Word of the Day – “Bescheid”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day, this time with a look at the meaning of

Bescheid

 

Now, I spelled that with a capital B which means that it’s a noun. And of course that raises the question whether it is der, die or das Bescheid.
Well, technically it’s der Bescheid.  But in practice we won’t need the article, because Bescheid is super chill about these things.
Like… Germans were like “Hey, Bescheid, do you want us to use an article with you like with all the other nouns?” and Bescheid was just like “Nah bros, it’s cool. Who am I to make you guys use an article. I’m just a normal word.”
Super humble.
“Hey Emanuel, you asked us to tell you when your intro is starting to waste our time… well, it just started.”
Oh… okay, cool. Let’s jump right in, then. Thanks for the heads-up :)

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Posted on October 11, 2018 by

Posted in A-Level, Audio Examples, Nouns, Vocabulary

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Word of the Day – “handeln”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll take a look at the meaning and family of

handeln

 

But we’ll need some mind bending today, so let’s stretch our brains together a little to warm up. 
Handeln is of course related to English to handle and they both come from the old Germanic noun*handeigh which was the word for  “portable phone”. Back then, it was much harder to see each other in person because there were no cars and no planes and the people were practically dependent on their cellphones to keep in touch. Just as Cesar noted in his diary…

Germanum sine portabile in mano rarum est.

That’s Latin. In my dreams anyway.
Anyway, the tribesmen were always with their phone, and so it’s no wonder they eventually came up with the word hand which literally meant “thing that holds the portable phone”.
Everybody thinking “What the hell?” yet?!?! Yes?
Well, perfect. Your brain is all warmed up now, ready for real info. So let’s jump right in…

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Posted on October 4, 2018 by

Posted in Audio Examples, B-Level, Must have words, Vocabulary

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Word of the Day – “peinlich”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German word of the Day. This time, we will talk about … my pee stain.
I was in a café, a very crowded café I should say, and I had to go to the bathroom. And as the guys among you know… sometimes a few drops come out late, no matter how thorough you are. That’s what happened to me that day. And as I washing my hands (like real gentlemen do),  it formed. A pee stain. Roughly the shape of Australia. Eight inches in diame… okay, okay, I’ll stop. Of course, we’re not gonna talk about that pee stain. There never was such a pee stain to begin with. The reason I made it up is that it has a lot to do with the word we’ll look at today:

peinlich

 

And  peinlich does have a lot to do with pee stains because peinlich means embarrassing.
Why it means that, and why the translation is not always straight forward, that’s what we’ll look at today.
So let’s jump right in…

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Posted on September 27, 2018 by

Posted in Adjectives, Audio Examples, Broad Vocabulary, Vocabulary

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Past Conditional – Exercise

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Hello everyone,

and welcome back to the if-est series ever… the series on Conditional. It’s been quite the journey. We learned what the heck I mean by conditional, we learned about the würde-conditional and the real conditional and when to use which. We learned about the past conditional and that there’s a simple system with two to four easy steps… depending on how you count. We went down the abyss of Past Conditional with modal verbs in sentences that have their verb at the end. And we came back out, with entirely new insights.
But now, the learning is done. Now it is time for the showdown.
Brabbabbbabbammmmm.
Us and what we’ve learned vs. dozens of sentences. One more ferocious than the next. But all vicious and full of guile, constantly looking to throw us a curve. Beat us. Break our brains and our spirits. But we shall not falte…
“Erm… we get it, Emanuel. Could we get going already, we don’t have that much time.”
Oh sure sure… ladies and gentlemen.. get ready for the epic

Past Conditional Workout

If you haven’t read the other parts of the series, you can of course give it a try. But if you want to read them first or you want to review them, then here are the links:

Conditional 1: Overview + würde conditional
Conditional 2: Real conditional (how and when)
Conditional 3: Work out (also epic, but not as epic as what we’re about to do)
Conditional 4: Past Conditional
Conditional 5: Past Conditional With Modals

And now I’d say let’s jump right in….
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Posted on September 19, 2018 by

Posted in Audio Examples, B-Level, Exercises, Grammar

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