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Curious,my grandmother used “Ach du lieber” all the time but hardly ever “Ach du lieber Gott”. She was from a German village on the Volga in Russia.
(Apparently she never read your earlier comment ;-))
Whoops, I stand corrected. So apparently, at least back a few decades, you would skip God.
Maybe she comes from a more conservative background where it was “forbidden” to say “God”. But that’s just a wild guess.
“Ach so” and “Echt” are my two favorite little phrases. I use them as much as possible to pretend I know how to speak German. :)
If you use them correctly, they definitely make you sound super German .
Ach du Lieber (Gott)! A classic exclamation I thought.
Only if you’re over 50 I’d say. Oh and just to make sure… you can’t skip “Gott” here.
Ach, Menno! [disappointed] Was that already everything for today? I am only joking, today was a great post. Ja, ach nee! [sarcastic] As if there would have been any bad post here before. Ach [reminiscent], and what good posts that were. Ach [forgetful], and I almost forgot. What did I want to say. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Ach [dismissive], wasn’t that important.
Hahaha… awesome compilation :). I basically heard all the different “achs” in my mind.
Was ist der Unterschied zwischen ‘Ach so’ und ‘Na so was’? Ich hatte beide in ähnlichen Situationen gehören.
“Na so was.” and its brother “Na nu.” are mild expressions of surprise. You see something revealed before your eyes. Like you open a box and find something very unique in it, and say: “What have we here? What a surprise.”
On the other hand “ach so” is about understanding something. It normally follows an explanation of some sorts and is placed inside of a talk. If somebody suddenly called: “Ach so!” without context, there would be astranged looks from the spectators. Insofar it is a bad translation of “Heureka!”.
So you will find that “ach so” will never open a discussion while “na so was” or “na nu” very much can, especially if you are in a Scooby Doo movie looking around at an attic.
Danke für die Erklärung!
I fully agree with what person243 said :)
Hello, I am happy to be here. I spent almost the whole last night (until 5 AM) reading articles here. I just could not help but keeping reading, so interesting is the way of writing. So for me it is a great gift the membership I received from the scholarship fund raised by the well-intentioned already existing peers.
I speak Romanian as my mother language, Russian and English by catching them somehow from the environment and some basic French which I learned in school. But only now I start to become really fascinated by how people speaking totally different languages apparently, invented, developed and used in fact the same mechanisms (for the languages I speak at least). I could found grammar an interesting matter before also, but now, with so in-depth and all-round explanations, and with this tone of writing which makes you feel the sincere “wish of good”, I feel honored to be in contact with you and really became I fascinated and very enthusiastic about learning German. The path that you show demands itself to be followed with the strongest will from our side. Congratulations, and thank you for making use of your talent and for increasing our faith in humanity! Best wishes and best regards!
Ach soo? Thanks Emanuel… I will definitely try to stick with it and try Assimil as well. Vielen Dank! :-)
Oh Btw, check this out…..not the same as your lesson for the day, but good for a chuckle :-)
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Hahahah… super!! Ein bisschen Ah-so soße :D
Oh, don’t quit! I started studying in March, to prepare for a trip to Berlin in May. I did a lot of on-line work (Memrise and Duo Lingo), plus worked with teachers on Italki.com. I knew I’d be nowhere near fluent, but I wanted to at least be able to ask directions and exchange pleasantries. I enjoyed it so much, that I’ve kept on. I’ll struggle along, then suddenly a few things will pop together — like recognizing separable verbs or *finally* remembering a couple of words that I recognized but could never place. It’s very exciting when those bits and pieces happen. I do some other things, like find YouTube videos with English subtitles (The Heute Show is the German equivalent of The Daily Show and some of them have English subtitles) Yabla.com is another on-line resource that has a huge library of subtitled videos at all levels. And radio.garden is an on-line wonderment! It live streams radio stations from around the world. I tune into some German stations and let them play like I would any other radio station. I don’t try to translate, more to just get used to hearing German as it is used daily. It’s not hard to figure out ads. If you want to try reading the Learning German with Stories series on Kindle is really nice. A series of books with 10 short stories about a young Italian guy moving around Germany while he tries to learn the language and get a job. Lots of notes on vocabulary and very witty stories.
Oh, the story suggestion is really nice. I might use that as a giveaway for the calendar. Danke :)
Yes I have tried your online courses as well and I consider myself in the very beginner level. It is so difficult trying to remember to all the different pronouns because of the male/feminine words etc. Not to mention trying to pronounce all the long words Germans are so famous for. Is there an easy trick to accomplish this seemingly impossible task? Other than giving up?
Yeah, stop worrying about it. You do not need to pronounce long words as a beginner :).
And this exercise is definitely a bit too advanced. Not because it’s difficult but because you have too many questions in your mind about all the sentences. Just relax. You’ll get there. But you do need patience. All this talk around the web of “Super easy, super fast” “3 months to fluency” “the quick and efficient guide” and so on is bullshit and sets you up for frustration because you’ll most likely WON’T feel like it’s easy and you WON’T be fast enough. Learning a language takes patience.
You could give Assimil a try. That seems to work really well, if you can commit.
Hi Emanuel…….I have a question for you. As a teacher, how long does it usually take for you to teach one of your non German speaking students to be proficient in the German language? Even with some of these “easy” exercises, I seem to be lost. Maybe I am a getting old or a slow learner or both….I feel discouraged because I am lagging behind. :-(
I don’t know, because I’ve never been a regular teacher. I used to have students here and there but only once a week, which really won’t get you anywhere if you don’t do work yourself.
This exercise here is not really that easy though. I’d put it at B1 level. Do you have an idea what level you are? And did you try the case exercise we did a few days ago?
The Scots say it, too, and so does my American husband sometimes – ach is GREAT :-)
Es hat mich lange gedauert, “ach” richtig zu verstehen. Aber jetzt sehe ich wie nützlich es sein kann. Einerseits ist es quasi ein Satzzeichen (!, ?, usw.). Anderseits gibt es einer Äuserung zusäztliche emotionalen Untertöne.
Eine kleine Korrektur:
– Es hat mich lange gedauert…
Das ist nicht idiomatisch. Du könnstest sagen. Dauern funktioniert nicht so.
– Es hat mich viel Zeit gekostet…
oder einfach
– Es hat lange gedauert,…
Der Rest vom Satz macht ja dann klar, für wen es lange gedauert hat.
In Ireland, they say “ach well”.
A sort of resignation, and/or a reply to a statement of the obvious.
“We cannot go out to play today, because its raining”.
“ach well”.( I did not want to go out anyway, AND it is ALWAYS raining)
Oh really? That’s cool. Does it sound like the German “ach”?
Definitely. I think it’s pretty common in Scotland, too. “Ach” has seeped into my English too…
Danke, ich habe mich mal gefragt wie genau ich “ach” verwenden kann. Ich habe auch “ach komm schon!” gehört. Ich annehme, dass man sowas sagt, wenn man ein bisschen verärgert oder ungeduldig ist.
Ja, aber das spielt die Art, wie man es sagt, eine große Rolle.
Man kann das auch “naggingly” sagen.