Hi,
my name is Emanuel. I am 38 years old and I teach German on the web. And I work in a bar. I’ve also studied something, but I don’t care about it.
I’m not a polyglot or a linguist but I do love languages, German and explaining things.
This passion developed when I was in Finland and I was confronted with foreign languages every day. Before that, I actually thought I sucked at languages. My grades weren’t great, I was glad when I could opt out French and I couldn’t even describe the way to Berlin Brandenburger Gate in English properly without breaking my tongue and using my hands like a mime.
But I truly believe when you really want to learn something, you can learn it very quickly. And it is never too late… I mean, I was already 54 when I was in Finland.
Anyway… I have been teaching German for 72 years now and I really like explaining things, I like German and I like English too … and I really honestly believe that German is easy.. at least easier than people think.
I’ll do my best to convince you…
11 random facts about me
| A word on language All the explanations here in English because I want the page to be useful for as many people as possible. | Pay for free stuff There used to be a plea for donations here :). But now there’s the membership thing and I need something new to fill the space so… Mach heute was gutes! :)
|
For the obligatory disclaimer click here: disclaimer
and last but not least, the infamous: Impressum
no comments from me and don’t send me these kind of comments
?
I really want to join as a member, but I can not afford the subscription fee as I am still a student and I am saving money to study abroad next year. I hope to receive your support for this sum; it will be a great encouragement for me to be able to learn German and realize my goal. I have sent an email to you. Thank you for your consideration.
Can you email to info@german-is-easy.com ? I don’t think I have seen your mail…
Hi Emanuel, I have received your confirmation for the sponsorship. Thank you so much for your help.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your kind assistance in obtaining the account for free. Learning German has been a long-standing dream of mine, and your help has made it possible. I also wish to extend my thanks to all the members of the community who generously donated to assist those who are unable to pay.
Hello Emanuel,
When is your book coming out?
Don’t know yet, we’re stuck with the layout at the moment, so I am hesitant to give a deadline, but we’ll do a kickstarter soon to prefund the printing :)
Hallo, Mein Name is Fan, und ich komme aus Wuhan, China. Ich freue mich Sie kennen zu lernen. Deine Website ist sehr interessant. Aber habe ich keine Zeit Deutsch zu lernen. Hoffentlich, kann lerne ich wieder. Bis bald.
Das wünsche ich dir auch, viel Zeit und Lust zum Lernen. Bis bald und liebe Grüße nach Wuhan!
Hallo Emmanuel, ich denke, dass die Website nicht gut aussieht. die css/webseite ist kaputt gegangen.
Kannst du ein bisschen spezifischer sein, was nicht gut aussieht und auf welchem Gerät?
Hello Emmanuel, what a gift this website is! I have randomly landed on it several times over the last year. And this week I finally started to properly read some of your articles. They are so interesting. Thank you for bringing your gift to the world. It makes German fun and provides so explanations as to the ‘why’ of the language. I keep asking my German teacher ‘why this’ and ‘why that’, and he often tells me to stop asking why, and to just learn the language! He might be right, but I enjoy understanding the origins of the language too! I’m not sure if you are a 38 year old bartender or a 72 year old wild swimmer – but as you said, you can’t count, so who cares? Angus
There are definitely many thing in every language where there’s no answer to “why”, but that’s all the more reason to actually answer the questions for which there IS a why :).
Thanks for the great feedback and yes… those year counts are not really accurate ;).
Hi Emanuel – Happy New Year to you and I hope that the future has good things in store for you and indeed all of us….in fact speaking of the future (ahem) I can’t seem to find an article or section on your excellent site that deals with expressing concepts/events etc in the future tense – any pointers?
Ha, no… that is one topic I haven’t touched yet, because I found it so boring and it’s also kind of useless, because I use future tense maybe once a week :).
But I’ll put it on the list for this year.
Great Emanuel. I have been waiting for your promised book for years. The Organisation of your website is easy to navigate.
I’ve reading your material for 7 years and I always find it interesting and helpful.
I also watch your YouTube videos, though I find the subtitles too fast for me to read.
Keep up your dreams, as you can see, they are slowly coming true.
I like your new studio too, very professional.
have a happy Christmas
Brightstar
Thank you and for you too :)!!
You can change several aspects of YouTube playback. As the video plays click on the gear wheel on the upper right hand corner and choose playback speed.
Hi, first I want to say that this website is a gift from heaven. It has helped me in many ways. Thanks for all your efforts :) And I would like to know if this website has an app. It could be very useful
I’m slowly working my way there, at least for the dictionary portion of it. Stay tuned, and become a member :).
Hello Emanuel
I would like to know about your swim-style.
(‘I’ve developed a swim style that lets me go down a 50m lane with just 14 strokes.’)
Hahaha… I need to go swimming again, to see if I still have it.
It’s on the back and you stroke with the legs first (normal frog style), then glide with arms extended above the head and then you swing with the arms down to the side and do a dolphin swing with the closed legs, then glide and reset.
