Angelika Davey's Blog, page 51

How a German singer can inspire to learn German

Photo Wikipedia

I always find it interesting to hear what inspires students to learn German. This weeks blog post is from a student, who wishes to remain anonymous, but has complained to me that whenever there is a blog post about the ‘Top 10German singers’, the sites never mention Sandra. As I only remember Sandra as the singer from Enigma, you have a guest post today from a huge Sandra fan. Over to you: “I discovered German pop star Sandraby accidentwhen Iheard her voice on a televise...

Angelika’s challenge: learn German for 30 days and win prizes

Happy New Year!

Did you makeany New Year’s resolutions? Were any of them about learning German?
If yes, then this blog post will be perfect for you! Because ………..

I am inviting you to join my 30 day learn German challenge. Start today or the next few days (last day to start is Sunday 10th) and spend the next 30 days at least 5 minutes learning some German. That could be doing a unit on Duolingo, reading a German online article or something from a book/ textbook, listen purposely to a Germa...

How to say New Year’s resolutions in German

It’s that time of the year again – nearly New Year’s Eve – and time to make New Year’s resolutions!

How could you do this in German?
There are several ways to say what your intentions are:

Use the present tense
Most of the time Germans use the present tense when talking about the future. The present tense is all you need when there is a time phrase in the sentence or you just know it is meant to be in the future. So, if you wanted to stop eating chocolate, you could sayIch esse keine Schokol...

Does it feel like Christmas? Oh yes, it does!

Frohe Weihnachten from the children of the German group in Calne, who also wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas!

A few monthsago fellow language blogger, Lindsay Dow of Lindsay does Languages, had this wonderful idea of creating an international Christmas song. Shespoke about it in a Facebook group and the following video is the result!

She decided on the Muppets’ ‘It feels like Christmas’ and a group of language enthusiasts, including me, translated individual lines into variouslangua...

The Christmas Story in German

Today’s blog post is the Christmasstory, read by me from the Luther Bible, Luke 2, verses 1 – 19, in German, of course! You can either just listen to me as I read the story, or you can click on the ‘subtitles/ close captions’ button and read the text as well.

If you want a reminder of the story in English, you can read about the Birth of Jesusfrom the New International Version (NIV) here.

Frohe Weihnachten! Merry Christmas!

The post The Christmas Story in German appeared first on Ange...

Where can I watch German news?

You’ve been learning German for a few years and you feel ready to watch the news in German.

Where do you start?

If you feel your German isn’t good enough to watch the news as they are shown on German TV, then try the news for Children.

Logohas daily news programmes lasting 10 minutes and are aimed at German children.

Neun einhalbare weekly news for children. If you click on “zur Sendung” you’ll get taken to the latest video, which lasts nine and a half minutes, hence the title.

Kiraka – dein...

Practise your German with online Advent Calendars

Have you bought your Advent Calendar? I bet it has chocolate inside

I had a look again to see if I could find some useful online Advent Calendars and found a few:

has a calendar in English with interesting information about Christmas in Germany. HanisauLand has a calendar with interesting facts in German Deutsche Welledid a nice one two years ago with audio text to guess what has been described. Unfortunately, as it’s an old calendar, you get the answers before you can even...

Yes? No? Jein!

Who remembers “Little Britain”?
Do you remember Vicky Pollards ‘yeah but no but’?

Here’s a little reminder:

What is the relevance to learning German, you may wonder?

Well, the Germans don’t have to say ‘yes and no’, they can say ‘JEIN’!
Jein ismade up from the two words ‘ja’ and ‘nein’ and is frequently used in spoken German if the person isn’t sure how to answer and would need to say ‘yes and no’.

So, from now on, if you can’t decide whether to say yes or no, say JEIN.

Warst du schon mal...

The lost chord – German for guitar players

Are you a German learner who also plays the guitar? Then you might like to know what some of the guitar parts are called in German! You never know, you might buy one in Germany, and even if you don’t,if a German talks about the Tonabnehmer, you now know what they mean!

If you are in Germany and need to buy new strings because some broke, you need to be aware that one of them is called differently. Fromthe thickest to the thinnest, they are

E A D G H E

As a guitar player, you’ll notice str...

How many American actors speak German?

Actually, I have no idea how many American actors speak German! I also don’t know how many English actors speak German!

As a young child in Germany I thought they all do. Then, as I got older, I found out they don’t. The films get dubbed. I never knew how John Wayne sounded for real, or Tony Curtis, or Roger Moore, or Sylvester Stallone, or any others …

This isn’t particularly good for Germans who are learning English (although nowadays you can watch a lot more films with the original voices...