Go to buyraycon.com/felifromgermany for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon *++As several people have correctly pointed out in the comments: Eisendrache translates to "Iron dragon" and not Ice dragon as I said in the video, which would be Eisdrache. Sorry about that! 🙈++* Which other German words have you ALWAYS wanted to know how to pronounce correctly? Should I start a TikTok/Instagram/UA-cam Shorts series about them? 🤔
For #37 It was used in a Volkswagen commercial many years ago and became a popular word to say because of its very German-ness. "Gesundheit" is very common in the US because of all the German imigrants that have come here over the years.
German here... I would say "Der Eisendrache" means the iron dragon instead of ice dragon because Eisen is iron and not ice, but maybe it's something just not used much in the German language, but I highly doubt that 🤷
Yes and I am kinda interested if she did this on purpose. I heard that some American/German youtubers do that because german viewers like to correct those mistakes wich means more engagement on the video.
@@AMK650 oh wow, I didn't even think about that😳... I hope that's not the case here. Anyways, I just thought that the people that don't know German should know the right translation 🤷
Yep, at 7‘34“ it can be seen in the little picture in the lower left corner: Eisendrache. But maybe for the American version the made the dragon icy. 😉 But it‘s probably about an steam railway, so iron would be better.
At 7:29 you say, that the translation of "Der Eisendrache" would be "the ice dragon". That would be "Der Eisdrache", though. Eisendrache means iron dragon.
@@red_dolphin468 Ja nun, wenn in einem lehrreichen Video etwas falsch erklärt wird, sollte man die interessierten Lernenden nicht in der Luft hängen lassen und den Fehler verbessern, oder?
I've been slacking on my German lessons but I still love listening to German artists, my favorites being Rammstein (obviously), Megaherz, Eisbrecher, Funker Vogt, Die Krupps, and Electric Callboy. Speaking of sechs reminds me of a joke I heard a while ago. "What comes between fear and sex in German? Fünf."
This joke is not working in German, because the pronunciation of "Sex" and "sechs" is different. So sorry, but just forget about it, even if the idea was nice.
@@kathrintaraba3274 like many jokes, it doesn't translate well into different languages, and sex and sechs being pronounced differently is kind of the point because to an English speaker they sound almost identical. Same with vier and fear, pronounced very different in German but close enough that a native English speaker couldn't tell the difference
Recently discovered your videos. They took me WAY down memory lane. My father was in the US Army and we spent 2 of his overseas tours in Germany. 1975-78 (Frankfurt), and 1980-1983 (Hanau). We LOVED living there. My parents were different from most of the Americans stationed in Europe. Many American families never tried to leave the kasernes. My Dad's view was the US government was paying for us to live in the country, let's go see the country, and other parts of Europe as well. We LOVED Oktoberfest. We really loved Christmas time, especially going to Christkindlmart when I was in elementary school. The places, the people, the FOOD. If I could emigrate to Germany, I would.
I spent 2 years there traveling to different posts installing communications equipment. Lived on the economy, enjoyed it. One site was remote, nearest full commisary was an hour away. You went there once a week and always bought things you might need, LOL
Fun fact about "Gesundheit!" (-> "Bless you!") in German: in the middle ages (?) people looked into the sky (heaven) and prayed for their own health by saying "Gesundheit!"after someone coughed or sneezed, because people died a lot of lung deseases in that times . So it has become a bit friendlier since then.
Fahrvergnügen was used in a series of VW commercials here in the US about 30 years ago. "Fahrvergnügen - It's what makes a car a Volkswagen." It's unintentionally funny to here the American narrators pronounce it. Maybe it was intended to compete against the slogan BMW was using at the time, Freude am Fahren. Also, doesn't Eisendrachen mean Iron Dragon?
I use Fahrvergnügen as a joking replacement curse word between myself & my wife. Like, "Well... fahrvergnügen", where a well damn or well shit would usually go. The Big F comes out on more serious situations & if I'm honest casual conversation being that I'm from NJ.
@@MagMan4x4 I'm German and *Der Eisendrache* means definitely *The Iron Dragon* --> *Der Eisen Drache* It is one of those typical combined words we have in German. *The Ice Dragon* would be *Der Eis Drache* --> *der Eisdrache* P.S. I'm really stunned she missed that!
12:24 I feel like this is the most obvious of any of the things asked about so far, with just the tiniest amount of knowledge about how sounds are spelt in German.
I enjoy listening and watching you. You have a great command for the English language, and a wonderful capacity to go between the German & English language. You also appear to have a great amount of energy. Keep up your great videos.
When we first moved to Germany I thout it was funny that my cousins listened to Elvis Presley. They sang the songs really good but they had no idea what they were singing. They didn't speak English. I also met a German band that sang a lot of Alabama songs but they didn't know many other country songs.
Liebe Feli, beim Wort Eisendrache (hab ich vorher noch nie gehört) steckt doch sicher das Wort Eisen drin, sonst wäre es doch der Eisdrache. Die Hälfte der deutschen Nachnamen habe ich hier noch nie gehört. Sind die damals alle ausgewandert und jetzt ist keiner mehr hier? By the way, deine Videos sind erfrischend unterhaltsam, ich freue mich immer riesig wenn ein neues kommt. Vielen Dank dafür.
My family name was originally Keller but it was changed to Kellar by my great-grandfather around 1900 because of his work on the railroads. I wish it was still in the original German spelling. I have a lot German heritage on my dad’s side of the family. Americans know the word “ Fahrvergnügen” from Volkswagen ads back in the 1980s or 1990s. I spent seven weeks in the summer of 1981 in Krefeld, Germany. I loved it and have many great memories. We also went to what was then West Berlin and we even spent a day in East Berlin, too. I never made it back to Germany until 2016 and again in 2018. I loved it both of those times, too. I love your videos and refreshing my knowledge of and learning more about German language and culture. Danke schön! Incidentally, my name is Shane and if had a dollar for every time someone said “Danke Shane” instead of “Danke schön” to me, I’d probably be a millionaire! Ha!
You have to love Rammstein. What a great band and live show. Plus they are returning to North America this week and I can not wait to see their show in NJ. Still learning all the German but great melody.
I love Rammstein. Been to all their concerts in Italy in the last 12 years, in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 12.07.2022. Great concerts, great band. I LOVE THEM
My favorite band from Germany is Rhonda. Not too hard to pronounce. ;) When we lived in Stuttgart as a kid, my grandfather (who spoke fluent German, Spanish, and Polish) was visiting and went the wrong way. I said to him that he took the wrong fart (said the English way). My parents loved to tell that story.
When I was growing up (mostly in the 1970s), most Americans I knew answered "gesundheit" in response to a sneeze. It made no difference whether or not they had any German ancestry or spoke German, and the word appeared on at least one children's record we had. I remember being a bit surprised to learn that there were other things one could say instead of "gesundheit". I still mostly say that when I hear someone sneeze, but because so many people make funny and often irreproducible noises when they sneeze, I've been known to answer "gesundheit" when someone says something that I find incomprehensible or unpronounceable, or when I need to say the same. An example of the former: if someone asks me a long, technical question with the details mixed up (I get these often, as I'm an Information Technology consultant), I may answer, "Gesundheit?" An example of the latter: there is a Finnish company named Nokian, which sells a line of tires named "Hakkapeliitta", the proper pronunciation of which I can only guess at, so I've been known to refer to these as "Hakkagesundheit".
In Finnish you pronounce words just like they are written, its easy, no silent letters, no different sounds of the same letter. "In Finnish, characters are there for a reason" - Hydraulic Press Channel from Finland.
What a beautiful, refreshing, wonderful person. AMAZING smile. If I am having a bad day I just watch one or 2 of her video's and I get a little pick me up. I'm definitely a fan.
I disagree on the part that "MOST" Germans would say that 'Sex' and 'sechs' are pronounced the same. Living in different parts of Germany I can say that this may be a thing especially in the south of Germany where 'sechs' is pronounced harsher at the beginning of the word. Outside Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg you mostly clearly hear the difference between the voiced and voiceless s-sound.
Yeah I was about to say her bavarianess is showing. In northern Germany you might hear people pronounce st or sp with a sharp s, but definitely not "Sechs".
Yeah, in this case her claim is outright wrong. The destinction is very strong and very much there in most regions of Germany and in most dialects. I don't know where she got that from but it's incorrect information. Nevertheless, there are a couple of dialects which apply a voiced s to the s in sex, just as they would pronounce sechs there. That is understandable insofar as sex is a Lehnwort or even a Fremdwort which does not follow German pronunciation rules. Maybe in the future it will be germanised into a voiced s. Just a little fun fact: When you study linguistics in Germany at a university level (like myself) the difference between grammatical gender (Genus) and biological gender/sex (Sexus) is one continuously revisited aspect of Indogermanic languages. And at the university they tend to use lots and lots of Latin to form concise technical terms. But Sexus is often pronounced with voiced s LOL I had only one younger professor who would pronounce Sexus with a devoiced s. Again, this just shows that Fremdwörter and Lehnwörter don't follow the rules very well, and why languages tend to assimilate them over time into their network of rules.
Fun fact: "Sechs" is actually written "sex" in Swedish. You bet they chose this spelling in order to trigger spam filters and various kinds of censorware. Btw: There is a noticeable difference in pronunciation - depending on age: When kids become aware of ... "the interesting stuff" ... they tend, for some time, to pronounce that number with a "ch" sound like in "Blech" to make sure they're not referring to the "dirty stuff". Never heard a voiced "s" though.
Hi Feli, once again very good, although I do not agree with one pronunciation rule. The first h in "Sehnsucht" is a silent h, but after the e it lengthens the e, as if it said "Seensucht". Without this h you could pronounce it with a short e like "Sennsucht".
I love this about language. In Texas, 'rodeo' is pronounced "row-dee-oh," but I hear in Beverly Hills, California, 'Rodeo Drive' is pronounced 'row-day-oh'. Also, in Texas, there is a city named Port Neches, and if you say Neches with a short a, we'll know you're not from around here. Locals say it with a long a, like Nay-ches.
@@Breathe-In-and-Out the rodeo drive is pronounced differently from A Rodeo Idk the origin of ro-day-oh drives pronunciation but in california we still say row-dee-oh for actual rodeos
Ballon: What you call the colloquial pronounciation is in fact the common one. Your's - with the long "o" and the "n"-sound at the end, is a southern speciality (southern Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland). Marlene Dietrich: The "r"-sound is produced in the throat, but the "ch" in made by the tounge in the mouth. The "throat-ch" can be found in "Lacher", "Macht", "Loch". With "ech", "äch", "ich", "öch", "üch" it is usually a tounge-sound (Licht, Recht, Löcher), with "ach", "och", "uch" your mentioned throat-sound.
I'm a German and this is a very good and accurate video with two exceptions where I disagree STRONGLY: 1. "Eisendrache" is NOT "ice dragon" but "iron dragon". I have no idea why she made that mistake since it's very clear. 2. "6" and "sex are pronounced profoundly different and German ears are not insensitive to the difference. While there are dialects in which the voiced "s" sounds more or less like the voiceless (like in Bavarian which is Feli's dialect) in the majority of Germany the distinction is very VERY clear.
