's all I have to say to this. I hope it makes your life a bit easier.
The accusative and dative personal pronouns. You already know ich, du, er, sie, wir, ihr, sie. And you might already know these forms, so I would like to make it a bit more simple to remember which belongs to which. If you take a look here, the forms are not really an issue.

It's like three, six, seven different, yeah, pronouns for each case. And you see, the wir and ihr form, the wir and ihr form in the plural, are even identical, which is just lovely. I want to show you a little trick on how to recognize what to use for er, es and sie. As you can see, the ich is contained in the mish of the accusative, so that might help you to remember.

Or the mir, there is no real clue here, but I think that comes naturally. But you might remember the video from fours where I gave you some tips on how to know how to replace the articles der, das, die. And I've marked the endings of the articles because they resemble or they remind me of the pronoun that I have to use. And this actually works the same way with the accusative and the dative.

So, let me just give you a few clues and then this topic should be no problem for you. You remember the article of the masculine in accusative? And that was den. And you can see, den ends in an n, so does ihn.

So if you know the article, and that's what I always say, know your articles, then you know which pronoun to use. You would never mistake it for im, because you know the article is den and the pronoun im. The same with s and z, as the articles are identical to the nominative, I don't write them down here, they work the same way. For the dative, the same.

It's beautiful. You remember the dative masculine article, dem, and now you're thinking, damn, what personal pronoun to use? And you see dem, you have the m, in the im of the dative pronoun. The same for the neuter, it's the same article in the dative.

Im gives away, or dem gives away the pronoun im. And for the feminine, the article, as you might know, is der. And you find the air of this article in er again. So as you can see, the clues are pretty clear if you know the articles.

That's all I have to say to this. I hope it makes your life a bit easier.
a1-l38-grammar-personal-pronouns-dative
05/20/2026
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Dann geben wir ein kurzer Intro über das Datif und wie sie zu nutzen sind. Diese Formen sind nicht so triedgisch. Die haben Deen und Deen, für die Kur. Man hat eine Statütütütütütütütütütütütütüt Kanon. Die Personenprämence sind beer, dir, imjer, und so. Ynann might already know the question, wie geht es Ynann. Wie geht es dir? Das ist das Datifkhat. Die Spezialität für die Plural ist, dass du einen anderen N, den End des Namen, addest. Zum Beispiel, du willst sagen, ich habe mit den Kindern gespielt. Ich habe mit den Kindern gespielt. Kind ist die einzelne Form des Kindes, das Plural, mit dem Kindern, das Dativplural. Das ist es, du gehst in die neue Klasse. Wir schauen uns, wann man die Daten benutzen kann. Zuerst, nach einer Datenpräposition. Das ist der clearest Fall, wenn man hier aus dem Nachseite von zu, ab und später auf zwei mehr auszurichten, wie über, sorry, über Land, du weißt, dass du eine dieser Worte oder eine dieser Endnames hast, wenn es möglich ist. Du lernst diese in einem besseren Video, also nicht zu lange darüber reden. Die zweite Möglichkeit ist, dass du eine 2-Way-Preposition hast. Die 2-Way-Prepositions sind hier, für Hinter, Über, Unter, Eben an, Zwischen, Haufen in. Ihr werdet diese in einem Special Video auch machen. Aber die Spezialität hier ist, dass du die Daten mit diesen nur, und wir nur, wenn die Frage ist, Wenn die Frage ist, wo, wo, wo, ist sehr stetig. Wir covered these x-Rides. 3. Mein Beispiel war, dass es innen geht, also warum wir innen gehen und nicht innen? Well, this is due to the character of Gehen, which means to feel in this moment. Or, for example, Duncan, ich danke Ihnen. I thank you. Es gibt mehr oder weniger 47 Wörter, die die Daten brauchen. Man kann nicht in einem anderen Fall benutzen. Man findet diese in den Schaum. Und letztlich haben wir Wörter mit zwei Objekten, zum Beispiel zu bringen. Diese Wörter benutzen zwei Objekte in allen Länguren. Es ist nicht egal, wie lange du leben, wie viel Land du in bist. Wenn du etwas bringst, hast du etwas, das du bringst. Und du hast einen Rechieber, der etwas, das du bringst. Und in diesem Fall bringt er seine Mutter, I&T, er bringt seine Mutter, T. Du kannst sehen, dass der ER hier die Feminine Form ist. Und ihr seht hier, I&T, das ist die Akkusität. Einmal, der Verkaufsverkauf ist immer der Dativ. Und der Fall, den du verabschiedest, ist immer der Akkusativ.
Dann geben wir ein kurzer Intro über das Datif und wie sie zu nutzen sind. Diese Formen sind nicht so triedgisch. Die haben Deen und Deen, für die Kur. Man hat eine Statütütütütütütütütütütütütüt Kanon. Die Personenprämence sind beer, dir, imjer, und so. Ynann might already know the question, wie geht es Ynann. Wie geht es dir? Das ist das Datifkhat. Die Spezialität für die Plural ist, dass du einen anderen N, den End des Namen, addest. Zum Beispiel, du willst sagen, ich habe mit den Kindern gespielt. Ich habe mit den Kindern gespielt. Kind ist die einzelne Form des Kindes, das Plural, mit dem Kindern, das Dativplural. Das ist es, du gehst in die neue Klasse. Wir schauen uns, wann man die Daten benutzen kann. Zuerst, nach einer Datenpräposition. Das ist der clearest Fall, wenn man hier aus dem Nachseite von zu, ab und später auf zwei mehr auszurichten, wie über, sorry, über Land, du weißt, dass du eine dieser Worte oder eine dieser Endnames hast, wenn es möglich ist. Du lernst diese in einem besseren Video, also nicht zu lange darüber reden. Die zweite Möglichkeit ist, dass du eine 2-Way-Preposition hast. Die 2-Way-Prepositions sind hier, für Hinter, Über, Unter, Eben an, Zwischen, Haufen in. Ihr werdet diese in einem Special Video auch machen. Aber die Spezialität hier ist, dass du die Daten mit diesen nur, und wir nur, wenn die Frage ist, Wenn die Frage ist, wo, wo, wo, ist sehr stetig. Wir covered these x-Rides. 3. Mein Beispiel war, dass es innen geht, also warum wir innen gehen und nicht innen? Well, this is due to the character of Gehen, which means to feel in this moment. Or, for example, Duncan, ich danke Ihnen. I thank you. Es gibt mehr oder weniger 47 Wörter, die die Daten brauchen. Man kann nicht in einem anderen Fall benutzen. Man findet diese in den Schaum. Und letztlich haben wir Wörter mit zwei Objekten, zum Beispiel zu bringen. Diese Wörter benutzen zwei Objekte in allen Länguren. Es ist nicht egal, wie lange du leben, wie viel Land du in bist. Wenn du etwas bringst, hast du etwas, das du bringst. Und du hast einen Rechieber, der etwas, das du bringst. Und in diesem Fall bringt er seine Mutter, I&T, er bringt seine Mutter, T. Du kannst sehen, dass der ER hier die Feminine Form ist. Und ihr seht hier, I&T, das ist die Akkusität. Einmal, der Verkaufsverkauf ist immer der Dativ. Und der Fall, den du verabschiedest, ist immer der Akkusativ.
a1-l36-grammar-the-dative
05/20/2026
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Modverbs are a group of six verbs that have some specialties that you should keep in mind when using them. So let's take a closer look here. These are the six words or verbs that I have I've been talking about dürfen, können, müssen, sollen and wollen and you see the translations and I like to direct your attention to the word müssen, which I've translated only with have to. You could also say must, but in the negative form we will see later this could cause some problems. So let's accept what is necessary for now. So what are the specialties of modern verbs? There are two specialties of which you are one these you already know from English. So the first one is if you take a look at the form ich kann nicht schwimmen, I don't know how to swim. You can't swim, er oder es can't swim. And you see, I and I, yes, I don't have a personal ending. I have written them here once again. So this is the first specialty, although in the present tense they don't take the I know or the television you know. So this is very important, all this by the way, and some of these are irregular, but you'll find it in the material, you'll find a whole table with all the forms of the material. So I don't bother here. So the second specialty you know English, I don't know swim. Can and swim are two verbs, same in In German, kann schwimmen. So the modern verbs are, for now, there are some later, but for now these are the only verbs that can take a second verb. This is a specialty you know English, so there shouldn't be too much trouble here. Note that in German the second verb is always in the infinitive form, which means it is the form you find in every dictionary. A tip, if you take a look at these examples, ich muss nicht arbeiten, you might be tempted to understand that debo doesn't work, but this is wrong, be careful. This translates as "I don't have to", yes I don't have to work, that's why I have translated it this way. Ich darf nicht sprechen on the other side means I must not speak. Of course, you could say I can't speak, but just to illustrate that it's a bit complicated here. That's all I wanted to tell you about modal verbs. I don't think they cause too much trouble, but it's always good to be aware of some special events.
