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German tenses in use: Präteritum Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 14, 2011
The Präteritum is equivalent to the English Simple Past tense, so to speak. But usually, the Präteritum is not used in everyday language in German. It is rather used as a literary language. Germans commonly opt for the Perfekt in their speech in order to refer to the past – which will be discussed in…
German tenses in use: Präsens Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 12, 2011
The German language has six tenses: Präsens, Präteritum, Perfekt, Plusquamperfekt, Futur I, and Futur II. Unlike English, there aren’t any special continuous forms in German. For starters, let’s have a closer look to the Präsens, which is basically equivalent to the English tenses Simple Present and Present Progressive. You can use the Präsens under four…
The Difference Between Werden, Wurden and Würden Posted by Larissa on Feb 22, 2022
These words are spelled similar, sound similar, and yet can change a sentence dramatically. Today we will talk about what the differences are between these three verbs. There are also other ways to use these verbs that I have not mentioned in this post, in order to keep it simple, clear, and to focus on…
Umfahren or Umfahren? One Word With Two Meanings Posted by Larissa on Aug 31, 2021
The German language never fails to interest me as I learn new words and phrases, even after living here for 9 years. When learning how to drive in Germany, I discovered a very interesting German word that has two meanings. There are of course some words in other languages that also have more than one…
How The Umlaut Changes German Words Posted by Constanze on Apr 14, 2021
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at the Umlaut – specifically, German words whose meanings change depending on whether an Umlaut is present in the word, or not! Hopefully this will help you to recognise and avoid some common errors when it comes to using the Umlaut. Firstly, what is the Umlaut? If you’re not familiar…
The German Verb ‘Sprechen’ (To Speak) Posted by Constanze on Nov 10, 2020
Guten Tag! In this ‘back to basics’ post, we’re going to look at the conjugation of the German verb sprechen – to speak. A very appropriate verb for your language learning! 🙂 Sprechen is an irregular German verb, meaning that both its endings and its stem will sometimes change. Here are a few conjugations of…
Find The Fehler! German Proofreading Posted by Constanze on Sep 2, 2020
Guten Tag! Today’s post is a little more interactive than recent ones. We are going to test your German proofreading skills. Are you ready? Let’s get started. In a recent post, I shared an article about illegal ‘Coronapartys’ in Germany. In this post, I will share sentences from that article, but deliberately include Fehler (mistakes)…