German · Chapter 12 · Lesson 7 · Grammar primer
Question words
Prescribed by the AQA specification - revisited.
The short version
Wer means who, not where
Wer sounds like English where and means who. Wo is where, and was is what. Three of the six core question words look like English words with a different meaning, and a tired ear picks the English one. Drill Wer ist das? against Wo ist das? until the reflex flips.
Wer ist das? Wo ist das?
Where to and where from have their own words
English asks where and tacks on to or from. German builds the direction in: wo for a position, wohin for a destination, woher for an origin. Wo gehst du? is understood but sounds wrong, because wo never asks about movement.
Woher kommst du? Wohin gehst du?
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
Read the full article · 8 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 21 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 7 of 9 in this chapter