Kultur
Sehenswürdigkeiten in Wien
Take a look at the map of Vienna to learn about some of the historical areas there are to see.
Do a bit of research on your own and see if you can find a museum or building in Vienna that you think is particularly interesting.
Hören
Was sollte man unbedingt in Wien sehen?
Arbeit mit dem Hören
Schreiben
Was macht man dort?
Sprechen
Now that you’ve read about what you can do in various buildings, use the tourist attraction that you picked at the beginning of the page, and write out five things that you can do there. When you are done, compare it with some of your classmates. Take notes about what your classmates suggest for their attraction. You may need those notes for a writing assignment.
Strukturen
man
You might have noticed that in the last section we used the word “man” a lot. In English when we tell people how to do something, we often say “you” in an impersonal way – especially when telling someone what they can do, or how to get somewhere. In German, you use the word “man” which essentially translates to “one”. You conjugate the verb just like you would for sie/es/er.
One travels with the U-Bahn — Man fährt mit der U-Bahn.
It sounds old-fashioned in English, but it’s just how it works in German.
Two things to note:
- “man” is only written with an upper case “m” when it comes at the beginning of the sentence, otherwise it’s written with a lowercase “m”.
- “man” is not the same as “Mann”. “Mann” means man or husband.
Kultur
frau als Pronomen
Although the pronoun man is officially gender neutral, its derivation from the gendered word Mann is clear. For this reason, you sometimes find, particularly in feminist publications, the use of the word frau, written in the lower case, as an alternative indefinite pronoun. You see it, for example, in the work of pioneering feminist linguist Luise Pusch, or in Swiss-born feminist author Verena Stefan’s famous novel Häutungen (1975):
„Mit dem wörtchen „man“ fängt es an. „man“ hat, „man“ tut, „man“ fühlt…: „man“ wird für die beschreibung allgemeiner zustände, gefühle, situationen verwendet – für die menschheit schlechthin. entlarvend sind sätze, die mit „als frau hat man ja…“ beginnen. „man“ hat als frau keine identität. frau kann sie nur als frau suchen“ (4).
Lesen
Wo liegt das?
Look at the following exercise again, and take a look at where these various tourist attractions are located in the city.
Was empfehlen Sie?
How do Joan, Haroon, Susanne and Anastasia describe their favorite destinations in Vienna. Read the texts and take notes. Find them on a map while you’re reading.
Arbeit mit dem Lesen
Strukturen
Two Way Prepositions (Dativ)
We’ve already learned a lot about prepositions, and today we’re going to focus on some prepositions that we use to describe where things are located. When we’re talking about the city, it’s particularly important to be able to describe and understand where things are. For right now, we will only be using these prepositions in the dative, but keep in mind, that they can also be used with the accusative case, and you’ll be learning more about that later.
Note: Just as with the other dative prepositions, these can be formed into contractions. Any time you see these contractions, you will know that you’re talking about the dative case.
an dem = am
in dem = im
Take a look at the pictures and phrases in the following activity to see the definitions of these prepositions, then complete the activity with the correct prepositions.
Arbeit mit den Strukturen
Now that you’ve worked with that a bit, use the location you selected at the beginning of this lesson and describe where it is in relation to other things around it using the prepositions you have been learning.