Tedesco: Lektion 3. - Grammar.en

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Food 1

Ich habe Hunger!

As mentioned in the "Accusative" lesson, haben is not used in the sense of "I'm having bread" or "I'm having tea" in German. Ich habe Brot only translates to "I have bread".
German uses haben in some instances where English uses "to be":

• Ich habe Hunger. (I am hungry.)
  
• Ich habe Durst. (I am thirsty.)
  
• Sie hat Recht. (She is right.)
  
• Er hat Angst. (He is afraid.)
  

Compound words

A compound word is a word that consists of two or more words. These are written as one word (no spaces).
The gender of a compound noun is always determined by its last element. This shouldn't be too difficult to remember, because the last element is always the most important one. All the previous elements merely describe the last element.

• die Autobahn (das Auto + die Bahn)
  
• der Orangensaft (die Orange + der Saft)
  
• das Hundefutter (der Hund + das Futter)
  

Sometimes, there's a connecting sound (Fugenlaut) between two elements.

• die Orange + der Saft = der Orangensaft
  
• der Hund + das Futter = das Hundefutter (the dog food)
  
• die Liebe + das Lied = das Liebeslied (the love song)
  
• der Tag + das Gericht = das Tagesgericht (dish of the day)
  

Mittagessen — lunch or dinner?

We're aware that "dinner" is sometimes used synonymously with "lunch", but for the purpose of this course, we're defining Frühstück as "breakfast", Mittagessen as "lunch", and "dinner/supper" as Abendessen / Abendbrot.

Cute like sugar!

The word süß means "sweet" when referring to food, and "cute" when referring to living beings.

• Der Zucker ist süß. (The sugar is sweet.)
• Die Katze ist süß. (The cat is cute.)

Does Gemüse mean "vegetable" or "vegetables"?

In German, Gemüse is used as a mass noun. That means it's grammatically singular and takes a singular verb.