Not only that: Katharina Witt was famous for mispronouncing Sex with the voiced S, so that it sounded like sechs. Sechs and Sex are very different to a German ear since the distinction between voiced s and voiceless s is significant - just like in English.
1. Yes I screwed that one up 😅🙈Sometimes your brain does weird things and you just don't question it. And even though several other people looked over the script and the video, nobody noticed this before publishing unfortunately. 2. Just to give you one example, many Germans can't hear the difference of the letter C and Z in American English and often mix up s and z sounds in English words. It's not like Germans can't hear this difference and of course, we do have both voiced and voiceless S sounds German, but since they're usually spelled the same (with the exception of ss and ß) and in many German dialects (such as Bavarian) also pronounced the same, I would say that the lines are a little more blurry than in English.
@dattel diskussion I highly disagree. the term sex entered German + English + French from Latin. And Latin was the language of Science which includes all medical terms as well for centuries in all European countries..
@dattel diskussion Sorry to say that but your English is then not the best...or at least very limited in behalf of wording. "to highly disagree" is a totally common phrase in English for expressing disagreement and has absolutely nothing to do with smoking pot. And you are making a huge mistake when you are limiting the meaning of the word "Sex" solely just for sexual intercourse because that is just an aspect of the actual meaning...The term includes for instance gender as well especially in English and also in French..and in German the term "Sex" is just the shortform of the word "Sexualität" and that includes intercourse + gender and even the sexual mental state of mind as well Somit ist dein Wortschatz nicht nur in Englisch etwas limitiert sondern auch in Deutsch. Es tut mir echt leid Dir das jetzt so direkt sagen zu müssen. Und ich meine das auch nicht böse oder beleidigend. Es ist einfach wie es ist. Vielleicht bist Du auch noch sehr jung und kannst daher noch viel dazulernen. Ich bin mittlerweile schon ziemlich alt und habe daher schon sehr viel dazugelernt Ich wünsche Dir noch eine gute Nacht.
I recently found your channel and love it. I have a few friends in Germany and had the time of my life when I visited them. I hope to go back one day soon.
Yeah, EAV is also in the video. 😃And they are still around! (even though they had their final live tour recently). They are known in the US? 🤔 The band‘s name is making fun of an Austrian insurance company „Erste Allgemeine Versicherung“ - „First General Insurance“. They just took the last word and turned it into the opposite. ☺️
I love all sorts of music in German! Some examples of bands/artists off hand would be: Dschinghis Khan, Rammstein, Nena, Mark Foster, Sido, Alligatoah, Cro, Marteria, Seeed, Andreas Bourani, Helene Fischer, Saltatio Mortis, Max Raabe, Ingo Ohne Flamingo, Oesch's die Dritten, Mo-Do, Axel Fischer, Franz Lang, and the list goes on! I have always loved other languages, but I also plan on moving to Germany from Canada soon for my Masters studies (hence my added interest in the language and culture)🇨🇦🇩🇪
My favorite German music since I was in college is Nena. She released her first album in both German and English so it was a big help while learning the language. I still listen to her music today. My favorite song of hers is ‘Was hast du in meinem Traum gemacht’.
Wasn't there over a year's wait before she re-recorded her first album in English? And then there was the "discussion:" about the hair in her arm pits, Oh I just love London!
also love Nena. UA-cam is always offering suggestions to other videos, so after listening to "99 Luftballons", I listened to some of her other songs, and I found myself coming back to them many times. I even went to see her live just before Covid hit. She's 60 years old, and still very energetic. My favorite Nena songs are "In Meinem Leben"', which basicly is a beautiful love song about accepting the other half with all of its flaws, and a very simple song called "Genau Jetzt", which basically calls "seize the moment".
Beautiful video Feli, I enjoyed it a lot. I was married into a German family for 12 years but the patriarch of the family Mr. Christian Jetter prohibited German from being spoken in the home beginning in WW-II. I have 3 daughters ages 33 through 31 and only the eldest practices German and Yiddish, which of course she sprinkles when speaking.
Growing up in WI with a huge German population I had many German friends. One family who emigrated after he was captured as a WW2 Luftwaffe pilot and realized he liked the US better. Their surname was Rump. One thing he endured, but was irritating to him was the pronunciation of his surname. He was constantly correcting people. "It is ROOMP! Rump is the butt! It is ROOMP ROOMP!" We all loved Emil and Inga, Oma, his mother-in- law, Raymond, Marcus and Birgit.
I can tell ya, Oma is the german Word for Grandma and Parents say Oma to their Mother too , for the children . Like , "Hey guys , u wanna visit Oma today ?" Means litteraly u wanna visit Grandma today , so probably Oma wasnt her Name ^^
@@Schrippe05 You are correct. Her name was Maria Wangrin, but everyone, including all of their friends, called her Oma. She was Grandma to everyone. A very special lady from the old country.
Feli: Dankeschon! Terrific video, btw! When I got "lost", your "sexy" german pronunciation made it clearer every time! And, it is a great idea to start a TikTok/Instagram/UA-cam Short series on correct German pronunciations!
Hallo und Servus aus Bayern 😁 great video as always 👍just one little thing that I noticed is that you pronounced/translated "Eisendrache" into "Ice Dragon" whereas I would have translated it into "Iron/Steel Dragon" but then I am not a gamer so I might be completely wrong 😂
I ordered my raycons after you first mentioned them in a video because I had the same problems with buds always falling out of my ears. Thanks to you I finally have headphones that really work and stay in my ears.. no matter what I do.
I can pronounce singular words and small sentences pretty ok, but if I try to do more than about 10 words I just can’t speak clearly.. thanks for the good video, I learned a lot!
Hi Felicia, I enjoy watching your videos. My parents immigrated from Bavaria in 1954. I have been there several times and still have first cousins, Aunts and Uncles living there - although not many of the later anymore. I am learning Deutsch and I am hoping to spend extended time there once I retire.
When you translate Ausfahrt into Dutch (far too) literally, it would become 'uitvaart'. But that would mean 'funeral'. Which makes a trip along the autobahn a little macabre. A comparable response as you had to Ausfahrt my mother once received after showing around a friend from Curaçao: "Why are so many towns around here called 'zachte berm'?". 'zachte berm' meaning 'soft shoulder'...
Very Interesting! In German, Ausfahrt kann also mean just any kind of trip you make in your spare time on Wheels But in German, die Auffahrt, the access can be understood as the ascension , too
Austrian here. Love watching your video. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" (or short "EAV or "E.A.V.) is a play on words because there is an insurance company called "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" ("First General Insurance") - and the band had some legal difficulty at the beginning as far as I know because of the similarity of the name, but then later on the insurance company even sponsored them sometimes.
There is an Austrian village in the municipality of Tarsdorf, located in the Innviertel region of western Upper Austria called Fugging. It recently changed the spelling of it's name from a 'K' to a double 'G'. Even though it only has a population of 106 it is really popular with English speaking tourists.
My great grandfather changed our surname to make it easier for Americans to say and spell. Now it's probably one of the easiest of German names for Americans. He changed Schneider to Snyder. And for anyone who may be curious, der Schneider means tailor, so it's an occupation name. About the extent of my knowledge of any German heritage I have.
Thats correct. Der Schneider is the tailor. A lot of names are like this. Miller makes Flour. Schmid is a blacksmith. Meier made things from milk. Drechsler is a woodturner. Only a few examples. There are a lot more names like this.
@@Dirk-Ulowetz Just realized I didn't proofread my comment and left the h out, but it's corrected now. I know many surnames come from an occupation. For those of us who only speak English, we are familiar with Baker, Brewer, Cook, Gardener, Hunter, Smith, Cooper (makes barrels) but may not be familiar with the words in other Germanic languages. When my daughter was born, one name I pushed for was Taylor as a private joke.
versengold is obviously a wordplay on multiple layers. the sentence :"gieb fersengeld" was used to tell somebody to speed up, vers for referencing music as the performer, so they actually hinted a lot of what they do, what sort of music they play in one word wich is quite nice.
So many people in the USA have German ancestry which you probably know--- i grew up in Ohio where many Germans immigrated to in the 1600's through the early 1900's. So saying Gesundheit was what 'we" said when someone sneezed. Both my maiden name and my married name are German. My married last name is difficult for Americans to pronounce as it is German and pronounced the way Germans use the letters.
There is German ancestry all over the Midwest from Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota down to Central Texas so much of the customs, traditions spelling ( using the letter K instead of C) and the number 7 with the horizontal line in the middle. The word Welkamin instead of Welcome. A lot of German calendars in homes. I've heard the German word for gloves (hundshous) or (handshous) for hand shoes which I thought was funny at the time but it was the right word.
My wife's ancestry is German on her moms side and Swedish on her dad's side. My ancestry is German and Irish on my dad's side and English on my mom's side. Three of our 4 children have the letter K in place of C so the German way of spelling their names instead of the English way of spelling. An example would be Kurt or Kurtis instead of Curt or Curtis. There are a lot of German Christmas traditions and customs that we still use after 4 generations of leaving Germany for the United States. We had a neighbor who lived across the street from us that had been a German wehrmact soldier in WWII
I pushed the send button to soon. Our neighbor who was a Whermact soldier eventually emigrated to the United States with his wife and raised 2 children, a son and a daughter. They were very nice people. Their daughter is a long time officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corp. It's ironic that a daughter of a former German soldier is a US citizen and soldier in the US Army.
I do really like a lot of Rammstein. "Herz Brennt" is especially good. I find listening to them helps me get better at understanding German, music seems to help understand the context, and I like how they use wordplay to get multiple meanings. I'm also glad my last name wasn't Americanized. It makes it easier to find distant relatives in Bavaria. One is an excellent concert pianist and teacher, and there are also some who took over making the guitar tuners for Hermann Hauser from Landstorfer. This all makes tremendous sense to me.
Check out Eisbrecher, Megaherz, Oomph and Stahlmann. There are many more great German bands, but those bands are a good place to really start delving in to the world of German music. Being an American my journey started with Rammstein, but I really took to that genre of music and now I can't get enough of it.
Versengold is most likely a Word play. There's a saying in German: "Fersengeld geben" which basically means "to run away". Versengold is a play on that word to make it sound more in theme with the medieval/fantasy style music they make. Vers=verse in English and gold needs no translation.
@@dutchman7623 That's not really a wordplay is it? It's a funny name, a guardian doesn't look to be the best job for a blind person, but I think that's actually a figure from some mythology.
@@dutchman7623 funny I saw them yesterday at Summerbreeze, great show with only old songs 🤘 I think one could argue Versengold is also a "medieval" way to say you earn music through poems/songs (Versengold is added to some kind of computer game where they are bards traveling from tavern to tavern)
My one and only trip to Germany (and Austria) back in 2002 (20 years ago, yes, I’m over due for a new visit, LOL) but I loved that even though I don’t speak German (I only memorized a few phrases like “I’m sorry I don’t speak German, do you speak English?” That helped a bit, and so did “where’s the WC?” LOL. But I loved that I could pick up on how the German I heard where we flew in to Frankfurt sounded a little different from the first town we visited which was on the Mosel River not far from Trier, the German near the Mosel sounded softer, almost like a French influence? And then in Austria I noticed people were much more likely to greet total strangers they passed on the streets with a “God is great” greeting? Which sounded liked “groose-got” to me, LOL and I really miss all the delicious jam / marmalades we’d have on our toast at breakfast… plum was the best!
