Macking on the Macken: Miss V, getagged

Some time ago I was ‘getagged’ by Missy Cola. She threw me a Stöckchen by virtue of which I must reveal to you, the reader, 6 (six) of my Macken. And I have a perfectly good reason why it has taken me 65 days to take up this challenge. Two, in fact! First, I wanted to give the game a Miss-V lingua-twist, and do it in both English and German. Two, I didn’t know what either Stöckchen or Macken meant (‘little stick’ - like one you would throw to a dog - and ‘pet peeve’/‘quirk’, respectively).

Here are the rules:

1. Provide a link to the person who threw you the stick. (Check!) (Setze einen Link zu der Person, welche Dir das Stöckchen zugeworfen hat.)

2. Outline the rules in your blog. (Check!) (Erwähne die dazugehörigen Regeln in Deinem Blog.)

3. Explain 6 unimportant things/habits/quirks. (Erzähle von Dir 6 unwichtige Dinge/Gewohnheiten/Macken.)

4. Pass the stick to 6 more people through a link at the end of your answer. (Gib das Stöckchen am Ende Deiner Antworten an 6 Leute durch Verlinkung weiter.)

5. Leave a comment on each chosen person’s blog/website letting them know they’ve been tagged. (Hinterlasse bei der jeder der gewählten Personen einen Kommentar in ihrem Blog/Website, dass sie “getagged” wurden.)

The new shorthand?

Okay, okay, I know I have done the SMS Thema almost to death, but hey, I’m on the other side of the world. What is anyone going to do about it? Phil (who you can find down in Austria, or over at Phil’s Blogging) recently unearthed the fact that using SMS-slang instead of full [...]

Discovering Neuseeland: German culture in NZ (video)

Join me as I report live from New Zealand, and uncover some pockets of German culture along the way.

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False Friends Mark II: en Español

Looking to broaden your linguistic horizons? Try the faux amis thing in Spanish!

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Typical Miss V overconfidence - I thought: “Spanish! Que facil!”. Then I got 42%. Shame.

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The Sprudel Question

In between providing me with blankets and reading material and feeding me soggy vegetables in inidentifiable sauce, the lovely Lufthansa lady who looked after me for 10 hours sometime during the last 48 also offered me many a drink. Being a responsible air traveller, I stayed hydrated with lots of oxygen accompanied by 2 [...]

Unterwegs!

You’ll have to bear with me here, as I am about to undergo the 30+ hours’ travel that it takes to get to New Zealand. You see, I am paying a quick visit to family and friends on those little islands down there, and it just so happens that it is pretty much the [...]

False friends (video)

My pop quiz on some common false friends/falsche Freunde/faux amis for people trying to learn Deutsch. I know I’ve slipped up on them, especially at 6.30am.

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Txt ok & ‘wont hrt kids’

Remember when I looked into the increasing use of SMS language recently? Well, the plot thickens. A recent University of Toronto study says that using text slang will not hinder kids’ linguistic development, but rather presents an “expansive new linguistic renaissance”.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure about that. While SMS abbreviations may not statistically [...]

Further evidence of umlaut abuse!

I found this and just couldn’t resist. As I was flicking through an English cuisine magazine (WHAT! It’s hard to find English-language magazines here!), just look at what I found.

Which LOLCAKAOPULIA will volunteer to write a firmly worded letter defending the umlaut?

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Attention World Travellers!

I thought that since the readers of the blog seem to be worldy folk, that you all might like to test your knowledge of various countries’ names auf Deutsch. Achtung: it’s not as easy as it seems!

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