Hi,
my name is Emanuel. I am 35 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 rndaom 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! :)
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and last but not least, the infamous: Impressum
Hey, I just wanted to thank you for the guide you’ve provided here. Your explanations are presented quite clearly and descriptively and I’m finding it a pleasure just to go through your words of the day! I see there are no comments so I hope this goes through! I’m studying in Switzerland, and although the dialect is it’s own beast, learning High German is part of my daily routine and I’ll definitely add this source to my learning material. I hope you continue on with your posts.
Have you considered writing a book?
Cheers,
Turi,
Vielen Dank :) for the nice comment…
I actually did think of writing my own language learning book at some point but that is quite an endeavor and there is no need to rush. I have a lot to learn yet and this is blog one way to practice for me… and to refine the explanations. The article about zu and um zu for instance. It is quite long and pretty comprehensive and I have to add more things that I havn’t thought of… anyway… I am glad you find it helpful and entertaining and I’ll do my best to keep it that way.
Viele Grüße in die Schweiz und viel Erfolg mit Deutsch
Emanuel
Hello,
The Top 100 Language Lovers 2012 competition hosted by the bab.la language portal and the Lexiophiles language blog has started and your blog has been nominated in the category professional language blogs. Congratulations! The nomination period goes until May 13th. Feel free to spread the word among other bloggers writing about languages or to suggest one blog yourself.
Please email me so I have your contact details (stefanie [at] bab [dot] la) and send you information about the status of the competition and the badge.
For further information on the Top 100 Language Lovers 2011 competition, visit http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-100-language-lovers-2012-nominate-your-favourite-now
Best wishes,
Stefanie for the bab.la and Lexiophiles team
Hallo! Ich habe den Blog durch diese Language Lovers Competition entdeckt und ich habe ihn in einem Tag durchgelesen! Ich bin jetzt traurig ich habe nichts mehr zu lesen, aber bin auch gespannt was noch kommt! Ich glaube dein Blog ist super, sehr witzig und ich habe auch sehr viel gelernt, das ich bisher, in den vielen Buechern die ich über die deutsche Spreche gelesen habe, nie gefunden habe! Vielen vielen Dank und bitte mach weiter so!!!
Wow, alles an einem Tag…. Das ist viel :). Danke danke danke für das Kompliment… ich werde mir große Mühe geben in Zukunft.
Dein Deutsch ist übrigends fast perfekt. Der einzige Fehler war ‘Spreche’ statt ‘Sprache’ aber das könnte auch ein Tipfehler sein. Du schreibst wie ein Muttersprachler !!!
Danke! Wenn man schreibt ist es einfacher weil man mehr Zeit zu denken hat… :) Mein Deutsch ist weit weit weg von perfekt!!! (Ich glaube das ist gerade falsch was ist geschrieben habe, oder?)
Ich glaube dein Blog ist perfekt um sich eine “natürlichere” Art von Reden zu verschaffen. Übrigens bist du zweisprachig?!
‘Mein Deutsch ist weit davon entfernt, perfekt zu sein’ ;)… deins war aber auch ok, und könnte auch von einem Muttersprachler stammen.
Danke für das Kompliment. Ich bin nicht zweisprachig, aber Englisch ist meine erste Fremdsprache und ich mag Englisch sehr sehr gerne.
Ich schreibe in etwa so wie ich rede… das ist auch das einzige was ich wirklich kann, denn ich lese nicht gerne in Englisch. Meine Quellen sind Youtube Videos und die Simpsons :)
Ich mache auch so, ich schaue mir Fernsehserien, Filme und Youtube Videos um Sprachen zu lernen! :)
Hi once again, I was hoping you could write a blog on the difference between bestimmt, sicher and gewiss. I was studying about expressing probability with future tenses using wohl and I was wondering what the difference between all these words meant? Ihre Website hilft mir wirklich. Vielen Dank!
Hi Lisa,
so in sentences that express your expectations about the future all three words you mentioned mean pretty much the same. Gewiss is a little out of date and I don’t think many people use it in spoken German nowadays. Anyway
Es regnet bestimmt/sicher/gewiss bald.
Here all 3 express that your are quite certain.
The overlap between them is large but each of them comes from a totally different background. That is also the reason why I can’t do a what-is-the-difference because it would be too long or not comprehensive.
Bist du sicher? Ja, ja ich bin sicher.
Here you can’t use either of the 2 others because here we are not talking about assumptions but rather about a measure … kind of.
Oh… and as a one word answer there actually is a difference between sicher and bestimmt.
Kommt Thomas zu meiner Party?
