Tag Archives: Language
Untranslatable German Words: Der Augenschmaus Posted by Constanze on Aug 12, 2019
Guten Tag! Today I’m bringing you another quirky German word that has no single-word equivalent in the English language. We call these words ‘untranslatable’ (unübersetzbar), even if there are English phrases that convey the same meaning. These ‘untranslatable’ words are fantastic at displaying the efficiency of German compound nouns. Today’s word is der Augenschmaus. What…
French Loan Words In German Posted by Constanze on Jul 31, 2019
Guten Tag! We have talked before about loanwords in the German language. There is quite a big crossover of both English words used in German, and German words used in English. However, did you know that there are many French words used in the German language, too? And many of these are everyday words we…
The German Dish Labskaus Posted by Constanze on Jul 29, 2019
Guten Tag! I’m coming at you today with a word you may not have realised is German in origin. We’ve talked several times on the blog about English words that are actually German, including angst, wanderlust and rucksack, to name but a few. If you’re interested, there are posts on these here, here and here…
3 Words About Former West Germany Posted by Constanze on Jul 24, 2019
Guten Tag! I recently read a book about the history of Germany. It contained many words I hadn’t heard of before, that gave insights into specific aspects of German history. The section on the post-war/Cold War period (1945-1991), in particular, used several German words when discussing the topic of East and West Germany. We all…
3 Words About Former East Germany Posted by Constanze on Jul 22, 2019
Guten Tag! I recently read a book about the history of Germany. It contained many words I hadn’t heard of before, that described specific aspects of eras in German history. The section on the post-war/Cold War period (1945-1991), in particular, mentioned several German words when discussing the topic of East and West Germany. We all…
The German Word ‘Zeug’ Posted by Constanze on Jun 26, 2019
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at a very small, but very versatile German word: das Zeug. Simply put, Zeug (das) means thing, or stuff. It is quite common to hear people say things like ‘Was ist das für ein Zeug?’ (‘What kind of thing/stuff is this?’). Zeug can refer to one thing, or several things…
5 More German Placeholders Posted by Constanze on Jun 24, 2019
Guten Tag! We briefly touched on German placeholders in this post, about the words Krimskrams (stuff, junk) and Dingsbums (thingy, thingymajig). Then we looked at German placeholders for names, such as John Doe. A placeholder (der Platzhalter) is a generic word you use in place of a real word. This might be because you can’t…