I stumbled across your video and as a native German who speaks English fluently I was curious about the requested words. Besides "Eisendrache" which has been commented on quite frequently, I'd disagree with your pronunciation of "Höpke", which I'd pronounce with a longer Umlaut - just like in the version you mentioned but quickly dismissed - because it is followed by a single instead of a double p. I really enjoyed watching your video and I thought your solution for explaining the pronunciation of the German -ch as in "Mädchen" by comparing it to a kind of exaggerated pronunciation of the word "humid" (which I've heard a lot by native speakers) was absolutely genius!
Love love love Nena’s 99 Luftballons (loved both versions but liked the German one a bit more as it was more “exotic”). Also loved Falco (I know that he is Austrian but was Germanophone). He had the song Der Kommisar although this song was covered by a British group called After the Fire. I heard both versions but don’t know that if it wasn’t covered by the British band if the German song would have gotten any airtime that I would have remembered hearing it. Of course was much more famous in the USA for Rock Me Amadeus!
I love that the German version of Nena's song charted, while the B version is the MTV video and the one we all have memorized. And Feli pronounced it Neena, while I somehow thought it was Nayna. Also....I've watched the German video with subtitles.....the actual English version was way different, more "Red Dawn" than the translation was. Our version is very, VERY different. I'd like Feli's take on both.
I have the German 'Club Version' of that Nena album... on cassette, so I haven't played it in a long time. There were several good tracks on it, only one I can sort of remember the title of is "Danz auf der Vulkan" -- Dance on the Volcano. I'm nowhere near fluent, so I couldn't translate the lyrics, but they were still good synth pop. After the Fire's version of Der Kommisar had better production (and a better video) -- I remember seeing both videos on MTV, and Rock Me Amadeus got heavy airplay there as well...
The reason so many Americans know the word "fahren" in German has probably something to do with the Kraftwerk son "Autobahn" with the line "Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn.". God, I love that song!
My understanding of Danke Schoen (and ftm Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen) is that their pronunciation is Yiddish, and idk if that makes a difference, but our culture is steeped in Yiddish influences that no one really knows about (like the 3 Stooges). Anyway, as Americans we're generally familiar with regional accents in English; we have a lot of them here and the UK has several notable ones too. But I'd love a video on German accents/dialects in your experience. "Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn!" Tschuss, Liebchen!😊
Yepp, Yiddish would probably stretch the Umlaut sound it the sound of the song. Not that I speak Yiddish, but what I've heard from certain speakers myself.
Thank you all your hard work it was a very entertains and engaging presentation !!! I never thought I would have this opportunity to learn so much about Germany!
Detail on "Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" - this is a play on words with "Versicherung" = insurance, so you would have "First General Insurance" which sounds like your standard insurance company, and "unsicher" = unsure / insecure. If you want to translate the band name and keep the wordplay element, I would suggest "First General Insecurance".
@@Mastacheata Sorry if I wasn't clear - I don't think that this was an actual insurance company, but it very well could have been. But they were more a comedy band (good musicians, don't get me wrong), so if the way they came up with the band name seems to be funny, it fits right in.
@@joycastle. The "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" was an actual insurance company from Austria (like the band) founded in 1882. In 1998 it merged into Generali. Of course the founding of EAV (the band again) predates that merger by about twenty years. At first the company didn't like that name very much and sued, but they withdrew their complaint. Not like it happened with JBO (James [zensiert] Orchester) but I can somewhat understand that, what with those both being in the music business.
#37 was popular among Americans 40 and younger because Volkswagen used it in their television and radio advertisements around 1990. They never said what it meant on the ads but fortunately at the time I was in a graduate studio with a Berliner who explained that it meant "the joy of driving".
13:29 The French pronunciation of "-ballon" is actually the standard pronunciation, not a colloquial one. I've never heard it the way you pronounce it, but Duden lists your pronunciation as a variant, and I suppose it must be a southern thing. (I'm from northern Germany.) Also, like others have pointed out, "Eisendrache" means "iron dragon", not "ice dragon".
Then her pronunciation at 13:29 is the Bavarian and Austrian standard pronounciation. Nearly everyone in these regions says it this way. Some words really are regional, like Semmel or Brezn ;-)
Interesting... I have to agree with your comment regarding the word Ballon. I have never heard anyone pronounce it the way Feli does either. I and everyone I know say it the way she considered "colloquially".
@dattel diskussion I was simplifying my point. Of course, German pronunciations of French words usually aren't real French pronunciations, but most people also usually don't really have the linguistic background to know there's a difference between [baˈlõ] and [baˈlɔŋ]. This comment section isn't really the place to be that precise.
I can highly recommend listening to Heilung! They're unusual at first, but beautiful and pleasingly archaic. And Maria's voice is just out of this world!
In the US „oe“ is typically pronounced as something close to „a“ or „ey“ likely because that was how it was spoken in many of the dialects of the Germans who came to the US. In the song it is likely because the Yiddish pronunciation as the lyricist was Jewish.
Feli is so cute and intelligent. I can't believe someone asked how to pronounce Ich Will. Have you heard that song? It's literally a pronunciation tutorial, the music was an afterthought.
Fun fact: In Austria there is an insurance company named "erste allgemeine Versicherung" (first common insurance). The Band, while thinking about how to name themselves, just saw some Illuminatet Logo of that company at a building outside the window and negated the term Versicherung to Ver-un-sicherung. That's how the band's name became Erste allgemeine Verunsicherung (first common un-insurance). The word Verunsicherung, however has it's own meaning an could be translated as "unsettledness". So a native German speaker would not associate Verunsicherung with anyithing around insurance but with unsettledness instead.
Verunsicherung would be uncertainty. Unsettledness appears to be something made up. I know what you mean, but it would be more like "not finalized", "no final definition"
@@MBrieger Exactly that not finalized, no final definition ist what is meant by "Verunsicherung" Someone does not really know what is going on/what to do, so the situation is not yet clear: unsettledness.
Many decades ago I want to Germany as part of the Foreign Exchange Program. I have a German last name, they were calling me in the airport for 5 minutes before I, and they, realized because the German pronunciation of my last name is so radically different from the American pronunciation. Everything from consonants being hard or soft, the sound of the vowel, where the emphasis is placed and even the sound made by tz. My German chaperons were just as shocked by the American pronunciation and that my fellow American students saying they would pronounce it the same way. In the US Gertz:Hertz:Kurtz:Kurts:Kerts:hurts all rhyme in German they do not at all.
@@MrOpacor yes but in the American pronunciation the entire string all rhyme together, it takes a while for Americans to recognize Gertz & Hertz pronounced the German way.
As a German, I have no idea how Americans pronounce these ease names "wrong" = differently. What do you think: should someone react when called but name is pronounced wrong? My first and last name are difficult to pronounce for English speakers ... and instead of carefully listening most of them ask me how my name is spelled - which does not help to pronounce them correctly 🤣 first name is Gunnar ('goooo-nar like school and car) and Krause ('crow-say like crown and say) and do not stress the second part of each name like with French names.
a little bit of additional info: "Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" is actually wordplay, too (like "Versengold"), because Versicherung is the german word for insurance. At the time of the founding of the band (1977), there was a rather big insurance company in Austria named "Erste Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG". So the band, being funny and satirical as they are, chose to quasi invert the name by turning "Versicherung" into "VerUNsicherung".
Well, Feli. Being Dutch and speaking English, German and - of course - Dutch, my surname (D R O G T) is pronounced differently in each of these three languages. And I'm ok with all of them! The German pronunciation should be easy for you. Just follow the regular, German pronunciation rules and that's it. 🙂 😎 Grüße aus Holland 🇳🇱
I see that different. Surames are given to people by the parents. Then they are written down in documents like the birth certificate. No big problem as long as the carrier stays in the country or language-area. But if for example he moves from India or China to Germany they try to find a trans-script that can match the naturally spoken version as good as possible. Family names are traded through history and we know that the origin of these names can be everything from hair colour to settling area, Forefathers, Job, rank in society... everything that can describe someone. This was long before script was for the common people. And for those who were able to write, there was no standardized version. So if someone tells me that his name is spoken THIS way, I try to adopt that. If I can't, because I only have the written version I try to speak the version I think it was meant to be.
@@Matahalii I beg to differ. A surname (a.k.a. "family name" or "last name") is NOT given by the parents, they are instead inherited (mostly the same as the parents, though some cultures have somewhat different rules where it's from the first name of one parent, or differs by the child's sex, or whatever, and what exactly happens at marriage can be tricky), and often goes back to some bureaucratic decision some centuries ago. Maybe you confused it with the personal ("first") name? I should also quickly mention that in some parts of the world (such as East Asia) the family name comes before instead of after the personal name and that people can have multiple personal names, which in the US for some reason has been specialized to exactly two, or one and a "middle initial".
@@KaiHenningsen Family names, or last names, were set around 1808 in the Netherlands into official registers. And this goes for many countries occupied during the Napoleontic times. They cannot be changed easily. Not even the way they are written. But many emigrants to the US or Canada have adapted their family name on immigration, mostly into the English version, de Bruin > Brown, Groen > Green, Timmerman > Carpenter. I have three first names, my sister four, and others have five or even six. A hazard when you travel to the US, because you have to write them down fully on every form each time. A long, long time ago, when my family was still noble and of high standing, the inheritance was split between four kids, those who got their fathers share continued with the fathers family name, the other two who got what mother brought into the marriage continued with mothers family name. But in those days the family name wasn't yet cut in stone, and they wanted to use the name connected to the estates they inherited.
Is my assumption correct, that the g in your name makes kind of what would be called a "harsh ch" sound by Germans? Or is this only the diphtong "gh"? Is the name related to the english word drought maybe?
Having lived in the Greater Cincinnati area for most of my life I have encountered many people with German last names and it can be frustrating trying to guess how each family pronounces theirs. For instance I have known people with the last name Rabe that pronounce it "Rayb" but also a different family that pronounce it "Robbie". I have known a Woeste family that says "Weestee" and another that says "Whoastee". I have known "Mule-ers" and "Millers". "Kotches", "Cooks", and "Cokes".
One thing is for sure, if they have a German name and live in the States for very long, they are highly likely to have no idea anymore how to correctly pronounce it according to the original German. As an American who has lived over 35 years in Germany and now in the States, I have seen this over and over!
99 Luftballons has been going through my head recently. 99 Kriegsminister, Streichholz und Benzinkanister... 99 defense ministers, match and gasoline canisters...
I loved Kraftwerk when I was in high school. I walked around singing about fahren, fahren, fahren auf den Autobahn 😃🚗. It’s also where I learned the word “Morgenspaziergang”. Wonderful word, and a great activity 😊. Thanks for the lesson! Tschüss!
