Tag Archives: Curious Words
10 Words That Are More Descriptive In German Posted by Constanze on Jan 16, 2019
Guten Tag! How’s your learning going? Hopefully, it’s going well! In today’s post, we’re going to look at some words that are just better in German. One of the most common stereotypes people hold about the German language is that it is angry and harsh-sounding. And one of the most common stereotypes people hold about…
German Word Of The Year 2018 Posted by Constanze on Jan 2, 2019
Guten Tag, und frohes neues Jahr! Hello, and Happy New Year! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful start to 2019. In this post we will clear up some unfinished business from 2018, and that is discovering what the German Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year) of 2018 is! Each year, the Gesellschaft für…
German Companions of Saint Nicholas Posted by Constanze on Dec 5, 2018
Guten Tag! As you may know, tomorrow (December 6th) is Nikolaustag (Saint Nicholas Day) in Germany. This is a German Christmas celebration separate to that of December 24/25. If you are not yet familiar with Nikolaustag, I recommend reading this post and this post first, to get a good introduction to it. If you are…
The Curiosity of the German Word “Spannend” Posted by Sten on Nov 2, 2018
noAn interesting lecture that you would like to attend – let’s hope it is spannend! A movie that you watched on Halloween – spannend! This German word has two different meanings: exciting, thrilling; and interesting. However, what baffles me is how it is used – for basically anything and everything! Let’s look at this word today…
Untranslatable German Words: Der Saftladen Posted by Sten on Jul 24, 2018
In our series on untranslatable words, we look at words in German that have no direct English equivalent. Today, we look at the curious, but enjoyable Saftladen. What does Saftladen mean? According to the Duden, a Saftladen is a: “schlecht geführter Betrieb; schlecht geführter, schlecht sortierter Laden” (badly managed establishment; badly managed, badly assorted establishment) So basically, a Saftladen Nichtskönner is a place…
German Words You Definitely Don’t Want To Mix Up! Posted by Constanze on Jul 18, 2018
Guten Tag! Making mistakes is a big part of language learning, and often mistakes involve muddling words up – either because they sound similar, because they are the same (but have different meanings), or because they are ‘false friends’ – words that seem like they should mean one thing, but they actually mean another. This…
German Words You Don’t Want To Mix Up Posted by Constanze on Jul 11, 2018
Guten Tag! Making mistakes is a big part of language learning, and often mistakes involve muddling words up – either because they sound similar, because they are the same (but have different meanings), or because they are ‘false friends’ – words that seem like they should mean one thing, but they actually mean another. This…