Tag Archives: Language
Germany’s Unwort des Jahres – ‘Non-Word’ of the Year 2020 Posted by Constanze on Jan 13, 2021
Linguists from the Technische Universität Darmstadt have decided on Germany’s Unwort des Jahres (the ‘non-word of the year’) 2020. This year, and for the first year since the Unwort des Jahres started in 1991, there are two of them: Corona-Diktatur and Rückführungspatenschaften. Germany’s Unwort des Jahres – ‘Non-word’ of the year. At the end of…
Germany’s Youth Word 2020 Posted by Constanze on Jan 6, 2021
Guten Tag! Every year, the Langenscheidt dictionary selects a word it calls the Jugendwort des Jahres – Germany’s Youth Word of the Year. This is separate from the Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year), also picked by Langenscheidt. For the Jugendwort des Jahres, people have the opportunity to vote from a selection of shortlisted…
German Word of the Year 2020 Posted by Constanze on Dec 9, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we will look at the Wort des Jahres in Germany. 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…
Sprechen, Reden, Sagen – What’s The Difference? Posted by Constanze on Nov 18, 2020
Guten Tag! Recently I wrote a post recapping the verb sprechen – to speak, talk, or say. Like in English, there are several words in German with similar meanings to the word sprechen. I thought it might be useful as a follow-up post to go through some of these words and give some example sentences…
The German Word Fisimatenten Posted by Constanze on Nov 11, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at a peculiar German word: Fisimatenten. If you’re thinking, Well, that doesn’t look like a German word, you’d be right! There are a few different theories as to this word’s origins. But before we get into that, what on earth does Fisimatenten actually mean? Die Fisimatenten Fisimatenten is difficult to…
The German Verb ‘Sprechen’ (To Speak) Posted by Constanze on Nov 10, 2020
Guten Tag! In this ‘back to basics’ post, we’re going to look at the conjugation of the German verb sprechen – to speak. A very appropriate verb for your language learning! 🙂 Sprechen is an irregular German verb, meaning that both its endings and its stem will sometimes change. Here are a few conjugations of…
The German Word ‘Gell’ Posted by Constanze on Oct 21, 2020
Guten Tag! In today’s post, I’m bringing you two German words that are the same, but have different meanings. There are several words like this in German, the difference sometimes being their gender (der Taube – deaf person, and die Taube – pigeon, for example), or that the word ending changes when plural (die Mutter…