Hello everyone,
And welcome to a very special episode, because today, we’ll talk about neither German vocabulary nor German grammar but we’ll talk about
German Politics
Hell to the yawn!!
Seriously, we have federal elections this month and to everyone’s surprise the election campaign season actually wasn’t boring at all.
I’m kind of hyped, and I really felt like it could be nice to share a bit about this, so I did a little poll last week here to ask if you’d be interested in a little special about what’s currently “on the menu” in Germany. Well, the Ayes have it, by communist margins. Seriously, it was like 87% in favor or something.
So today, we’ll do a little special about the so called Wahl-O-Mat.
And don’t worry… I will give my opinion here and there, but by and large, I’ll keep things objective and not preach.
And also, I will not lose focus of language completely because we’ll not only analyse some political topics, but also the language they’re described with.
Sounds super boring, but is super interesting, so when you’re ready, let’s dive right in.
Find out more
All lessons, tools and premium features (and there’s a LOT of them :).
Already a member?
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
This is not only interesting, but it’s also a nice distraction from US politics.
There are three more posts like this so plenty of distraction to be had :)
Too lazy to look right now to see if you have something already, but I’d love to hear more about gelten. In English I think this case a good translation would be “to apply to.”
Regarding nuclear energy, my feeling is it’s good, but not instead of renewable, but rather in addition to. Renewable has some challenges ahead for various technical reasons, and surely they will be resolved eventually, but it will take time and I think part of the solution will be more generation so that geographically when generation isn’t possible in one location it is possible in another. Nuclear is a nice carbon free way to generate that doesn’t have the same challenges and buys some time.
I do have an article about that :)
https://yourdailygerman.com/gelten-meaning/
As for nuclear… I have been reading a fair bit about Thorium technology of late. Maybe that’s a good long term option.
Very interesting from every point of view.
I’ d like to see part two .
And more political/ newspaper texts- my goal being to read German newspapers.
Part 2 is here :)
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-elections-wahlomat-2025/
Super interesting and informative from both a linguistic and cultural-political perspective. I’d love more on all 38 questions!
Being able to get the detail of statements made by party members, to back up the results when the Wahl-o-Mat aligns you with the party, is critical.
Regarding Bavaria. I must confess I am enjoying much of German traditional music. I’ll go out of a limb and speculate that a disproportionately high percentage of songs featuring words like “Heimat” & “Edelweiß”, originate in or are about Bavaria. So one would understand the feeling about wind turbines.
In Duolingo, they expected a translation like “Entschuldigen Sie, sind das unsere Sitzplätze?” I was emboldened and said “Entschuldigen Sie, sind diejenige unsere Sitzplätze?” Would it be right?
Another sentence from the Handelsblatt:
Should the “infrage” be “in Frage”?
Fair point. I grew up in Berlin so I never really looked it at through the eyes of someone who legitimately loves their landscape.
Re: diejenigen
No, it doesn’t work in your example. It’s a pointer within the sentence, not within reality.
Re: infrage stellen
This is correct. infrage is treated as adverb by convention.
In my increasingly worn out Handelsblatt, there is an article about how green Hydrogen is more expensive to produce, than thought. I feel there’s going to be breakthrough in that technology. Surely, it is the most exciting of options.
But hydrogen is a means of storing and transporting energy. It’s always good to have more options so I’m pro hydrogen tech, but the energy to produce it still has to come from somewhere.
BUt okay… according to the CSU, we already have nuclear fusion tech, so we’re good, I guess.
(They did say that on a talk show.)
That was extremely interesting.
I loved this one, thanks. I’m all for Part 2 on election issues in Germany! You learn so much about the country and culture as well! Good vocab building too!!
First of all, thank you for the great blog and the courage to cover such a topic!
I would allow myself a comment on the thing I am passionate about here: As a person living in Baden Württemberg I’ve seen what deforestation windmills cause, so even though I am 100% for renewables usage , those bastards are not the answer for sure. Destroyng what’s left of a great nature here and in Bavaria for an inefficient and costly power source. Is it worth it?
Great topic. I did a quick cursory Google search about it, and since I found that Greenpeace is on the fence about it, it must mean that there is at least a problem.
I would think that Germany has enough non-forest area where wind could be built out.
Cutting into an existing broad piece of forest does seem weird, but I think this is more a function of money and incentives than of the energy form itself.