Modverbs are a group of six verbs that have some specialties that you should keep in mind when using them. So let's take a closer look here. These are the six words or verbs that I have I've been talking about dürfen, können, müssen, sollen and wollen and you see the translations and I like to direct your attention to the word müssen, which I've translated only with have to. You could also say must, but in the negative form we will see later this could cause some problems. So let's accept what is necessary for now. So what are the specialties of modern verbs? There are two specialties of which you are one these you already know from English. So the first one is if you take a look at the form ich kann nicht schwimmen, I don't know how to swim. You can't swim, er oder es can't swim. And you see, I and I, yes, I don't have a personal ending. I have written them here once again. So this is the first specialty, although in the present tense they don't take the I know or the television you know. So this is very important, all this by the way, and some of these are irregular, but you'll find it in the material, you'll find a whole table with all the forms of the material. So I don't bother here. So the second specialty you know English, I don't know swim. Can and swim are two verbs, same in In German, kann schwimmen. So the modern verbs are, for now, there are some later, but for now these are the only verbs that can take a second verb. This is a specialty you know English, so there shouldn't be too much trouble here. Note that in German the second verb is always in the infinitive form, which means it is the form you find in every dictionary. A tip, if you take a look at these examples, ich muss nicht arbeiten, you might be tempted to understand that debo doesn't work, but this is wrong, be careful. This translates as "I don't have to", yes I don't have to work, that's why I have translated it this way. Ich darf nicht sprechen on the other side means I must not speak. Of course, you could say I can't speak, but just to illustrate that it's a bit complicated here. That's all I wanted to tell you about modal verbs. I don't think they cause too much trouble, but it's always good to be aware of some special events.
a1-l28-grammar-modal-verbs-present-tense
05/20/2026
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The accusative and dative personal pronouns. You already know ich, du, er, sie, wir, ihr, sie. And you might already know these forms, so I would like to make it a bit more simple to remember which belongs to which. If you take a look here, the forms are not really an issue. It's like three, six, seven different, yeah, pronouns for each case. And you see, the wir and ihr form, the wir and ihr form in the plural, are even identical, which is just lovely. I want to show you a little trick on how to recognize what to use for er, es and sie. As you can see, the ich is contained in the mish of the accusative, so that might help you to remember. Or the mir, there is no real clue here, but I think that comes naturally. But you might remember the video from fours where I gave you some tips on how to know how to replace the articles der, das, die. And I've marked the endings of the articles because they resemble or they remind me of the pronoun that I have to use. And this actually works the same way with the accusative and the dative. So, let me just give you a few clues and then this topic should be no problem for you. You remember the article of the masculine in accusative? And that was den. And you can see, den ends in an n, so does ihn. So if you know the article, and that's what I always say, know your articles, then you know which pronoun to use. You would never mistake it for im, because you know the article is den and the pronoun im. The same with s and z, as the articles are identical to the nominative, I don't write them down here, they work the same way. For the dative, the same. It's beautiful. You remember the dative masculine article, dem, and now you're thinking, damn, what personal pronoun to use? And you see dem, you have the m, in the im of the dative pronoun. The same for the neuter, it's the same article in the dative. Im gives away, or dem gives away the pronoun im. And for the feminine, the article, as you might know, is der. And you find the air of this article in er again. So as you can see, the clues are pretty clear if you know the articles. That's all I have to say to this. I hope it makes your life a bit easier.
The accusative and dative personal pronouns. You already know ich, du, er, sie, wir, ihr, sie. And you might already know these forms, so I would like to make it a bit more simple to remember which belongs to which. If you take a look here, the forms are not really an issue. It's like three, six, seven different, yeah, pronouns for each case. And you see, the wir and ihr form, the wir and ihr form in the plural, are even identical, which is just lovely. I want to show you a little trick on how to recognize what to use for er, es and sie. As you can see, the ich is contained in the mish of the accusative, so that might help you to remember. Or the mir, there is no real clue here, but I think that comes naturally. But you might remember the video from fours where I gave you some tips on how to know how to replace the articles der, das, die. And I've marked the endings of the articles because they resemble or they remind me of the pronoun that I have to use. And this actually works the same way with the accusative and the dative. So, let me just give you a few clues and then this topic should be no problem for you. You remember the article of the masculine in accusative? And that was den. And you can see, den ends in an n, so does ihn. So if you know the article, and that's what I always say, know your articles, then you know which pronoun to use. You would never mistake it for im, because you know the article is den and the pronoun im. The same with s and z, as the articles are identical to the nominative, I don't write them down here, they work the same way. For the dative, the same. It's beautiful. You remember the dative masculine article, dem, and now you're thinking, damn, what personal pronoun to use? And you see dem, you have the m, in the im of the dative pronoun. The same for the neuter, it's the same article in the dative. Im gives away, or dem gives away the pronoun im. And for the feminine, the article, as you might know, is der. And you find the air of this article in er again. So as you can see, the clues are pretty clear if you know the articles. That's all I have to say to this. I hope it makes your life a bit easier.
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05/20/2026
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Here we go, so the German cases. The following minutes, I would like to answer the following questions. You can read them what German cases are there. You might already have heard of them and know them, just to make sure we are all on the same track.

Why do they have so weird names and do these names actually mean something and how do I identify a case? It is also important to be able to see which case is what. And then question four, when do I use which case, which is one of the most common questions in my experience and of course we will work through a couple of examples, so this is not so theoretical, it is also practical, I am rather a practical teacher. So let us start with the cases.

You are lucky, German has only four cases, there is other languages like Polish which I have learned 15 years ago, that has seven cases and I think Finnish beats that easily and most likely Romanian or something down there has a horrible amount of cases. The first case is called nominative and I looked into the origins of these, I am a big fan of etymology, it means the origin of words and nominative comes from to nominate and you know that word from to nominate a president or nominate someone for the Oscars. So the nominative is the nominator of the sentence, it is the boss, let us say, who is doing the action that is performed in that case, in that sentence and if you want to find out about the boss of the sentence, you have to ask who or sometimes it is a what, for example, who barks the dog, in German, that is a who or what rings the mobile and in German, those questions are there if it is a person or vice versa, if it is a non -person. The second case is acquisitive, sorry, it is written with double A, only with C in English and it comes from the word to accuse and it is actually quite beautiful because here at SmarterGermans, we give our clients glasses, our learners glasses and classes nominative, acquisitive glasses, sorry, I am confusing the words here, so to excuse, the thing that is accused is in the acquisitive and now you have to understand accused is a bit wider, is to be understood a bit wider, so actually everything you buy, you sell, you kiss, you touch, you taste, you eat, almost everything that is the victim of what is happening is the acquisitive and if the victim is a person, for example, I love you, you are the victim of my love, we have to ask whom do you love and in German, that is wen, but let us say I love my mobile, it is not a person, it is a non -person, so I ask again, was, what do you love.