Bestimmt.
Here bestimmt is an assumption, while sicher is a statement based on knowledge. So if the person says bestimt, he or she assumes that Thomas will come, while if the person says sicher, he or she knows that Thomas will come. So sicher is a bit more certain than bestimmt maybe. However adding something to the one word answer changes everything.
Sicher/ bestimmt kommt er.
With the right intonation, this sicher can sounds just like bestimmt … so not a bit more certain.
Oh and what both have in common is that they have consoling potential and are often used that way.
Wird meine Katze wieder gesund?
Ganz sicher!
I hope this helps a bit, although it was not that structured :)
Vielen Dank noch einmal! Sie haben meine Frage beantwortet.
Hi again, I have two more burning questions that are keeping me up at night and I am hoping you can answer them because I really need my sleep! The first is: Why is the following sentence “Ich habe zugenommen” with haben instead of sein? To me it is an obvious change of state and there is no direct object, so I would have thought it would be with Sein.
The second question is pertaining to: “Ist es draussen kalt?” Can I also say “Ist es kalt draussen?” or am I being a typical English speaker and translating verbatim? What is the rule with having the “kalt” after “draussen”?
Many thanks!
Hi Lisa, the question regarding zunehmen had me think for a while. You are right. It feels very much like a change of state. However, that is not the focus. The focus is that you take something to yourself… but that would be a poor explanation as it merely expresses merely my native perception of the word which could very well be due the the very fact that we use haben…. so I started thinking if there were a fail prove answer.
I could say, that nehmen goes with haben so all prefixed nehmens will use haben as well, but there might be an exception somewhere, so this doesn’t qualify.
But I finally realized that zunehmen can take an object… Ich nehme 10 Kilo zu. 10 Kilo is a acc object. It is not mandatory but neither is coffee for trinken.
So zunehmen can take an object and is thus using haben.
The second question was easier… both are perfectly fine. I honestly can’t tell a difference and the second version does not sound any less German than the other. It would be slightly different for the statement.
Es ist draussen kalt.
Es ist kalt draussen.
The latter is the better (by far). The former is not the default. Why not? Because Germans like their place info ALAP (as late as possible). So putting it in front of kalt shines a spotlight on drausser and the listener might infer that the speaker intends to make a contradiction between draussen and the inherent oposite innen. So it sounds a bit like:
Es ist draussen kalt, aber drin nicht.
This certainly depends also on diction and melody and sometimes a speaker might just accidentally say the draussen first.
Waiting for more questions :)
TEKAMOLO…. in dieser Reihenfolge:
temporal, kausal, modal, lokal…
Kalt ist modal
Draussen lokal
LG
Jana
Das ist Quatsch. Beides ist richtig, es kommt drauf an, was genau man mit dem Satz sagen möchte. TeKaMoLo hat bei diesem Beispiel keine Relevanz.
Great blog – am currently learning German and struggling a little but reading the examples here has helped with the learning. Thanks so much and keep it up ! ^^
Hi Emanuel, Deine Seite ist wirklich super…. weiter so! Mein Mann ist englischer Native Speaker und er liest Deine Seite mit Begeisterung!
Ich wollte dich aber auf einen kleinen Fehler hinweisen, weil er auf Deiner “About” -Seite ist, wo sicher viele Leute zuerst hingehen, wenn sie Deine Seite besuchen!
Es soll heißen “I’ve been teaching German now FOR five years”. “Since” benutzt man, wenn man auf einen Zeitpunkt in der Vergangenheit hinweist (since 2007) und “for”, when es sich um eine Zeitspanne handelt.
Ich hoffe, du nimmst mir diesen Hinweis nicht übel ;)
Nee garnicht :)… dieser Fehler passiert mir leider immer noch zu oft. Ich weiß das zwar eigentlich in der Theorie, hab’ sogar andere schon berichtigt, aber das deutsche seit ist einfach zu stark in meinem Kopf :)
I’m an English teacher, so I’ll let you know of any really terrible grammatical flubs ;) (Basically just stay away from semi-colons and you can’t mess up too terribly). Honestly, though, because you write the blog more as though you were speaking to readers face-to-face than lecturing in a highly proper textbook I have yet to come across anywhere that your writing or punctuation is confusing. I’m actually enjoying reading how you express yourself in English as much as I’m enjoying learning German – your words have a different cadence to them than an English native speakers’, and it’s neat to read.
