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- Category: German learning methods
5 Ways to Re-Use Your German & Learn More in the Process
There is one key ingredient to students who learn the most in their German lessons: they repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
My first German teacher was (and surely still is) an excellent instructor. She told me if I wanted to learn a new word in German, I'd have to use it 28 times.
28 times!! That's a lot of repetition. (If that's an average, sometimes it goes faster--say 20 repetitions, and sometimes it takes longer, say 40 repetitions. For as many times as you have to remind yourself that it's "das Ende," suddenly 28 times sounds fairly reasonable, oder?)
My awesome teacher was right.
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- Category: German vocabulary
IKEA Germany advertises with a catchy slogan:
Wohnst du noch, oder lebst du schon?
Are you still living, or are you already living?
Sehr lustig.
This works in German since wohnen ≠ leben. But the difference is significant. Here's how to tell the difference between wohnen and leben and which one to use when.
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- Category: German vocabulary
"Kennen" is not the same as "wissen" and it can be very confusing trying to tell the two apart.
Here you will learn what "kennen" means, what "wissen" means, and finally how to tell the difference.
There are example sentences, too, and I highly recommend you grab your German notebook and write them down so you can refer back to them later.
kennen
Ich kenne... is for things you can get to know. You might not have always known your German friend Marius, however you got to know him once, which means you can now say "Ich kenne Marius."
If you've been to Berlin and have seen the sites and have enjoyed the restaurants and have an idea of what it's like, then you can say "Ich kenne Berlin."
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- Category: German culture and food
The brothers Albrecht founded the discount chain Aldi in Germany after World War II. Now, four years after his brother Theo, Karl Albrecht has passed away, signaling the end of the first generation at Aldi.
The brand Aldi has grown to become a world-wide chain of discount stores, with their own Aldi-branded products and efficient store layouts, with weekly specials on special purchases--a different theme every week.
One of the things the brothers Albrecht were best known for was their incredibly high level of privacy and lack of publicity. There is only one famous picture available of them (left), partially because they were not interested in fame, but in running their business, but also because Theo Albrecht, who died in 2010, was kidnapped in 1971 and returned after 17 days and a ransom of 7 million Marks was paid.
Aldi is significant in German culture and the German economy, as anybody and everybody shops at Aldi--their products are frequently top-shelf, but with bottom-shelf pricing.
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- Category: German culture and food
Schlager is a form of music unique to German--it's its own genre. Comprised mainly of catchy tunes (that lead to ear worms), straight-forward forms and uncomplicated texts, you can hear Schlager at Oktoberfest, pretty much any Karneval celebration anywhere in Germany, and of course on German television.
You can easily dance to it and it's a good bet that you can dance with your kids to it and not worry about the texts.
A lot of Schlager shows are shown on TV in the evenings and are recorded performances in front of live studio audiences; and frequently, the singing is not live, it's lip-synced in-studio. I don't know why this is, but it happens all the time--even Nelly Furtado lip-synced one of her songs live on a German show.
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