Next is dative, dative in German, dative comes from dare, to give, funny enough, it is not the thing or the person giving anything because that would be the nominative, the nominative is the giver, the one that does the action, I have said, so the dative is nevertheless related to giving because it is the receiver of the thing, so if there is a thing that is given or, for example, there is something that is told to you, then that is the nominative, in English you would ask to whom have you given the mobile and in German, careful, we only use one word, dem, underneath the English and there is no bus here, so we use that for both. Last case, which I will not go too deep into because it is on its way out, in a couple of years, maybe 50, 100 years, the genitive might be dead and for B1, if you are a beginner, you do not need the genitive, should you come across it, it is easy to understand, so I do not usually bother talking much about it, but it comes from the word Genesis, which you might know from the Bible or from the lousy Terminator movie, and it means Genesis, something that is generated, that is coming into life and how do you come into life, through your relatives, your closest relatives are your mother and your father, so it also has to do with relation and for example, one example in English, the door of my car is broken, you would ask, okay, whose door is broken and in German, that is Betzen, there is also no bus, so it is for both, it is an overview, these are the questions and we will work with these questions later and I will refer to them later on again. The next question was how do I recognize the cases, now you might be familiar with this table here, I urge you not to learn this table by heart, a table is always a detour, it will make you go into your head and look for something in that table in your head and then go back through another line to your mouth and speak, by the time you have done that, the other one has fallen asleep or switches to English, so do not learn tables, tables are a wonderful tool to give an overview, which is what I do here, now, the nominative is nothing else but four different articles or let us say, to be more precise, four different endings and you can see, I have highlighted these endings here, let me colour them for you, so it is actually er, s, e and e and if you want to know how that looks with others, for example, to ask which car is broken or not which car, which dog is barking, you would ask welcher er, you need to use the same ending or thus, you would use weiches or weiche, and this is the beauty, no matter what article, the endings are always the same, now, the nominative has a function, we said in the beginning, it is the nominator and the nominator is so oppressive, it subjects the rest of the sentence under its reign, so if it subjects everything else, it is called the subject, the subject is always nominative, there is no exception, the accusative is simply another set of endings and if you take a look, you will find that they are actually pretty much the same, the only difference you find is in the masculine, it is en instead of er, but the rest, that is the dd and as the accusative is telling us who is accused, who is directly influenced by the verb, by the action, it is the direct object, do not worry about that, just notice it, you do not have to know these terms, I will show you later how to find the accusative without thinking in these grammar terms and we have the dative, you see, it is a completely different set of endings, I will not go into this extra n here, another lesson, the dative, we said, has to do with giving and I mentioned that it is what you receive and as it is not directly influenced by the verb, for example, if you give something to someone, the thing you give is directly influenced by the giving, but the one who receives it is indirectly influenced and therefore it is the indirect object, I have picked a bit too big font here, so I cannot let you do like this, object, good enough, yeah, but the last case, in English it is called possessive case, which I like, because it makes it very visible, things that belong to each other in a possessive way, for example, the door of my car, so you know the door belongs to the car, the car possesses the door and that is why it is called possessive case, let us not go deeper here, as you can replace the genitive very easily with the dative, again, now, that is the theory, I hope it was not too long or too complicated, if you have not understood anything, please ask a question, I will certainly try to answer that later on, let me give you a few examples, the first example, I want to work with a sentence, the man brings his mother a tea, you can already try to put that into German in your head, and this sentence has certain elements, it has the man, it has his mother and has a tea, so we have three elements for the three main cases, what I do when I read a foreign language text, I always figure out what is the verb, what is the action, what is happening, because I want to know what is happening, Germans are so keen on to know what is happening and in this case, it is the brings, I have to colour this and I always colour or tell my students to colour the verbs first, so now I know someone is bringing something, there is bringing happening and my first question that I have is who brings, and you of course could ask what, but you do not have to, so who is bringing, who brings, in German, we do not have this is bringing, we just say who brings, the answer to that is which case, of course the nominative, or the function of the nominative here is the subject, now let me translate the sentence for you, der Mann blinkt, and see whether you have predicted it, so the German question for who brings would be, wer, and all I do is, I take the German word, German verb and put it here, and the answer is man, der Mann, where that gets a different colour, now take a look at the man, der Mann uses the article der, if you go back to our little table here, we can check whether we are right, whether that is the subject, so I take a look, whether I find the article der in this line, and I see it is here with a masculine column, so we are fine, just to make a counter check, it could not be the acquisitive, because I do not find a der in any of these articles, so it must be the nominative, der Mann, actually let me colour this, so the next question would be, what does the man bring, because if someone is bringing something, you want to know what he is bringing, and in German, that would be was, and please note the technique I use here, was bringt, and all I do is to take over, was bringt der Mann, I integrate the answer from before, from above, and just add it to was bringt, the answer to was bringt der Mann, you can answer it yourself first, of course, and we have two more options, his mother or a tea, so does he bring his mother, is he carrying his mother, is the mother the one directly influenced by bringing, I hope not, so he is bringing a tea in German, einen tea, now let us take a look at einen tea, einen ends in en, if I take a look, we have asked was bringt er, so that is acquisitive, let us take a look, and there is the en in the acquisitive, that is completely accurate then, so we have identified the direct object, the acquisitive, now a question, because we still have one more element, actually let me another sentence a bit more, the mother is left, and to ask for the mother, we know in English, you would ask to whom does the man bring a tea, and remember to whom in German, we already here, we have the wem, and we do the same as before, we just integrate everything from above, and I just get the answer from the very last question, einen tea, very beautiful, very logical, the answer to that is of course seiner Mutter, it gets a different colour in a second, everything, now the seiner Mutter, let us check whether we are correct, whether that is indeed the dative, if it is the dative, we have to be able to find the ending er in the article table above, so we say it is dative, do we find er, it is not here, but it is here, so Mutter must be feminine, and of course it is, so this is how you can ask simple questions and crack at least most of the meaning of a sentence, this was a simple sentence though, I admit there is way more complex matters, but I will show you another example that helps you to work with a bit more complex sentences, is that so far, do you understand that, I hope you could follow me here, it is a very logical approach, you always ask the questions in this order, where, to get the subject or the nominative, then the was, or if it is a person, wenn, and then the wenn, if, there is a wenn, next example, the dog bites the man, we have how many elements, we have a dog, which is masculine, I get it away, we have a verb here, and we have the man, so we only have two elements, most likely we can only ask two questions, so the first thing we identify is the verb, that is this one, to bite, can you translate that sentence right away, it is der Hund beißt, which by the way, you know from ein bisschen, is a little bite, der Hund beißt, and der Mann, den Mann, the man, den man, now, beiß is the verb, first question, can you ask the first question already, you remember the German question for who, leer, and all you do is to write down the German verb, wer beißt, who is biting, and what is the answer, is the dog biting or the man, pretty obvious, right, gets more interesting, wer was nicht, so der Hund, so this is our subject, the dog is the one doing the biting, next question, what is the dog biting, or in this case, we know it is a person, so we ask wen, whom is the dog biting, and we play the game as before, wenn beißt, der Hund, we integrate the answer, and the question is, the answer is of course, the only thing that is left, the in man, in man will be blue in the second, so we have identified the subject and the direct object, the accusative, now, I give you this example not because it is simpler, because I want to test you, your knowledge, now, can you translate the following sentence properly, in man beißt der Hund, can you tell me who is biting whom, let us do the analysis, so beißen, still the book, so there is still someone biting, now, maybe you are tempted to say, it is the man biting the dog now, because that is how it would be in English, you can do the check, man uses the article den, and if I take a look in my table, there is no den in the subject line, so it cannot be the subject, it is still the accusative, the direct object, so den man, the man is still the one that is being bitten, and the dog is still the one biting, that is the beauty of the cases, I can turn this around, in English, you would have to make now a more complicated structure, you would say, the man is bitten by the dog, see, in English, you have to create a completely different structure, while in German, you just turn them