Hello everyone,
Welcome back to the Advent Calendar, door number 17. And today, it’s time for a bit of activity again with another little
Wortschatz-Quiz
We’ve already done this type of quiz once this season and I feel like a lot of you enjoyed the format so we’ll do a a second round today.
I’ll give you four “orbit words” that all circle around a common core.
For example:
- die Bohne (bean)
- mahlen (grind)
- das Koffein (awake)
- süchtig ( addicted)
The word these “orbit” around is der Kaffee. Your task is to find this word and then… ugh.. TYPE IT.
Now, the “orbit words” are often a bit on the less known side. That’s kind of the goal of this practice, to see some vocabulary you DON’T know in context. Just that you need to actually figure out the context yourself ;).
The main goal though is that you enjoy the puzzling and thinking.
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Totally stumped! Didn’t get any, it’s fun though.
This is not by any means a measure of language skill, so please don’t take it too seriously :)
Bissfest. Love it. I thought a ‚bissell‘ was jiddisch or Schwarzwald only. Yea me!
Didn’t know you paid taxes for dogs. Maybe some german culture lessons are in order.
It’s a so called “Aufwandssteuer” and administrative districts can levy it. I guess in some rural regions, it’s zero, while in cities it’s he most expensive.
At some level it makes sense – I hate seeing homeless animals, and having every animal numbered can be a way to stop people throwing them away. From another point, goverment keeps finding new ways to tax and control people, which is disgusting. But hey, not the worst tax imaginable.
The point of the tax is that someone’s dog is a burden to the overall of society. It’s running around outside, shitting into places and barking or jumping on people who are scared. There is no cat tax for instance, though that would bring in more money. It’s not about getting money and controlling people. I know plenty of people who would prefer NO ONE having dogs, so the tax is kind of a compensation for that part of the population even though they don’t get it directly.
Not all taxes are primarily meant to bring in revenue. Many are meant to steer behavior or compensate society as a whole for indulgence of a some of them.
> There is no cat tax for instance
Really? That’s funny, didn’t think about that. Yes, what you say makes sense.
I wonder how old this dog tax is. And what were arguments for and against it.
According to Wikipedia, a fee for dog ownership goes back to the 15th century and it was on and off ever since.
Vanilla ice really threw me–I don’t connect those two flavors! : ) OH, ice cream! Now I see the comments.
Also, there’s no Hund-tax in the US, so that one threw me too. haha
“there’s no Hund-tax in the US”
Oh really? Not even in urban centers on a community level? I think the main purpose of the tax is to “compensate” the general public who doesn’t own dogs for the poo, pee, the leash-less running around (which is VERY common) and the occasional scare. And maybe also a compensation for dog related accidents that the administration has expenses with like police coming or whatever.
I get that it doesn’t make much sense in the countryside, but I find it “fair” in bigger cities.
I am in the US and I have to pay a license fee every year for each of my dogs. I would consider that Hundesteuer. :)
Oh, you mean for the dog tag, kind of? Yeah, that’s the same, I would say. In Germany it’s considered a tax and it’s around 120 Euro per year and more if you have multiple dogs.
Thank you so much for granting me a full-year account. I’m genuinely touched by the kindness of both you and the German learning community. It’s not just a subscription-it feels like being welcomed into a team that believes in lifting each other up.
Your blog, “Your Daily German,” is something try rare. The way you explain grammar and usage-layered with humor, real life context, and those wonderfully unexpected examples-makes the language feel a little less like a maze and more like a path I can follow. German isn’t an easy language to crack, but with your content, I finally feel like l’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks again-for the access, the blog, and the spirit behind it all
Live this
This quiz is Greek to me? Still not sure what was required? Maybe with more examples I would get the hang of it.
So it’s kind of like a reverse mind-map. I take a word, like “bike” and then I look for 4 words that connect to it. Like “handlebar”, “pedal”, “ride” and “saddle”. And then your task is to find the original word.
Eis tastes like Vanilla>>??lol —-not!
In German, “Eis” can also mean “ice cream”. We don’t distunguish there.
Learnt a lot zum Beispiel bissfest passt mit meinem Kochfahigkeit!
That was fun! Die Röhre seems like a fertile source of compound words. My favorite is Zielfernrohr (far target tube, aka rifle scope). How did it become associated with the oven?
So the Röhre is ONLY the “oven cabin”, so it’s part of the oven, but not the full device. I should have made that more clear.
I’ll do an article on “Rohr” and “Röhre” next year.
Why was “Nudeln” incorrect?
It asked for the singular version of the word. Nudeln is plural, but the quiz did accept Nudel.
Yup :)
Cold water on pasta: was für ein Gruselfilm ist das denn? I get the purpose, but “Yeah, nah”, as we say down here!
As for the quiz, I erred in the same way as a few others in choosing “Ofen” instead of “Herd”. Which is cool, as now the difference is clear in my mind. I also needed the hints for a couple of the other questions.
Do Germans call any sort of fee a “tax”? We’d say “registration/rego” for dogs and cars and other “ownership taxes”, but tend to use “tax” itself for extra charges on things you buy: petrol tax, land tax, goods-and-services tax.
