Fun with Phonetic Pronunication (video)

I teach how to (badly?) pronounce a German sentence:
Ich habe mein eigenes Rad. (I have my own bike.)
The pronunciation might not be perfect, but you’ll be understood - which I think is the most important part!

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Bin sitt

Those of you who speak or are learning German may be familiar with the word satt as in ‘Ich bin satt’, meaning “I’m full as a bull/stuffed/about to pop”.
A word you may not be familiar with is sitt, which is satt’s liquid equivalent, meaning one’s thirst has been quenched. Makes sense to me! Hungrig - [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Neologistic musings

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 [...]

Dedicated to my fellow antipodeans

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!

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And speaking of acronyms…

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