around, and keep the articles the way they are, that is the beauty of it, now, final test, to see whether you understood the logic behind the German cases, and that is, how would you say in German, the man bites the dog, I will give you 30 seconds to come up with this, if the man has to bite the dog, the man has to be the subject, and it needs an article from the nominative line, and we know the man is masculine, so we take the der, so it is der Mann, and we do the analysis for Hund, the Hund is the one bitten, it is directly influenced by the biting, and Dog, as I have written, is masculine, so we take the den, and that makes it, der Mann beißt den Hund, we have turned it around by just changing the articles, again, in real life, you usually have the sentence order, I love you, ich liebe dich, subject, verb, direct object, as a rough outline, guideline, to how to structure sentences, but in certain situations, a writer and author might think it might make sense to turn that around, or shift the sentence order a bit, you as a beginner, if you are a beginner, you do not have to follow, you do not have to be creative, you might want to be, that is fine, but if you are a beginner, stick to the sentence order, I love you, ich liebe dich, der Mann beißt den Hund, this is all I wanted to share with you, I wanted to keep it short, because it is also a lot of information, you can watch this video afterwards again, so how do you say the cat bites the woman, in German, I will just let you think a minute, so cat is, by the way, a feminine being, and the woman is grammatically also feminine, now, wie Katze beißt die Frau, now we possibly have a problem, because before we had der and den, who helped us to differentiate, now we only have die and die, which are the same, so if I wrote, die Frau beißt die Katze, who is biting whom, you will not believe it, but it is indeed the woman who bites the cat, your logic might say, no, that does not happen, it can only be the cat biting the woman, but grammar says, what comes first, bites first, so it is the woman that comes first, and she is the one biting, so in case the articles do not give away the function of each element, the sentence order helps you with understanding, it was a nice beautiful add -on, okay, there are some questions coming in, let me get back to them, Sanjay asks, how can I improve my speaking, I am making many mistakes when speaking, I give you one beautiful tip, I work with conversation trainers, I do the tuition, supervision and planning, and my conversation trainers make you speak, and that means, you want to be better at speaking, you need to speak more, but that is not all, you need feedback, if you do not get feedback while speaking, then you might learn gibberish, wrong German, and that is not in your interest, right, so you need feedback, and my clients are always told to record themselves, and to listen to what they have recorded, first, before sending it to me, I have the final say whether it is correct or not, so you need to record yourself to be able to listen to your own mistakes, to find your own mistakes, and ideally you have a native speaker around, or very advanced learner, who can take a final look and say, yeah, that is okay, I will give you a hint where to correct, feedback is everything, and then Michael asks, how can you easily remember the cases, these cases when you speak, is it just from practice, I find it difficult to remember when speaking which case to use, I absolutely feel you Michael, and that is when you learn this stuff cognitively only, there is a beautiful technique in my course, it is called the preaching, and that simply helps you to use the case without thinking a second of this table, it is actually a pattern drill, but optimized and made more beautiful, you just have to drill these, it is indeed by practice, but by structured practice, not just by random speaking, random speaking practices, if you are lucky you improve if you have good listening skills, but you need to work structuredly, and that is what I found over the last years, people like and need structure, and this is what is lacking in many of my, whatever I have heard in other settings, emre, can you tell a bit about the verbs and prepositions, needs accusative or dative, when they are used in the sentence, emre, I have made quite a few videos about this topic, and I would not want to go too deep here, there is a beautiful song, the accusative song, I do not want to sing this here, I do not want to spoil your weekend, although I sing it also in my videos, it might be a free preview in my shop, please take a look in the preview videos of my A1 to B1 grammar course, I think it is free, and if you are lucky, it is Margaret, a companion who does the singing, they are easy to learn, it is entlang durch, um, gegen, für, bis, ohne um, I mentioned um twice, but that is because of the song, and dative is aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu, also, gegenüber, ab, I learned these with help of these songs that you find in my course on my homepage, take a look there, gemma, how can I fluently use the correct case when speaking, yeah, we had that Michael was asking that you need, first of all, to understand what does a case do, and then you need to practice it in form of a pattern drill, and also to consciously read, like, take a look at the text, color the text, so that you first notice, okay, that is the accusative, okay, last question, and then I say goodbye for today, but I will certainly do more of these live classes, yeah, I enjoy them, hope you enjoyed, the more feedback you give me, the better I can make them, and more motivated I am also to offer them for free here, so how can I fluently use, can we always determine a case by those certain question words, you can, yes, I would say yes, there will be situations that are not clear yet to you, because we only had a couple of minutes, and there is also prepositions that override our beautiful questions, yeah, I can give you one last example, because I like this question, and then I have to say goodbye, so let me share my screen one more time with you, so, um, ich, what do I do, let me think, der Mann sperrt den Hund in den Käfig, the dog that bites, so the man sperrt den Hund in den Käfig means the man locks the dog away into the cage, or its cage, with my English, I am not a native speaker, so, now, let us analyze quickly, we have bites, we have sperrt, which is the lock, the action that is happening here, next question, who is locking, the man, so the man is our subject, so let me ask the question, wer sperrt, der Mann, next question, you can already think ahead, while I do my coloring here, dogs are living beings in German, we do not say it, we say he, so wen, you could also use was, does not matter, does not matter, sperrt, der Mann, so whom does the man lock, or lock in, what is the answer, well, its the dog that he locks away, and you see den Hund, you remember maybe already, den is certainly accusative, at least for now, with what you know, and we have one more element in the sentence, and that is in den Käfig, now, in den Käfig is tricky, because it has a preposition in the beginning, which is in, and its hard to, you could ask for that, I give you the question in the end, but the preposition overrides everything you know, I couldnt ask whom, to whom is he locking the dog, that doesnt work, so you would rather ask, where does he lock the dog away, where, and in German we have two kinds of where, it could be, or actually three, but lets stick to two for now, it could be simply wo, or it could be wohin, so I dont want to go into wohin, the topic here is what I call two way preposition, or in German, Wechselprepositionen, so in den Käfig, take a look, we have the article den, so maybe you can identify the case, so lets go to our beautiful table, and I see den here, we color this yellow, but unfortunately, I also see den here, so I cannot clearly define without further information which one it is, because we dont know what case the preposition requires, so in this case you have to ask, wohin, which in this situation with the preposition in, leads to accusative, so in den Käfig is accusative because of in, and the situation, okay, but thats a completely different topic, or a bit more, I hope you learned a little bit, and it was worth your time, I enjoyed it, okay, Ich danke euch und wünsche euch ein schönes
Here we go, so the German cases. The following minutes, I would like to answer the following questions. You can read them what German cases are there. You might already have heard of them and know them, just to make sure we are all on the same track.

Why do they have so weird names and do these names actually mean something and how do I identify a case? It is also important to be able to see which case is what. And then question four, when do I use which case, which is one of the most common questions in my experience and of course we will work through a couple of examples, so this is not so theoretical, it is also practical, I am rather a practical teacher. So let us start with the cases.

You are lucky, German has only four cases, there is other languages like Polish which I have learned 15 years ago, that has seven cases and I think Finnish beats that easily and most likely Romanian or something down there has a horrible amount of cases. The first case is called nominative and I looked into the origins of these, I am a big fan of etymology, it means the origin of words and nominative comes from to nominate and you know that word from to nominate a president or nominate someone for the Oscars. So the nominative is the nominator of the sentence, it is the boss, let us say, who is doing the action that is performed in that case, in that sentence and if you want to find out about the boss of the sentence, you have to ask who or sometimes it is a what, for example, who barks the dog, in German, that is a who or what rings the mobile and in German, those questions are there if it is a person or vice versa, if it is a non -person. The second case is acquisitive, sorry, it is written with double A, only with C in English and it comes from the word to accuse and it is actually quite beautiful because here at SmarterGermans, we give our clients glasses, our learners glasses and classes nominative, acquisitive glasses, sorry, I am confusing the words here, so to excuse, the thing that is accused is in the acquisitive and now you have to understand accused is a bit wider, is to be understood a bit wider, so actually everything you buy, you sell, you kiss, you touch, you taste, you eat, almost everything that is the victim of what is happening is the acquisitive and if the victim is a person, for example, I love you, you are the victim of my love, we have to ask whom do you love and in German, that is wen, but let us say I love my mobile, it is not a person, it is a non -person, so I ask again, was, what do you love.

