Sprachenatelier Berlin

How many times have you been asked the question “Why are you learning x language“? Personally, I lost count. I can usually come up with a pretty reasonable answer, for example “because I have German friends“ or “because I want to work in the translation field“. However, sometimes I can't think of anything else other than “just because I like it!“. And truth be told, that is why I started and why I continue to study most of the languages that I know. In my opinion, you can compare language learning to a relationship: at first everything is amazing, you're in love with the language and just want to keep discovering more. And then the problems start to come up. At the beginning it's just little things here and there, once or twice, no big deal. Bu t after a while you get bored, you lose interest. Sometimes you can work it out and fall in love again, but sometimes the interest just isn't there anymore and you need to let it go. When I first s

As if learning a foreign language isn't hard enough already, there are unfortunately ambiguous sentences which have more than one meaning, which can be easily misinterpreted without context or understanding. We call these “garden path sentences“ because they are easily misunderstood (they lead you down the garden path ) even though they are all grammatically correct. There are two different types of ambiguity when it comes to sentences. L exical ambiguity, where one of the words have more than one meaning, and syntactical ambiguity, in which the syntax , or grammar , can be understood in more than one way. For example: Put the box on the table in the kitchen. Is the box already on the table, and to be put in the kitchen? Or is the box to be put on the table which is in the kitchen? What do you want me to do, mum?! It is not clear from the sentence where exactly the box should go. Confused by CollegeDegrees360 is licensed under CC BY 2.0   FUN

Back when I first started to learn German, there were a few things which I just couldn't get my head around, and that my teachers and a dictionary just couldn't explain. Little words like “schon“ , “doch“ , “eher“ , “erst“ ... Sure I understood the meaning, but I just never felt comfortable knowing when and how to use them. Luckily, one day I stumbled upon “German is Easy“ : a blog post for everyone who wants to learn German. It explains loads of useful words and grammar concepts, and how to use them, and provides some listening and writing/grammar exercises. There's always something interesting to read and plenty to learn and practise. It is without a doubt one of the best language blogs I have come across, and I really enjoy checking in every week to see what is new. Emanuel is the writer, and has this way of explaining things which is totally different to textbooks and teachers, and that is exactly why his blog is so good. His posts are brilliantly and humo

The first, and perhaps hardest, part of learning a language is to get out of what I like to call the danger zone. Out of the „how do I say it in my own language“ mindset and into the „how do I say it in German“ mindset. Thinking exclusively in the target language is probably the most important technique to master. Because, as ideal as it would be to simply think in the mother tongue and come out with perfect German, that's not exactly how it works. And it is this tendency to keep thinking in one's own language that causes repeated mistakes. But not to fear! Because so many people do it, we've managed to find some of the most common mistakes that seem to repeat themselves. So let's have a look at some of them together and see if we can knock them on the Kopf.  Mistake #1 PREPOSITIONS If I could go back in time to my 12 year old self, innocent and naive, sitting in my first German class with my whole future ahead of me, excited and r