So the “(Back)ofen” is JUST the thing you use for baking and the “Röhre” is the cavity where you put the goods in that are to be baked.
And “Herd” is the full deal.
I’d actually expect a Herd to have an oven, but I think that’s changing now. For me, a Herd without an oven is a Kochplatte or Kochfeld, but not a Herd.
“Do Germans call any sort of fee a “tax”?”
No, we have “Gebühr”, which is a random charge someone pulls out of their butt. For instance when you get a new ID, you have to pay a “fee” for them doing their tax money funded job in the tax money funded office of the tax money funded government department.
Or some gyms have a monthly rate (der Preis) but then also a quarterly “Gebühr” for… something. Administrating your SQL entry, I guess.
But anything that is an actual tax is called Steuer and you do pay “dog tax” and Kraftfahrzeugsteuer (KFZ-Steuer). These are recurring, not just when you register.
Aah, groovy: thanks very much for that, it should help quench the misunderstandings, particularly for the Herd and friends, even if I’ll have to wait a while for the Rohr/Röhre connection.
So, so (to) taxing ;-) We also have exorbitant fees attached to seemingly mundane bureaucratic processes. I recently renewed my passport for ten years, which came with an associated fee of more than $AU400 (about 220 Euros). Similar situations include getting access to detailed maps (made by government departments), and the constant stream of nonsense that folk seeking citizenship need to navigate. There the tax/fee isn’t only monetary, but just as much in finally *unterstanding* what’s required, and finding their way through the dense thickets of bureaucratese. But I’m doubtless preaching to the choir on that score, given Germany’s famously labyrinthine bureaucratic culture.
I had heard of “Gebühr” as fee/charge, but somehow it had managed to sneak –along with endless multitudes of its friends, sad to say– out of my active vocabularly.
220????
Holy cow! I hope that is tax deductible. This is a VERY steep fee. Like… how is a poor person supposed to shell out this kind of money for something they’re required to have.
Everyone always complains about how German bureaucracy is so so bad, but I think we’re actually just kind of normal. Not great, but normal.
Not everyone here has a passport: something a bit over half the population, from memory. While it’s useful as part of an ID establishing routine (and obviously for overseas travel) it’s far from compulsory. But yeah, it’s a steep one, and adjusted annually for inflation. Hey, having bought the thing, I really should start thinking about organising a trip somewhere ;-)
It’s explicitly ruled out as a tax deduction (even if required only for business trips).
Another nice quiz! My favourite new vocab: abschrecken, vorheizen, die Umluft, und bissfest.
Ich habe die letzte Frage mit „Ofen“ beantwortet, wegen des Wortes „Umluft“.
Bis Morgen
Yeah, I added Platte (stove top) to make sure it can’t just be the Ofen part :).
Hallo!
No typos :)
I like these quizzes, I got the last one wrong, my answer was “Klimaanlage” ;)
Bis morgen!
I caught one: “see some vocabulary you DON’T in context” -> “see some vocabulary you DON’T *know* in context”
Our of curiosity, how did you fit “die Platte” in there?
Don’t know, really, I thought maybe AC systems have some sort of “plates” I don’t know about ;)
I mean, there is most likely some sort of plate in there somewhere, but using such an engineering detail for a quiz like that would earn me the wrath of like 90% of quiz takers :).
My last was the same as yours!
I’m curious about giving “awake” for “das Koffein.” Caffeine?
One thing in the quiz – you are looking for a “singular noun,” but to me that’s not the normal phrase. “Singular” means “unique.” I believe you would have to say, “a noun in the singular.” Clumsy for sure! Maybe I’m behind the times and “singular noun” has replaced the more clumsy phrase.
There’s a high chance that “singular noun” is just me messing up English through being lazy :)
Das hat spaß gemacht und ich habe ein paar neue Wörter gelernt.
These are fun even if I suck at it! I like puzzles. I typed Nudeln but it marked me incorrect. No idea on the oven/stove one though preheat got me close
So Nudeln you basically got right, except for a technicality (it was restricted to singular). You got the correct concept though, so that counts.
I went for Nudel and got the article wrong. I think I avoid pasta because of my tendency to confuse it with the English paste. I’ve seen zahnpaste and zahnpasta, although I think the e ending is more common. I suppose I should just take the easy win and use pasta for Nudeln since we do in English as well.
To me, it’s definitely “Zahnpasta”. It is a “Paste”, but the product name itself is with A and sounds weird with “e” for me.
I actually don’t like the name Pasta for the dish. I find Nudeln much cuter, but Pasta is just pushing out the poor noodle little by little. I think at some point Nudeln might shift over completely to the “Asian variety”. So Pad Thai, Pho Soup and all that will be with Nudeln and Spaghetti Bolognese will be with Pasta.
Lots of fun! I had the first 3 right (there’s no way I would I known “Herd” – I guessed “oven”) and learned many new words!
That was fun! I got all of them right – but I needed the hints for every single one.
Fun idea reminiscent of New York Times game: Connections