When needing a lighter, a German would ask “Haben Sie Feuer”, literally translating as “Have you got fire?”Ĭhances are, if you're a chain smoker learning German who also forgets their lighter a lot, you've been asking after fire so much it's crept into your English too. What you're actually looking for is a lighter. Then you realize that German is once again messing with your mother tongue. They look at you oddly because they have neither wood, nor kindling. Stepping out into the cold English winter night for a cigarette, you ask someone if they have fire. So when you ring up someone in the English-speaking world whose name begins with a J, and German is playing with your English skills that day, they may not recognize the person you're after. Perhaps it took you a while to realize that the Julia you met in Germany doesn't have quite so exotic a name as you imagined, and actually spells her name the same way as the Julia you know from home (not Yulia). The German J is pronounced the same way as the English Y. This is yet another problem with pronunciation.

The actress known to Germans as Yulia Roberts. The shorter, catchier nature of “Na?” means it's always easy to slip back into German and use this monosyllabic word when you're interested in how your friends are doing. The best English translation might be “what's up?”.įor example, a slightly more antagonistic use of the phrase would be if a German Nicki Minaj had asked Miley Cyrus “Miley, na?” at the 2015 VMA's, rather than “Miley, what's good?” “Na?” is a shorter, more all encompassing way of asking what's going on with someone. You bump into an old friend you didn't expect to see at a party and in a moment of excitement, keen to know how they've been, you blurt out the German “Na?” Before you know it, you're asking where the facuum cleaner is, your children are telling you what they learnt about the fikings at school today and you're dressing up as a fampire for Halloween.ĭid these German Hells Angels greet each other with a 'Na'?. Lately, you're holding onto that rule so hard that it's starting to infect your English speech. W now sounds like the English V sound, and the German V sounds like the English F. You can forget your previous notions of what a W was meant to sound like. The only time you're likely to use the German numbering system is if you're reading an old nursery rhyme to your children, for example Sing a Song of Sixpence's “four and twenty blackbirds” baked into a pie.Ī while back you learnt the golden rule of German pronunciation. This may sound odd to English speakers, but it is common in other languages, such as Arabic. Twenty-one in English is one and twenty in German. In German, once you get past ten, the rightmost digit comes before the first. Photo: DPA.Īsking your local greengrocer for “five and twenty” potatoes may get you an odd stare, but this could happen if you spend a little too much time learning your German times tables. Numbers can be hard, just look at this Mental Arithmetic World Championship contestant. All very complicated.Ĥ. Getting your numbers the wrong way round You've been writing out an English word in phonetic German and that's why English spellcheck doesn't like you. The way that the 'ei' in English words like receive and deceive sounds, is the same as the 'ie' sounds in German. You've just been focusing too hard on German pronunciation. You may be staring at a word document, wondering why the spellcheck has decided to highlight the words 'recieve' and 'decieve', which you're sure are spelt right. The best English equivalent would be “right?”, so “Trump is all just a bad dream, right?” or “Trump ist nur ein Albtraum, oder?”.īut if you've been speaking a lot of German recently, you might notice the literal translation of oder creeping into your English.ĭon't blame your colleagues for their bemused expressions when you walk into the office and shake the rain off your umbrella, only to exclaim, “Terrible weather, or?” It's a way of asking whether the other person agrees with you. Putting “oder” (or) at the end of a sentence is common throughout Germany. You might have started subconsciously back loading sentences with verbs and greedily withholding them until right at the end of your point. There isn't enough time in the world to explain German grammatical rules but chances are, German has started messing up the grammar of your English sentences too. In German the main verb often goes at the end of the sentence. Giving you a Yoda-like sentence structure

German grammar structure