Video 30: Plusquamperfekt Review, Temporal Prepositions, and nachdem

Source: Roughly 2 hours 9 minutes total, but the great majority is silence/filler ("Thank you" placeholders) — only a few stretches contain real teaching content. Approximate topic ranges:

• 00:00–04:05 — Silence/opening (skipped, pure logistics)
• 04:05–14:00 — Correction of a Plusquamperfekt narrative exercise (a story about missing a bus, a friend turning up by coincidence, a café mix-up) — extracted below
• 14:00–14:30 — Silence (skipped)
• 14:30–16:55 — Vocabulary: unternehmen vs. machen — extracted below
• 16:57–22:30 — Temporal prepositions: am, gegen, wegen, seit — extracted below
• 22:30–44:30 — A listening exercise (matching audio to pictures about currencies); the transcript here is almost entirely silence/"Thank you" placeholders with only a couple of fragmentary lines ("I go for the walk", "This is a verb") — no substantive teaching content to extract, skipped
• 44:33–1:02:10 — Main topic: the time connector nachdem — meaning, which clause it attaches to, the two valid tense-sequence combinations, word order, and worked student examples — extracted below, this is the bulk of the class
• 1:02:10–end (~2:09:00) — Almost entirely silence/filler ("Thank you" / "I'm in a seat" repeated) with no further teaching content; skipped as it contains nothing substantive to extract

Topics Covered

• Plusquamperfekt narrative correction: genitive apostrophe, sich informieren / Bescheid geben, separable verbs, word order with missing subjects
• Vocabulary distinction: unternehmen (to undertake, for "adventurous"/bigger activities) vs. machen (for everyday small tasks)
• Temporal prepositions: am (clock-time of day only), gegen (+Akk., approximate time), wegen (+Gen., "because of"), seit (+Dativ, "since"/duration)
• nachdem: meaning, which clause gets it, the two valid tense-sequence pairings, and where the verb goes

Plusquamperfekt Narrative Correction

A worked correction of a cloze-style story (a narrator misses the bus, meets a friend, and is annoyed to discover a friend had drunk coffee with Lena in the wrong café). Mostly Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt sentences.

• Ich hatte den Bus verpasst. — "I had missed the bus." (Plusquamperfekt: hatte ... verpasst)
• sich informieren — to inform oneself — introduced as an alternative to sagen: instead of always saying ich sage, you can say ich gebe Bescheid — "I let (someone) know" / "I give information."
• Leider konnte ich ihr nicht Bescheid geben, weil ich mein Handy aufzuladen vergessen hatte. — "Unfortunately I couldn't let her know because I had forgotten to charge my phone." Both ich hatte vergessen and ich vergessen hatte (verb-final word order in the weil-clause) were confirmed as correct — the difference is just main-clause vs. subordinate-clause word order.
• Als ich im Café ankam, war Leena schon gegangen. — "When I finally arrived at the café, Lena had already left/gone." (Plusquamperfekt: war ... gegangen.)
• Zufällig kam mein alter Freund Felix vorbei. — "Coincidentally my old friend Felix came by/ came over." vorbeikommen = "to come over/come by"; zufällig = "coincidentally, accidentally."
• Das war schön, denn ich hatte ihn schon lange nicht mehr gesehen. — "That was nice, because I hadn't seen him in a long time."
• Er erzählte mir, dass er gerade mit Lena in einem anderen Café Kaffee getrunken hatte. — "He told me that he had just drunk coffee with Lena in a different café."
• Als ich das hörte, war ich ein bisschen sauer. — "When I heard that, I was a little bit angry/annoyed" (sauer sein = to be annoyed/cross).
• Anscheinend hat(te) Lena nicht mehr an unsere Verabredung gedacht und nicht auf mich gewartet. — "Apparently Lena no longer thought about our appointment/meeting and didn't wait for me." anscheinend = apparently, seemingly.
• Lenas Handy (with an apostrophe before the -s) — flagged as a genitive construction: a proper name + apostrophe + -s marks possession (e.g. Lenas Handy — "Lena's phone").
• Tatsächlich hatte sie im falschen Café gesessen. — "In fact, she had sat in the wrong café." Spelling correction emphasized: essen → gegessen (to eat) vs. sitzen → gesessen (to sit) — these past participles look similar but are different verbs; pay close attention to spelling.
• Als wir uns endlich trafen, hatten wir einen schönen Nachmittag zusammen (verbracht). — "When we finally met, we had a nice afternoon together."
• A second short gap-fill text (about Karim making a tasty salad) was used to test subject identification in Plusquamperfekt sentences:
  • Karim machte einen leckeren Salat. Das Rezept hatte er von seinem Vater bekommen. — "Karim made a tasty salad. He had gotten the recipe from his father."
  • Teaching point: in Das Rezept hatte er von seinem Vater bekommen, das Rezept is fronted but is the object, not the subject — er is the subject ("he had received the recipe from his father"). When a sentence blank is given without an explicit subject pronoun, check whether the fronted noun could be the object instead, and supply the missing subject (here, er) accordingly.