EAV comes from Erste Allgemeine Versicherung that was (still is?) an insurance company in Austria, so it is a kind of a game with words, with the "un" inserted it means something like "uninsurance". It is one of my favourite bands, next time you should help us pronounce titles like Banküberfall (English version is Bankrobbery), Märchenprinz (Prince from a tale or sg?), or my all-time favourite Küß die Hand schöne Frau (Kiss the [your] hand pretty lady, btw "küß die Hand" used to be a greeting form here in Hungary too, thanks to the unforgettably beautiful times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, long live our Kaiser und König!) :)
In my humble opinion (as a linguist): The ability to differentiate between [z] and [s] strongly depends on the region you're from. In the far north and the south people mostly don't hear a difference, but I'd say that a plurality of germans can hear that they aren't the same sound.
Germans know that difference. In my humble opinion (as a German), I would say all of them. They are completly different letters in German - almost no chance to be mixed up.
@@zauberfee4403 Moritz Lauer was referring to the sounds of a voiced and voiceless "s" ([z] vs. [s]). Personally, I come from a region where there is practically no voiced "s" sound and therefore consider his opinion correct: Before I learnt about linguistics I couldn't tell the difference between both sounds. In my childhood, we had this joke: How does a nun count? Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, Pfui Teufel!, sieben, acht, neun, ... 😁
@@christian_w. it's about s and z. And they are completly different. What has it got to do with "sex" and "sechs"? I never even heard there was a difference in the prnounciation between thise two words, before.
@@zauberfee4403 No, it is not about the letters "s" and "z" (which are in fact different for virtually every German native speaker). Moritz's comment was about sounds. He used IPA, an alphabet to communicate in written form about sounds. And in IPA, [s] stands for a voiceless "s" sound like in "Tasse", "fließen", "Sex", "reißen". And [z] represents a voiced "s" sound like in "Sonne", "Lisa", "sechs", "reisen". And my comment meant that in my region there is no difference in pronunciation between "sechs"/"Sex", "reisen"/"reißen", "Muse"/"Muße". All "s" sounds are voiceless, here.
To all the foreigners I want to point out an important feature of the language which is necessary to understand first, otherwise you will not get the pronunciation right. German is one of very few languages with a feature called terminal devoicing or Auslautverhärtung. It means a native speaker will automatically, subconsciously HARDEN any "soft" (voiced = with your voice = your vocal cords resonate/vibrate) consonants into their "hard" (devoiced = voiceless = your vocal cords do not resonate/vibrate) counterparts. Auf Deutsch: Die stimmhaften Mitlaute (Konsonanten) b, d, g, w werden zu stimmlosen p, t, k, f. The voiced consonants b, d, g, w are devoiced into p, t, k, f. This feature is VERY distinct and VERY noticeable the other way around, which means, whenever a German speaks English his Auslautverhärtung is one of the most prominent speech patterns contributing to a thick cliché German accent. Most Germans don't even know what terminal devoicing is and they don't realise they do it all the time on a subconscious level. Auslautverhärtung is acquired very early on as a baby from listening to the parents. It takes years of training and/or intensse excercise to lose terminal devoicing as a German when speaking English. Terminal devoicing does not apply when the voiced consonant is not at the end of the syllable or at the end of the word. Here is how a native speaker would pronounce things: the wheel - das Rad ([ra:t]), correct pronouncatio is with a "hard" devoiced t --- but: the wheels - die Räder, where the d is truly a "soft" voiced d. der Schlag [schla:k]), ausgesprochen mit stimmlosem [k] - die Schläge, ausgesprochen mit stimmhaftem [g] brav ([bra:f]), das [v] wird als stimmloses [f] ausgesprochen - jedoch: "das brave Mädchen" where the [v] is pronounced [bra:ve] as a German voiced [w] der Zug [tsu:k] mit stimmlosem k - die Züge mit stimmhaftem g das Haus mit "scharfem" stimmlosen s - die Häuser mit "summendem" stimmhaften s (equivalent to the English [z]) das Kind mit stimmlosem t - die Kinder mit stimmhaftem d der Raub mit stimmlosem p - der Räuber mit stimmhaftem b This rule is effective even within compound words (Determinativkomposita) as long as the voiced consonsant represents the end of a syllable: The g in Schlaglicht is devoiced into k because it's the end of a syllable/stem word even though it is inside of a longer word. And both g's in Flugzeug are pronounced as k's -> [flu:k][tseuk] And of course, there are exceptions ;-) ....words ending on -ig such as Honig, König, richtig etc. are pronounced correctly with an [ich] sound, NOT an [ig] or [ik]. It's "Honich" ([ho:nich]) not "Honik" ([ho:nik]). Also, words ending on -ung do not get subjected to Auslautverhärtung either. Terminal devoicing is the most tricky thing for people who want to learn German and improve their pronunciation because it is such a difficult yet subconscious mechanism in the language. In English, aside from some inherited Old German remanence which survived the centuries, terminal devoicing does not exist at all.
@dattel diskussion There is no Austrian language. They speak German with an Austrian accent and in Austria itself there are some Upper German (oberdeutsche) dialects. Those are the philological facts.
18:41 funnily enough, another diminutive of Frau is sometimes used to describe a dog owner: das Frauchen. Also for men: das Herrchen. For animals on the other hand, you would say Weibchen (female) and Männchen (male).
I wonder if you have heard about "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain (from A Tramp Abroad). Sam Clemens (pen name "Mark Twain") (1835-1910) was an author and humorist who was incredibly popular in the U.S. and Europe. But that was over a century ago so you may not be familiar with his work. 'The Awful German Language' can be found online.
@@jurgens.3964 You would probably be amused by it. It is more of an essay within a larger text.It spends a lot of it on the grammatical gender paradoxes. Also, delete the “e” when spelling “awful”.
@@Markle2k Well, it's Mark Twain, how could you not be amused by it? 😀 And at least this German here actually knows where his pen name came from. He worked for a while on river steam boats, where it was often necessary to measure the water depth to see if it became dangerously shallow, and it was usually communicated as "mark six ... mark five ... mark three" (getting shallower). And of course, "twain" is just "two". (How's that for a typical German reaction?)
Hi Feli! This is one of my favorite sessions because I pride myself for knowing music all over the world even being here in the backwards US (music scene) :-). You didn't mention & what a lot of people don't know about the Nena song is the 99 luftballoons German version was by far a bigger hit in the US than the English translation which basically made no sense. Here's the German bands/artists I know of and have listened to. 1. Alphaville. Yes that catchy "Forever Young" song is from a German group 2. Sarah Connor. No not the Terminator person but a great German pop singer 3. The awesome Reamonn when they were fronted by Irishman Rea Garvey. There's a concert of theirs available on Blu-ray worldwide that's just incredible. 4. Tangerine Dream is German 5. The Notwist is German 6. Mando Diao is a Swedish group but they made major strides in Germany and actually came out with another great Blu-ray unplugged concert filmed there that still ranks as one of my favorites. 7. Of course the great Herbert Groenemeyer and the song "Mensch" (Human). The video with the polar bear and the catchy song I still remember vividly from my visit to Germany in 2002. 8. The legendary Giorgio Moroder famous for Donna Summer and memorable songs on the Top Gun soundtrack was italian, but was pretty much Munich-based from the 70s on. Finally I love all those Aspres Ski (after skiing) compilations with great one hit wonder bands like Bluelagoon ("Break My Stride" remake) and one of my all time favorite covers is Fun Punk featuring Radspitz bizarrely epic cover of "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini".
We learned Fahrvergnügen from a Volkswagen commercial back in the 80's I believe it was. Does 'eidel' mean anything in German? Is it a common surname? The Raycon ad was actually very helpful. 😄I have some, but I didn't realize they have so many button functions.
Volkswagen USA leaned heavily into the use of the catchword "Fahrvergnügen" in TV, radio and print ads for about 20 years; I was never clear whether that was done worldwide, or just in North America. At the time, my assumption was that their advertising copywriters just made the word up. If there's some use of the word in German-speaking countries that doesn't stem from those Volkswagen ads, I've never herd of it.
Eidel has no meaning, sorry to break that to you 😅 And it’s the first time I’ve heard it. I live in the west of Germany. It might be common in other parts but I haven’t heard it before
I believe that the Volkswagen ads that used (made up) the word Fahrvergnugen were used beginning in 1990. I haven't seen that word used in a long time.
I think I remember seeing this commercial in the nineties when I was on vacation in the States, but I did not recognize the word they were saying for it. It did not have even remote similarity to the actual German pronunciation. They messed up the "v" (must be like "f"), the "gn" (the "g" must not be silent), and the "ü" (sounded like "u" ("oo" in English), but "ü" and "u" are very different sounds).
Sex is six in Latin as well. Interesting. I do listen to one German singer fairly regularly. She used to go by a stage name Oonagh but she has since gone to using her actual name Senta. Her latest song 9Was immer es ist” is quite delightful. Thanks for another enjoyable video, Feli! Hope your weekend is going well.
I know you say Americans use “Gesundheit” as a joke, but myself and a lot of people in my neck of the woods (upper Midwest) use it as a response to someone sneezing. Lots of descendants of German immigrants up here (the state capital of North Dakota, for example, was literally named after Otto von Bismarck)!
There are a good many people in Indiana and Ohio that will reflexively say gesundheit in response to a sneeze as well. It is just part of the lexicon borrowed from the old world.
I picked it up from my mother who lived in Germany twice when her father and later my father were stationed in Germany in the Army, but also was common to hear on US Army bases here as many other families have been stationed at times there.
Americans know #37 because of an ad campaign for Volkswagen back in the late 80s and early 90s. While on vacation with a friend's family we made it into "Fart Fig Newton"...
Feli, I’ve long enjoyed your videos, and I think that you speak beautifully both English and German. I find your English pronunciation, phrasing and grammar to be very close to those of native English speakers, without your incorporating native-English bad habits. One native detail that I hope you’ll purge is the use of the term “you guys” and all its various related forms, especially “your guys’s”, which you used at around the 5:00 mark. “You”, “your” and “yours” are perfectly clear. Adding “guys” is not only unnecessary, it makes for the nonsensical double possessive: both “your” and “guys’s”. It’s also a mouthful to pronounce, and in any case, the possessive plural of “guys” is “guys’”, not “guys’s”. Thanks for all your great videos about your US and German adventures.
@@dj1rst : it happens mostly at the workplace. This is because in the past it was rare for boys and girls to be seen together except they are kins or husbands and wives. Nowadays, men and women work together at workplace, work out together at the gym ...so it is more convenient to address them both as guys in a meeting.
