German Travel & Daily Life: Study Guide to 268 Phrasebook Flashcards

BY8889 — German Travel & Daily Life is a 268-card English→German phrasebook. Read it in order and you'll see two decks sewn together. Cards 1-208 are the travel core: greetings, transport, hotel, food, directions, sights, money, time and the "I lost my passport" kit. Cards 209-268 are a second pass on numbers, colors, ordinals and fractions. Part of that pass repeats the first block, so plan around it.

Sample cards

Vocabulary covered: Flughafen, Bahnhof, Bushaltestelle, U-Bahn, Straßenbahn, Fahrkarte, Abfahrt, Ankunft, Einzelzimmer, Doppelzimmer, Schlüssel, Frühstück, Speisekarte, Hähnchen, Schweinefleisch, Nachtisch, glutenfrei, lecker, geradeaus, in der Nähe, Dom, Schloss, Burg, Denkmal, Apotheke, Geldautomat, Krankenhaus, Notfall, Eingang, Ausgang, geschlossen, Bargeld, Ermäßigung, Reisepass, Gepäck, gestohlen, plus days, months, seasons, weather, numbers to 1000 and eleven colors.

Fix three things before you start

1. Add the article to every noun. None of the nouns show der/die/das, and in German the gender decides the form of almost every word around the noun. Put it in the hint: der Bahnhof, die Bushaltestelle, das Gleis, die Speisekarte, das Frühstück, der Schlüssel. Color-coding by gender (blue/red/green) is the fastest way to make it stick.

2. Ignore the capital letters in block 1. Every back in cards 1-208 starts with a capital, so Links, Teuer, Heiß, Geschlossen look like nouns. In German, only nouns are capitalized: it's links, teuer, heiß, geschlossen. Once you know this, capitalization tells you whether a word is a noun. Block 2 (cards 209-268) has it right.

3. Suspend the repeats. Numbers 1-10 show up twice (188-197 and 210-219), and so do Tag, Woche, Monat (151-153 and 266-268). Keep the second version of the numbers, since card 210 adds the useful ein before a noun.

Collisions to learn on purpose

• Morgen is both "tomorrow" (card 145) and "morning" (147). Lowercase morgen = tomorrow, der Morgen = morning, and morgen früh = tomorrow morning.
• Stadt covers both city and town. Kleinstadt is the small one.
• Schloss vs Burg: a Schloss is a palace-style residence (Neuschwanstein), a Burg is a fortified castle on a hill.
• Bankomat (card 120) is Austrian. In Germany you'll see Geldautomat, and people say EC-Automat.

Tip: drill the number pattern, not each number

Card 254 is the most useful one in the deck: units + und + tens, so 47 is siebenundvierzig. Prices, platform numbers and times all use it. After the deck, have someone read out random prices ("vierundachtzig Euro") and write down the digits. That's the skill you'll actually need at the ticket counter, and the deck has no card for it.

Keep going

For the general vocabulary that sits under these phrases, see the German A2 Everyday deck guide. Learning several languages? The Spanish Travel & Daily Life guide covers the same situations.

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