Vocabulary: unternehmen vs. machen

• etwas unternehmen — to undertake / to do something (more adventurous, exciting, or higher- intensity activities), e.g. Ich möchte am Wochenende etwas mit meinen Freunden unternehmen. — "I want to do something together with my friends on the weekend."
• unternehmen can also just mean "to do," but it is reserved for activities with a bit more scale or excitement — "thoda sa adventurous, thoda sa exciting."
• Restriction: unternehmen is not used for routine day-to-day tasks. For ordinary small chores (e.g. homework), use machen instead:
  • Correct: Ich mache meine Hausaufgaben. — "I'm doing my homework."
  • Incorrect: Ich unternehme meine Hausaufgaben. — wrong; small, everyday tasks always take machen.
• Other vocabulary drilled in the same list: kennenlernen (to get to know), bauen (to build), finden (to find), vermissen (to miss someone), sich anmelden (to register oneself, e.g. in a neighborhood network), sich einsam fühlen (to feel lonely), alte Freunde vermissen (to miss old friends).

Temporal Prepositions: am, gegen, wegen, seit

• am is used only with the exact clock time of day (morning/afternoon/evening), not with the word morgen ("tomorrow," lowercase) meaning "tomorrow."
  • am Morgen — "in the morning" (note capital Morgen, the noun for "morning"), e.g. Ich wache am Morgen um 8 Uhr auf. — "I wake up in the morning at 8 o'clock."
  • Contrast: morgen (lowercase, "tomorrow") never takes am — e.g. just Ich gehe morgen. — "I'm going tomorrow," not am morgen. A common student mistake is to see "Morgen" and reflexively attach am to it regardless of meaning.
• gegen (+ Akkusativ) — used for an approximate time, when you are not sure of the exact time: e.g. Unser Kurs beginnt gegen halb neun. — "Our class starts around 8:30" (compare to using um for an exact time).
• wegen (+ Genitiv) — "because of." Flagged as a genitive preposition; with a neuter noun like Wochenende, the genitive article would ideally be des, but the construction used here was the common spoken-register dative alternative: wegen dem Wochenende ("because of the weekend") — many genitive prepositions like wegen are used with the dative in casual speech even though the formal rule calls for the genitive.
• seit (+ Dativ) — "since" (for time spans), always takes the dative: e.g. Mein Kollege ist seit gestern in guter Stimmung — supergelaunt — und hat Kuchen mitgebracht. — "My colleague has been in a good mood since yesterday — in great spirits — and has brought along cake." Also: Ich stehe schon seit einer Stunde in der Küche. — "I've already been standing in the kitchen for an hour" (seit einer Stunde, dative).
• in + time duration (e.g. in 10 Minuten) was contrasted with these: in here means "in/within" a future duration ("we'll be there in 10 minutes"), not a fixed preposition tied to a specific verb, and is not interchangeable with seit, gegen, or wegen.
• A genitive note recurred: wegen der Busfahrt — "because of the bus ride" — Busfahrt is feminine, so the genitive article is der.

nachdem (Temporal Connector)

The main and most substantial topic of the class: nachdem ("after"), a subordinating time-connector that links two clauses describing actions in sequence.

Core rule

• nachdem is attached to the clause describing the activity that happened first (the earlier of the two actions) — not the later one. This mirrors English "after," which also attaches to the earlier event: "After I had eaten dinner, I went for a walk" → nachdem goes with "had eaten dinner."
• nachdem requires two different tenses in the two clauses — it cannot be used with both clauses in the same tense the way some other connectors can.

The two valid tense-sequence combinations

Only two sequences are grammatically valid with nachdem; you cannot mix-and-match arbitrarily:

1. Plusquamperfekt (in the nachdem-clause) → Präsens (in the main clause) — describing a past action's effect continuing into a present-tense narration.
2. Präteritum or Perfekt (in the nachdem-clause) → Präsens (in the main clause) — Präteritum and Perfekt are treated as interchangeable/equivalent here, both pairing with a following present tense.

• You cannot jump directly from Plusquamperfekt to Präsens skipping the sequence, nor can you combine two clauses both in Präteritum/Perfekt with nachdem — the rule is strictly: whichever tense is "more in the past" goes in the nachdem-clause, and the clause describing the resulting/later state must be one tense-step "more present" than it. You cannot skip a step in the sequence.