Next is dative, dative in German, dative comes from dare, to give, funny enough, it is not the thing or the person giving anything because that would be the nominative, the nominative is the giver, the one that does the action, I have said, so the dative is nevertheless related to giving because it is the receiver of the thing, so if there is a thing that is given or, for example, there is something that is told to you, then that is the nominative, in English you would ask to whom have you given the mobile and in German, careful, we only use one word, dem, underneath the English and there is no bus here, so we use that for both. Last case, which I will not go too deep into because it is on its way out, in a couple of years, maybe 50, 100 years, the genitive might be dead and for B1, if you are a beginner, you do not need the genitive, should you come across it, it is easy to understand, so I do not usually bother talking much about it, but it comes from the word Genesis, which you might know from the Bible or from the lousy Terminator movie, and it means Genesis, something that is generated, that is coming into life and how do you come into life, through your relatives, your closest relatives are your mother and your father, so it also has to do with relation and for example, one example in English, the door of my car is broken, you would ask, okay, whose door is broken and in German, that is Betzen, there is also no bus, so it is for both, it is an overview, these are the questions and we will work with these questions later and I will refer to them later on again. The next question was how do I recognize the cases, now you might be familiar with this table here, I urge you not to learn this table by heart, a table is always a detour, it will make you go into your head and look for something in that table in your head and then go back through another line to your mouth and speak, by the time you have done that, the other one has fallen asleep or switches to English, so do not learn tables, tables are a wonderful tool to give an overview, which is what I do here, now, the nominative is nothing else but four different articles or let us say, to be more precise, four different endings and you can see, I have highlighted these endings here, let me colour them for you, so it is actually er, s, e and e and if you want to know how that looks with others, for example, to ask which car is broken or not which car, which dog is barking, you would ask welcher er, you need to use the same ending or thus, you would use weiches or weiche, and this is the beauty, no matter what article, the endings are always the same, now, the nominative has a function, we said in the beginning, it is the nominator and the nominator is so oppressive, it subjects the rest of the sentence under its reign, so if it subjects everything else, it is called the subject, the subject is always nominative, there is no exception, the accusative is simply another set of endings and if you take a look, you will find that they are actually pretty much the same, the only difference you find is in the masculine, it is en instead of er, but the rest, that is the dd and as the accusative is telling us who is accused, who is directly influenced by the verb, by the action, it is the direct object, do not worry about that, just notice it, you do not have to know these terms, I will show you later how to find the accusative without thinking in these grammar terms and we have the dative, you see, it is a completely different set of endings, I will not go into this extra n here, another lesson, the dative, we said, has to do with giving and I mentioned that it is what you receive and as it is not directly influenced by the verb, for example, if you give something to someone, the thing you give is directly influenced by the giving, but the one who receives it is indirectly influenced and therefore it is the indirect object, I have picked a bit too big font here, so I cannot let you do like this, object, good enough, yeah, but the last case, in English it is called possessive case, which I like, because it makes it very visible, things that belong to each other in a possessive way, for example, the door of my car, so you know the door belongs to the car, the car possesses the door and that is why it is called possessive case, let us not go deeper here, as you can replace the genitive very easily with the dative, again, now, that is the theory, I hope it was not too long or too complicated, if you have not understood anything, please ask a question, I will certainly try to answer that later on, let me give you a few examples, the first example, I want to work with a sentence, the man brings his mother a tea, you can already try to put that into German in your head, and this sentence has certain elements, it has the man, it has his mother and has a tea, so we have three elements for the three main cases, what I do when I read a foreign language text, I always figure out what is the verb, what is the action, what is happening, because I want to know what is happening, Germans are so keen on to know what is happening and in this case, it is the brings, I have to colour this and I always colour or tell my students to colour the verbs first, so now I know someone is bringing something, there is bringing happening and my first question that I have is who brings, and you of course could ask what, but you do not have to, so who is bringing, who brings, in German, we do not have this is bringing, we just say who brings, the answer to that is which case, of course the nominative, or the function of the nominative here is the subject, now let me translate the sentence for you, der Mann blinkt, and see whether you have predicted it, so the German question for who brings would be, wer, and all I do is, I take the German word, German verb and put it here, and the answer is man, der Mann, where that gets a different colour, now take a look at the man, der Mann uses the article der, if you go back to our little table here, we can check whether we are right, whether that is the subject, so I take a look, whether I find the article der in this line, and I see it is here with a masculine column, so we are fine, just to make a counter check, it could not be the acquisitive, because I do not find a der in any of these articles, so it must be the nominative, der Mann, actually let me colour this, so the next question would be, what does the man bring, because if someone is bringing something, you want to know what he is bringing, and in German, that would be was, and please note the technique I use here, was bringt, and all I do is to take over, was bringt der Mann, I integrate the answer from before, from above, and just add it to was bringt, the answer to was bringt der Mann, you can answer it yourself first, of course, and we have two more options, his mother or a tea, so does he bring his mother, is he carrying his mother, is the mother the one directly influenced by bringing, I hope not, so he is bringing a tea in German, einen tea, now let us take a look at einen tea, einen ends in en, if I take a look, we have asked was bringt er, so that is acquisitive, let us take a look, and there is the en in the acquisitive, that is completely accurate then, so we have identified the direct object, the acquisitive, now a question, because we still have one more element, actually let me another sentence a bit more, the mother is left, and to ask for the mother, we know in English, you would ask to whom does the man bring a tea, and remember to whom in German, we already here, we have the wem, and we do the same as before, we just integrate everything from above, and I just get the answer from the very last question, einen tea, very beautiful, very logical, the answer to that is of course seiner Mutter, it gets a different colour in a second, everything, now the seiner Mutter, let us check whether we are correct, whether that is indeed the dative, if it is the dative, we have to be able to find the ending er in the article table above, so we say it is dative, do we find er, it is not here, but it is here, so Mutter must be feminine, and of course it is, so this is how you can ask simple questions and crack at least most of the meaning of a sentence, this was a simple sentence though, I admit there is way more complex matters, but I will show you another example that helps you to work with a bit more complex sentences, is that so far, do you understand that, I hope you could follow me here, it is a very logical approach, you always ask the questions in this order, where, to get the subject or the nominative, then the was, or if it is a person, wenn, and then the wenn, if, there is a wenn, next example, the dog bites the man, we have how many elements, we have a dog, which is masculine, I get it away, we have a verb here, and we have the man, so we only have two elements, most likely we can only ask two questions, so the first thing we identify is the verb, that is this one, to bite, can you translate that sentence right away, it is der Hund beißt, which by the way, you know from ein bisschen, is a little bite, der Hund beißt, and der Mann, den Mann, the man, den man, now, beiß is the verb, first question, can you ask the first question already, you remember the German question for who, leer, and all you do is to write down the German verb, wer beißt, who is biting, and what is the answer, is the dog biting or the man, pretty obvious, right, gets more interesting, wer was nicht, so der Hund, so this is our subject, the dog is the one doing the biting, next question, what is the dog biting, or in this case, we know it is a person, so we ask wen, whom is the dog biting, and we play the game as before, wenn beißt, der Hund, we integrate the answer, and the question is, the answer is of course, the only thing that is left, the in man, in man will be blue in the second, so we have identified the subject and the direct object, the accusative, now, I give you this example not because it is simpler, because I want to test you, your knowledge, now, can you translate the following sentence properly, in man beißt der Hund, can you tell me who is biting whom, let us do the analysis, so beißen, still the book, so there is still someone biting, now, maybe you are tempted to say, it is the man biting the dog now, because that is how it would be in English, you