Tense: Present – Das Präsens Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jun 8, 2011
Learning tenses of a language can be a thorn in one’s side, but learning these rules is crucial to an effective study, since tenses display essential word orders, which enable you to handle a language more freely. There is only one present tense form in German and this one corresponds to all three forms that…
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungs-auftragübertragungsgesetz – Compounding nouns in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 30, 2011
One of the most striking characteristics of the German language is that you can virtually combine an unlimited number of nouns to form a new noun. Such long words can confuse learners of German to a great extend. First, German orthography uses closed compounds, whereas in English most compounded nouns are separated by spaces or…
Audiovisual comprehension – Toms Fahrrad Posted by jan on May 29, 2011
Today I got a new audiovisual comprehension for you. I hope you´ll understand it. To help you a little bit, here´s the spoken text: Das ist Tom. Er hat ein neues Fahrrad bekommen. Die Reifen sind viel größer als die von seinem letzten Fahrrad. Und der Sattel ist viel höher. Das ist die Vorderbremse. Diese…
Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s crime novel and movie “Das Versprechen” – “The Pledge” Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 24, 2011
Am Wochenende (on the weekend), I had the chance to watch one of my favorite Filme (movies) “The pledge” with Jack Nicholson on TV, a movie based on the Kriminalroman (crime novel) ‘Das Versprechen’ – ‘The pledge’ by Swiss Dramatiker (playwright) and Romanautor (novelist) Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Here is a rough plot outline for all who…
The usage of “Du” and “Sie” in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 20, 2011
Learners of Germany would come soon across the fact that there are two different forms for addressing people, “du” and “sie”, which both mean “you” in English. “Du” is informal speech and “sie” is formal speech. What I have witnessed is that the formal option is fading more and more to the background. I belong…
German music: Herbert Grönemeyer Posted by jan on May 14, 2011
Hi everybody! First of all: Sorry for not blogging for a while! I was involved in another project where I had to shoot several videos for Transparent. Today I want to introduce a very famous singer and Liedermacher (songwriter) to you. His name is Herbert Grönemeyer. Maybe he is the most famous Musiker (musician) in…
Studentenleben in Deutschland – Student life in Germany Posted by Sandra Rösner on May 10, 2011
How does student life look like in Germany? How do students reside? What do students do in their leisure time? How can one imagine a daily routine when studying in Germany? In this post I would like to give you an insight into this topic. When German high school students have taken their Abitur (high-school…