7:24: Der Eisendrache - more like The Iron Dragon, Ice Dragon would be Eisdrache 13:56: Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung - Its a play of words on the name of an austrian insurance company "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" (First General Insurance). That Insurance company even tried to sue the band for their name, but withdrew their lawsuit after a while. A similar thing happened to a german pop band with the name "Die Allianz", which also got sued by the german insurance company of the same name, but indeed had to rename their band (to "Die Band ohne Namen" - "The band without a name"). 14:11: Versengold - Indeed another play of words which is based on the (outdated) german saying "Fersengeld geben" (loosely translated "paying heel money" ), which means turn tail and run/to bail out of something or to scram. They obviously changed Ferse to Verse as a reference to verses (since they are obviously a band) instead of heel. Maybe they changed Geld (money) to Gold so the pun isn't too much on the nose. To be fair, I find many similar names of german folk rock bands and bands of the "Neue Deutsche Härte" kinda cringe. 15:37: I guess the pronunciation of "Dankeschön" as something like "Danke sheen" or "Danke sheyn" isn't of genuin german origin but sounds more like jewish (or yiddish), maybe even Pennsylvania German dialect.
Ausfahrt is definitely a running gag with military personnel. The people who have been stationed in Germany a while will tell the noobs about the town of Ausfahrt and how it has the best bars and the hottest women and such just to have them driving around lost taking every exit on the highway trying to get to Ausfahrt.
Man würde echt denken, dass "Quirky Unterschiede zwischen USA& Deutschland" als Kanalkonzept 2022 schnell ausgelutscht wär, aber 4 Jahre UA-cam and it's still your whole personality gurl
Bei den Namen habe ich meinen eigenen Vornamen vermisst. Bislang hat ihn noch kein English Muttersprachler sofort korrekt aussprechen können. In Kombinaton mit einem Nachnamen ergibt mein Vorname dann Uwe Seeler (Fussballspieler beim HSV und leider kürzlich verstorben) einen Name der passen würde für das Video. In Bezug auf die "Ausfahrt" gibt es ein Strassenschild in Dänemark das unsere Freunde aus Michigan sehr lustig fanden: "Fart Kontrol" dieses Schild warnt in Dänemark vor einer Geschwindigkeitskontrolle.
I don’t listen to a lot of German music but Kraftwerk is a must. Their Trans Europa Express has been sampled so much. I also like Glasperlanspiel, Tim Bendzko, Lotte. Oh and I used to be really love listening to this American Schlager singer, Sarah Jane Scott.
Martin Luther King jr was was born Michael King jr. His father like him was a Baptist minster and was born Michael King and named his son Michael King jr. He went to Germany befor WWII to a Baptist convention and learned about the protestant reformer Martin Luther and changed his name to Martin Luther King and his son's name to Martin Luther King jr.
7:42 The Nürburgring actually consists of the north loop (Nordschleife) and the Grand Prix track. The south loop (Südschleife) was partially demolished, most of it is now a public road, only a few areas are still in their original condition. The start-finish loop (Start Ziel Schleife) was even completely torn down. Even before Niki Lauda's accident, many Formula 1 drivers refused to continue driving on the north loop because the track was becoming too dangerous for them due to the faster cars. After Niki Lauda's accident, the Nürburgring was removed from the racing calendar. After that, the Grand Prix track was built on the area where the start-finish loop and the northern part of the south loop used to be, so that Formula 1 returns to the Nürburgring. Greetings from Germany
Entertaining video as always. You mentioned that the word Schadenfreude is somewhat unique to the German language. There is in fact an English equivalent - epicaricacy - but it is rarely used. Most English speakers are more familiar with the German word.
I was reminded of a train trip where my fellow passenger, a man whom I took to be Indian or Pakistani, was reading a Sydney newspaper and sneezed several times. Some Australians, including myself, say, "Gesundheit!", which I did. He jumped like a shot rabbit. "Was hast Du gesagt!?" He wasn't even polite to an older man! It emerged that he was in Sydney for post graduate studies, was of Afghani descent, and came from Hamburg. In two weeks in Australia, he had not met anyone socially, and, at first he was more than a little suspicious of how I "knew he was German". Eventually I persuadex him that "mehrere Australier sagen "Gesundheit", auch wenn sie außerdem kein Deutsch sprechen." Once he relaxed and was confident I wasn't from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, we had a good chat for the rest of the journey. So "Gesundheit" has migrated here as well, though, I suspect, not as commonly as in the US.
"Gesundheit" is fairly common in the US, but it's a regional thing -- from Pennsylvania through the Midwest, where there have been large German immigration, but not as much in other areas. I never cared for saying "Bless You" so I adopted "Gesundheit" after taking German in high school...
Hi Feli, enjoyed the video. Rammstein has a song (and great music video) called Deutschland ( ua-cam.com/video/2nmxqHJZvO8/v-deo.html ). It has many references of Germanys history throughout the video and the lyrics are mentioning the duality many Germans can feel when thinking about current Germany and it's history. Would be great if you would watch/react to it and break the historic referenced down.
Well, this is kinda hard, simply because Rammstein "plays" a little bit with history here. Although some scenes are quite easy to name (like the references to the Third Reich or the GDR), others are quite metaphoric and abstract.
You're right on the origin of the Borussia in a football club's name, but specifically for Borussia Dortmund the name originates from the Borussia beer.
Go to buyraycon.com/felifromgermany for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon
*++As several people have correctly pointed out in the comments: Eisendrache translates to "Iron dragon" and not Ice dragon as I said in the video, which would be Eisdrache. Sorry about that! 🙈++* Which other German words have you ALWAYS wanted to know how to pronounce correctly? Should I start a TikTok/Instagram/UA-cam Shorts series about them? 🤔
For #37 It was used in a Volkswagen commercial many years ago and became a popular word to say because of its very German-ness. "Gesundheit" is very common in the US because of all the German imigrants that have come here over the years.
Fräulein is still used in France
Mademoiselle
Also, fair warning since I am from the coast
ua-cam.com/video/VSdxqIBfEAw/v-deo.html
No, long form video is the future. Don't give into short attentions spans. Plus great vocabulary video thanks.
Canadian character Anne of Green Gables is pronounced Ann.
German here... I would say "Der Eisendrache" means the iron dragon instead of ice dragon because Eisen is iron and not ice, but maybe it's something just not used much in the German language, but I highly doubt that 🤷
Yes and I am kinda interested if she did this on purpose. I heard that some American/German youtubers do that because german viewers like to correct those mistakes wich means more engagement on the video.
@@AMK650 oh wow, I didn't even think about that😳... I hope that's not the case here. Anyways, I just thought that the people that don't know German should know the right translation 🤷
Correct, but "Gaspreis" is the word of the year. 😎
Yep, at 7‘34“ it can be seen in the little picture in the lower left corner: Eisendrache. But maybe for the American version the made the dragon icy. 😉 But it‘s probably about an steam railway, so iron would be better.
But if the 'n' is missing, then der Eisedrache would become Ice dragon, No ??? 😜
She's a good language teacher; she made things simple and clear.
At 7:29 you say, that the translation of "Der Eisendrache" would be "the ice dragon". That would be "Der Eisdrache", though. Eisendrache means iron dragon.
Yea, thanks! Instantly looked in the comments!
I picked up on that too.
Correct.
und natürlich gibt es wieder die "Korrekturpolizisten" in den Kommentaren XD
@@red_dolphin468 Ja nun, wenn in einem lehrreichen Video etwas falsch erklärt wird, sollte man die interessierten Lernenden nicht in der Luft hängen lassen und den Fehler verbessern, oder?
I've been slacking on my German lessons but I still love listening to German artists, my favorites being Rammstein (obviously), Megaherz, Eisbrecher, Funker Vogt, Die Krupps, and Electric Callboy.
Speaking of sechs reminds me of a joke I heard a while ago. "What comes between fear and sex in German? Fünf."
That's one joke you really need to speak both languages for!
That's very clever . Vier fünf sechs
Four five six.
This joke is not working in German, because the pronunciation of "Sex" and "sechs" is different. So sorry, but just forget about it, even if the idea was nice.
@@kathrintaraba3274 like many jokes, it doesn't translate well into different languages, and sex and sechs being pronounced differently is kind of the point because to an English speaker they sound almost identical. Same with vier and fear, pronounced very different in German but close enough that a native English speaker couldn't tell the difference
@@thenightcook1134 yes, exactly, just don't be too German and use a bit of humor and intuition ;-) And it works.
And have fun!
Recently discovered your videos. They took me WAY down memory lane. My father was in the US Army and we spent 2 of his overseas tours in Germany. 1975-78 (Frankfurt), and 1980-1983 (Hanau). We LOVED living there. My parents were different from most of the Americans stationed in Europe. Many American families never tried to leave the kasernes. My Dad's view was the US government was paying for us to live in the country, let's go see the country, and other parts of Europe as well. We LOVED Oktoberfest. We really loved Christmas time, especially going to Christkindlmart when I was in elementary school. The places, the people, the FOOD. If I could emigrate to Germany, I would.
Just do it come over and stay ..maybe find a job befor and your good to stay :)
I spent 2 years there traveling to different posts installing communications equipment. Lived on the economy, enjoyed it. One site was remote, nearest full commisary was an hour away. You went there once a week and always bought things you might need, LOL
One of the few things I remember from my German teacher was "when two vowels go walking, the second does all the talking".
Fun fact about "Gesundheit!" (-> "Bless you!") in German: in the middle ages (?) people looked into the sky (heaven) and prayed for their own health by saying "Gesundheit!"after someone coughed or sneezed, because people died a lot of lung deseases in that times . So it has become a bit friendlier since then.
Rammstein is why I'm learning German. Learning German is why I started following your channel. So, Rammstein is why I follow your channel.
Fahrvergnügen was used in a series of VW commercials here in the US about 30 years ago. "Fahrvergnügen - It's what makes a car a Volkswagen." It's unintentionally funny to here the American narrators pronounce it. Maybe it was intended to compete against the slogan BMW was using at the time, Freude am Fahren. Also, doesn't Eisendrachen mean Iron Dragon?
I use Fahrvergnügen as a joking replacement curse word between myself & my wife. Like, "Well... fahrvergnügen", where a well damn or well shit would usually go. The Big F comes out on more serious situations & if I'm honest casual conversation being that I'm from NJ.
Driving Pleasure is the translation
@@MagMan4x4 I'm German and *Der Eisendrache* means definitely *The Iron Dragon* --> *Der Eisen Drache*
It is one of those typical combined words we have in German.
*The Ice Dragon* would be *Der Eis Drache* --> *der Eisdrache*
P.S. I'm really stunned she missed that!
@@MagMan4x4 Yes, but Eisen is iron.
@@pseudo_nym yeah, I’m a PA Dutch speaker and we say eisen for iron. I’m surprised as well that she didn’t read it that way
12:24 I feel like this is the most obvious of any of the things asked about so far, with just the tiniest amount of knowledge about how sounds are spelt in German.
I enjoy listening and watching you. You have a great command for the English language, and a wonderful capacity to go between the German & English language. You also appear to have a great amount of energy. Keep up your great videos.
When we first moved to Germany I thout it was funny that my cousins listened to Elvis Presley. They sang the songs really good but they had no idea what they were singing. They didn't speak English. I also met a German band that sang a lot of Alabama songs but they didn't know many other country songs.
Liebe Feli, beim Wort Eisendrache (hab ich vorher noch nie gehört) steckt doch sicher das Wort Eisen drin, sonst wäre es doch der Eisdrache.