Word order

• The verb in the nachdem-clause goes to the end of the clause (standard subordinate-clause word order), with the conjugated auxiliary (hat/hatte/ist/war) last.
• nachdem can be placed at the beginning of the sentence or in the middle, but the teacher recommended always starting the sentence with nachdem, for two reasons:
  • It keeps the tense sequence in a predictable order (past tense first, then present tense), reducing the chance of mistakes.
  • It mirrors how English speakers naturally think and phrase such sentences ("After I have completed my homework, I went for a party" — English usually starts with "after" too).
• Separable verbs stay together at the clause end in a nachdem-clause, just as in other subordinate clauses (consistent with the general Nebensatz word-order rule from earlier lessons).

Worked examples

• Sie besucht ihre Großeltern. Sie kommt zurück nach Hause. — "She is visiting her grandparents. She is coming back home." Both given in present tense; "visiting grandparents" happens first, so nachdem attaches to that clause, and it must be converted to a past tense while the second clause stays in the present:
  • Nachdem sie ihre Großeltern besucht hat, kommt sie zurück nach Hause. (Perfekt → Präsens)
  • Nachdem sie ihre Großeltern besucht hatte, kommt sie zurück nach Hause. — also presented; Perfekt and Präteritum/Plusquamperfekt forms of the nachdem-clause are interchangeable here as long as the second clause stays present.
• Nachdem mein Opa seine Brille gesucht hat, liest er die Zeitung. — "After my grandfather searched for his glasses, he reads the newspaper." (Perfekt in the nachdem-clause → Präsens in the main clause.) Spelling correction noted: the participle of Frühstücken in a related drill is gefrühstückt (not simply "frühstückt") — students were reminded to double-check participle forms.
• Nachdem mein Opa seine Brille gesucht hatte, las er die Zeitung. — same meaning, using Plusquamperfekt + Präteritum instead — confirmed as an equally valid alternative.
• Clarification on future tense: a student asked "Können wir auch Futur hier nutzen?" ("Can we also use the future tense here?"). Answer: No — while it's grammatically possible and the teacher had seen this structure with future tense in outside research (including an AI search), the course textbook for B1 only sanctions nachdem with past→present combinations (Plusquamperfekt/Präteritum/Perfekt feeding into Präsens) — future tense with nachdem is not expected at this level (B1) or even B2.1, so stick to the two approved sequences for the exam.
• Practice sentence (Plusquamperfekt + Präteritum, both past, as a third valid pairing within the "both past" family): Nachdem Opa die Zeitung gehalten hatte, ... — "After grandfather had held the newspaper, ..." — the action of holding/reading the newspaper happens first, so nachdem attaches there, in Plusquamperfekt, while the following clause can be Präteritum or Perfekt (student's choice, both equally valid as "PPP" — Perfekt or Präteritum allowed).
• Student-built example: Nachdem ich meine ganze Hausaufgabe gemacht hatte, ging ich mit meinen Freunden ins Kino. (or: ..., bin ich mit meinen Freunden ins Kino gegangen.) — "After I had done my whole homework, I went with my friends to the cinema." Both the Präteritum (ging) and Perfekt (bin ... gegangen) forms of the second clause were accepted as correct.
• Frühstück practice sentence: Nachdem er gefrühstückt hatte, fuhr er zur Arbeit. (reconstructed pattern: "After he had had breakfast, he drove to work") — most students got the participle gefrühstückt right; a few had written it without the ge- prefix and were corrected.

Notes & Tips

• nachdem always attaches to the earlier action, never the later one — when building a nachdem-sentence, first identify which of the two events happened first, then put that clause in the harder/more-past tense and attach nachdem to it.
• Two tenses are mandatory with nachdem: never write both clauses in the same tense. The only valid pairings are (Plusquamperfekt → Präsens) or (Präteritum/Perfekt → Präsens), or, when both clauses are in the past, (Plusquamperfekt → Präteritum/Perfekt). You cannot skip a step in this past-to-present "ladder."
• Future tense with nachdem is not expected for the B1 exam (or even B2.1, per this course), even though it's used informally/loosely elsewhere — don't use it on the test.
• Prefer starting the sentence with nachdem rather than placing it mid-sentence — it's easier to get the tense sequence right and mirrors how English speakers think with "after."
• Spelling/participle accuracy matters: easy-to-confuse pairs like gegessen (eaten) vs. gesessen (sat), and remembering the ge- prefix on participles like gefrühstückt, were both flagged as common small mistakes that cost exam points.
• am vs. morgen: don't reflexively attach am to every appearance of the word "Morgen" — am is only correct with the capitalized noun Morgen meaning "the time of day," never with lowercase morgen meaning "tomorrow."
• gegen for approximate/uncertain times vs. um for exact times is a useful pair to keep distinct when describing schedules in the exam's speaking/writing sections.