Enjoyed this lesson very much and believe a part 2 would be interesting
It’s coming :)
Thanks for reminding us about the blurring feature- it was nice to try the translation on my own and then check! The ‘language used’ sections were really helpful for understanding context, too. I really liked this article (and the language-learning content you built into it)- definitely up for a part 2! Thanks, Emanuel!!
Absolutely terrific, Emanuel. I’d love a Part 2.Yes, we’re still a little touchy about the whole paper ballot/hanging chads thing over here…
I have a browser extension from Google that shows English and whatever the language of the page is in at the top of the screen. You click on English and the entire page changes including all of the other pages in that site that you visit. Very handy.
Thank you so much for the explanations of each of the questions (and yes, I’d like more) because I took the test and some of the questions I just didn’t have the background to answer. I find this fascinating. The number of parties running is overwhelming. How so you handle having so many choices where some are pretty close to each other? I wish we had that many parties to choose from in the US.
Only 6 or 7 have a realistic chance to make it past 5% or get 3 direct mandates, so if you want to influence the results, you’d vote one of those.
The small ones are more relevant for regional elections, where it’s easier for them to get traction if they are from the region.
A little suggestion if you actually want to improve your German using the Google Translate extension: Don’t use it to translate the entire page at once. Try to read in German, and then you can use the extension to highlight specific words or sentences and click “Translate Selection to English.”
I truly enjoyed it. Super interesting , not boring ar all. I am in for Part I I, both the overview of the main parties and the actual election system. What you did in this newsletter was an aspect of German culture, albeit it current political events. The study of the culture of a country whose language you are learning is, in my opinion, a significant part of the language learning. Please continue the “Language study.” That’s my favorite part.. Without going into detail, I do have my opinions on a few of the political questions. I almost forgot to comment on “soll” versus “sollte.” I must admit I would have used “sollte,” I did not understand your explanation of why “soll ” had been used instead of “sollte.* it was good that you mentioned the use of “”nutzen”instead of “benutzen.” The question was indeed on my mind. I look forward to part two. Fredrick Adams
In a nutshell, the questions are about what you (the voter) WANT, not what you “would like”. That’s why “soll” is a better match.
Does that help :)?
ThanKS. I need to think about it a bit.
Just a quick note on renewables to clarify the numbers: 50% renewable electricity in Germany is great but that is only 10% of all energy use ie building heating and cooking, vehicle/plane/shipping fuels, industry fuels etc – we will never get there on electricity (renewable or not) yet we’re spending the majority of effort and funding on electricity. Just clarifying! (And yes I work in the renewable gases industry – biomethane/hydrogen )
That is true, BUT, electricity is (with the exception of bio-fuel) the only form of energy we can produce domestically long term. We don’t have oil and we don’t have much gas.
So it makes sense to focus the effort there and get the tech and grid up to speed to we can gradually shift other consumption toward electricity. Like switching from oil heating to heat pump for instance.
We cannot produce oil here (or at least not without using electricity) but we can produce electricity.
Also, I think part of oil and gas consumption is due to very old and inefficient systems. Not sure what makes more sense there, switching home to heat pump and having a few gas powerplants or upgrading every house’s oil heating individually.
But yeah, the number 50% sounds better than it is in terms of real actual consumption of energy.
Apropos unsere kommenden Wahlen kann ich nur sagen, “Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual!”
lol
Wie Du vielleicht weißt, hatten wir vor Kurzem Wahlen. Wir haben über viele der gleichen Themen abgestimmt, die Grenze, Energie und soziale Dienste. In den letzten 30 Tagen hat die neue Regierung Milliarden von Dollar an Verschwendung entdeckt, von denen die Menschen nichts wussten. Unsere Steuergelder wurden aus absurden Gründen in andere Länder geschickt, Kondome für Afghanen, Geschlechtsumwandlungsoperationen für Transgender in Guatemala und andere ähnliche Zwecke. Das summiert sich jedes Jahr auf Milliarden von Dollar.
Obwohl ich in Deutschland wohnte, wusste ich gar nichts davon. Danke!!
Excellent all round. The explanations, both the political and the linguistic ones, are very interesting and informative. Thank you!
Can I please correct two of your English spelling mistakes? It should be “benefit”, not “benifit” and “apparently”, not “apperantly”.
Definitely a yes please for a second part. Good approach to cover background and the language used for each section.
Great lesson! Usually when watching ZDF, if I get to choose between e.g. Marcus Lanz and Harald Lesch, I’ll invariably choose Lesch over Lanz, mainly because of the language, so thanks a lot for the help here ;)
I greatly enjoyed this presentation. Very relevant and interesting. Thank you!