German/Food 1

The verb haben (to have)
In English, you can say "I'm having bread" when you really mean that you're eating or about to eat bread. This does not work in German. The verb haben refers to possession only. Hence, the sentence  Ich habe Brot only translates to  I have bread, not  I'm having bread. Of course, the same applies to drinks. Ich habe Wasser  only translates to  I have water,  not  I'm having water.

Having said that, the verb  haben  is sometimes used to describe physical conditions, emotional conditions, and states of being.

For instance, the German for  I am hungry  is  Ich habe Hunger. You can think of it as having the condition of being hungry.

Ich habe Hunger  =  I am hungry

Ich habe Durst  =  I am thirsty

Sie hat Recht  =  She is right

Er hat Angst  =  He is afraid

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.

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. For instance,  die Orange  +  der Saft  becomes  der Orangensaft,   der Hund  +  das Futter  becomes  das Hundefutter ,  die Liebe  +  das Lied  becomes  das Liebeslied, and  der Tag  +  das Gericht  becomes  das Tagesgericht

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.