“My horse can gallop as fast as yours.”.Let me look for an example… uhm… I need to get to the mall to get new ones soon… damn the only category left is “Horse riding center”… anyway, we gotta put up with this… here you go. In case two, we’re talking about whether they’re unequal or not. In case one, we’re making a statement about whether A and B equal or not.
You see, there are two approaches to comaring stuff:
als – comparing thingsĪls is also THE word we need to compare things. Let’s now get to its next function – comparisons. When I lived in Paris, I often drank wine.Īnd that’s it for alsand time.Alsich in Paris gewohnt habe, habe ich oft Wein getrunken.Like the verb really prefers to hang out with the rest of itself at the end of the phrase rather than to sit in the vicinity of als. Quick word on the grammar, before we move on… you’ve probably noticed that als is that it is one of those words that don’t get along with the verb very well. Not for the future, not for some weird conditional, not for habits. So yeah… als is THE translation for when whenever you talk about singular events in the past. In the second one, however, the als pinpoints one visit of many and so the sentence kind of sounds like I ate a lot with every meal … during THAT ONE STAY. The first sentence tells us what always happened on my visits. Alsich in Berlin war habe ich immer viel gegessen.Wennich in Berlin war, habe ich immer viel gegessen.Actually, let’s look at the two back to back, that’ll really make it clear. Then we’d actually need wenn, usually in combination with immer. I met my ex-girlfriend when I was at Aldi.īut if we’re talking abot reoccurring events, so if in English we have something like whenever, then als does NOT work.Als ich bei Aldi war, habe ich meine Ex-Freundin getroffen.When did you decide to quit your job? When I woke up this morning.Īnd THATS’ what German als is used for, and that’s what makes it a translation for when.When did you buy this Bentley? Last Monday.Īnd the other option is to tell when something happened is by saying what else was happening.The first one is to “indicate” the point in time directly, like in these two examples: Of course, there are plenty of ways to do that but they all can be divided into two categories. Let’s say you want to tell at what point in time something happened in the past. Like “ Yo, could you do my German homework?”Īnd als is just like “Sure thing! I got you!”Īnyway, what we’ll do now is go over them one by one and see how exactly to use als and which pitfalls to avoid. als helps us make (unequal) comparisons.The first 30 words in this list account for 31,8 percent of all words and 50 % of all written German consists of only 207 words.Īnd do you know where als is on that list? It ranks at number 21!! #wow #jawdropĪls has three distinct main translations: as, when and than.īut with these small words it’s often better to not think of translations but instead in terms of ideas or function.Īnd als is used for the following three things: The German Wikipedia has this list of the most used words in German. Psyched yet? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawesome guys… let’s dive right in then.Īls is like one of THE MOST useful words… EVER. I learned a lot and I will put t to the test today. But not to worry for I have participated in a workshop last weekend:Īnd that was well worth the 2 grand I paid for it. Als is one of these preposition-conjunction-congestion-stuff-things, as linguists call them, when they’re drunk.
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