Tag Archives: German language
Curious German Words: Der Föhn Posted by Constanze on Feb 19, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at a very interesting German word. This word is related to the weather, and is also the subject of Alpine folklore. It has made its way into the English language, and is also the German word for ‘hairdryer’. Today we’re looking at the word Föhn. Föhn, Fön, Foehn/foehn? Throughout this…
German Idioms Using Clothes (Part 2) Posted by Constanze on Feb 12, 2020
Guten Tag! Carrying on from last week’s post about German idioms using clothes, here are five more phrases you can add to your collection. I hope you enjoy learning them! German Idioms Using Clothes (Part 2) Jemanden etwas in die Schuhe schieben Literally ‘to push something into someone’s shoes’, this idiom means to place the…
German Idioms Using Clothes (Part 1) Posted by Constanze on Feb 5, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at some more German idioms. This time, the subject is clothing. German has many idioms that use items of clothing to express a certain meaning. Here you can learn five of them. Let’s go! German Idioms Using Clothes (Part 1) Wo drückt der Schuh? Literally ‘Where does the shoe press…
5 German Idioms Using Tools Posted by Constanze on Jan 29, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at German idioms – but not just any German idioms. These are all ones that are related to tools in some way. The word for tool in German is das Werkzeug (plural: die Werkzeuge) and the German language is quite fond of idioms that involve different kinds of Werkzeuge. Here…
Austrian and Swiss-German Words of the Year 2019 Posted by Constanze on Jan 27, 2020
Guten Tag! We have previously looked at Germany’s Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year) and its Unwort des Jahres (Non-word of the Year) 2019 in this post, this one (runners up) and this one. But what about other, German-speaking countries? Do they also have ‘words of the year’ in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland? The…
German Word of the Year 2019 Runners Up Posted by Constanze on Jan 1, 2020
Guten Tag! Each year, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS) – The German Language Association – picks a word as their Wort des Jahres – ‘Word of the Year’. This is often a word related to a prominent topic in the country during the year, and is usually interesting from a linguistic perspective, too. The…
Gender-Neutral German: Das Gendersternchen Posted by Constanze on Dec 18, 2019
Guten Tag! You may have seen words like this in German: Einwohner*innen, Mieter*innen, Lehrer*innen. What’s the little star in the middle all about? This is called the Gendersternchen, and it’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s post. As language learners soon find out, German is a very gendered language. That means, not only…