A while ago I wrote a blog post about using crib sheets When is cheating not cheating? – not the ones you would use in an exam, but sheets with useful information for German learners. I thought about it recently when some students of mine were doing some exercises about prepositions and also about adjective … Read more
If you check your dictionary for the German noun Schrecken, you’ll see that ‘der Schrecken’ means dread, horror, scare, fright etc… And if you have scared somebody in German (I mean, if you want to talk about it in German, the action would be the same as anywhere else ☺) you can use the phrase … Read more
The two German verbs HABEN and SEIN are – just like ‘to have’ and ‘to be’ in English – irregular verbs. But they are also very important in all the other tenses, not just the present tense. A while ago I reminded you how to comjugate them in the present, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect tenses as … Read more
Last week I told you when to write das or dass, and when you might still see daß: Das, dass or daß? That’s the question! Today’s post is a follow-up about when German words need the ‘ss’ or ‘ß’. Although ‘daß’ is now spelled ‘dass’, doesn’t mean that the ‘ß’ is obsolete. But the rules … Read more
You’ve been learning German for a while now and then you see sentences with parts that look like this: Shall we make some sense of this? Okay, let look at the easiest one: daß The reason why I call it easy is that it’s obsolete. Since the German spelling reform in 1996, the word ‘daß’ … Read more
The two German verbs HABEN and SEIN are – just like ‘to have’ and ‘to be’ in English – irregular verbs. But they are also very important in all the other tenses, not just the present tense. So, as a reminder, here they are conjugated in the present, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect tenses as well as … Read more
Modal verbs! How much do you know about them? You probably remember a few things things: They are conjugated differently to ‘normal’ verbs. There aren’t many (können, müssen, sollen, wollen, dürfen) They are ‘helping verbs’ as they always come with a second verb. You’ll find that second verb in its infinitive at the end of … Read more
Denglisch! You all know about the Germans’ love to Germanise English word! Over the last few months I have collected sentences with Denglisch words in German health podcasts and magazines, but instead of just posting them here for you, I have turned them into a grammar exercise. (I hope, you’re shouting YAY!) So, get pen … Read more
When you learn vocabulary it helps if there is a straight translation. For example, when it comes to learning German it’s easy to learn the word for child, because it’s ‘Kind’ – one straight translation for one word. But when it comes to prepositions, it’s a different matter. There are lots of translations and it’s sometimes … Read more
Did you know that the German word for part is Teil? There are other words, but in this post we’re looking at Teil. And did you know that Teil can be masculine or neuter? So far so good, lets carry on, did you know that der Teil and also das Teil mean the part? Okay, … Read more
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