German Language Blog
Menu
Search

Tag Archives: german etymology

The German Nightmare Posted by on Jun 6, 2015

Guten Tag! Today I’m going to talk a little about der Schlaf (sleep) or, more specifically, nightmares. The reason I wanted to write this post is because someone sent me music by the German band Nachtmahr (‘Nightmare’) the other day. I have always known the German word for nightmare to be der Alptraum, so I…

Continue Reading

Untranslatable German Words: Der Geisterfahrer Posted by on Sep 17, 2014

Guten Tag! Here’s another little German language lesson in the form of an untranslatable German word – and today there are a few other words thrown in for good measure. Today’s word is Der Geisterfahrer. Before I tell you what this word means, here are some similar-looking words, along with their meanings. You will see…

Continue Reading

The German wimp: A broad definition Posted by on Jul 13, 2014

Guten Tag, and wilkommen to another post on untranslatable German words. This week I want to talk about a word that I didn’t know until last week, when a customer at work told me about “this German word that means you park in the shade”. He thought it was hilarious, but he couldn’t remember exactly…

Continue Reading

The German culture of cleanliness: Putzfimmel and Kehrwoche Posted by on Jul 6, 2014

Everyone I know who’s been to Germany has commented on what a clean country it is. Germany is stereotyped as being clean, anyway – although how much of this is a stereotype, and how much of it is the simple truth? There are two words in the German language that suggest Germany has a culture…

Continue Reading

Untranslatable German Words: Teil 2 Posted by on Jun 20, 2014

Guten Tag, and wilkommen to week 2 of my series of posts on ‘untranslatable’ German words! In this series of posts I talk about one or more German words that there is no direct translation for in English. In my first post on this topic, I suggested that the reason for this was to do…

Continue Reading

Newer posts