Tag Archives: Language
Untranslatable German Words: Die Knoblauchfahne Posted by Constanze on Jun 30, 2015
Today I’m going to talk about bad breath. As you do. Let me introduce you to your new, untranslatable German word: Die Knoblauchfahne. What does Knoblauchfahne mean? Die Knoblauchfahne means, quite simply, garlic breath! I know this seems like an easy word to translate and in some ways it is, but like all quirky…
What To Say In German When Words Fail You Posted by Constanze on Jun 13, 2015
A little while ago I wrote a post about words and phrases that’ll make your German sound more natural and ‘real’ (you can read that post here). One thing that many language learners get frustrated with is not sounding natural enough, and often that is because of the rather scripted nature of the things…
The German Nightmare Posted by Constanze 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…
Kaffeepause At A German Cafe Posted by Constanze on May 27, 2015
Anyone who visits Germany will inevitably end up in a coffee shop at some point during their travels, so I thought I’d put together a list of phrases you can use to navigate your way through a German café. For convenience’s sake the café in this scenario is one where you order and pay at…
Natural German Conversation Posted by Constanze on May 22, 2015
Every conversation has natural interjections, reactions and filler words. This is what makes language feel natural. Here is a list of German words and phrases that you can slot into conversations to make your German flow more naturally. Please note that some of these aren’t meant to be full, grammatically correct sentences, but fragments. Just…
Untranslatable German: Schnapsidee & Alkoholleiche Posted by Constanze on May 17, 2015
Guten Tag! I’ve gone a little off track with the untranslatable German words lately, so here are two for good measure! Even though I’ve already written about roughly 5,567 of them, rest assured there are always more quirky, fascinating German words to be discovered. 🙂 These two words revolve around the theme of Der Alkohol…
German Writing Exercise: Keep A Diary Posted by Constanze on May 11, 2015
Guten Tag, liebe Freunde! One of the things I’m really interested in at the moment is finding ways to integrate language learning into our daily lives, so that it feels more natural and we see progress with it more quickly. Sometimes I get asked “How can I make faster progress with my German?” and recently…