Angelika Davey's Blog, page 52

Practise your German with an online picture dictionary

Do you like dictionaries? Most people don’t. They are boring to read, but, of course, useful, when you need to look for a word.

Have you ever had the urge to read a dictionary? Even, if your answer usually is ‘no’, you may like to look at this one, anonline Bildwörterbuch, a picture dictionary.

It’s a brilliant site, if you either just want to have a browse and look at pictures while learning some new German words, or if you are interested in a particular topic and want to learn new vocab a...

Im Bärenkrankenhaus – at the bear hospital

Last weekend I went to the official opening of Moonraker Bears, a local bear shop and hospital. I liked it so much, that I was looking for an excuse to take some pictures for a blog post. Then I remembered that awhile ago I wrote a blog post about common illnesses, in case somebody would need to see a doctor in Germany.

So, to continue the theme, here are 6poorly bears with some illnesses that aren’t as common as the cold or headache.

And here are two more bears which are just cute

Th...

Dasselbe? Das Gleiche? It’s all the same to me!

Dasselbe? Das Gleiche? It’s all the same to me! Or is it?

Sometimes you want to say that things are ‘the same’ and you look it up in the dictionary and find thesetranslations: derselbe, dieselbe, dasselbe and more and also der Gleiche, die Gleiche, das Gleiche and more.

Looks bad enough to tear your hair out?
Actually, it looks worse than it is.

Let’s look at the two main words dasselbe, das Gleiche. Both mean the same, but there is a slight difference between them.

Dasselbe means it is the o...

I’m a little teapot – no, I’m looking for German words!

The other day somebody posted a picture with a German word and several meanings. Seeing the picture, my friend Freya reminded me of a game German children play, called Teekesselchen (little tea pot). I did a little research and found out that the game is based on an English book ‘The Book of a Hundred Games’ written byMary White in 1896. On page 117 she writes about a game called‘Teapot’. It’sa game of homonyms, words that sound the same, are usually, but not always, spelled differently. You...

Honour thy German Teacher!

Today is World Teacher Day! It’s been celebrated every 5th October since 1994. “According to UNESCO, World Teachers’ Day represents a significant token of the awareness, understanding and appreciation displayed for the vital contribution that teachers make to education and development.” (quote Wikipedia)

So I thought, today is a good day to look at some German teacher related words – and we have some videos, too

Let’s start:

Teacher = Lehrer, but only if it’s a male teacher.
Teacher = Lehr...

10 reasons why you should learn German

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably don’t need any reasons for learning German. But the lovely people of takelessonsproduced this great infographic, which I thought was worth sharing.

Don’t you agree?

The post 10 reasons why you should learn German appeared first on Angelika's German Tuition & Translation.

What does a German keyboard look like?

As a German learner you most likely have written aGerman text on your computer and find writing the extra characters ä, ö, ü and ß a bit of a hassle. You either need to use a virtual German keyboard, find the symbols on a word document and copy and paste or use number combinations for it. If you need a reminder about the number combinations, check out an older blog post about the letter ß and those other German letters.

So, while you are (maybe) struggling with those, have you ever wondered...

What is the difference between reden, sprechen & sagen?

A few weeks ago a student asked me what the difference is between the verbs reden, sprechen and sagen.

If you look those words up in the dictionary you’ll find:

reden – to talk, to speak, to say sprechen – to talk, to speak, to say sagen – to say, to speak

Hmm, that’s useful, isn’t it?

Actually, if you think about it, when do you use talk, speak or say? Speak and talk are often interchangeable but speak is more formal than talk. A speaker is somebody who holds a speech whereas a talker pro...

Astrantia – the New Dual Language Browser

Have you ever come across an interesting article online which wasn’t in your native language but you really wanted to know what it was about? Or, have you read an article in a foreign language, understood most of it but would have liked to see a translation as well?

Of course, you can use Google Translate. Sometimes, the website offers a direct translation, or you need to copy and paste the text into Google Translate to see what it was all about. Both ways aren’t always easy to do.

If only y...

15 German tongue twisters to get your tongue round

Do you remember trying to say tongue twisters as a child? Did you try to say them as quick as possible and fell over laughing because you couldn’t? Do you remember that those saying didn’t really make much sense but they did make you practise the sounds certain letter combinations made?

Well, now is the time to do the same in German!

Tongue twisters is German are ‘Zungenbrecher’ (lit. tongue breakers) and I have prepared a video and slides with 15 tongue twisters for you.

You can look at th...