Describing People in German

I can’t describe in words how important this lesson is . Even though you have already learned to describe to some degree , here we will introduce a new aspect of describing people in German , and we will review . But how could we describe if we didn’t have vocabulary ? Here it is :

The verb used most often for describing is “to be” which we learned before . Some examples are : She is stupid , I am lazy . But you do use other verbs like feel , looks , etc . In this lesson we will be sticking mostly with the verbs we’ve learned in the past . We will , however , learn one new verb .

All sentences we will create will be in the nominative case . Okay , let’s get started !

In term of beauty , you can say four basic things . These aren’t all , but these are the easiest and simplest ones .

• She is beautiful → 🔊 Listen Sie ist schön
• He is ugly → 🔊 Listen Er ist häßlich

These two use the verb to be , and the next one will use the verb “to look” which would need something else in order to make sense .

• She looks beautiful, but that shirt is ugly → 🔊 Listen Sie sieht schön aus, aber dieses Hemd ist häßlich
• He looks ugly, but he looked handsome yesterday → 🔊 Listen Er sieht häßlich aus, aber gestern hat er schön ausgesehen

And in the last sentence it says “ausgesehen.” Don’t worry about that–it wouldn’t be taught until later lesson . So since you get the idea of describing , let’s learn a new verb ! And the new verb is “klingen” which is to sound . As in “He sounds weird”, “She sounds boring” . Since we know how to describe , we really don’t have to cover it . It works just like other verbs .

• He sounds nice → 🔊 Listen Er klingt nett
• They sound funny → 🔊 Listen Sie klingen komisch

Remember that when describing it’s S+V+A , or subject , verb, then adjective . Exactly like in English . For right now , that’s all for describing things . We are going to have some small describing lessons with some parts of this lesson .

Related Verbs

Okay we just went over the verb in the previous section . This will basically be a list that will help you memorize them better , and there is not a lot . Other then “klingen” and “fühlen” you should know all of these . The “Er sieht aus” is to show you it is a separable-prefix verb .

Describing People with Nationality

It is no surprise you can describe people with nationality , most times , it’s stereotypical , like Norwegians are blonde , tall , etc . or Germans wear lederhosen , drink beer , and play polka all day long , but that is just not true . However you can just use it for what it is , a nationality . If you do describe people by nationality this will help . Okay , you should already know how to describe , right ?

This part we will get more in to detail later , but right is is an important part of describing people with nationality , even though in English we most times don’t do this , in German they do . The difference between nationality and  language, like in English, French and french. But in german it is französisch and Franzose, Französin. This also is how it works for nationality description by noun or adjective , which we are going to learn right now .

Noun or Adjective Nationality

There are two ways for describing people in German . With a noun-based nationality word or an adjective-based nationality word . Most times in English , the adjective-based nationality and the language of that country as the same word , but, most of the time, not in German . You can see the difference with this example :

• Ich bin schwedisch (I am Swedish) and Ich spreche Swedish (I speak Swedish)

Although, sometimes they are the same, see the example below for that , but most times it like the example above .

• Ich bin französisch (I am French) and Ich spreche französisch (I speak French)