I think I’m pretty buoyant, so I can glide quite well :)
Hi Emanuel, do you have any Social Media accounts like Insta or Tiktok? So i could follow you. Thank you
I have Insta for YDG, but I’m not really doing much there:
https://www.instagram.com/yourdailygerman/
And I have Insta for my photos:
https://www.instagram.com/emanuels.butt/
No TikTok for me :)
Emanuel! How can I get a discord invite???
HI Beth, I don’t have a Discord server. Do you mean the Easy German Discord with Cari and Janusz? I think you need to be a Patreon of their channel for that. I can ask them if you want to.
Questions/Thoughts:
1) Is there a place for ‘general language questions’ where the topic isn’t in one place only or finding that one place isn’t known (see my Q3 below)?
2) I just re-watched some of the Anje German course videos that I signed up for (and passed through) last year. I was really surprised how much better I could understand what was being said in many of the conversations. I certainly didn’t memorize the script or remember half of what was supposed to be said, but the phrases chunked together much better. The transcribed dialogues still have value in understanding common contractions and omitted words. And of course, I re-watched your Oscar winning “in der Bäckerei” scene. Which brings me to my question…
3) If you <Kunder> are in a one-on-one conversation, and the person you are talking to is an employee, does one use “Sie/Du” oder “Ihr”? I was hoping Anje would ask you “Do you have ______?” or “Do y’all have _______?” but that doesn’t come up in any of the dialogues. She is talking to one person, but it kind of address to ‘the group that make up the business’. Do I address an employee of a company as y’all or as an individual?
4) Saw a comment below about adding flashcards/Seedling to this site, and you gave some answers. My vote is ‘don’t break yourself doing it if you do’. Flashcard apps are plentiful. More to the point, every learner needs different things and a good flashcard app will allow you to set it up in different/unique ways to work on what you need.
For example, my flashcard app (Flashcard Hero) is usually set up to speak the phrase to me in English, I then respond/translate out loud in German, and then the app speaks the German back to me for reference and comparison. I never read the flashcards unless needed; it is all aural based. A press of a single button, and the whole stack comes at me in reverse; it speaks the German to me, and I translate into English. I have 5 different German ‘speakers’ in the MacOS that I can choose from so I can shift the tonal inflections and hear different AI ‘accents’.
5) For me, one of the key values of YDG is: HOW DO I USE THE WORD/PHRASE IN REAL LIFE. I do believe that your descriptions in the dictionary are good and answer that. You clearly help English based learners understand which word/phrase works in which situation and how.
5b) That said…as I mentioned, your dictionary descriptors dislike Geldbeutel nor Brieftasche, so when I asked you in a question “What word should I use for wallet?” you answered “Portemonnaie”. But…portemonnaie is NOT a word found in your dictionary :) I know it is French, and there isn’t much to say, but if a word is discounted and another should be used, that word should be in your dictionary. IMHO.
6) This is a great site and I was happy to renew my subscription for year two! It is a key piece in my learning.
Hi Emmanuel,
I’ve just finished reading the article about “like”, which is every informative! Thank you a lot!
You mean the difference between mögen, gern and gefallen? Glad you enjoyed it :)
Hello Emmanuel
love your articles and appreciate your efforts. And thanks a lot for your scholarship.
One question though, is there a way for me to find all the comments I have posted ? If not, I think that would be a great help if could work on that in the future.
Thanks a lot :)
On top of the thread, next to the number of comments (on the left) there should be a little icon. Click it and you’ll have an overview :)
I’m also working on putting one onto a proper page, but that takes time.
Let me know if this helps so far :)
Hey I unsubscribed because I’m finished learning German! Haha danke für alles!
Gerne :)! Und Glückwunsch!!
Hi Emanuel, I’m a broke aupair who needs to learn german asap or I won’t be able to stay in germany, i really need that scholarship
Send me an email please :)
Info@german-is-easy.com
Super loving this idea of having all the different prefixes in one place. Can you also include the description of the idea behind each of the prefixes in the box.
You mean the idea(s) of the prefix itself?
Yes! Also can you do an article on verb kickers? Weil dass etc
“kickers”… I like that name, actually. Just to clarify… that article would mainly be about word order, right?
Yep!
Hi Emanual,
I love the idea of prefix-verb flash cards. Can‘t wait until they are available.
Also, have you considered wrapping your dictionary as an app? I find myself using the Google translate app quite a bit, but usually get more satisfying results via your dictionary.
Then integrate into Seedlang ;-)
I’m building an app for the card game, and that’ll be the base for the more general dictionary app.
I have also talked to Jeremy about featuring Seedlang clips in my dictionary in return for links and so on, but I don’t think he’s willing to integrate my dictionary.
They’re building their own there, and the usage notes and ideas and translations that I do are what sets me apart from other dictionaries. So he’d have to pay significant money for it and I don’t think he finds it necessary.
He is experimenting with the AI that I am using for speech recognition though, after saying a year ago that he doesn’t like it, so who knows :)
Just to make sure… we’re friends. But we’re also competition at least in terms of building a dictionary.