If you want to say what you like to do in German, you just add gern after the verb (you may also hear people say gerne ), and the verb (esse , trinke ) stays the same. Think of gern as meaning ‘with pleasure’.
Florian isst Fleisch. | Florian eats meat. |
Florian isst gern Fleisch. | Florian likes to eat meat. (lit. ‘Florian eats with pleasure meat.’) |
Anna trinkt Kakao. | Anna drinks cocoa. |
Anna trinkt gern Kakao. | Anna likes to drink cocoa. |
To say you like it very much, add sehr gern ; to say you don’t like something, add nicht gern .
Ich trinke sehr gern Wein. | I like (to drink) wine very much. |
Er isst nicht gern Gemüse. | He doesn’t like (to eat) vegetables. |
In this activity you will practise talking about what kinds of food and drink you like or dislike.
Respond to each question according to the written prompts. You may want to use the transcript to help you. If you wish, repeat the exercise, giving your own personal answers instead of the ones suggested.
Question
Prompt (a) Sachertorte
Model answer
Question
Prompt (b) Käse
Model answer
Question
Prompt (c) Kaffee
Model answer
Question
Prompt (d) Tee mit Zitrone
Model answer
Question
To practise and improve your German fluency and pronunciation you can try recording yourself and comparing your way of speaking with that of the speakers you hear in these materials. There are a number of free online recording tools available. The best approach to this kind of practice is that you do the speaking activities in these materials and record your responses. Then listen again to your response and re-record until you are happy with it. Finally, listen again to the recording in the activity and compare it with your own recording.
Listen to Herr Schuster and Frau Georg talking about what they like to eat and drink. Then decide which words from the list below would fit the gaps in the six statements to indicate how much they like or dislike certain things. You can then check your answer using the transcript.
gern • nicht gern • sehr gern • gar nicht gern • besonders gern • überhaupt nicht gern
Practise what you have learned about expressing likes and dislikes by writing sentences to say what you and other people like or don’t like using the cues below. Then write a few more sentences about your own personal preferences.
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Beispiel
(Thomas/essen) Gemüse ; Obst
; Pfirsiche
Thomas isst nicht gern Gemüse.
Er isst sehr gern Obst.
Er isst besonders gern Pfirsiche.
Notice the letter ß in Weißbrot . This is pronounced like s and is used instead of double- s after long vowel sounds in words like Weißbrot (white bread) and Straße (street).
You have come across quite a few words containing ch in the previous activities, such as Milch and Brötchen . This ch should sound like the ‘h’ in ‘human’. Practise your pronunciation as you listen and repeat what you hear in the recording. You may find it useful to record yourself in order to check that you are distinguishing the German ch from the English sounds ‘sh’ and ‘ck’.
OpenLearn - Beginners' German: Food and drink Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.