Tag Archives: german and english
German-English Cognates Posted by Constanze on Oct 25, 2017
Guten Tag! In a recent post, Six Reasons To Learn German, I mentioned that German and English are from the same language family – the Indo-European family – which means both languages have taken words from Latin, Greek and French. Because of this, there are numerous cognates (words sharing a common source) that look and sound…
5000 New German Words Added To Dictionary Posted by Constanze on Aug 9, 2017
You may have seen articles floating around the past couple of days about how 5,000 new German words have been added to Duden. But what is Duden? And what are the words? Duden is a dictionary of the German language. It was first published by Konrad Duden (hence the name) in 1880, and has just released its…
9 German Food & Drink Idioms Posted by Constanze on Apr 19, 2017
Guten Tag! Ich hoffe, es geht euch alle gut. Recently I came across the German idiom klar wie Kloßbrühe, which is the German version of the English ‘clear as crystal’. In German, this idiom literally translates to ‘clear as dumpling broth’. In other words, it has nothing to do with crystal. It had me thinking…
German Culture In The USA Posted by Constanze on Feb 22, 2017
Guten Tag! When you think about countries relating to the German language and culture, the first (perhaps only) countries that come to mind are Germany and Austria. But there are, in fact, many countries around the world that have German as a second or minority language, with towns & cities that have German roots. Today…
Untranslatable German Words: Der Pantoffelheld Posted by Constanze on Nov 23, 2016
Guten Tag! Today it’s time for another untranslatable word, in which I share some of the quirkiest, coolest words the German language has to offer – and try (usually fail) to find an identical English version! This time it’s a funny one: Today’s word is der Pantoffelheld. What does der Pantoffelheld mean? Pantoffelheld is used…
Truly Grimm: German Fairytales Posted by Constanze on Mar 11, 2016
Guten Tag! Most people will have heard of die Brüder Grimm (the Brothers Grimm) and their Märchen (fairy tales). Perhaps you’ll have read a few of them, or seen the Disney adaptations of these gruesome stories. But who exactly were these famous German brothers, and what is it like reading their fairy tales in German?…
German Vocabulary around the House Part 2 Posted by Larissa on Feb 22, 2016
Servus! I’m carrying on from my last post and listing Gegenstände (objects) around the house. In this post I’ll be writing about das Schlafzimmer, das Gästezimmer, das Esszimmer and die Küche. If you missed the start of this topic you can find the post here. Gegenstände die im Schlafzimmer sind: Objects that are in the…