Wir bitten um Ihr (Miss)Verständnis

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. [...]

A century of subscribers! (video)

I pay tribute to my hundred (now 119 !) YouTube subscribers with some poetic musings, German-style.

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Hamburgs of the world, unite!

A little interwebbal research has shown me that Hamburg, Hansestadt, HH, meine Perle, is not the only Hamburg on this green Earth. In fact, I was able to find evidence of 13 (thirteen! Oooh, I hope you’re not superstitious) different Hamburgs around the world.
Okay, they’re not so much around the world as in the [...]

Post-it notes make language learning fun! (video)

Miss V takes post-it notes as a vocabulary-learning aid to the next level. Who knew you could have so much Spass with stationery?

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Public transport - translated!

You remember me Schlumping around on Hamburg’s public transport? Well check out this take on Hamburg’s HVV network: in English! It’s pretty hilarious - my favourite is “Adjustingen”.
(Click for the full-size map. Thanks to Klaussi for the link. Edit: Thanks to Scott for the heads-up about the broken link, now fixed.)

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That worm in your ear…

No, it’s not a disease!
You know when a song is (as we say in English) “stuck in your head”, going round and round (like a record baby)? Technically, it’s when a melody becomes trapped in what’s called the ‘phonological loop’, which rehearses what you’ve heard over, and over … and over again.
But the handy-dandy German [...]

German Pick-up Lines (Anmachsprüche video)

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

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Breaking news about the passing of our beloved umlaut

LOLCAKAOPULIA members unite! The umlaut, oh holy gracer of vowels that so enriches the German language, is once again in danger.
As the technologically challenged Miss V attempted to create a podcast (apparently it’s one of those fancy new technologies all the kids are using these days), just look at what they did to my [...]

New Zealand accent explained (video)

I explain once and for all the mysteries of that odd sound coming from the mouths of Kiwis.
**due to technical difficulties, this video from last week could only just be posted now. Enjoy the belated goodness!**

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Lego block building

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 [...]