Tag Archives: German language
Old German Handwriting Posted by Constanze on Oct 10, 2018
When I was young there was an old German poster in my family kitchen that used to drive me insane, because although I knew it was in German, I couldn’t read what was written on it. It looked to me like another language! “It’s because that is old German handwriting”, my mum told me. “Some…
The German Kur Posted by Constanze on Sep 19, 2018
When you need to take a period of sick leave from work, you generally stay at home during that time, right? In Germany, when you`re ill, as part of the Krankenkasse (German health insurance), you can request to be sent on a Kur – a type of spa break. Die Kur – literally ‘the cure’…
What’s Your Star Sign In German? Posted by Constanze on Sep 14, 2018
Guten Tag! Whether die Astrologie (astrology) interests them or not, most people are aware of what their Sternzeichen (star sign) is. In today’s post, we’ll be looking at the star signs in German! In German, the term das Sternzeichen literally translates to ‘star sign’, but another word for it is das Tierkreiszeichen, which translates to…
German Exclamations And Interjections Posted by Constanze on Sep 5, 2018
There is a phrase that kept coming up in my work some time ago. The phrase was ‘Klein, aber oho!’. It took me a while to figure out how to translate this phrase. It starts ‘Small, but…’ and then the mysterious word ‘oho’. On first glance, this looks like an abbreviation for something. But it…
Is The German Language Sexist? Posted by Constanze on Aug 29, 2018
German has three genders for its nouns: der (masculine), die (feminine) and das (neuter). A common point of confusion amongst German language learners is why each noun has its assigned gender – especially when there is no pattern to it and/or its gender doesn’t appear to make sense. For example, a table in German is…
Tricky German Pronunciation Part 2 (With Audio) Posted by Constanze on Aug 15, 2018
Guten Tag! This is part 2 of a requested post (please find part 1 here). Following my posts ‘German Words You Don’t Want To Mix Up’ parts 1 and 2, a lot of people were interested in a post with audio clips of words and sounds that look similar, but are very different. Sometimes in…
Tricky German Pronunciation Part 1 (With Audio) Posted by Constanze on Aug 8, 2018
Guten Tag! This is part 1 of a requested post. Following my posts ‘German Words You Don’t Want To Mix Up’ parts 1 and 2, a lot of people were interested in a post with audio clips of words and sounds that look similar, but are very different. Sometimes in German, when we mispronounce a…