can do the check, man uses the article den, and if I take a look in my table, there is no den in the subject line, so it cannot be the subject, it is still the accusative, the direct object, so den man, the man is still the one that is being bitten, and the dog is still the one biting, that is the beauty of the cases, I can turn this around, in English, you would have to make now a more complicated structure, you would say, the man is bitten by the dog, see, in English, you have to create a completely different structure, while in German, you just turn them around, and keep the articles the way they are, that is the beauty of it, now, final test, to see whether you understood the logic behind the German cases, and that is, how would you say in German, the man bites the dog, I will give you 30 seconds to come up with this, if the man has to bite the dog, the man has to be the subject, and it needs an article from the nominative line, and we know the man is masculine, so we take the der, so it is der Mann, and we do the analysis for Hund, the Hund is the one bitten, it is directly influenced by the biting, and Dog, as I have written, is masculine, so we take the den, and that makes it, der Mann beißt den Hund, we have turned it around by just changing the articles, again, in real life, you usually have the sentence order, I love you, ich liebe dich, subject, verb, direct object, as a rough outline, guideline, to how to structure sentences, but in certain situations, a writer and author might think it might make sense to turn that around, or shift the sentence order a bit, you as a beginner, if you are a beginner, you do not have to follow, you do not have to be creative, you might want to be, that is fine, but if you are a beginner, stick to the sentence order, I love you, ich liebe dich, der Mann beißt den Hund, this is all I wanted to share with you, I wanted to keep it short, because it is also a lot of information, you can watch this video afterwards again, so how do you say the cat bites the woman, in German, I will just let you think a minute, so cat is, by the way, a feminine being, and the woman is grammatically also feminine, now, wie Katze beißt die Frau, now we possibly have a problem, because before we had der and den, who helped us to differentiate, now we only have die and die, which are the same, so if I wrote, die Frau beißt die Katze, who is biting whom, you will not believe it, but it is indeed the woman who bites the cat, your logic might say, no, that does not happen, it can only be the cat biting the woman, but grammar says, what comes first, bites first, so it is the woman that comes first, and she is the one biting, so in case the articles do not give away the function of each element, the sentence order helps you with understanding, it was a nice beautiful add -on, okay, there are some questions coming in, let me get back to them, Sanjay asks, how can I improve my speaking, I am making many mistakes when speaking, I give you one beautiful tip, I work with conversation trainers, I do the tuition, supervision and planning, and my conversation trainers make you speak, and that means, you want to be better at speaking, you need to speak more, but that is not all, you need feedback, if you do not get feedback while speaking, then you might learn gibberish, wrong German, and that is not in your interest, right, so you need feedback, and my clients are always told to record themselves, and to listen to what they have recorded, first, before sending it to me, I have the final say whether it is correct or not, so you need to record yourself to be able to listen to your own mistakes, to find your own mistakes, and ideally you have a native speaker around, or very advanced learner, who can take a final look and say, yeah, that is okay, I will give you a hint where to correct, feedback is everything, and then Michael asks, how can you easily remember the cases, these cases when you speak, is it just from practice, I find it difficult to remember when speaking which case to use, I absolutely feel you Michael, and that is when you learn this stuff cognitively only, there is a beautiful technique in my course, it is called the preaching, and that simply helps you to use the case without thinking a second of this table, it is actually a pattern drill, but optimized and made more beautiful, you just have to drill these, it is indeed by practice, but by structured practice, not just by random speaking, random speaking practices, if you are lucky you improve if you have good listening skills, but you need to work structuredly, and that is what I found over the last years, people like and need structure, and this is what is lacking in many of my, whatever I have heard in other settings, emre, can you tell a bit about the verbs and prepositions, needs accusative or dative, when they are used in the sentence, emre, I have made quite a few videos about this topic, and I would not want to go too deep here, there is a beautiful song, the accusative song, I do not want to sing this here, I do not want to spoil your weekend, although I sing it also in my videos, it might be a free preview in my shop, please take a look in the preview videos of my A1 to B1 grammar course, I think it is free, and if you are lucky, it is Margaret, a companion who does the singing, they are easy to learn, it is entlang durch, um, gegen, für, bis, ohne um, I mentioned um twice, but that is because of the song, and dative is aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu, also, gegenüber, ab, I learned these with help of these songs that you find in my course on my homepage, take a look there, gemma, how can I fluently use the correct case when speaking, yeah, we had that Michael was asking that you need, first of all, to understand what does a case do, and then you need to practice it in form of a pattern drill, and also to consciously read, like, take a look at the text, color the text, so that you first notice, okay, that is the accusative, okay, last question, and then I say goodbye for today, but I will certainly do more of these live classes, yeah, I enjoy them, hope you enjoyed, the more feedback you give me, the better I can make them, and more motivated I am also to offer them for free here, so how can I fluently use, can we always determine a case by those certain question words, you can, yes, I would say yes, there will be situations that are not clear yet to you, because we only had a couple of minutes, and there is also prepositions that override our beautiful questions, yeah, I can give you one last example, because I like this question, and then I have to say goodbye, so let me share my screen one more time with you, so, um, ich, what do I do, let me think, der Mann sperrt den Hund in den Käfig, the dog that bites, so the man sperrt den Hund in den Käfig means the man locks the dog away into the cage, or its cage, with my English, I am not a native speaker, so, now, let us analyze quickly, we have bites, we have sperrt, which is the lock, the action that is happening here, next question, who is locking, the man, so the man is our subject, so let me ask the question, wer sperrt, der Mann, next question, you can already think ahead, while I do my coloring here, dogs are living beings in German, we do not say it, we say he, so wen, you could also use was, does not matter, does not matter, sperrt, der Mann, so whom does the man lock, or lock in, what is the answer, well, its the dog that he locks away, and you see den Hund, you remember maybe already, den is certainly accusative, at least for now, with what you know, and we have one more element in the sentence, and that is in den Käfig, now, in den Käfig is tricky, because it has a preposition in the beginning, which is in, and its hard to, you could ask for that, I give you the question in the end, but the preposition overrides everything you know, I couldnt ask whom, to whom is he locking the dog, that doesnt work, so you would rather ask, where does he lock the dog away, where, and in German we have two kinds of where, it could be, or actually three, but lets stick to two for now, it could be simply wo, or it could be wohin, so I dont want to go into wohin, the topic here is what I call two way preposition, or in German, Wechselprepositionen, so in den Käfig, take a look, we have the article den, so maybe you can identify the case, so lets go to our beautiful table, and I see den here, we color this yellow, but unfortunately, I also see den here, so I cannot clearly define without further information which one it is, because we dont know what case the preposition requires, so in this case you have to ask, wohin, which in this situation with the preposition in, leads to accusative, so in den Käfig is accusative because of in, and the situation, okay, but thats a completely different topic, or a bit more, I hope you learned a little bit, and it was worth your time, I enjoyed it, okay, Ich danke euch und wünsche euch ein schönes
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05/20/2026