Die Hälfte der deutschen Nachnamen habe ich hier noch nie gehört. Sind die damals alle ausgewandert und jetzt ist keiner mehr hier?
By the way, deine Videos sind erfrischend unterhaltsam, ich freue mich immer riesig wenn ein neues kommt. Vielen Dank dafür.
jop.... dache mir auch, das ist ein "Iron Drake" und kein "Ice Drake" ^^
Hat sie vermutlich absichtlich für Klicks gemacht. Leute regen sich in den Kommentaren drüber auf = mehr Kommentare = mehr Reichweite.
Ist eigentlich Iron Dragon😉
@@heikomicheler165 Genau!
@@gaiaorigin9569 Und der Ami merkt sich den Fehler. 😕
My family name was originally Keller but it was changed to Kellar by my great-grandfather around 1900 because of his work on the railroads. I wish it was still in the original German spelling. I have a lot German heritage on my dad’s side of the family. Americans know the word “ Fahrvergnügen” from Volkswagen ads back in the 1980s or 1990s. I spent seven weeks in the summer of 1981 in Krefeld, Germany. I loved it and have many great memories. We also went to what was then West Berlin and we even spent a day in East Berlin, too. I never made it back to Germany until 2016 and again in 2018. I loved it both of those times, too. I love your videos and refreshing my knowledge of and learning more about German language and culture. Danke schön! Incidentally, my name is Shane and if had a dollar for every time someone said “Danke Shane” instead of “Danke schön” to me, I’d probably be a millionaire! Ha!
You have to love Rammstein. What a great band and live show. Plus they are returning to North America this week and I can not wait to see their show in NJ. Still learning all the German but great melody.
I didn't know they're coming to NJ. Thanks!
nice, wish I could go see them but closest is in Chicago about 10 hours away from me, sadly its rare for them to come to the south
I love Rammstein. Been to all their concerts in Italy in the last 12 years, in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 12.07.2022. Great concerts, great band. I LOVE THEM
My favorite band from Germany is Rhonda. Not too hard to pronounce. ;)
When we lived in Stuttgart as a kid, my grandfather (who spoke fluent German, Spanish, and Polish) was visiting and went the wrong way. I said to him that he took the wrong fart (said the English way). My parents loved to tell that story.
Great, my friend
Germany have got a wide range music scene singing in German. Rammstein is only the peak of the iceberg.
"Versengold" is a wordplay on the idiom "Fersengeld geben"which means "to run away".
Yeah I was surprised she didnt get that...
When I was growing up (mostly in the 1970s), most Americans I knew answered "gesundheit" in response to a sneeze. It made no difference whether or not they had any German ancestry or spoke German, and the word appeared on at least one children's record we had. I remember being a bit surprised to learn that there were other things one could say instead of "gesundheit". I still mostly say that when I hear someone sneeze, but because so many people make funny and often irreproducible noises when they sneeze, I've been known to answer "gesundheit" when someone says something that I find incomprehensible or unpronounceable, or when I need to say the same. An example of the former: if someone asks me a long, technical question with the details mixed up (I get these often, as I'm an Information Technology consultant), I may answer, "Gesundheit?" An example of the latter: there is a Finnish company named Nokian, which sells a line of tires named "Hakkapeliitta", the proper pronunciation of which I can only guess at, so I've been known to refer to these as "Hakkagesundheit".
If you said "hucka per litre" with a British accent you probably wouldn't be too far off 😁
In Finnish you pronounce words just like they are written, its easy, no silent letters, no different sounds of the same letter.
"In Finnish, characters are there for a reason" - Hydraulic Press Channel from Finland.
It's a funny thing, in português you use the word saúde (Gesundheit) to say Cheers!
@@dirktaubenreuther9437 In Austria (at least in Tyrol) and I think in Bavaria some people also say "Gesundheit" instead of "Prost" (Cheers).
Ha ha you pronounced squirrel correctly, love it.
What a beautiful, refreshing, wonderful person. AMAZING smile. If I am having a bad day I just watch one or 2 of her video's and I get a little pick me up. I'm definitely a fan.
I disagree on the part that "MOST" Germans would say that 'Sex' and 'sechs' are pronounced the same. Living in different parts of Germany I can say that this may be a thing especially in the south of Germany where 'sechs' is pronounced harsher at the beginning of the word. Outside Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg you mostly clearly hear the difference between the voiced and voiceless s-sound.
Yeah I was about to say her bavarianess is showing. In northern Germany you might hear people pronounce st or sp with a sharp s, but definitely not "Sechs".
I was not not that they sound the same 6 sounds like zecks to me. My Dad would Never has said it sex. Very improper !!
Yeah, in this case her claim is outright wrong. The destinction is very strong and very much there in most regions of Germany and in most dialects.
I don't know where she got that from but it's incorrect information.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of dialects which apply a voiced s to the s in sex, just as they would pronounce sechs there. That is understandable insofar as sex is a Lehnwort or even a Fremdwort which does not follow German pronunciation rules. Maybe in the future it will be germanised into a voiced s.
Just a little fun fact: When you study linguistics in Germany at a university level (like myself) the difference between grammatical gender (Genus) and biological gender/sex (Sexus) is one continuously revisited aspect of Indogermanic languages. And at the university they tend to use lots and lots of Latin to form concise technical terms.
But Sexus is often pronounced with voiced s LOL
I had only one younger professor who would pronounce Sexus with a devoiced s.
Again, this just shows that Fremdwörter and Lehnwörter don't follow the rules very well, and why languages tend to assimilate them over time into their network of rules.
Fun fact: "Sechs" is actually written "sex" in Swedish. You bet they chose this spelling in order to trigger spam filters and various kinds of censorware.
Btw: There is a noticeable difference in pronunciation - depending on age: When kids become aware of ... "the interesting stuff" ... they tend, for some time, to pronounce that number with a "ch" sound like in "Blech" to make sure they're not referring to the "dirty stuff". Never heard a voiced "s" though.
Thanks!
Danke! :)
Hi Feli, once again very good, although I do not agree with one pronunciation rule. The first h in "Sehnsucht" is a silent h, but after the e it lengthens the e, as if it said "Seensucht". Without this h you could pronounce it with a short e like "Sennsucht".
I love this about language. In Texas, 'rodeo' is pronounced "row-dee-oh," but I hear in Beverly Hills, California, 'Rodeo Drive' is pronounced 'row-day-oh'. Also, in Texas, there is a city named Port Neches, and if you say Neches with a short a, we'll know you're not from around here. Locals say it with a long a, like Nay-ches.
@@Breathe-In-and-Out the rodeo drive is pronounced differently from A Rodeo
Idk the origin of ro-day-oh drives pronunciation but in california we still say row-dee-oh for actual rodeos
Ballon: What you call the colloquial pronounciation is in fact the common one. Your's - with the long "o" and the "n"-sound at the end, is a southern speciality (southern Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland).
Marlene Dietrich: The "r"-sound is produced in the throat, but the "ch" in made by the tounge in the mouth. The "throat-ch" can be found in "Lacher", "Macht", "Loch". With "ech", "äch", "ich", "öch", "üch" it is usually a tounge-sound (Licht, Recht, Löcher), with "ach", "och", "uch" your mentioned throat-sound.
I'm a German and this is a very good and accurate video with two exceptions where I disagree STRONGLY:
1. "Eisendrache" is NOT "ice dragon" but "iron dragon". I have no idea why she made that mistake since it's very clear.
2. "6" and "sex are pronounced profoundly different and German ears are not insensitive to the difference. While there are dialects in which the voiced "s" sounds more or less like the voiceless (like in Bavarian which is Feli's dialect) in the majority of Germany the distinction is very VERY clear.
Not only that: Katharina Witt was famous for mispronouncing Sex with the voiced S, so that it sounded like sechs. Sechs and Sex are very different to a German ear since the distinction between voiced s and voiceless s is significant - just like in English.
1. Yes I screwed that one up 😅🙈Sometimes your brain does weird things and you just don't question it. And even though several other people looked over the script and the video, nobody noticed this before publishing unfortunately.
2. Just to give you one example, many Germans can't hear the difference of the letter C and Z in American English and often mix up s and z sounds in English words. It's not like Germans can't hear this difference and of course, we do have both voiced and voiceless S sounds German, but since they're usually spelled the same (with the exception of ss and ß) and in many German dialects (such as Bavarian) also pronounced the same, I would say that the lines are a little more blurry than in English.
@dattel diskussion I highly disagree.
the term sex entered German + English + French from Latin. And Latin was the language of Science which includes all medical terms as well for centuries in all European countries..
@dattel diskussion Sorry to say that but your English is then not the best...or at least very limited in behalf of wording.
"to highly disagree" is a totally common phrase in English for expressing disagreement and has absolutely nothing to do with smoking pot.
And you are making a huge mistake when you are limiting the meaning of the word "Sex" solely just for sexual intercourse because that is just an aspect of the actual meaning...The term includes for instance gender as well especially in English and also in French..and in German the term "Sex" is just the shortform of the word "Sexualität" and that includes intercourse + gender and even the sexual mental state of mind as well
Somit ist dein Wortschatz nicht nur in Englisch etwas limitiert sondern auch in Deutsch.
Es tut mir echt leid Dir das jetzt so direkt sagen zu müssen. Und ich meine das auch nicht böse oder beleidigend. Es ist einfach wie es ist.
Vielleicht bist Du auch noch sehr jung und kannst daher noch viel dazulernen.
Ich bin mittlerweile schon ziemlich alt und habe daher schon sehr viel dazugelernt
Ich wünsche Dir noch eine gute Nacht.
@dattel diskussion You need 2 weeks for such a ridiculous and childish reply?
Slow thinker.
I recently found your channel and love it. I have a few friends in Germany and had the time of my life when I visited them. I hope to go back one day soon.
Yeah, EAV is also in the video. 😃And they are still around! (even though they had their final live tour recently). They are known in the US? 🤔 The band‘s name is making fun of an Austrian insurance company „Erste Allgemeine Versicherung“ - „First General Insurance“. They just took the last word and turned it into the opposite. ☺️
I love all sorts of music in German! Some examples of bands/artists off hand would be: Dschinghis Khan, Rammstein, Nena, Mark Foster, Sido, Alligatoah, Cro, Marteria, Seeed, Andreas Bourani, Helene Fischer, Saltatio Mortis, Max Raabe, Ingo Ohne Flamingo, Oesch's die Dritten, Mo-Do, Axel Fischer, Franz Lang, and the list goes on! I have always loved other languages, but I also plan on moving to Germany from Canada soon for my Masters studies (hence my added interest in the language and culture)🇨🇦🇩🇪
My favorite German music since I was in college is Nena. She released her first album in both German and English so it was a big help while learning the language. I still listen to her music today. My favorite song of hers is ‘Was hast du in meinem Traum gemacht’.
