Easy ways to ask questions in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 21, 2012
In order to be able to ask questions in German it is not necessary that you know a particular sentence structure for questions. There are several easy ways to start off your question formation. I. Intonation One way of asking questions in German easily is intonation. Just like in English, and probably in many…
Der Maibaum (maypole) Posted by jan on May 19, 2012
Today I want to introduce a German tradition to you, that takes place in May. I´m talking about the so called Maibaum (maypole). A Maibaum is a decorated tree or at least stock of tree that is usually aufgerichtet (erected) on May the 1st. In some regions it is already put up on the eve…
German poetry: Spuren im Sand – Footprints in the Sand Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 18, 2012
I have just come across a very nice poem and it made me almost cry because I find it is such a soothing piece of work. Every one of us will sooner or later find him- or herself in a difficult situation where we feel alone, and maybe this poem will let you know that…
Denglish: The English loan word “adden” in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 16, 2012
Some days ago, I posted a note on our Facebook-Page, saying that the German language has a new English loan word for the verb “hinzufügen” = to add, which is “adden”. The opinions about English loans in German were divided. Some were happy about this progress in the German language because now it is easier…
School Life in Germany Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 14, 2012
In one of my last posts I already wrote about school life in the former GDR but how does it look like nowadays? It has been quite a while that I attended school and I am sure that many things have changed since then but others might still remain the same. For example, some years…
German False Friends Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 11, 2012
Being a native speaker of English learning German you might sooner or later come across German words you seem to be familiar with. Sometimes these words contain the meanings you might give them, but sometime these words can be totally misleading. Those misleading words are called False Friends! False friends in language are words spelled…
Key: German weak verbs Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 9, 2012
My last post was about German weak verbs. In addition to the explanation how to conjugate weak verbs in German, I gave you an exercise where you had to fill in the blanks with the correct conjugated forms of the verbs used in the example sentences. Following you find the key to the exercise, the…