Tag Archives: words
What’s The Difference? Man and Mann In German Posted by Constanze on Jun 24, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re looking at two German words that often confuse learners – man and Mann. By the end of this post you’ll be able to recognise the difference between these two words, and be able to use them in the correct way. Let’s get started! Mann vs man The confusion about these two…
The German Prefix ‘Un’ Posted by Constanze on Apr 22, 2020
Guten Tag! Today we’re going to talk about German nouns that start with ‘Un’. Like in English, there are many adjectives in German that begin with ‘un’ to signify lack or negation. Some examples include the words unbequem (uncomfortable) and unverständlich (unintelligible). In both English and German, removing the prefix ‘un’ from these examples would…
The German Word ‘Glück’: Happiness Or Luck? Posted by Constanze on Mar 25, 2020
Guten Tag! Recently I’ve been talking about das Glück (luck) on the blog, and I wanted to address something that could be confusing about this word. If you studied German in school, one of the first adjectives you probably learnt was the word for happy – glücklich. Ich bin glücklich – I am happy Ich…
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…
Loaded German Words: Kraut Posted by Constanze on Oct 25, 2019
Guten Tag! Recently there was an uproar here in the UK when the official party for the pro-Brexit campaign put out a poster showing a photo of Angela Merkel, accompanied by the words ‘We did not win two world wars to be pushed around by a Kraut’. This was in reference to a phone call…
Similar German Words: Stimme, Stimmung, stimmen Posted by Constanze on Sep 11, 2019
Guten Tag! Today we’re going to look at three words that appear extremely similar, but which have different meanings. It can be confusing to a language learner to see a word that you think you recognise, only to find out it means something else entirely. So let’s start with three words: Stimme, Stimmung, and stimmen…
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…