Advent Calendar 2022

Advent Calendar 24 – Frohe Weihnachten

“Frohe Weihnachten” *** *** Hallo ihr lieben, door number 24, the last door of the Advent Calendar and just like is the tradition, behind this door is… drumroll… Freizeit und ein Danke! Seriously, the stores are still open but I’m from East Germany, and traditionally Christmas is today, on the evening of the 24th, and it’s not a day for working or learning. So yeah… thanks a lot for joining me for the calendar this year and for all your feedback and the comments and all. We’ll do the yearly oracle next week, so stay tuned. But for now, have a relaxed and peaceful Christmas, and if have an argument over dinner… make sure to win :). And if you don’t celebrate, have a few relaxed days, and if you’re in Germany, go outside and enjoy just how quiet and deserted the cities seem. It’s a special mood you don’t get to see except for on Christmas. Oh and for those of you who have to work… I hope you have relaxed shifts and a good flow, and if you work hospitality, then I wish you some relaxed customers and no drama. I’ll probably do some work myself, because I … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 23 – “German Nuggets”

“German Nuggets” *** *** Hallo Leute, day 23 of the German Advent Calendar, slowly slowly (or not so slowly)  the Advent season is drawing to a close :). So a few days ago, I did a poll where I asked you for one of the days what you’d like to see in the Advent Calendar. The majority of you voted for the Yearly Oracle. I didn’t expect that, to be honest, and so I asked myself, what would Jesus do. But I didn’t like the answer, so I’ll do something different. Seriously though, this morning when I got up, I was thinking that it’s maybe cooler to do it right around New Years. And that’d also give me a bit more time to think of some int… I mean … to connect to the 5th dimension and channel the oracle. So instead, I’ll do the second place of the poll and that was… drum roll…. A Sneak Peek of my New Project Yes, we already had the card game, and yes, the books are in the works as well, but I had an idea not so long ago and usually it’s best to implement ideas when they’re fresh and then … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 22 – Alman is in the Air

“Alman’s in the Air” *** *** Hello everyone, door number 22 of our Advent Calendar, almost Christmas, and behind today’s door is some really nice and funny German Humor Error code: n.a. So have a great day, let me know in the comments how you liked it and I’ll see you tomorrow.                   Nah, I’m kidding. I’m not the biggest fan of German comedy, especially the one that makes it to the mainstream and TV. It’s horrendous. But today, I wanted to tell you about a YouTube channel that actually is kind of funny. I mean… maybe not lmao rofl burst out laughing funny, but at least it’s worth that approving little smile that says “Yes, this was humorous.” So that’s what I wanted to do today, and I will, but before that, I actually wanted to quickly share something I discovered with you that most of you won’t care about but still. Instagram German Influencers are FAKE So over the last year or so, I have noticed that there are more and more “langfluencers” or particularly “Germfluencers” pooping up on i… sorry… I mean popping up on Instagram. And many of … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 21 – “Make no mistake”

“Is this… perfectionism” ***   *** Hallo Leute, and welcome to day 21 of this year’s Advent Calendar. And today, I actually would like to … uh… “start a conversation”. Which is influencer speak for ranting about something :). Yes, I’m going to rant again. Seriously though, I want to share some thoughts about a trope in language learning that I find to be… not so helpful maybe. Learn it 100% right I don’t know if this is the best way to phrase it. But let me explain. The perfect example are the German genders and specifically the articles der, die das. And especially as a beginner, you’re likely to hear or read something like this, be it in a textbook, a course or a Youtube video: German Gender is really important and you should really learn it along with the noun. Now there’s nothing wrong with learning the gender alongside with the noun. What I do have a problem with is that teachers and other sources often imply that if you DON’T learn the gender along with the noun you’re making a mistake, because: “It’s really hard to unlearn a mistake.” As if learning something is akin to carving … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 20 – All about Asking

