Miss-Verständnis | Deutschlisch

Wir bitten um Ihr (Miss)Verständnis

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ April 5, 2008 ⋅ 8 comments

The avid readers of this blog (or should I say, ‘reader’ singular – Hi Mum!) might notice the entries a little sparse at the moment. This is because Miss V is in the land of Urlaub (where all Germans go on holiday), living it up and talking about herself in the third person in France. [...]

German Pick-up Lines (Anmachsprüche video)

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ March 21, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

I come on to German finger puppets with these slick pick-up lines.
P.S. Frohe Ostern!

Lego block building

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ March 11, 2008 ⋅ 10 comments

So I put in my two cents (or gave my mustard, as the Deutschies say) about German as a modular language.
But that was about verbs. Mmm, yes. Nouns (of the compound variety), in German, are a completely different (and somewhat maligned – by Englischers at least) phenomenon. Mark Twain wrote an essay called “The [...]

Neologistic musings

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ March 5, 2008 ⋅ 6 comments

So I was thinking (and no, it DIDN’T hurt!)… a source of interest and flummoxery to Englischers learning Ze Cherman is that there is a difference between Auf Wiedersehen (literally: until seeing again!) and Auf Wiederhören (until hearing again!), depending on whether you are in person or on the telecommunications device.
Could we thus, theoretically also [...]

In celebration of the ‘chen’

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ March 3, 2008 ⋅ 5 comments

Ahhhh, ze Cherman language. What CAN’T it do? Today I was thinking (as you do) about our friendly little suffix, the ‘chen’. Another quirk of Deutsch which allows the speaker to efficiently (who would have guessed!) express the smallness or cuteness of something.
The chen has given us gifts such as Brötchen (bread roll – ‘little [...]

Dedicated to my fellow antipodeans

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ February 26, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Ever felt like the deliciousness of something could not be described by the word ‘lecker’?
Well, now there’s an alternative from downunder which will really get the message across: “that was bloody lecker!” (and no, it doesn’t mean covered in blood.)
NB: Please do not take the offence. I only make the Spaß!

Duzen, Siezen, What-zen?

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ February 17, 2008 ⋅ 7 comments

This whole business of having different forms of the personal pronoun ‘you’ is really confusing. Thanks a lot, Germany. Way to make your language even harder to learn.
I mean, if there was a hard and fast rule that said exactly when and with whom you are supposed to duzen and siezen, that would be okay. [...]

Acronymical (video)

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ February 15, 2008 ⋅ 7 comments

Miss V, in a follow-up to her prefixation, muses on the lack of convenient acronyms in the German language.

Verbification

By Miss-Verständnis ⋅ February 12, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

Verbs, as the ‘doing words’ of any language, are always the more fun than boring old nouns. Englischers ‘verb’ (or, as I like to say, ‘verbify’) nouns all the time, especially in slang. For example: if the police use a taser gun on someone, that person was ‘tasered’ (or ‘tased’ – as in “Don’t [...]