6.8 At the doctor's and at the pharmacy — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say that you are ill — Ich bin krank. — and name where it hurts with the compound the language builds for every part of the body: Haben Sie Halsschmerzen? , Hast du Kopfschmerzen? Answer the four questions a German doctor opens with, beginning Haben Sie Fieber? and Haben Sie Husten? Ask for something at a pharmacy — Hast du Hustenbonbons? , at a real counter Haben Sie Hustenbonbons? — and know what a German pharmacy will and will not sell you. Ask for a doctor in an emergency — Brauchen Sie einen Arzt? — and know the number to call. Prerequisites : 6.7 — appointments, and 5.1 — the body. This is the lesson you hope not to need and should nevertheless read twice. German has one grammatical gift for this conversation and one trap. The gift is that the words for pain are built to a single pattern: take the part of the body, add the word for pains, and you have the ailment. Headache, stomach-ache, toothache and sore throat are all the same construction, so learning one teaches you all of them. The trap is the dative: in Mir tut der Kopf weh. and Mir ist schlecht. the person who suffers is in a case an English speaker does not expect. Who is speaking to whom Formal, both ways. A doctor will use the formal form with any adult patient and expects it back. In a pharmacy the same — though the corpus lines of the second exchange below are informal; see the note after it. One point of medical culture worth knowing before you go: in Germany appointments are usually made by telephone, and a practice will often keep an open consultation hour for people without one. The word for that hour is in the list below and is worth recognising on a door. Building the ailment The pattern is: body part + the plural word for pains , written as one word, sometimes with a linking -en in between, as in Ohrenschmerzen . The pains are plural even when there is one ache, and the whole thing takes the verb for to have : Part Ailment English der Kopf Kopfschmerzen headache der Bauch Bauchschmerzen stomach ache der Hals Halsschmerzen sore throat der Zahn Zahnschmerzen toothache der Rücken Rückenschmerzen back pain das Ohr Ohrenschmerzen earache The second construction uses the verb for to do with the body part as the subject: literally the head does me pain , with the person in the dative. Both are common; the first is easier and always correct, so use it while you are learning and recognise the second. Then there is the sentence for feeling sick, which springs the same trap. It has no subject at all — literally to me is bad — and the pronoun is dative. It appears in the first exchange below; learn it whole, because taking it apart is a job for the grammar volume. Getting seen, and paying Three practical things decide how this goes. The first is the appointment: telephone, say what is wrong in one sentence, and ask for the earliest slot. The word for an appointment is the one from 6.7, and the sentence that gets you seen today is the one saying it is urgent — a word built on the noun for a case of need. The second is insurance. Everybody in Germany is insured, either through the statutory system or privately, and the first thing a practice asks for is the card. A visitor from the European Union shows the European card; a visitor from outside it pays and claims afterwards, and should ask for the bill as a private patient. The words for all of this are long compounds, and you do not have to produce them — you have to recognise the one for the card and hand it over. The third is the hospital, which you want only for an emergency. The word is a compound of the ones for sick and house, and the emergency department is usually die Notaufnahme , built on the word for emergency. The number to call anywhere in the European Union, Germany and Austria included, is 112, and it works in Switzerland too; and the operator will find an English speaker if you say that you speak English. Exchange one — at the doctor's Brauchen Sie einen Arzt? [1] Do you need a doctor? Ich bin krank. [2] I am ill. Haben Sie Fieber? [3] Do you have a temperature? Haben Sie Husten? [4] Do you have a cough? Haben Sie Halsschmerzen? [5] Do you have a sore throat? Mir ist schlecht. [6] I feel sick. Nehmen Sie Medikamente? [7] Are you on medication? Those four questions — do you have a temperature, a cough, a sore throat, are you taking anything — are the opening of nearly every consultation, and they are all yes-or-no, which means you can survive the first minute with two words. The last is the one to answer carefully: bring the packets of anything you take, because the names differ between countries and the pharmacist will read the box. Exchange two — at the pharmacy Hast du Kopfschmerzen? [8] Have you got a headache? Nimm deine Tabletten! [9] Take your pills. Hast du Hustenbonbons? [10] Do you have cough drops? Medikamente sind teuer. [11] Medicine is expensive. Nimmst du Medikamente? [12] Are you taking medication? The corpus lines in this exchange use du , as between people who know each other. At a real counter both sides say Sie : Haben Sie Kopfschmerzen? , Haben Sie Hustenbonbons? , Nehmen Sie Medikamente? A German pharmacy is not a shop with a counter at the back. It sells mainly medicines, it is staffed by pharmacists who are consulted rather than merely served by, and a great many things that are on open shelves in Britain or America are behind the counter here and must be asked for — including painkillers. Shampoo and toothpaste are in a different kind of shop altogether, as 6.4 mentioned. Prescription medicines need a prescription, das Rezept , which is a word worth recognising. Since January 2024 a prescription for someone in the statutory system has been electronic: the pharmacy reads it from the health card, from an app or from a printed code. Private patients may still be handed a paper form. Outside opening hours, every district has one pharmacy on duty overnight, listed on the door of every other one and online under a