“All about asking” *** *** Hello everyone, day20 of our German Learning Advent Calendar, and today, I want to talk a bit about a rather common German word. One of the absolute essential German words even, because without it, we won’t ever get any answers. I’m talking of course about fragen Now, of course you all know what it means, and you probably have used it many times already. But let’s go over the basics real quick anyway, because why not. Feel free to skip it if you want to miss out. fragen – grammar and usage The conjugation is 100% organic, free range, grass fed Irish beef… aka 100% natural, aka 100% regular. ich frage du fragst er/sie/es fragt wir fragen ihr fragt sie fragen And the same goes for the past tense, which would be ich fragte, du fragtest and so on. But fragen is definitely one where people use the spoken past in daily life and that is also super regular. ich habe gefragt… In terms of structure, the person you ask is the direct object, so in German that means it’ll be in Accusative. Ich frage mich, warum du mich fragst. I’m asking myself, why you’re … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 19 – Rordr

“The Mystery of Rordr” *** ***   Hallo Adventskalenderisten, and welcome to the final stretch of the epic German Learning Calendar, door number 19. And today, it’s time to get a little active, because behind the cryptic title that sounds like a name of a dwarf in a fantasy novel is actually a little quiz about one of the burning questions about German: “r” or “dr” ? Yeah… it’s so burning, many of you didn’t even have it :). But you actually do have it, because it’s actually a common thing in spoken German and also a common mistake. And I don’t want to talk about grammar today, or what’s a prefix and and what’s a da-word and what’s an adverb. It gets quite messy and none of this really matters, at least not for speaking properly. What we’re trying today is to build some intuition for these things, because that’ll help us much more with sounding idiomatic than a bunch of rules. So… many of you probably remember this from one or the other article here: German tends to be quite “explicit” when it comes to expressing location and spatial relations. And one example is that German really likes … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 18 – “Back to the kitchen”

“Back to the kitchen” *** *** Hallo Leute, German Advent Calendar, Day 18, the fourth of Advent, and today we’ll actually pick up a loose thread of the Calendar and complete our look at the slightly sad truth about How (many) posts online are made If you missed the first part or you want to read that again you can find that here: Advent Calendar 15 – Peeking into the kitchen We left after step 3 when we had a list of promising topics for our blog. But now we need to create the actual articles. Ewww, that sounds like a lot of work. Especially because we’re not really interested in writing and in the topics. Because remember… we’re just doing this to market our product. And the topics we collected are based on search metrics, not on what we know or care about. Step 4 – Hire a (cheap) freelance writer So we go back online to Fiverr or Upwork or another of these freelance platforms and we find ourselves a cheap copywriter. There are plenty of English native speakers on these platforms who freelance as content writers, either as a side hustle or as their normal income while … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 17 – Breaking News

“Avatar: Blue Respite”     *** Hallo ihr Leute, und willkommen zu Tag 17 von unserem Advent-Kalender. Ein besonderer Tag, denn YourDailyGerman hat heute Geburtstag!! Hurra. An diesem Tag hatte ich damals den WordPress-Blog angefangen. Und das feiern wir mit einer absolut epischen Pause Laaaangweilig!! Im Ernst, es ist eine alte Kalender-Tradition, dass ich einen Tag einfach ausfallen lasse. Das erste mal ist das passiert, weil ich noch in einer Bar gearbeitet habe, und ich habe es einfach nicht geschafft. Und seitdem ist es ein fester Bestandteil des Kalenders, auf den sich viele Stammleser immer extrem freuen. “Aber… wir freuen uns nicht wirk…” STAMMLESER FREUEN SICH EXTREM DRAUF!! Also… heute gibt’s eine Atempause. Habt einen schönen Tag und Abend :). Obwohl… eine kleine Sache gibt es doch. Hi folks, and welcome to day 17 of our Advent Calendar. A special day, because YourDailyGerman has its birthday today. Hooray! On this day, the 17th, I started the WordPress-Blog back in the day.  And we’ll celebrate that with an absolutely epic Break Booooring!! Seriously though, it is an old calendar tradition that I simply skip one day. The first time, this happened, because I was still working at a bar and I … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 16 – Game Changer

“Game Changer” *** Hallo ihr alle, German learning Advent Calendar day number 16. And behind today’s door is a something that might be an absolute game changer, at least for those of you who make their own flashcards or vocabulary lists. I definitely was like “Wooooaaaaaaah” when I heard about this – in a freaking TikTok video, no less. Anyways, get ready for an epic Google Sheets Hack for Translation Google Sheets is pretty much Google’s version of Microsoft Excel and like Excel, it has lots of cool functions that 99.9% of people don’t know about. And one of these functions is… drumroll…. Google Sheets can be set to pull in translation directly from Google translate. And here’s how it works. Open a new document, one column is for English and one for German. Put some words or phrases into the side that you want to translate. Now, go to the first cell in the column of the target language and put in the formula for Google Translate The formula is: =GOOGLETRANSLATE([field number of origin] ; “[code for origin languge]” ; “[code for target language]”) In our example, the origin field is A2, so the second field in column A. … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 15 – A peek into the kitchen

