Word of the Day – “verschwinden”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time, we’ll take a quick look at the meaning of

verschwinden

 

And to give you a real life example… imagine you’re finally having the first date with your crush, you’re having really good conversations and it is going really well and then you suddenly let go a really noisy fart.
The urge you feel in that moment, the thing you want to do… that’s verschwinden.
“Erase my date’s short term memory?”
Uh… no… the other thing.
“Turn back time  and prevent myself from eating that onion-bean-salad?”
NO… I mean to disappear. That’s what I want to do.
“But Emanuel, that’s the least productive option. Because if you disappear, the date will be over and you’ll be all alone in your bed.”
Hmmmmmmm… good point. Maybe that’s why I was single for so long #singletear
But hey, let’s not waste time with dating tips and jump into our topic instead…

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Posted on May 20, 2019 by

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Adjective Endings Exercise – No Pain, No Gain

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Hello everyone,

and welcome. Please put away all your textbooks and phones because today is surprise test!
And the topic will be… 

Adjective Endings

“Oh no, please! We didn’t prepare.”
Quiet! No one cares!
You had more than enough time to read my mini series with my patented system.

And DON’T you think that you can just read those three articles now. Now, you have to take the test.
And just so you know… if you fail, you have to start German again from ZERO.
Sounds good?
“No, it doesn’t!”
Yeah, whatever…. whining won’t help you!
Jump in!

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Posted on May 9, 2019 by

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Word of the Day – “wischen”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And this time, we’ll take a look at a word that connects windshields, busting and our butts.
You might have guessed it… I am talking about

wischen

 

Wischen is the German word for to swipe, to wipe and it sure looks an awful lot like waschen. That would make sense, since they’re both about cleaning. But they’re not related.
Waschen comes from the same root as water. Wischen on the other hand is the German brother of to whisk, and the original idea was  moving swiftly. Which also makes sense, at least if you’re as swift a cleaner as I am. Like a fairy, I whisk through the bathroom, whoosh, the floor. Whoosh, the mirror. Whoooooooosh the toilet. And I am done.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… you’re thinking that I’m not doing a lazy job cleaning.
I’m actually pretty thorough, though. I oddly enjoy das Bad wischen.
But hey, we’re not here to talk about my cleaning preferences. We’re here to talk about wischen. And while the verb itself is useful, it’s the prefix versions that really make it a word of the day.
Because there are quite a few cool colloquial ones, and some of them are impossible to guess.

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Posted on May 1, 2019 by

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German Relative Clauses 3 – Exercise

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to the third part of our mini series on relative clauses in German. And today, it’s time to get active and practice what we’ve learned in the big, exhausting

Relative Clauses Work Out

If you haven’t read the articles, or you want to re-check them, you can find them here:

Relative Pronouns in German – The Basics
Relative Pronouns in German – Nitty Gritty

And just so you know… if you’re looking for a normal exercise where you just fill in a few gaps in short sentences, then you’ve come to the wrong place.
This quiz is HARD as fur. I mean rock.
Or actually like a rock with fur on it. It’s soft on the surface but under it is the cold hard reality of … German.

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Posted on April 22, 2019 by

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