see you!

Know what the English for “We hear us tomorrow” is?
Right! “Talk to you tomorrow”

(We see us is also not good. Simply say, See you!)

does or don’t?

Correct: “She doesn’t work at Penny.”

Not good: “She don’t work at Penny.”

he / she / it doesn’t
I / you / we / they don’t

What means?

Typical German mistake: “What means working today?”

Good ways of asking the question:

“What does work mean today?” or

“What is the meaning of work these days?”

You need the helping verb do to ask a question in the present tense or turn the verb mean into its noun form.

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from is not “vor”

Vor 3 Jahren: “We built this three years ago.”

A typical mistake is to use “for” because it sounds like the German “vor”, so the sentence: “We built this for three years.” is not correct.

We write for before a period of time: I lived in Germany for two years.
We write ago to indicate a time in the past: I lived in Germany five years ago (2007).

Need to

Mistake: I have not to use it.
Good way of saying it: I don’t need to use it.

We say don’t need to when you have alternatives.

Prepositions so hard to guess

Our cat is the smallest on the street. The preposition (“on”) in this sentence is right.

Not so good (it sounds very “German”!) would be Our cat is the smallest from the street.

oops: A friend of mine

There was a mistake in my last post!

Correct is: “A friend of ours lives in Kassel.”

Not right: “A friend of us lives in Kassel.”

To describe relationships between people, we either

1) put the possessive determiner before the other person or

2) put the possessive pronoun at the end.
Both are correct: 1) They are my friends and 2) They are friends of mine.

A friend of mine

Correct is: “A friend of ours live in Kassel.”

Not right: “A friend of us live in Kassel.”

To describe relationships between people, we either
1) put the possessive determiner before the other person or
2) put the possessive pronoun at the end.
Both are correct: 1) They are my friends and 2) They are friends of mine.

meet me!

Good: “We meet next Thursday at 2 PM.”

Not good: “We meet us next Thursday at 2 PM.”

Good: “I don’t feel safe.”

Not good: “I don’t feel me safe.”

Feel and meet are not reflexive verbs in English, so you don’t need me (or us).

Know the difference between “That’s normally for kids” and “That’s normal for kids”?

“That’s normally for kids” means “that is for kids (not adults)” and
“That’s normal for kids”? means “that is what kids do”.

The grammar difference is that we add “-ly” only for adverbs in English: a careful driver is one who drives carefully; a slow drinker is one who drinks slowly.