When you have finished this lesson you can:

• Congratulate to a birthday

• Talking about celebrations and traditions

• Ask for a translation

! Note: In German, it’s not unusally to call an adult “Geburtstagskind”. It’s the term for a person having birthday.

It is not abnormal to mark friends or colleagues' birthdays either privately or in the office.
It is also common for the birthday child to have a cake or something else edible at work. For round birthdays (30, 40, 50, for example), colleagues often put together to buy a gift. The same is true of other special days, weddings, christening, anniversary or the like.

When you want to congratulate your birthday, you say:

Another phrase to congratulate is:

Arrange correctly: Click at the speaker-button on the left and drag them to the corresponding word on the right side.

Arrange correctly: Click at the pronoun on the left and drag them to the corresponding form of a verb on the right side.

We already use the modal verbs “können” (can) and “müssen” (must, have to). Here are three further modal verbs and their conjugation:

! Remember: The first verb is the conjugated form of the modal verb and it stands at the second position, the verb position. The second verb, the real activity, stands in infinitive at the last position of the sentence.

Arrange correctly: Click at the pronoun on the left and drag them to the corresponding form of a verb on the right side.

Read the phrases and insert the verb in parentheses in the correct form.

There are different occasions in one’s life you can congratulate for. In German, you use the phrases “Alles Gute zu …” and “Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu …” for nearly all occasions.

Arrange correctly: Click at the speaker-button on the left and drag them to the corresponding word on the right side.

Sometimes you may need to ask some words:

(reg., except. du sprichst aus, er/sie/es spricht aus)

… when you can pronounce:

tschechisches Streichholzschächtelchen.

[little czech matchbox]