I'm confused by this sentence as it doesn't make sense to me.

"Was für Sachen kochen Sie, wenn sie Freunde haben"

I know sie, lower case means it, they, her but in this case I thought it would be upper case meaning you. I obviously need a grammar book but could someone shed some light on this?

The capitalized "Sie" is the polite version of the pronoun "you".
Which things do you cook if you have friends (with you).

On my blog you find some links to free grammar ressources:
http://learninggerman.posterous.com/pages/gramm...

"wenn sie Freunde haben?" why is the other "sie" here not capitalized? Doesn't it mean "you"?

You are right, it should be "Sie" (polite form) in the second part of the sentence too. I have changed it :)

Vielen Dank. Very surprised more people haven't noticed that, very strange.

I know in German the apostrophes are important and in a lesson called "Der Breifträger kommt" there was a sentence that went like this "ja, der Brief, auf den ich gewartet habe ist auch dabei". I think this means "yes, the letter to which I have waited is there". Not to be nit picky but shouldn't there be a comma after habe, I listened a few times and there is a pause. I know a little bit about German grammar that's why without a comma it seems wrong.

Yes, it's strange that nobody haven't noticed that.

And you are right about the missing comma in the sentence from the lesson about the "Briefträger". I've corrected it. In general Irene is very attentive when she creates lessons but it can happen to all of us that we miss something or that the lesson included regional adpects of the German language. For example I've noticed that Irene used "Haustüre" instead of "Haustür". There is an article about this here: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/zwiebelfisch/0,151... (but it is probably to hard for you to understand it). It Standard German it is "Tür" not "Türe". I've added a note to the lesson to clarify this for all further learners.

Please continue to ask if you find strange things :-) All the German speaking members love to help.

Thanks for your comment Veral. Its kind of funny how we take things for granted in our own language. I'm sure I make all sorts of grammar mistakes that might confuse a learner as I am very rusty with writing, I might miss use comma's etc. When learning German, especially a beginner with the strangeness of the language we notice a lot of little things natives might take for granted. Even when trying to translate the words and use google translate I still can't figure out what some sentences mean, but like steve said to try to understand 70-80% of it and in time I'll probably get it. I have a hard time remembering genders, if anyone has any tips for this, I would l love to hear it. A lot of words are the same in English but for some reason the genders don't stick very well, maybe its just a matter of exposer.