Archive for December, 2010
Silvester – New Year’s Eve Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 31, 2010
The countdown is running. There are only a few hours left till the old year is over. With this last post for this year I would like to give you an insight into how Germans Silvester feiern(see the New Year in) and what you can say to wish someone a Happy New Year. There are…
German nouns: gender hints Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 20, 2010
In German, all nouns have a particular grammatical gender. They can either be masculine (männlich), feminine (weiblich), or neuter (sächlich). The gender of a noun is indicated by its preceding article: „der“ (for masculine nouns), “die” (for feminine nouns), and “das” (for neuter nouns). Please note that not the thing or person is supposed to…
The history of the Adventskranz (Advent wreath) Posted by jan on Dec 15, 2010
To celebrate the pre-Christimas period and to get in touch with its atmosphere, the Advent wreath became an inherent part of German culture.
Writing the letters “ä”, “ö”, and “ü” without a German keyboard Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 13, 2010
There are three letters in German that do not exist in English. These are the Umlaute (umlauts) “ä”, “ö”, and “ü”. Although these letters do not exist in the alphabet, they play an important role in writing. Unfortunately, Umlaute cannot be found on all keyboards but there is no need to worry about that, seeing…
Separable Verbs II: Prepositions as prefixes Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 9, 2010
Separable verbs can be separated because they consist of two independent words, that is, they consist of the core verb and a particular prefix. The prefix is always either: a preposition, an adverb or an adjective. In the list below, you can find one example verb for every prepositional prefix. 1. ab- : 2. an-…
Family matters Posted by jan on Dec 6, 2010
Hi everybody. Today I want to show you some words that are about family. For this, just read the following (fictional) text. In the end I got some questions that you can answer through the comment field if you want!
Separable Verbs I: Draw the line between prefixes and core verbs Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 1, 2010
With this post I would like to start a series on German separable verbs. In this introductory post I explain how you can distinguish separable verbs from inseparable verbs. The main difference between separable and inseparable verbs is that separable verbs consist of two words: a core verb and a semi-prefix, whereas inseparable verbs consist…