I won’t bother writing the way I said it… I’ll just write down his response.

Nehmen – to take

Ich nehme

du nimmst

er,sire,es nimmt

Ihr nehmt

sie nehmen

Du hast genommen!

After a little research, it seems that abnything in the past tense is genommen.

Ich habe genommen

du hast genommen

er, sie, es hat genommen

etc. etc.

So what I should have said was:

Hallo, bitte nimmst du ein parr bier aus dem Kühlschrank, weil letzte Woche Ich habe zwei flaschen aus dein bier genommen.

Roughly translated: Hello, please take a few beers from the fridge because last week I took two of your beers.

Likewise, anything in the future tense takes the form; nehmen.

Ich werde nehmen – I will take

Du wirst nehmen – you will take

Note: This whole page only covers present tense. If you are interested in some good resources on other tenses, you are in the wrong place. (… as of June 2009. Give me another 6 months.

The most useful thing that I have found to date is the consistency in the way that verbs change depending on the subject. Using the verb “haben” as an example, note the bold italic letters.

haben – to have (have, have got, own, possess, wield.. etc.)

This is worth memorising:

• Ich habe
• du hast
• Sie haben
• er, sie, es hat
• wir haben
• ihr habt
• sie haben

And this is the other bit worth memorising:

1. If you are using “du”, then the verb almost always ends in st. Eg. Du hast,  du laufst
2. If you are using “Ich” then they usually end in e. Eg. Ich habe, Iach laufe
3. If you are speaking about someone else specifically, it’s er, sie or es and you usually use t. Eg. er hat, sie lauft
4. Remember that all the Sie’s, (I.e. Sie – formal “you”, sie – she and sie – they) are the same, so you can go off the change for er, sie, es.

Obviously there is a whole lot more to it than this, but if you can remember these little hints as you speak, then you’ll guess about 70% right when you have to grab a new verb that you have just learnt and mash it into a sentence.

http://translate.google.com/translate_t#

Definitely worth checking out.

The thing that I really like aboutthe Google translator is that it remembers which language I want, so when I open my home page it is already set to English to German (or vice versa depending on which way I translated last time.)

Another simillar tool is Yahoo Babel Fish which is also very useful.

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt

I arrived at the cuorts to meet a few of the local guys. We had organised six players, 3 teams to play side out drills.

I got there and there were two guys warming up and one more just arriving. Plenty of other people around on other 3 courts were hanging out or playing games.

I shouted across the court to one of the guys: “Hey Hansi, haben wir sechs hoyte”?

Everyone around the courts stop what they are doing and look at me…

Hansi laughs and says: “Nein Tristo, wir haben kein sex,… aber wir sind sechs hoyte fur training.”

That was my German lesson for the day.

But the Germans have made the whole thing about ten times more complicated… for example.

Where we would say five thirty five for 5:35, they would say five minutes past half an hour before six…. which sounds like fünf nach halb sechs.

The first thing to remember is that they never say “half past”, it is always “half before”. So halb sechs is half past five…

The next thing to remember is that they use those half hour references the same way we use the hour references. So where we would say twenty five minutes past five, they would say five minutes to half six, or fünf vor halb sechs.

Rather than using AM or PM they use 24 hour references. So 2 O’clock in the afternoon is 14 O’clock, Viertzehn Uhr. (Uhr is German for O’clock)

Note: Uhr is also German for clock, or watch. die Uhr

Most of the other stuff is basically the same.

5 minutes to six is fünf vor sechs

Quarter past seven would be Viertel nach seben

In their defence, many of them have realised the error of their ways, and now speak purely in 24 hour time. So 10:30 in the evening (22:30)  is simply Zwei und zwanzig, dreißig

If this is confusing, you might want to check out a professional explanation on telling the time in German.