A teacher, oh god, the pressure is on now :). But I hate semicolons. I find them superfluous… at least to me in German they are. Make a point if you want to make a point hahaha….. Seriously though, I am glad that there are no major fuck ups in there and it is nice to hear that it is an enjoyable read…. I am really really curious as to what the different cadence is… not that I would want to purge it, but being aware allows for switching it on and off to a degree…. anyway, thanks for your comment :)
I think a lot of it comes from the fact you usually don’t use contractions (‘I’m’ instead of ‘I am’) or where you say things a bit longer (and probably more properly) such as ‘there are no’ whereas a native speaker might more likely say ‘there aren’t any’. I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing, though – we native speakers are awfully lazy speakers (which transfers to our typing) and it’s not necessarily a good thing, haha.
That’s interesting :)… my being a German native definitely shines through there… if you pay close attention, you can certainly pick up a lot about how it would be in German… for instance:
“There aren’t any”… just doesn’t exist in German. We say “There are no” (using kein/e/r/n/m)
Why the word “fuck” It seems to me that the word is used by many people to emphasize that they are contemporary or with it or sophisticated. I hate the word, and don’t understand why so many people seem to find the need to be coarse. The use of the word coarsens your otherwise outstanding remarks.
Hi Don,
I do agree with what you say and I really try to stay away from “language”… my input is mostly DVDs and youtube so I get to hear fuck a whole lot in pretty much all contexts. So what goes in comes out :). However, I often catch myself writing fuck for emphasis and genuinity but then I remove it. Might be that some did slip my sensor though… if you refer to the fuck in “fuck-ups”, is that bad language, too?
I think “mistakes” would be a good word to use. “Mistakes” in combination with “major”, gets the point across quite well.
I also am not a fan of the word, but the way you use it is funny. It’s great that you are kind enough to try and censor your use of the word, but don’t get wrapped around the axel if it slips out every now and then.
Also, I greatly appreciate your need to wait, despite sooo many inquires about follow-up lessons, for your creativity to hit you before taking on an article.
Hahaha… yeah, it actually recently happened, that I thought I’d write “hin – part 2” but when I started I found myself bored by the topic and just couldn’t do it.
BUt then comes the day, where I wake up and feel like “Today’s the day” and then there’s no writer’s block at all. Quite fascinating, actually. I feel super stuck with topics sometimesn and then at some point it’s just gone.
As for swearing, I actually eliminated the f-word completely, but I have since been criticized for anything feces related, “suck” and also “God” and “Jesus”. Oh and I was accused of being sexist.
So ultimately it comes down to what we all hat ethe most … compromise. How much am I willing to restrict myself (which might change me and not feel like a restriction at some point). I feel pretty okay, at the moment :).
Interestingly, when I read old articles that do have the f-word in it, I sometimes cringe because it really doesn’t have to be there and was just me trying to sound “native”.
Anyway, thanks for your comment :)!!
Avoiding “fuck” is good policy. Avoiding it as a transitive verb seems essential. You didn’t use it that way, so your usage was colloquial in Scotland, slightly vulgar in England and inexcusably profane in the Bible Belt! But what the fuck is “genuinity” (LOL)? There is “genuineness”; (a semicolon, what a useful Satzzeichen that is!) there is “authenticity”, which probably comes closer to what you meant. Even “authenticity” seems out of place, as you are not writing fiction, thus don’t need to give invented characters an authentic style. Dare I ask, whether you actually meant “street credibility”?
“genuinity”… I must have made that up. Sometimes, I am too lazy to actually look up a word and I’ll just guess-invent one. Failed this time, it seems.
Word aside, what I had in mind (I think) was an authentic form of expressing the “emotions” of the narrator. When writing these things, I sometimes drift into a role of someone who actually also learns German and is surprised about the information. In that role, I feel like “fuck” is a good expression of surprise or intense emotion, just because that’s what I hear all the time on Youtube. I wasn’t really doing it for street cred. I actually cringe at myself whenever I catch me using “slang” because I want to “belong”.
Anyway… I’m content with my decision to stay away from the word.
I just wanted to leave a comment, to let you know that for the past few months I have been reading every single one of your posts! I live in Montreal, Canada and have been learning German for almost a year now. Thanks so much for running this blog! :)
Cool, thanks for your feedback :) and good luck with your studies!
I’m an Italian Foreign Languages student, and I just wanted to thank you for the amazing and useful work you’re doing. I’ve been learning German for a year and I can’t even yet formulate a phrase, your blog is really giving me three or four hands!
