Yeah, that title was totally click bait :)
But for good reason because I have a little announcement and you’ll really like it.
So… right now it’s fall (a very freaking super uber gray fall in Berlin) but advent season is coming and besides ginger bread and Glühwein and shopping stress and family stress that also means: advent calendar.
For those of you who don’t know what that is… the idea is essentially that you get to open a little present every day between the first and the 24th of December. A piece of chocolate, or a ginger bread or even just a nice small picture.
It’s really a cool tradition so last year, we did that last year here on the blog too. Every day you’d get a … prefix verb.
Uh… hooray… I guess.
Here’s a link to the first episode, in case you want to check out the series… which is NOT in the archives ;).
So, I actually really like the idea and I want to do a advent calendar again this year, but not with prefix verbs. This time, it’s you to decide what goes in it.
Here’s how it works:
Leave a comment asking me something, anything.
That can be a question about the German language… as long there’s a fairly short answer. So no “How does the conditional work in German?” All those little questions:
- What’s the difference between A and B?
- How to translate X in that context?
- Do you have a trick for pronouncing this and that?
You can also ask me to draw up a little exercise on some grammar topic… like “Give us an exercise on word order.”
And you can ask about German politics (yawn) or German fashion (is there such thing?) or Germany in general. . Or to read out a poem. Or sing Madonna. Or do a drunk rant about something. Or post a nude picture of me. You can ask anything really.
I will then pick the best questions and requests and boom… that’s gonna be this year’s German is Easy Askvents Calendar. Every day a cool little surprise.
So go right ahead… post your question in a comment here. And oh… I almost forgot… there’s gonna be a little give away if your question makes it into the calendar.
Ich bin schon gespannt auf eure Fragen :)
Bis dann.
Your blog does such a better job than the old textbook I found! Thanks! I have just arrived in Germany to live with my family (from USA) and ALL the in-person classes in my city–there are about 20–are full until March. Do you think if I do all your exercises and learn some additional vocab that your course will bring me through A1?
Definitely! You should read all the “essentials” in the course section and check out some of the A-Level posts in the Word of the Day and study some more vocab. Mix in a little practice with Duolingo and you’re more than fine.
awesome because DW is good but boring. Duolingo is also good though I took a “pretest’ and because I understand German conceptually pretty well (my vocab is slim but I can figure things out when reading) it said I was 55% fluent already and started giving me exercises I simply could not do! Thanks for being here! LG Sarah
Cool, let me know how it is going :)
Could you put the search box at the top of the page, so I don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom? Cause I love your site and come here all the time.
I’ll look into it when I find the time, promise!
The first time I was in Berlin, I overheard a conversation between a waitress and some customers. I didn’t know very much German at that point, so it’s a bit difficult for me to remember what the conversation was about from memory, but I recall the waitress saying something like “ah so” or “ach so” or “also”, many times. I had the impression that she was saying something like ” and so on” , because she would give a hand motion every time she said it where she turn her hand around in a circle. These days, I know “and so on” to be “und so weiter”, so I don’t think that was it. Could you guess at or explain this phrase from the horribly small amount of info I just gave you? :D
That’s a hard one, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “also”. That would only make sense if she was lecturing the customer for an extended period of time on a complicated topic. The others are more likely but yeah… without anything else, that’s all I can say.
Another request. I would love the artiicles in audio format (podcasts) to listen while commuting again and again.
That’s a huuuuge project though. And they’re notw ritten to be read out. That would change the dynamic and the flow, so there would need to be edits. Maybe at some point in the future :)
Kanst du Bescheid erklären?
It’s in the book that I keep mentioning. I should stop mentioning it and finish it instead :)
A burning question: when you are going to substitute a pronoun for a word, how do you figure out when to use er versus der or sie versus die? I seem to always guess wrong beyond the fact rhat in English we just do not have this conumdrum. All objects are neutral and the word das should cover it all, meiner Meinung nach :-). Thanks!
What’s a great quote that will impress Germans when brought up in conversation?
Since Christmas is coming, how about your favorite German Christmas movie?
I don’t think I have one :D
I would like to request a blog (or series) on Konjuncktiv II. I understand it, but not really, all at the same time.
Comin’ up next year :)
Woher stammt die Currywurst eigentlich? Ist sie ein staple fast food wie hamburgers und hotdogs? Und kennst du gute deutsche Musik (Sänger, Bands, Musiker oder so)? Denn fast alle Deutsche, dass ich kenne, hören nur englische Musik :P
Explain “Na ja”!
How about whether ‘laufen’ means to run or to walk? There is much debate over this
What are some “hip” words among the German youth these days?
Why are there so many words for “chicken”? A fairly famous (among my circle of friends) story of a friend of mine here, who started learning German when she was already 40, was that she had some German friends over for lunch and served a fancy chicken salad. She initially described it as “Salat mit Hündchen,” which earned a round of laughter, causing her to correct to “Salat mit Händchen.”
On a related note, a cool post could be one about vowel length and easily (for English speakers at least) confused German words, e.g. “schwul/schwül” or “Hölle/Höhle.”
I like both of these questions :)
Is it too late to make a request? If not, I would like to see an article about knowing the gender of foreign words. Searched for it a little bit and didn’t find good answers. (:
No, not too late at all. I’ll take suggestions up to the 30th of November or so :)
Vielleicht etwas mit Wörter die kurz geschrieben sind und was sie bedeuten.
Wie zum Beispiel (z.B.) deshalb (d.h.), u.a., bzw., und so weiter (u.s.w).
Es ist nicht so einfach zu googeln die Wörter wann man weiss nicht was sie könnten sein. Ich kenne schon ein paar aber nicht alle.
Wait, d.h. is deshalb? I’ve always assumed it was ‘das heißt’, ha. Yeah, this question could be a really good one to address :D
You had it right, it’s “das heißt”. There’s no acronym for “deshalb” that I’d be aware of.
This is a good one, especially for people moving here. I think maybe I learned some of those abbreviations in school or college, but you get here and they’re everywhere. Aside from the ones GG lists, there’s:
– bzgl.
– zzgl.
– o.Ä.
– bspw. (ok yeah, same as z.B.)
– ggf.
– i.A.
– z.Z.
– m.f.G.
I’ll probably think of more…
Oh cool… I already did some brain storming but I forgot quite a few. Danke!
Ich liebe deinen Unterricht!!!!!
Toll! Danke :)
The sensible me would like some side-by-side audio of the differences in pronunciation between ‘o’ and ‘ö’ and ‘u’ and ‘ü’.
Aber was wäre noch besser:————————–
Es würde mir gefallen, wenn du ein Lied singen würden. Egal was für ein Leid: ein Schlaflied, ein Kinderlied, ein Weihnachtslied…sogar ein Meer-Shanty! Wenn du schüchtern bist, könnten deine Mitarbeiter mitsingen.
Mal sehen, wie die vielen Praktikanten das finden ;)
I’m planning to finally leave South Korea behind and come to Germany next year to work and study. My question is: what little secrets should I know that might make my transition easier. Dieses Idee ist schön.
i mean even if they do it zehr schlect!
Haha… seriously, though… I can only speak for myself and for me sehr schlechtes Deutsch coming from an English native speaker doesn’t bother me very much. For me it’s worse from speakers coming from French or Spanish because of all the filler “ehh, uhh” they tend to mix in. That combined with bad German gets tiring very quickly .
Is not a filler only… Just remaining vocals that our language got us used to… Like the typical…. Ich kommeee aus Eeeespanien