Word of the Day – “das Lob”

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Hello everyone,

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

das Lov

 

oh… ups…  I meant

das Lob

 

Sorry for the typo, haha.
So yeah, we’ll look at das Lob today, not only because it’s something that everybody likes to get, but also because there are a few related words that seem to have as much connection to das Lob as I have to the WIFI in the library.
NONE!!
If you listen to this, dear library… your WIFI is really really not good.
And that by the way was kind of the opposite of a Lob…

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Posted on October 10, 2019 by

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Word of the Day – “gelingen”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And today, we’ll take a look at the meaning of

gelingen

 

Gelingen is one of those weird words many of you have probably missed for some reason, even though it is quite useful and common.
And it’s one of those verbs that have ge- as an actual non-separable prefix, not just a past marker.
And if you’re now like
“We DO NOT know what you’re talking about, Emanuel, this is advanced stuff….”
let me tell you that you, all of you, know at least one other example for these kinds of verbs… gefallen :). 
The two actually kind of fit together, both grammatically and thematically… something that mir gelingen will probably dir gefallen.
But I’m getting ahead of myself …

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Posted on October 3, 2019 by

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Word of the Day – “spalten”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And today we’ll take a look at the meaning of

spalten

 

And man… what a sound! And maybe that’ just me, but it matches really well with what it stands for. Spalten!
Like… a chasm opening up during an earthquake. Or a bolt of lightning smashing into a tree.
Well okay,  I guess technically those would sound more like “cshrrrkh”. But at least to me, spalten fits well, too. And this notion of forcefully splitting in two is kind of the core of spalten. And not only that verb. It actually was also the core of the Indo-European root *(s)pel-.
Which is uber ancient, btw… just in case you were wondering.
And you’ll be surprised how many words come from it.
But more on that later. Let’s start with spalten itself….

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Posted on September 25, 2019 by

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Word of the Day – “hin”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And this time, we’ll take a look at the meaning of one of your least favorite words…

hin

 

Hin is really confusing for a lot of learners and even advanced speakers often make mistakes with it. Or better, without it. Like here…

  • Ich bin da gegangen.

This is wrong, it should be:

Forgetting hin is a really really common, I’m sure many of you have made it. And even though you’ll still be understood, a missing hin sounds quite bad and really really ruins your language swag. Kind of like this:

  • I drinks a beer.

It’s just a letter, it’s understandable, but it sounds like I am an A2 student.
Today, we’ll take a thorough look at hin and see what it does and why it sounds so bad if you forget it. And we’ll talk about its weird nature and how it can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a prefix or not.
So, are you ready to jump in?
Let’s go…

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Posted on September 17, 2019 by

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