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For most of us, thinking is at least somewhat unpleasant. We try to avoid it where possible. For example, I ask these guys, how long does it take for the earth to go around the sun? What do you reckon, Kaz? Is it 24 hours? Obviously, a day, yes. Or take this problem, which has been given to thousands of college students. You go into a toy store, and there's a toy bat and a toy ball. Together, they cost a dollar ten. And the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Ten cents. We're all wrong, aren't we? What the heck are you doing? If you think about it for just a second, it's obvious that the ball can't cost ten cents. Because if it did, then the bat would cost a dollar ten and the two items together would cost a dollar twenty. The correct answer is five cents. Now the point of these questions is not that they're difficult. Any of these people could have quickly checked their answer if they wanted to. The point is that they don't check. Because thinking is uncomfortable. It takes effort. The Earth doesn't take one day to get around the sun. It takes only a year. Now I think it would be easy to put these mistakes down to stupidity, and believe that you, being much smarter, could never fall into such traps. But then I think you'd be fooling yourself. I think these examples reveal blind spots in all of our thinking, due to the fundamental way that our brains work. Now one way of modeling how the brain operates is as though there are two systems at work. work. Psychologists call them System 1 and System 2, but maybe it's useful to think of them as characters. So let's call System 1, Gun, and System 2, Drew. You are Drew. He represents your conscious thought, the voice in your head. I am who you think you are. He's the one capable of following instructions. He can execute a series of steps. If you are asked to calculate 13 times 17 in your head, for example, he's the one who has to do it. Can I just use my calculator? No. All right. 17 times. Drew is lazy. It takes effort to get Drew to do anything, and he is slow, but he's the careful one, capable of catching and fixing mistakes. 221. Now meets System 1, Gun. He is incredibly quick, which he needs to be since he's constantly processing copious amounts of information coming in through your senses. He picks out the relevant bits and discards the rest, which is most of it. And he works automatically, without you, Drew, being consciously aware of what he is doing. For example, when you spot some text, he reads it before you can even decide whether or not you want to read it. Gun fills in the gaps. For example, what does this say? Did you notice that the H in the and the A in cat are actually the same symbol? But you had no trouble reading it because Gun made the correct automatic assumption. So although Drew is unaware of what Gun is doing, it's Gun's perceptions that become the basis for your conscious thoughts. The way I like to think of it, each of these characters is related to one of your main memory structures. Guns' automatic responses are made possible by long-term memory, the library of experiences you've built up over your lifetime. In contrast, Drew exists entirely within working memory, so he's only capable of holding four or five novel things in mind at a time. This is perhaps one of the best-known findings from psychology, that our capacity to hold and manipulate novel information is incredibly limited, like when trying to remember a string of random numbers. 6, 7, 5, 5, 3, 1. Yes! But we are able to overcome these limitations if the information is familiar to us. For example, let me give you four random digits. 7, 1, 0, 2. Now these would normally take up most of your working memory capacity just to remember, If you reverse them, 2017, they are now just one thing, the present year. The process of grouping things together according to your prior knowledge is called chunking, and you can actually hold four or five chunks in working memory at once, so the larger the chunks, the more information you can actively manipulate at one time. Learning is then the process of building more and bigger chunks by storing and further connecting information in long-term memory, essentially passing off tasks from Drew to Gunn. But in order for this to happen, Drew first has to engage with the information actively and effortfully, often multiple times. For example, when you were first learning to tie your shoelaces, you probably recited a rhyme to help you remember what to do next, using up all your working memory in the process. But after doing it over and over and over again, it gradually became automatic. That is, Drew doesn't have to think about it anymore because guns got it. Musicians and sports stars refer to this as muscle memory. Though of course the memory is not in the muscles, it's still in the brain just controlled by gun. Slow deliberate conscious practice repeated often enough leads to this. I bet 99% of the time what appears to be superhuman ability comes down to the incredible automation skills of gun developed through the painstaking deliberate practice of drew. What's interesting is it's actually possible to see how hard drew is working just by looking at someone. Try this task. I'm going to show you four digits. I want you to read them out loud, and then after two beats, I want you to say each number back on the beat, but adding one to each digit. So as an example, 7291 should be 8302. This is called the add one task, and it forces drew to hold these digits in memory while making manipulations to them. It's important to say the numbers back on the beat. Try this one. To make it harder, you can try adding three instead of one. Ready? Now what you're unaware of is that as you're completing this task, your pupils are dilating. When Drew is hard at work, as he is in this task, you have a physiological response, including increased heart rate, sweat production and pupil dilation. Watch how the pupils of these participants enlarge as they perform the add one and add three tasks. 4, 3, 9, 7, 2, 5, 4, 0, 8, 3. Excellent. Nicely done. It requires a lot of thinking. I know. That's the point. 6, 9, 1, 6, 7, 0, 2, 7. When this research was originally carried out, the researchers made a surprising observation. When the participants were not engaged with the task but were just chatting with the experimenters, their pupils didn't really dilate at all. This indicates that the add one and add three tasks are particularly strenuous for system two and that most of our day to day life is a stroll for Drew, with most tasks handled automatically by gun. Just as we spend a lot of our lives lounging around, our brains spend most of their time doing the mental equivalent. And I don't mean to make that sound like a bad thing, this is how our brains evolved to make the best use of resources. For repetitive tasks we developed automatic ways of doing things, reserving Drew's limited capacity for things that really need our attention. But in some circumstances there can be mixups. For example I moved to Australia in 2004 and one of the first things I learned was that to turn the lights on you flick the switch down. My whole life growing up in Canada, gun had automated that up means on. So no matter how well I drew, knew that down was on in Australia, I would for years continually switch the lights off when entering a room and on when leaving. When Destin learned to ride the backwards bicycle with its steering reversed, it took months to overcome his automated habit. And once he had done that, he couldn't easily go back to riding a normal bike. Understanding Gun and Drew also explains errors in the baton ball question. It's Gun who first perceives the key pieces of information, that together the baton ball cost $1.10, the bat cost $1 more than the ball, so the ball costs $0.10. Gun immediately had an answer that he blurted out automatically. Meanwhile, Drew, without being consciously aware that the answer came from Gun, endorsed the idea without checking it. After all, the answer sounded reasonable and Drew is lazy. So how do you get Drew to do more work? Researchers have found at least one way. When they gave out a clearly printed test including the baton ball question to incoming college students, 85% got at least one wrong. But when they printed the test in a hard to read font, with poor contrast the error rate dropped to 35%. A harder to read test resulted in more correct answers. And the explanation for this is simple, since Gunn can't quickly jump to an answer, he hands off the task to Drew, who then invests the required mental effort to reason his way to the correct answer. When something is confusing, Drew works harder. And when Drew works harder, you're more likely to reach the right answer and remember the experience. This is something I think the advertising industry knows about and is using to its advantage. A few years ago, again in Australia, I saw a giant billboard that had just two letters on it. Un. There was no logo, no indication of what it was for, and this seems to go against all the basic principles of advertising. To show what the product does, how it's better than the competition, and use clear branding and maybe a jingle to make it memorable. The goal is usually to make the message as easy to understand as possible, so Drew doesn't have to work very hard. But if you look at a lot of effective advertising today, it's changed to be more confusing. As the Un campaign rolled out across Sydney, I saw ads like this one in bus shelters. Unexplained. With Un, there is no stress, just unstress. No hassle, just unhassle. With Un, you can undo what you did. You can Undrive through the car wash with the window down. Or Unbreakdance in front of your teenage son and his mates. Un makes life relaxing and unreal. Un your life, be happy and live for now. Don't worry, Un worry. Can you guess what the ads were for? They're actually for insurance. Now that advertising is everywhere, Gun is skilled at filtering it out. It's automatic. If I just saw another insurance ad, I never would have given it a second thought. But something that doesn't make sense? That's something Gunn can't deal with, so he hands it off to Drew. This same realization has been happening in education. Lectures which have long been the dominant teaching method are now on the decline. Like the old form of advertising, they're too easy to tune out. And often, especially in science lectures, too many new pieces of information are presented, and that exceeds Drew's capacity because he doesn't have big enough chunks to break the material into. In place of lectures, universities are introducing workshops, peer instruction, and formats where students are forced to answer more questions, do more work, and just listen and take notes. And this will undoubtedly make Drew work harder, which is good because that's how learning happens. But a lot of students don't like it because it requires more effort. Just as it's hard to motivate someone to get off the couch and exercise, it's hard to get Drew to give his full effort. There's an appeal to doing things you already know. for the musician to play the same familiar songs that Gunn has already automated that feel and sound good. To watch videos that give you the sensation of understanding without actually learning anything. To always drive with the GPS on so you never get lost but you also never learn the way. If you really want to learn and get better at anything, have any chance of becoming an expert, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable because thinking takes effort. It involves fighting through confusion And for most of us, that's at least somewhat unpleasant.