Cool. I am happy to hear that… and you should start to try phrase things … better a faulty phrase than no phrase :)
Dear Emanuel, I came across your blog only recently. I want to thank you for your great blog because so far it has been greatly helpful to me and has introduced me to many useful German phrases as well as grammar rules. Would you be so kind and explain, in a future lesson, how to say “I want you to know that…” in German? (and ‘I need you to…’) Also I meant to ask you, what is your first language and how many languages can you read/write/speak? Thanks! :D
Hi Manni,
thanks for your feedback. It is always great to hear that it helps people :).
As for your question… since that would be a translation of an English expression I don’t really know how to frame it as a topic but I can give you a short answer:
I want you to know… would literally be
Ich will, dass du weißt…
However, in many occasions Germans would use a different phrasing… “you should know”:
Du solltest wissen….
A variation of that is:
Du musst wissen….
which is a little more urgent maybe and thus a good match for “I need you to know…” and oh… for this (I need you to know) there is NO literal translation.
Ich brauche dich zu wissen… is nonsense in German and noone would understand :)
As for the languages… German is my mother tongue and English is my second language. I can also speak and write French, but not as fluent as English. I have a basic knowledge of Finnish and I was able to read and write in Finnish 4 years ago but I never managed to actually talk.
And finally I was able to hold conversation in Italian and I can read it fairly quickly but I never use it so it will slowly go to sleep …
Thanks so much for a great site! I love your style of writing and approach to teaching. I am American and honestly thought you were too, your English is amazing. Your article on adjective endings was awesome and hilarious. Such good advice! Please keep teaching us, I look forward to more words of day!
Ha then youtube has taught me well :)… honestly though, I am really incredibly vain when it comes to my English so your compliment made me grow about 2 inches and pad my shoulder for half an hour ;)
This is great. Ich bin eine Austauschschulerin und ich wohne jetz in Deutschland fur ein jahr. Dein blog ist ganz toll! Ich kann noch nicht so gut Deutsch weil ich bin in deutschland seit nur 2 Monate. Dein blog ist seeehr nutzlich. Und du sprichst Englisch wirklich gut!
Ich werde diesen Blog ab sofort benutzen!
Woo! Korrigier mich bitter wenn du hast zeit. :) Und ich hab auch einen Blog auf WordPress uber mein austauschjahr hier in Deutschland. Du kannst das anschauen wenn do mochtest! :)
Also du hast ein paar Schreibfehler (bitte, du, möchtest / moechtest, jetzt, fuer, some words should be capitalized) aber sonst ist der Text ziemlich gut.
Hier noch 2 andere Fehler:
…, weil ich erst seit 2 Monaten in Deutschland bin (verb final because of weil, only as the opposite of already is erst … I have written about this so check it out:)
… du sprichst wirklich gut Englisch. (Englisch sounds much better as the final word for reasons I don’t want to discuss right now … but I will when I talk about word order)
Viel Spaß bei deinem Austauschjahr und viel Erfolg mit dem Lernen.
Where is the article where you talk about the verb in the final position? i can’t find it. :(
I havent’t really talked about that yet I think… just the prefix part. I will touch the matter when I talk about sentence structure though and that is going to be soon…
hello bro! im german teacher in Turkey. You should a contact page.i’ll credit you in my website wwww.esakademi.com and you should create a pdf file of your all works if you’ve already done this let me to know where it is. I would also to share it on website. Take care!
Aka, please make it easier to distribute his work for free. Klingt spannend : p
Hahahah… yeah :)
Gruesse aus Graz! I’d like to nominate you for the Liebster Blog Award! You’ll have to follow me back to my blog to pick up the questions that go with the nomination, but congratulations on being one of my (and doubtless many others) favorite reads! I always look forward to a new post :)
Oh cool… that sounds great :).
Hey so I read the rules on your blog and I fear I have to be a Spielverderber because I can’t follow them…
I don’t really follow blogs (save 3, 2 of which I read occasionally and the last one hasn’t posted anything in 7 month)… so who would I nominate… and then where would I post the answers and the random things… I don’t want to make it an extra post since people get an Email whenever I post stuff and I feel kind of responsible to make sure it is what they signed up for… so basically I am being totally sceptical German about it :)
well goodness no need for all of that! This is a pretend universe, I am confident we can bend the rules as need be. Please put aside your natural cynicism, or at least re-direct it (I hear the OeBB could really use some improvement) and try to enjoy the moment ;) I promise not to tell anyone that you haven’t followed all of the rules, I didn’t either, if that makes you feel better. Just thought you deserved a thumbs up, you’re free to accept and play along as you wish!
hahaha… alright then I gratefully accept of course and I do appreciate it (just as I am happy to see your liking my posts all the time :)…. I added some random facts to my about page … but what is OeBB??
huzzah! The OeBB is the name of the train system here in Austria. While my only experience has been pleasant, I’ve heard many tales of misadventure from others. Apparently they could use a little more German organization ;)
Hah… I don’t know about that… S-Bahn in Berlin is a neverending story of failure and mismanagement with people waiting for 60 minutes in cold in the middle of the capital because… the doors were frozen and that is just one example. it is funny actually. At some point this year (in February I believe) they seriously did announce that they would finally return to their emergency schedule after… THEY HAD BEEN ON AN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY SCHEDULE for months with several lines completely without service :)
I have a question.
