Using “sein” – The practical guide

In this episode:

Practice the German verb "sein" (to be) - by speaking. All important forms and phrases in one exercise, perfect for beginners as well as advanced learners.

60 comments

Hello everyone,

and welcome to a new episode of our practical guide series on German verbs. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these, but now it’s time to bring out the AI again and use it to practice all the essential phrasings for one verb.
Because that’s the best way to learn, period!
And this time with one of the top three most important German verbs and the only one which is really irregular:

sein

Yup, the one and only :).
As usual, we’ll go over the most important phrasings and structures by  building simple and more complex sentences and actually speaking them.
I have Stew, the speech recognition AI fired up, so warm up your mouth and when you’re ready, let’s jump right in :)

Continue reading →

60 Comments

Posted on September 15, 2022 by

Word of the Day – “bereit”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And this time with a look at the meaning of

bereit

Which is the German word for ready.
And the two are not only translations, they’re actually brothers.
And they’re related to a verb you’d never expect… to ride, or reiten in German

Continue reading →

49 Comments

Posted on September 2, 2022 by

Word of the Day – “der Schritt”

In this episode:

A fun look at the meaning of "der Schritt" - the German word for "step" - and a few of its useful relatives.

Vocab:   

der Schritt, der Fortschritt, schrittweise, der Rückschritt, schreiten, einschreiten, überschreiten, die Ausschreitung,...

44 comments

Hello everyone,

and welcome back to Summer, Sun, Vocab Fun, which is a lot like the usual articles, but more chill and less quiz ;). And this time, with a look at the meaning of

der Schritt

A great word to practice the German “r” because without it, Schritt literally sounds like shit.
Which would be the PERFERT moment to insert a little segment about how to actually pronounce that.
Oh well.
I guess some other time.
Seriously though… I actually started writing it, but then I felt it was too long. Or maybe not too long, because this is a short one overall, but the article got “weird proportions”, if that makes sense. Like… there was no flow.
And so I decided to cut it.
Not to worry, though, I’ll probably make it into an article on its own.
But today, we’ll completely focus on collecting some sweet, sweet vocabulary around Schritt… Continue reading →

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Posted on August 22, 2022 by

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My New Favorite Feature – Testers Wanted

Hi everyone,

so as the title already says, I am looking for some people as beta testers, because yes… I have a new feature called:

My New Favorite Feature

Literally.
Because you can now pick favorites in the dictionary.

Most of you are probably familiar with my dictionary at this point. If you don’t know what I mean… that’s basically what you see when you use the search function of the site. There’s over 9.000 entries in there at this point and I am slowly building out the meaning, definitions, examples and family relations.

The goal is actually to have my own vocabulary trainer, and the first step toward that is now finished, because you can now mark your own favorites.
So you can create your own personalized vocabulary selection that you can quickly check and review any time.
And that’s not all, actually… .

Continue reading →

63 Comments

Posted on August 12, 2022 by

Prefix Verbs Explained – “einziehen”

In this episode:

"einziehen" has dozens of translations. But they all belong to two core concepts. Today, we'll find out all about it and also what's up with "reinziehen".

35 comments

Hello everyone,

and welcome to Summer, Sun, Vocab Fun.
And today, I have something really cool for you, because we actually have the first episode of season 17 of

German Prefix Verbs Explained

Yes, the series has actually been renewed for an entire new season.
100 more episodes of repetitive soap opera trash.
Will Mr. Ausmachen tell Ms. Anmachen what he did? Is Zunehmen pregnant? And what happened to the mysterious Mr. r-version?
All these are questions that we’ll not get an answer to today.
But what we will get answers for is how and when to use the verb

einziehen

Some of you may know my article about ziehen. In it, I actually go over all the important prefix versions including einziehen.
But there are quite many of them and I didn’t go too much into details for every prefix verb in that article. And also, back when I first wrote it, I hadn’t really started giving the r-version much attention, so I’ve decided to give some of the verbs their own article.

And “einziehen” is definitely interesting enough for a closer look so even if you’ve read the article about ziehen, you’ll find something new here…. especially reinziehen.
For those who haven’t read the article on ziehen, I’ll put a link to it below this one.

But now let’s get started.

Continue reading →

35 Comments

Posted on August 4, 2022 by

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False Friends Explained – “bekommen vs become”

In this episode:

German bekommen and English to become look the samee but they don't mean the same at all. Today, we'll find out why and how surprisingly close they actually are.

61 comments

Hello everyone,

and welcome to a new episode of our Summer, Sun, Vocab Fun series, this time with a special summer edition of

False Friends Explained

In these types of posts, we explore infamous pairs of false friends and find out how to properly translate them, and
more importantly, who’s to blame for the mess!
Was it English or German? Or do they just look similar by coincidence? Or was it those politicians again?

Either way, someone has to get CANCELLED for the confusion.
And today, we’ll look at one of the most famous, most confusing pairs of false friends ever:

bekommen vs become

I actually had a segment about this in the article about “werden”, so if you’ve read that, you might already know what’s going on.
But as I was giving that article a much needed do-over the other day, I felt like this topic was a bit crammed and out of place there. This is just such an iconic couple of false friends, they deserve to have their own article. And they actually have a really surprising connection.
So if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.

Continue reading →

61 Comments

Posted on July 25, 2022 by

Word of the Day – “nähen”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day, the Summer, Sun and Vocab Fun special edition.
Which basically means it’s shorter and stupider. But also more fun :).
And today, we’ll take a quick look at the family around the German word

nähen

 

which is the German word for to sew.
And in case you’re now like
“Bruh, I don’t even use that in English.” or
“Bruh, my torn jeans are a way of self expression.” or
“Bruh, I’m living with mom, I’ll ask her.”  let me tell you… yes, sewing sounds boring.
But sewing a tear or sewing on a button is not hard at all and it is a really helpful life skill. And especially for the dudes and bros among you – sewing is an absolutely sexy alpha chad skill. Like… basically, it is like spear fishing, just with a smaller spear and without fish. No wonder it is part of the basic curriculum in Chad-school.

 

 

Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted on July 15, 2022 by

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Word of the Day – “schrumpfen”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day, this time with a look at one of the most German sounding words ever:

schrumpfen

A word like the smell of moss on an old musty oak tree deep in the forest where a boar forages for truffles.
Or the sound of an old, giant steam engine piston moving.
Or the name of a German metal band.

A word that seems like it’s a freeze dried version of a real word and you have to pour water on it to make it expand.
And a word that describes what happens to our self confidence when we make our first attempts at speaking to a native speaker.

Because schrumpfen is the opposite of wachsen and means to shrink.

Continue reading →

63 Comments

Posted on July 5, 2022 by