From Ich hab Dich lieb to Ich liebe Dich!

Today is Valentine’s Day and although I’m not a big fan of this holiday I thought I could use it as an inspiration for today’s post. And fully ignoring Valentine’s Day in an article posted on February 14 didn’t seem quite all right either.
So I was thinking how to connect language and love. It isn’t [...]

erforderlich ≠ förderlich

Today’s topic is another pair of tricky German words. They seem so similar that many people assume they must be cognates. This similarity, however, is very misleading in this case. Just like the verbs (er)fordern and fördern, which have different meanings.
erforderlich (adj.) means necessary, required, prerequisite etc. Have a look at the examples:

Für mitreisende Kinder [...]

Bis dass das Geld euch scheidet

Just a little while after publishing my post on the difference between als and wie last week I was writing with my German friends and another very common mistake made by German native speakers caught my eye. Another one that I can hardly understand and I decided to devote my today’s post to it. As [...]

Wie, als, als, wie? Wie…??

The confusion between these two tiny words: wie and als is one the most common mistakes made by German native speakers. And one of the greatest mysteries to me as the explanation when to use which is very straightforward and unambiguous.
So much so that when I entered als and wie into google I immediately found [...]

Weltschmerz and other German “Schlagerexports”

Today I came across the word Weltschmerz in an English text and it made me think about other German words that immigrated into English and other languages. Some are pretty obvious and common, like kindergarten, poltergeist or doppelganger. Others are used mostly used in particular fields: gestalt in psychology, zeitgeist in sociology, weltschmerz in philosophy [...]

Westernklamauk & Mysterykrimiserie

There’s something very special about German TV guides. Every time I look up the TV program for the upcoming hours or days, I notice that under the title of every show or film there is an additional line explaining what kind of a show it is. So far so good, it’s not different in other [...]

Otto Normalverbraucher

It’s a funny thing with the name you use for a standard, normal, average person in different countries. Looking at the article on this topic on German Wikipedia, you will notice that especially in English-speaking countries there is a wide range of these so-called placeholder names.
Whereas in most countries it’s just one of the names [...]

Daily deal of the… week?

I’ve already complained a lot before about the way the Germans let the English words pollute their language but I’m still amazed all over again at some really not very well thought of instances of this phenomenon. I constantly come across funny and/or unnecessary translations and weird Germglish mixtures.
My favorite recently: der Daily Deal der [...]

mittels

There are certain tricky and troublesome words that are a nightmare for all learners of a given language. I decided to dedicate a post to this topic from time to time if you don’t mind.
Today’s word: mittels
mit•tels preposition, + Genitive (or Dative), elevated/written language – by means of
What I found particularly confusing about this [...]

All Rabbit’s Friends and Relations

A recent conversation with my flatmate inspired to write today’s post. He was then just about to start a new course at the university and I was asking if he was looking forward to meeting new people. However, I used the word Kollegen and was immediately corrected: your co-students are Kommilitonen (fellow students), not Kollegen [...]