Why do people say.. “2 Tagen” or something similar when the plural of Tag is TagE.
Wann benutzt man am ende “N”?
This is an ending for accusative case… In 2 Tagen is accusative and that’s where the n comes from. Most nouns don’t get such endings but unfortunately some do… I would say, just pick ’em up along the way based on flow… it is really frustrating to study those on purpose
Vielen Dank für diesen Blog!! Ich komme aus den USA, und seit 2 Jahren unterrichte ich mich. Ich hatte ein bisschen Hilfe auf LiveMocha.com (FB für die Menschen, die eine neue Sprache lernen wollen). 2011 war ich 25 Tage in den “DACH” Länder, aber ich wusste nur ein bisschen Deutsch (ich sprach nur Deutsch in Europa. Es war für mich wichtig). Ich kenne eine Bekannte, die in Leipzig mit ihrem Mann lebt. Von Zeit zu Zeit kann ich mindestens mit ihr schreiben. Ich habe Die Presse app auf meinem iPhone, und ich kann täglich laut lesen. Ich habe eine sehr starke Empfehlung für zdf Videos (Heute Show, Bella Block, Tatort, Soko, Die Erde usw.) und arte.tv, wo man viele interessante Dokumentarfilme finden kann. Ich höre 1-2 Std. täglich zu, und es ist sehr gut für meine alte Ohren! Ich lese viele Bücher auch. Sie sind sehr gut für meine Vokabeln. Seit Februar finde ich fast 2000 neue Wörter, die ich einprägen will. Ich werde alles diese Wörter nicht sagen, aber ich werde sie hören. Patricia Koelle schreib sehr klar, und ich genieße ihre Bücher. Sabatina James (e.V.) schreib sehr gut Deutsch: Sterben sollst Du für Dein Glück und Nur die Wahrheit macht uns Frei. Sie hilft den Frauen, die unter Scharia leben muss. Jetzt schrieb ich manchmal in Deutsch auf FB, und ich muss sehr vorsichtig mit meinem Deutsch sein, um die dumme Fehler nicht zu machen (Regenbogen vs. Regenboden)!!!! Leider kann ich nicht mit jemandem sprechen, deshalb spreche ich mit der Luft, wenn ich laufe.
Semicolons; These separate two independent clauses where you leave out the coordinate conjunction. I am really tired of studying; tomorrow I will do something else. You may use it in a list to separate major points, where you have commas in between: In Alaska, there are brown bears, which are very dangerous, and I try to avoid; wolverines, which I have seen twice, and that pound for pound are the most ferocious animal on the Earth; caribou; and wolves. It took me a long time to remove the comma after an adverb that began a sentence, because we always put one in. Likewise, starting a sentence with a year number is something we just don’t do in English. The main thing is not to argue with the language but accept it for what it is.
Your English is great. Weiter so. One minor thing that most Americans miss–all right is two words. I like your style, and I will be coming back.
Mike Smith AKA Boreal Blog
Hey Mike, tausend dank für deinen langen, schönen Kommentar. Ich habe mich sehr darüber gefreut :). Dein Deutsch ist schon ziemlich gut… man merkt zwar manchmal schon noch, was deine Muttersprache ist aber das ist überhaupt nicht schlimm… ausserdem, so motiviert wie du bist, bist du bestimmt bald perfekt. 2000 neue Wörter… das ist soooo viel. Das ist auf jeden Fall genug um dich normal zu unterhalten.
Ich stimme dir auch zu, was die Sprachen angeht… die sind halt einfach so wie sie sind und man muss das so hinnehmen… Deutsch und Englisch sind ja quasi noch Zwillinge im Vergleich zu manchen Sprachen der Indianer (native americans). Das sind völlig andere Welten…. viel Spaß auf jeden Fall beim lernen und Deutsch lesen und ich hoffe du findest hier auf dem Blog noch was, was dich weiterbringt. Gruss und frohes neues Jahr über den Teich…