Wasn't there over a year's wait before she re-recorded her first album in English? And then there was the "discussion:" about the hair in her arm pits, Oh I just love London!
also love Nena. UA-cam is always offering suggestions to other videos, so after listening to "99 Luftballons", I listened to some of her other songs, and I found myself coming back to them many times. I even went to see her live just before Covid hit. She's 60 years old, and still very energetic. My favorite Nena songs are "In Meinem Leben"', which basicly is a beautiful love song about accepting the other half with all of its flaws, and a very simple song called "Genau Jetzt", which basically calls "seize the moment".
nena ´s Leuchturm..😍
I love Nena like you, my friend. I am so happy to hear that
Sadly she is mentally ill now these days
Beautiful video Feli, I enjoyed it a lot. I was married into a German family for 12 years but the patriarch of the family Mr. Christian Jetter prohibited German from being spoken in the home beginning in WW-II. I have 3 daughters ages 33 through 31 and only the eldest practices German and Yiddish, which of course she sprinkles when speaking.
Growing up in WI with a huge German population I had many German friends. One family who emigrated after he was captured as a WW2 Luftwaffe pilot and realized he liked the US better. Their surname was Rump. One thing he endured, but was irritating to him was the pronunciation of his surname. He was constantly correcting people. "It is ROOMP! Rump is the butt! It is ROOMP ROOMP!" We all loved Emil and Inga, Oma, his mother-in- law, Raymond, Marcus and Birgit.
I can tell ya, Oma is the german Word for Grandma and Parents say Oma to their Mother too , for the children . Like , "Hey guys , u wanna visit Oma today ?" Means litteraly u wanna visit Grandma today , so probably Oma wasnt her Name ^^
@@Schrippe05 It may be derived from Großmama ("grand mom") -> Omama (how a child might try to pronounce it) -> Oma.
@@Schrippe05 You are correct. Her name was Maria Wangrin, but everyone, including all of their friends, called her Oma. She was Grandma to everyone. A very special lady from the old country.
Feli: Dankeschon! Terrific video, btw! When I got "lost", your "sexy" german pronunciation made it clearer every time! And, it is a great idea to start a TikTok/Instagram/UA-cam Short series on correct German pronunciations!
Hallo und Servus aus Bayern 😁 great video as always 👍just one little thing that I noticed is that you pronounced/translated "Eisendrache" into "Ice Dragon" whereas I would have translated it into "Iron/Steel Dragon" but then I am not a gamer so I might be completely wrong 😂
I ordered my raycons after you first mentioned them in a video because I had the same problems with buds always falling out of my ears. Thanks to you I finally have headphones that really work and stay in my ears.. no matter what I do.
I can pronounce singular words and small sentences pretty ok, but if I try to do more than about 10 words I just can’t speak clearly.. thanks for the good video, I learned a lot!
Wunderbar, mein freund
Hi Felicia,
I enjoy watching your videos. My parents immigrated from Bavaria in 1954. I have been there several times and still have first cousins, Aunts and Uncles living there - although not many of the later anymore. I am learning Deutsch and I am hoping to spend extended time there once I retire.
When you translate Ausfahrt into Dutch (far too) literally, it would become 'uitvaart'. But that would mean 'funeral'. Which makes a trip along the autobahn a little macabre.
A comparable response as you had to Ausfahrt my mother once received after showing around a friend from Curaçao: "Why are so many towns around here called 'zachte berm'?".
'zachte berm' meaning 'soft shoulder'...
If the life is like the Autobahn, then the funeral is the Ausfahrt.
and me visiting netherlands wondered how many buildings belonged to "te koop"
Very Interesting! In German, Ausfahrt kann also mean just any kind of trip you make in your spare time on Wheels
But in German, die Auffahrt, the access can be understood as the ascension , too
@@dirktaubenreuther9437 Isn't that also called an ''Ausflug'?
@@thoges5040 My favourite dutch saying is 'je hoar is te huur' (hoar and huur both pronounced the same).
Austrian here. Love watching your video. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" (or short "EAV or "E.A.V.) is a play on words because there is an insurance company called "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" ("First General Insurance") - and the band had some legal difficulty at the beginning as far as I know because of the similarity of the name, but then later on the insurance company even sponsored them sometimes.
I love your videos. I come form German ancestry. I love learning how German words are pronounced correctly.. Always wondered about my name.
Wunderbar, mein freund
There is an Austrian village in the municipality of Tarsdorf, located in the Innviertel region of western Upper Austria called Fugging.
It recently changed the spelling of it's name from a 'K' to a double 'G'.
Even though it only has a population of 106 it is really popular with English speaking tourists.
My great grandfather changed our surname to make it easier for Americans to say and spell. Now it's probably one of the easiest of German names for Americans. He changed Schneider to Snyder. And for anyone who may be curious, der Schneider means tailor, so it's an occupation name. About the extent of my knowledge of any German heritage I have.
Thats correct. Der Schneider is the tailor.
A lot of names are like this. Miller makes Flour. Schmid is a blacksmith. Meier made things from milk. Drechsler is a woodturner. Only a few examples. There are a lot more names like this.
The way your name is spelled NOW, is actually "cheater" in Danish! The pronunciation IS a little different, though ... ^^
@@Dirk-Ulowetz * A Müller makes flour in a Mühle
@@Dirk-Ulowetz Just realized I didn't proofread my comment and left the h out, but it's corrected now. I know many surnames come from an occupation. For those of us who only speak English, we are familiar with Baker, Brewer, Cook, Gardener, Hunter, Smith, Cooper (makes barrels) but may not be familiar with the words in other Germanic languages.
When my daughter was born, one name I pushed for was Taylor as a private joke.
@@nadine8742 flower? Like Blume?
versengold is obviously a wordplay on multiple layers. the sentence :"gieb fersengeld" was used to tell somebody to speed up, vers for referencing music as the performer, so they actually hinted a lot of what they do, what sort of music they play in one word wich is quite nice.
So many people in the USA have German ancestry which you probably know--- i grew up in Ohio where many Germans immigrated to in the 1600's through the early 1900's. So saying Gesundheit was what 'we" said when someone sneezed. Both my maiden name and my married name are German. My married last name is difficult for Americans to pronounce as it is German and pronounced the way Germans use the letters.
There is German ancestry all over the Midwest from Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota down to Central Texas so much of the customs, traditions spelling ( using the letter K instead of C) and the number 7 with the horizontal line in the middle. The word Welkamin instead of Welcome. A lot of German calendars in homes. I've heard the German word for gloves (hundshous) or (handshous) for hand shoes which I thought was funny at the time but it was the right word.
@@kenardturner7173 Yes, my grandmother used to use some Pennsylvania Dutch words and phrases; her grandparents were Mennonites in Lancaster, PA.
My wife's ancestry is German on her moms side and Swedish on her dad's side. My ancestry is German and Irish on my dad's side and English on my mom's side. Three of our 4 children have the letter K in place of C so the German way of spelling their names instead of the English way of spelling. An example would be Kurt or Kurtis instead of Curt or Curtis. There are a lot of German Christmas traditions and customs that we still use after 4 generations of leaving Germany for the United States. We had a neighbor who lived across the street from us that had been a German wehrmact soldier in WWII
I pushed the send button to soon. Our neighbor who was a Whermact soldier eventually emigrated to the United States with his wife and raised 2 children, a son and a daughter. They were very nice people. Their daughter is a long time officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corp. It's ironic that a daughter of a former German soldier is a US citizen and soldier in the US Army.
Feuerschwanz is my favorite German band, and actually in my top five overall.
I do really like a lot of Rammstein. "Herz Brennt" is especially good. I find listening to them helps me get better at understanding German, music seems to help understand the context, and I like how they use wordplay to get multiple meanings.
I'm also glad my last name wasn't Americanized. It makes it easier to find distant relatives in Bavaria. One is an excellent concert pianist and teacher, and there are also some who took over making the guitar tuners for Hermann Hauser from Landstorfer. This all makes tremendous sense to me.
Check out Eisbrecher, Megaherz, Oomph and Stahlmann. There are many more great German bands, but those bands are a good place to really start delving in to the world of German music. Being an American my journey started with Rammstein, but I really took to that genre of music and now I can't get enough of it.
"Fahrvergnügen" was used in the 1990s in popular Volkswagen tv commercials and print ads.
Versengold is most likely a Word play.
There's a saying in German: "Fersengeld geben" which basically means "to run away". Versengold is a play on that word to make it sound more in theme with the medieval/fantasy style music they make.
Vers=verse in English and gold needs no translation.
That's correct. I know that band. :)
What about 'Blind Guardian' ? 😛
@@dutchman7623 That's not really a wordplay is it? It's a funny name, a guardian doesn't look to be the best job for a blind person, but I think that's actually a figure from some mythology.
@@Mastacheata Correct! It's biblical.
Blind Guardians and Ivory Towers...
Useless and wasteful.
But good music!
@@dutchman7623 funny I saw them yesterday at Summerbreeze, great show with only old songs 🤘 I think one could argue Versengold is also a "medieval" way to say you earn music through poems/songs (Versengold is added to some kind of computer game where they are bards traveling from tavern to tavern)
My one and only trip to Germany (and Austria) back in 2002 (20 years ago, yes, I’m over due for a new visit, LOL) but I loved that even though I don’t speak German (I only memorized a few phrases like “I’m sorry I don’t speak German, do you speak English?” That helped a bit, and so did “where’s the WC?” LOL. But I loved that I could pick up on how the German I heard where we flew in to Frankfurt sounded a little different from the first town we visited which was on the Mosel River not far from Trier, the German near the Mosel sounded softer, almost like a French influence? And then in Austria I noticed people were much more likely to greet total strangers they passed on the streets with a “God is great” greeting? Which sounded liked “groose-got” to me, LOL and I really miss all the delicious jam / marmalades we’d have on our toast at breakfast… plum was the best!
Hi Feli, great chanel 🙂
One little thing, Der Eisendrache means The Iron Dragon instead Ice
👍
Yes.
Eisendrache = Iron Dragon
Eisdrache = Ice Dragon
🥰🥰💖💖
13:28 omg i never heard "Luftballon" as you said it, very exciting. i only know [Luftballong] :D
I first learned all my pronunciations from Rammstein songs. My co-worker has a lot of fun with me over-inflecting, everything: )
Not a good idea. Ramstein is selling a stereotype, German isnt that harsh.
I stumbled across your video and as a native German who speaks English fluently I was curious about the requested words.
Besides "Eisendrache" which has been commented on quite frequently, I'd disagree with your pronunciation of "Höpke", which I'd pronounce with a longer Umlaut - just like in the version you mentioned but quickly dismissed - because it is followed by a single instead of a double p.
I really enjoyed watching your video and I thought your solution for explaining the pronunciation of the German -ch as in "Mädchen" by comparing it to a kind of exaggerated pronunciation of the word "humid" (which I've heard a lot by native speakers) was absolutely genius!
Love love love Nena’s 99 Luftballons (loved both versions but liked the German one a bit more as it was more “exotic”). Also loved Falco (I know that he is Austrian but was Germanophone). He had the song Der Kommisar although this song was covered by a British group called After the Fire. I heard both versions but don’t know that if it wasn’t covered by the British band if the German song would have gotten any airtime that I would have remembered hearing it. Of course was much more famous in the USA for Rock Me Amadeus!
