Tag Archives: words
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…
German Things And Stuff Posted by Constanze on Jun 12, 2019
Guten Tag! Do you ever have moments where you can’t remember the word for something? How about when there’s a pile of what can only be described as ‘stuff’? Just like in English, German has words that you can use in these situations. Here are two of them: Krimskrams and Dingsbums. Krimskrams The first word…
German Word Of The Year 2018 Runners-Up (Part 2) Posted by Constanze on Apr 24, 2019
Guten Tag! As you may know from previous posts, each year the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS) – The German Language Association – picks a word as their Wort des Jahres – Word of the Year. They also publish the top 10 most voted for out of all of the words submitted. You can read…
Don’t Let It Confuse You! – Dose Posted by Sten on Feb 23, 2019
Today, we start a new series on the blog, called Don’t Let It Confuse You! In this series, we will look at words or phrases that seem to mean the exact same thing in English, simply because they are spelled the same or sound the same. These are also known as “false cognates”, in German known as Fauxami (a “false…
Two of the Longest Words in German Posted by Larissa on Jan 22, 2019
As an English speaker we are used to short, simple words, which means it can be quite intimidating when reading German words that are three times as long as what they are in English! Here’s a post with two of the longest German words, what they mean, and some tips on helping you decipher those…
10 Words That Are More Descriptive In German Posted by Constanze on Jan 16, 2019
Guten Tag! How’s your learning going? Hopefully, it’s going well! In today’s post, we’re going to look at some words that are just better in German. One of the most common stereotypes people hold about the German language is that it is angry and harsh-sounding. And one of the most common stereotypes people hold about…