For most of us, thinking is at least somewhat unpleasant. We try to avoid it where possible. For example, I ask these guys, how long does it take for the earth to go around the sun? What do you reckon, Kaz? Is it 24 hours? Obviously, a day, yes. Or take this problem, which has been given to thousands of college students. You go into a toy store, and there's a toy bat and a toy ball. Together, they cost a dollar ten. And the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Ten cents. We're all wrong, aren't we? What the heck are you doing? If you think about it for just a second, it's obvious that the ball can't cost ten cents. Because if it did, then the bat would cost a dollar ten and the two items together would cost a dollar twenty. The correct answer is five cents. Now the point of these questions is not that they're difficult. Any of these people could have quickly checked their answer if they wanted to. The point is that they don't check. Because thinking is uncomfortable. It takes effort. The Earth doesn't take one day to get around the sun. It takes only a year. Now I think it would be easy to put these mistakes down to stupidity, and believe that you, being much smarter, could never fall into such traps. But then I think you'd be fooling yourself. I think these examples reveal blind spots in all of our thinking, due to the fundamental way that our brains work. Now one way of modeling how the brain operates is as though there are two systems at work. work. Psychologists call them System 1 and System 2, but maybe it's useful to think of them as characters. So let's call System 1, Gun, and System 2, Drew. You are Drew. He represents your conscious thought, the voice in your head. I am who you think you are. He's the one capable of following instructions. He can execute a series of steps. If you are asked to calculate 13 times 17 in your head, for example, he's the one who has to do it. Can I just use my calculator? No. All right. 17 times. Drew is lazy. It takes effort to get Drew to do anything, and he is slow, but he's the careful one, capable of catching and fixing mistakes. 221. Now meets System 1, Gun. He is incredibly quick, which he needs to be since he's constantly processing copious amounts of information coming in through your senses. He picks out the relevant bits and discards the rest, which is most of it. And he works automatically, without you, Drew, being consciously aware of what he is doing. For example, when you spot some text, he reads it before you can even decide whether or not you want to read it. Gun fills in the gaps. For example, what does this say? Did you notice that the H in the and the A in cat are actually the same symbol? But you had no trouble reading it because Gun made the correct automatic assumption. So although Drew is unaware of what Gun is doing, it's Gun's perceptions that become the basis for your conscious thoughts. The way I like to think of it, each of these characters is related to one of your main memory structures. Guns' automatic responses are made possible by long-term memory, the library of experiences you've built up over your lifetime. In contrast, Drew exists entirely within working memory, so he's only capable of holding four or five novel things in mind at a time. This is perhaps one of the best-known findings from psychology, that our capacity to hold and manipulate novel information is incredibly limited, like when trying to remember a string of random numbers. 6, 7, 5, 5, 3, 1. Yes! But we are able to overcome these limitations if the information is familiar to us. For example, let me give you four random digits. 7, 1, 0, 2. Now these would normally take up most of your working memory capacity just to remember, If you reverse them, 2017, they are now just one thing, the present year. The process of grouping things together according to your prior knowledge is called chunking, and you can actually hold four or five chunks in working memory at once, so the larger the chunks, the more information you can actively manipulate at one time. Learning is then the process of building more and bigger chunks by storing and further connecting information in long-term memory, essentially passing off tasks from Drew to Gunn. But in order for this to happen, Drew first has to engage with the information actively and effortfully, often multiple times. For example, when you were first learning to tie your shoelaces, you probably recited a rhyme to help you remember what to do next, using up all your working memory in the process. But after doing it over and over and over again, it gradually became automatic. That is, Drew doesn't have to think about it anymore because guns got it. Musicians and sports stars refer to this as muscle memory. Though of course the memory is not in the muscles, it's still in the brain just controlled by gun. Slow deliberate conscious practice repeated often enough leads to this. I bet 99% of the time what appears to be superhuman ability comes down to the incredible automation skills of gun developed through the painstaking deliberate practice of drew. What's interesting is it's actually possible to see how hard drew is working just by looking at someone. Try this task. I'm going to show you four digits. I want you to read them out loud, and then after two beats, I want you to say each number back on the beat, but adding one to each digit. So as an example, 7291 should be 8302. This is called the add one task, and it forces drew to hold these digits in memory while making manipulations to them. It's important to say the numbers back on the beat. Try this one. To make it harder, you can try adding three instead of one. Ready? Now what you're unaware of is that as you're completing this task, your pupils are dilating. When Drew is hard at work, as he is in this task, you have a physiological response, including increased heart rate, sweat production and pupil dilation. Watch how the pupils of these participants enlarge as they perform the add one and add three tasks. 4, 3, 9, 7, 2, 5, 4, 0, 8, 3. Excellent. Nicely done. It requires a lot of thinking. I know. That's the point. 6, 9, 1, 6, 7, 0, 2, 7. When this research was originally carried out, the researchers made a surprising observation. When the participants were not engaged with the task but were just chatting with the experimenters, their pupils didn't really dilate at all. This indicates that the add one and add three tasks are particularly strenuous for system two and that most of our day to day life is a stroll for Drew, with most tasks handled automatically by gun. Just as we spend a lot of our lives lounging around, our brains spend most of their time doing the mental equivalent. And I don't mean to make that sound like a bad thing, this is how our brains evolved to make the best use of resources. For repetitive tasks we developed automatic ways of doing things, reserving Drew's limited capacity for things that really need our attention. But in some circumstances there can be mixups. For example I moved to Australia in 2004 and one of the first things I learned was that to turn the lights on you flick the switch down. My whole life growing up in Canada, gun had automated that up means on. So no matter how well I drew, knew that down was on in Australia, I would for years continually switch the lights off when entering a room and on when leaving. When Destin learned to ride the backwards bicycle with its steering reversed, it took months to overcome his automated habit. And once he had done that, he couldn't easily go back to riding a normal bike. Understanding Gun and Drew also explains errors in the baton ball question. It's Gun who first perceives the key pieces of information, that together the baton ball cost $1.10, the bat cost $1 more than the ball, so the ball costs $0.10. Gun immediately had an answer that he blurted out automatically. Meanwhile, Drew, without being consciously aware that the answer came from Gun, endorsed the idea without checking it. After all, the answer sounded reasonable and Drew is lazy. So how do you get Drew to do more work? Researchers have found at least one way. When they gave out a clearly printed test including the baton ball question to incoming college students, 85% got at least one wrong. But when they printed the test in a hard to read font, with poor contrast the error rate dropped to 35%. A harder to read test resulted in more correct answers. And the explanation for this is simple, since Gunn can't quickly jump to an answer, he hands off the task to Drew, who then invests the required mental effort to reason his way to the correct answer. When something is confusing, Drew works harder. And when Drew works harder, you're more likely to reach the right answer and remember the experience. This is something I think the advertising industry knows about and is using to its advantage. A few years ago, again in Australia, I saw a giant billboard that had just two letters on it. Un. There was no logo, no indication of what it was for, and this seems to go against all the basic principles of advertising. To show what the product does, how it's better than the competition, and use clear branding and maybe a jingle to make it memorable. The goal is usually to make the message as easy to understand as possible, so Drew doesn't have to work very hard. But if you look at a lot of effective advertising today, it's changed to be more confusing. As the Un campaign rolled out across Sydney, I saw ads like this one in bus shelters. Unexplained. With Un, there is no stress, just unstress. No hassle, just unhassle. With Un, you can undo what you did. You can Undrive through the car wash with the window down. Or Unbreakdance in front of your teenage son and his mates. Un makes life relaxing and unreal. Un your life, be happy and live for now. Don't worry, Un worry. Can you guess what the ads were for? They're actually for insurance. Now that advertising is everywhere, Gun is skilled at filtering it out. It's automatic. If I just saw another insurance ad, I never would have given it a second thought. But something that doesn't make sense? That's something Gunn can't deal with, so he hands it off to Drew. This same realization has been happening in education. Lectures which have long been the dominant teaching method are now on the decline. Like the old form of advertising, they're too easy to tune out. And often, especially in science lectures, too many new pieces of information are presented, and that exceeds Drew's capacity because he doesn't have big enough chunks to break the material into. In place of lectures, universities are introducing workshops, peer instruction, and formats where students are forced to answer more questions, do more work, and just listen and take notes. And this will undoubtedly make Drew work harder, which is good because that's how learning happens. But a lot of students don't like it because it requires more effort. Just as it's hard to motivate someone to get off the couch and exercise, it's hard to get Drew to give his full effort. There's an appeal to doing things you already know. for the musician to play the same familiar songs that Gunn has already automated that feel and sound good. To watch videos that give you the sensation of understanding without actually learning anything. To always drive with the GPS on so you never get lost but you also never learn the way. If you really want to learn and get better at anything, have any chance of becoming an expert, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable because thinking takes effort. It involves fighting through confusion And for most of us, that's at least somewhat unpleasant.
a1-l09-the-science-of-thinking
05/20/2026
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