Nehmen (German): Structured Vocabulary Support
£2.00
‘nehmen’ is one of the first verbs a German learner meets and one of the most useful - take the bus, take a seat, take sugar. This resource follows it back to a very old idea: that to take something is to receive the share that is dealt out to you.
‘nehmen’ comes straight down through German from the ancient root *nem- ‘to allot, take one’s due’. The same root reached English by other roads, hiding inside ‘numb’, ‘nimble’, ‘number’ and even ‘economy’ - so a learner meets surprising English relatives while working in German.
• The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short captions
• The word history, Proto-Indo-European to modern German, dated at each stage the record allows
• A present-tense conjugation card showing the vowel change - ‘ich nehme’ but ‘du nimmst’
• An English-links card naming the English cousins of the root.
• A sources page, with the scholarly dispute on the root noted honestly
• A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Who it’s for
Designed first for secondary MFL learners (KS3 and KS4), but it suits a wider range: anyone who likes word origins, learners taking German who want to see its English relatives, home-educated children, specialist tuition students including dyslexic and working-memory profiles, and adults brushing up German alongside a child.
It isn’t for an absolute beginner who hasn’t yet met present-tense verbs. The card assumes a learner who can read a short German sentence and is ready for a strong verb that changes its vowel.
The vowel change in ‘nehmen’ - ‘ich nehme’ but ‘du nimmst’, ‘er nimmt’ - is one of the first strong-verb patterns a German learner has to hold, and it is easy to get wrong. Seeing the verb whole, with its history and its English cousins, gives the pattern a place to live instead of being one more form to memorise.
Linguistic quirk: the ‘h’ in ‘nehmen’ is silent. It is a Dehnungs-h, a ‘lengthening h’ that marks the long vowel but stands for no sound. The older forms had no h at all - Old High German ‘neman’, Middle High German ‘nëmen’. The h is a later spelling habit, not a piece of the word’s sound.
Originally created to support one of my own children’s learning once the school day had ended.
The French ‘prendre’, Italian ‘prendere’ and Spanish ‘prender’ resources cover the same idea from a different Latin root, ‘prehendere’; ‘nehmen’ is the Germanic side, on its own root *nem-. See L’atelier des mots, L’Officina Radice and El Taller Raíz.
Why word origins help with modern languages: the Compendium post on teaching words through structure.
Free in The Wordhord - the English cousins of this root: ‘numb’ and ‘nimble’.
‘nehmen’ is one of the first verbs a German learner meets and one of the most useful - take the bus, take a seat, take sugar. This resource follows it back to a very old idea: that to take something is to receive the share that is dealt out to you.
‘nehmen’ comes straight down through German from the ancient root *nem- ‘to allot, take one’s due’. The same root reached English by other roads, hiding inside ‘numb’, ‘nimble’, ‘number’ and even ‘economy’ - so a learner meets surprising English relatives while working in German.
• The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short captions
• The word history, Proto-Indo-European to modern German, dated at each stage the record allows
• A present-tense conjugation card showing the vowel change - ‘ich nehme’ but ‘du nimmst’
• An English-links card naming the English cousins of the root.
• A sources page, with the scholarly dispute on the root noted honestly
• A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Who it’s for
Designed first for secondary MFL learners (KS3 and KS4), but it suits a wider range: anyone who likes word origins, learners taking German who want to see its English relatives, home-educated children, specialist tuition students including dyslexic and working-memory profiles, and adults brushing up German alongside a child.
It isn’t for an absolute beginner who hasn’t yet met present-tense verbs. The card assumes a learner who can read a short German sentence and is ready for a strong verb that changes its vowel.
The vowel change in ‘nehmen’ - ‘ich nehme’ but ‘du nimmst’, ‘er nimmt’ - is one of the first strong-verb patterns a German learner has to hold, and it is easy to get wrong. Seeing the verb whole, with its history and its English cousins, gives the pattern a place to live instead of being one more form to memorise.
Linguistic quirk: the ‘h’ in ‘nehmen’ is silent. It is a Dehnungs-h, a ‘lengthening h’ that marks the long vowel but stands for no sound. The older forms had no h at all - Old High German ‘neman’, Middle High German ‘nëmen’. The h is a later spelling habit, not a piece of the word’s sound.
Originally created to support one of my own children’s learning once the school day had ended.
The French ‘prendre’, Italian ‘prendere’ and Spanish ‘prender’ resources cover the same idea from a different Latin root, ‘prehendere’; ‘nehmen’ is the Germanic side, on its own root *nem-. See L’atelier des mots, L’Officina Radice and El Taller Raíz.
Why word origins help with modern languages: the Compendium post on teaching words through structure.
Free in The Wordhord - the English cousins of this root: ‘numb’ and ‘nimble’.
