Archive for 'Language'
Untranslatable German: Schnapsidee & Alkoholleiche Posted by Constanze on May 17, 2015
Guten Tag! I’ve gone a little off track with the untranslatable German words lately, so here are two for good measure! Even though I’ve already written about roughly 5,567 of them, rest assured there are always more quirky, fascinating German words to be discovered. 🙂 These two words revolve around the theme of Der Alkohol…
German Writing Exercise: Keep A Diary Posted by Constanze on May 11, 2015
Guten Tag, liebe Freunde! One of the things I’m really interested in at the moment is finding ways to integrate language learning into our daily lives, so that it feels more natural and we see progress with it more quickly. Sometimes I get asked “How can I make faster progress with my German?” and recently…
Happy Mother’s Day! Vocabulary for Mother’s Day Posted by Larissa on May 10, 2015
In Germany the second Sunday of May is Mutter Tag (Mother’s day). The only exception is when the second Sunday falls on a public holiday “Pfingstsonntag” in which Mother’s Day is then changed to the first Sunday of May. This year it’s on the 10th of May, which is today! Here are some ideas in…
Die Geschichte vom Tag Der Arbeit Posted by Larissa on May 5, 2015
Here in Germany we had a bank holiday/public holiday last Friday, on the 1st of May. This Feiertag (public holiday) happens in the whole of Germany and other surrounding countries such as Austria und Belgium. A lot of the public holidays here in Bavaria are usually religious, such as Heilige Drei Könige (literal translation: holy…
When English and German cross over Posted by Constanze on May 4, 2015
I caught a glimpse of this British newspaper headline the other day and read it the German way, rather than the English. This happens to me from time to time, and I’m always quite excited when it does. 😀 Rat lied. Both of these are English words that also exist in German. These kinds of…
German Phone Call Vocabulary Posted by Constanze on Apr 25, 2015
In German, speaking on the phone is called telefonieren. Some people (like me) find telephone calls a bit scary and intimidating. They’re even moreso if you’re making a phone call in a different language! So I’ve compiled this list of useful phrases and vocabulary to help make German phone calls less scary. Etiquette When answering…
German poetry goes Frankfurt vernacular Posted by Sandra Rösner on Apr 21, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, one of you ask me if I’m familiar with the poem “Fourteen Daughters” by Friedrich Stoltze – a German poet an writer who was famous for his poems written in Frankfurt vernacular. I have to admit that I had never heard of him before but after a quick search on Google I…