“Peeking into the kitchen (#kindagross)” *** Hallo ihr lieben, and welcome to day 15 of our Advent Calendar. And behind today’s door is actually kind of a little glimpse “into the kitchen”, where lots of German learning content online is prepared. And just like in a normal kitchen… it ain’t pretty Many of you probably kind of low key know at least part of this, but I’m sure most of you are not fully aware of the extent of it. So let’s take a look at How (a lot of) Language Learning Content is made Normally, if someone sets out to explain something, by for example writing an article, we would assume that their goal is to … explain it. Of course, there might also be a financial reason. A journalist for a science magazine for example doesn’t just write because they want to tell us something, they also do it because it’s their job. But you’d usually expect the person writing an explanatory piece to be somewhat knowledgeable in the field and ideally, they also have an innate desire to share their expertise. So someone writing articles about some grammar aspect of the German language should have a passion … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 14 – “The Joinoooor”

  “The Joinooooor” ( doesn’t like a full stop, uses all subordinating conjunctions, sees two sentences – connects them, “The book was good. But could be one sentence.”, …)

Advent Calendar 13 – It’s in the Cards

“It’s in the cards” *** Hallo ihr lieben, eigentlich sollte ja gestern Halbzeit-Show sein, aber beide Acts haben abgesagt. Das ist schade, und ihr alle wart sehr enttäuscht und traurig… “Emanuel, eigentlich war ich überhaupt nicht trau…” Ihr wart SEHR TRAURIG!!!! Und ihr habt in den Kommentaren gefragt, ob ihr zumindest ein bisschen Werbung haben könnt. “Emanuel, ich habe alle Kommentare gelesen, und da hat niemand nach Werb….” Ihr habt nach WERBUNG GEFRAGT!! Und deshalb habe ich entschieden, euch heute mein neues Projekt vorzustellen. “Emanuel, du hast noch nicht mal dein Buchprojekt fertig.” Ich werde euch meine neues Projekt vorstellen!!! hi all you good people,  so yesterday originally was supposed to be the half time show, but both acts cancelled. That’s a pity and you all were very disappointed and sad.  “Uh, actually I wasn’t disappointed and sa…” You were really disappointed and sad!!! And you asked me in the comments, if you could have at least a few ads.  “Emanuel, I read all comments and no one asked for ads the…” You ASKED FOR ADS!! And that’s why I have decided to introduce my new project to you. “Emanuel, you haven’t even finished the old book project yet. I … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/rauf-drauf-difference-german/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>

Advent Calendar 12- “With you or with you.”

“With you or with you?”

Advent Calendar 11 – The Secret of Chindia

“The Secret of Chindia”

Advent Calendar 10 – Lord of the Flies

“Lord of the flies” ***

Advent Calendar 9 – The family gene

“The Family Gene”

Advent Calendar 8 – It’s beginning to sound a lot like…

  “It’s beginning to sound a lot like Quizmas!” ***

The Meaning of “Korb kriegen”

"einen Korb kriegen" is about asking out your crush and... being REJECTED. It's a really common expression, and today, we'll find out where it comes from.

Vocab: der Korb, einen Korb kriegen

Advent Calendar 6 – An Epic Cognate

“An Epic Cognate”

“scheinen” as “to seem” – A common mistake

English speakers often use "scheinen" as "to seem" but that's not actually how Germans talk. Today, we'll learn what to actually use.

Advent Calendar 2022 – Netflix and Chill

“Netflix and Chill”

Advent Calendar 3 – Jingle Polls

“Rug Poll!”

Advent Calendar 2- “Missfits”

“Fit and Miss”

German Advent Calendar – 2022 Edition (#peakfun)

“The Startening”   EDIT:  I had to clean up my email list and I removed a bunch of addresses that haven’t been active in months.  If you usually hear from me and that stops now, please let me know. I might have accidentally deleted your entry.