I have written about compound nouns before in posts like Lost German compound nouns found after long search, Handschuhe – Gloves or Are you a ‘Muffel’? but I wrote them to show you the variety of compound nouns. In this blog post I’m going to answer the question: How do you determine the gender of … Read more
Image credit: Frank Schwichtenberg “Otto Gerhard Waalkes (born 22 July 1948), also known as simply Otto, is a German comedian, actor, musician, writer and comic book artist. He became famous in the 1970s and 1980s in Germany with his shows, books and films.” (Quote Wikipedia) My friends and I loved him in the 70s. As … Read more
Do I need cookies to learn German?Of course you do, the more chocolate they have, the better your German will be 😉 Sorry, this blog post is not about those cookies you can (and should) eat, these are the ones you read about when you’re about to access a website, webpage or blog post. You … Read more
“Do as I say, not as I do!” You have most likely heard this saying lots of times, but why is it the title of my blog post? Well, I have fallen foul of my own rules! Whenever students tell me that their German isn’t good enough or that they are struggling I tell them … Read more
Image attribution: Willy Pragher “Theo Lingen (10 June 1903 – 10 November 1978), born Franz Theodor Schmitz, was a German actor, film director and screenwriter. He appeared in more than 230 films between 1929 and 1978, and directed 21 films between 1936 and 1960.” (source Wikipedia) Fancy reading about him in German? Here is the … Read more
Welcome to another month of the German Action for Happiness Calendars. As before, you can if you wish also print out a PDF version. And if you want or need to, you can see it here in English, where you also find further foreign languages. Use the following sentences as a German reading and translation exercise and … Read more
Whenever students want to talk about the future, they often get wollen and werden mixed up. It’s understandable, because ‘ich will’ sounds like ‘I will’. But it’s a false friend, because ‘ich will’ means ‘I want’. When asked, for example, “Was wirst du morgen machen?” (What will you do tomorrow?) students told me “Ich will … Read more
“Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer who is famous for having invented the Diesel engine, which burns Diesel fuel; both are named after him.” (Source Wikipedia) As it would have been his birthday today, I searched the internet for some easy and not … Read more
A while ago I was asked when (or how) to use willkommen with bei, in, zu, auf or an. I answered and then did a little research to see if there was more. The result is this blog post. Willkommen & dative prepositions: Willkommen as an adjective. If it’s used an an adjective and comes … Read more
This page contains affiliate links to Amazon. It means I’ll get a few pence if you buy anything – at no extra cost to you. The verb brechen means to break. It gets conjugated as follows (watch out, it’s an irregular verb, so the 2nd and 3rd form singular is different): The perfect tense goes with ‘haben’ … Read more
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