I love that the German version of Nena's song charted, while the B version is the MTV video and the one we all have memorized. And Feli pronounced it Neena, while I somehow thought it was Nayna. Also....I've watched the German video with subtitles.....the actual English version was way different, more "Red Dawn" than the translation was. Our version is very, VERY different. I'd like Feli's take on both.
I love Nena's songs like you ❤❤
I have the German 'Club Version' of that Nena album... on cassette, so I haven't played it in a long time. There were several good tracks on it, only one I can sort of remember the title of is "Danz auf der Vulkan" -- Dance on the Volcano. I'm nowhere near fluent, so I couldn't translate the lyrics, but they were still good synth pop. After the Fire's version of Der Kommisar had better production (and a better video) -- I remember seeing both videos on MTV, and Rock Me Amadeus got heavy airplay there as well...
@@AndrewAMartin 🥰🥰😊😊
The reason so many Americans know the word "fahren" in German has probably something to do with the Kraftwerk son "Autobahn" with the line "Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn.". God, I love that song!
My understanding of Danke Schoen (and ftm Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen) is that their pronunciation is Yiddish, and idk if that makes a difference, but our culture is steeped in Yiddish influences that no one really knows about (like the 3 Stooges). Anyway, as Americans we're generally familiar with regional accents in English; we have a lot of them here and the UK has several notable ones too. But I'd love a video on German accents/dialects in your experience.
"Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn!" Tschuss, Liebchen!😊
Yepp, Yiddish would probably stretch the Umlaut sound it the sound of the song. Not that I speak Yiddish, but what I've heard from certain speakers myself.
Thank you all your hard work it was a very entertains and engaging presentation !!!
I never thought I would have this opportunity to learn so much about Germany!
Detail on "Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" - this is a play on words with "Versicherung" = insurance, so you would have "First General Insurance" which sounds like your standard insurance company, and "unsicher" = unsure / insecure. If you want to translate the band name and keep the wordplay element, I would suggest "First General Insecurance".
Hmm, I didn't know that. Does the insurance company still exist? That's really a funny way to come up with a band name.
@@Mastacheata Sorry if I wasn't clear - I don't think that this was an actual insurance company, but it very well could have been.
But they were more a comedy band (good musicians, don't get me wrong), so if the way they came up with the band name seems to be funny, it fits right in.
@@joycastle. Whoops, totally my fault. I think I misread your comment when first looking at it. 🤦♂️
@@joycastle. The "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" was an actual insurance company from Austria (like the band) founded in 1882. In 1998 it merged into Generali. Of course the founding of EAV (the band again) predates that merger by about twenty years.
At first the company didn't like that name very much and sued, but they withdrew their complaint. Not like it happened with JBO (James [zensiert] Orchester) but I can somewhat understand that, what with those both being in the music business.
#37 was popular among Americans 40 and younger because Volkswagen used it in their television and radio advertisements around 1990. They never said what it meant on the ads but fortunately at the time I was in a graduate studio with a Berliner who explained that it meant "the joy of driving".
13:29 The French pronunciation of "-ballon" is actually the standard pronunciation, not a colloquial one. I've never heard it the way you pronounce it, but Duden lists your pronunciation as a variant, and I suppose it must be a southern thing. (I'm from northern Germany.)
Also, like others have pointed out, "Eisendrache" means "iron dragon", not "ice dragon".
Jep, never heard anyone saying Luftballon like that, maybe it's a bavarian thing..
Then her pronunciation at 13:29 is the Bavarian and Austrian standard pronounciation. Nearly everyone in these regions says it this way.
Some words really are regional, like Semmel or Brezn ;-)
Interesting... I have to agree with your comment regarding the word Ballon. I have never heard anyone pronounce it the way Feli does either. I and everyone I know say it the way she considered "colloquially".
balloon
@dattel diskussion I was simplifying my point. Of course, German pronunciations of French words usually aren't real French pronunciations, but most people also usually don't really have the linguistic background to know there's a difference between [baˈlõ] and [baˈlɔŋ]. This comment section isn't really the place to be that precise.
I can highly recommend listening to Heilung! They're unusual at first, but beautiful and pleasingly archaic. And Maria's voice is just out of this world!
I'm chanting Hakkerskaldyr every day
Thank you for this advice, my friend
In the US „oe“ is typically pronounced as something close to „a“ or „ey“ likely because that was how it was spoken in many of the dialects of the Germans who came to the US.
In the song it is likely because the Yiddish pronunciation as the lyricist was Jewish.
Feli is so cute and intelligent. I can't believe someone asked how to pronounce Ich Will. Have you heard that song? It's literally a pronunciation tutorial, the music was an afterthought.
Fun fact: In Austria there is an insurance company named "erste allgemeine Versicherung" (first common insurance). The Band, while thinking about how to name themselves, just saw some Illuminatet Logo of that company at a building outside the window and negated the term Versicherung to Ver-un-sicherung. That's how the band's name became Erste allgemeine Verunsicherung (first common un-insurance). The word Verunsicherung, however has it's own meaning an could be translated as "unsettledness". So a native German speaker would not associate Verunsicherung with anyithing around insurance but with unsettledness instead.
Verunsicherung would be uncertainty. Unsettledness appears to be something made up. I know what you mean, but it would be more like "not finalized", "no final definition"
Allgemein = general
@@MBrieger Exactly that not finalized, no final definition ist what is meant by "Verunsicherung" Someone does not really know what is going on/what to do, so the situation is not yet clear: unsettledness.
@@jurgens.3964 Jürgen, within Financials one talks about "settling" a debt. I guess that is what I had in mind as well, when I thought about the term.
I grew up with the SCORPIONS!! Was in love with their music from the first song, and the guitar player, at first sight💕🍻🤘
Many decades ago I want to Germany as part of the Foreign Exchange Program. I have a German last name, they were calling me in the airport for 5 minutes before I, and they, realized because the German pronunciation of my last name is so radically different from the American pronunciation. Everything from consonants being hard or soft, the sound of the vowel, where the emphasis is placed and even the sound made by tz. My German chaperons were just as shocked by the American pronunciation and that my fellow American students saying they would pronounce it the same way. In the US Gertz:Hertz:Kurtz:Kurts:Kerts:hurts all rhyme in German they do not at all.
Gertz and Hertz do rhyme in German, if you remember that Hertz is a German surname as well ;).
@@MrOpacor yes but in the American pronunciation the entire string all rhyme together, it takes a while for Americans to recognize Gertz & Hertz pronounced the German way.
As a German, I have no idea how Americans pronounce these ease names "wrong" = differently. What do you think: should someone react when called but name is pronounced wrong? My first and last name are difficult to pronounce for English speakers ... and instead of carefully listening most of them ask me how my name is spelled - which does not help to pronounce them correctly 🤣 first name is Gunnar ('goooo-nar like school and car) and Krause ('crow-say like crown and say) and do not stress the second part of each name like with French names.
a little bit of additional info: "Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung" is actually wordplay, too (like "Versengold"), because Versicherung is the german word for insurance. At the time of the founding of the band (1977), there was a rather big insurance company in Austria named "Erste Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG". So the band, being funny and satirical as they are, chose to quasi invert the name by turning "Versicherung" into "VerUNsicherung".
Well, Feli. Being Dutch and speaking English, German and - of course - Dutch, my surname (D R O G T) is pronounced differently in each of these three languages. And I'm ok with all of them! The German pronunciation should be easy for you. Just follow the regular, German pronunciation rules and that's it. 🙂 😎
Grüße aus Holland 🇳🇱
Is the original pronunciation something like "drort"?
I see that different. Surames are given to people by the parents. Then they are written down in documents like the birth certificate. No big problem as long as the carrier stays in the country or language-area. But if for example he moves from India or China to Germany they try to find a trans-script that can match the naturally spoken version as good as possible. Family names are traded through history and we know that the origin of these names can be everything from hair colour to settling area, Forefathers, Job, rank in society... everything that can describe someone. This was long before script was for the common people. And for those who were able to write, there was no standardized version. So if someone tells me that his name is spoken THIS way, I try to adopt that. If I can't, because I only have the written version I try to speak the version I think it was meant to be.
@@Matahalii I beg to differ. A surname (a.k.a. "family name" or "last name") is NOT given by the parents, they are instead inherited (mostly the same as the parents, though some cultures have somewhat different rules where it's from the first name of one parent, or differs by the child's sex, or whatever, and what exactly happens at marriage can be tricky), and often goes back to some bureaucratic decision some centuries ago. Maybe you confused it with the personal ("first") name?
I should also quickly mention that in some parts of the world (such as East Asia) the family name comes before instead of after the personal name and that people can have multiple personal names, which in the US for some reason has been specialized to exactly two, or one and a "middle initial".
@@KaiHenningsen Family names, or last names, were set around 1808 in the Netherlands into official registers.
And this goes for many countries occupied during the Napoleontic times.
They cannot be changed easily. Not even the way they are written. But many emigrants to the US or Canada have adapted their family name on immigration, mostly into the English version, de Bruin > Brown, Groen > Green, Timmerman > Carpenter.
I have three first names, my sister four, and others have five or even six. A hazard when you travel to the US, because you have to write them down fully on every form each time.
A long, long time ago, when my family was still noble and of high standing, the inheritance was split between four kids, those who got their fathers share continued with the fathers family name, the other two who got what mother brought into the marriage continued with mothers family name. But in those days the family name wasn't yet cut in stone, and they wanted to use the name connected to the estates they inherited.
Is my assumption correct, that the g in your name makes kind of what would be called a "harsh ch" sound by Germans? Or is this only the diphtong "gh"? Is the name related to the english word drought maybe?
My German professor in college always used to say, "When 'e' and 'i' go walking, the second one does the talking." So 'ie' = eee, and 'ei' = eye. ;)
Having lived in the Greater Cincinnati area for most of my life I have encountered many people with German last names and it can be frustrating trying to guess how each family pronounces theirs. For instance I have known people with the last name Rabe that pronounce it "Rayb" but also a different family that pronounce it "Robbie". I have known a Woeste family that says "Weestee" and another that says "Whoastee". I have known "Mule-ers" and "Millers". "Kotches", "Cooks", and "Cokes".
One thing is for sure, if they have a German name and live in the States for very long, they are highly likely to have no idea anymore how to correctly pronounce it according to the original German. As an American who has lived over 35 years in Germany and now in the States, I have seen this over and over!
You can add “Cuck” to the pronunciations of Koch. The people who had that last name where I grew up pronounced it that way.
@@pepintheshort7913 Yeah, and mostly spoken with an extended smile, well ... you know why.
99 Luftballons has been going through my head recently. 99 Kriegsminister, Streichholz und Benzinkanister... 99 defense ministers, match and gasoline canisters...
I loved Kraftwerk when I was in high school. I walked around singing about fahren, fahren, fahren auf den Autobahn 😃🚗. It’s also where I learned the word “Morgenspaziergang”. Wonderful word, and a great activity 😊. Thanks for the lesson! Tschüss!
EAV comes from Erste Allgemeine Versicherung that was (still is?) an insurance company in Austria, so it is a kind of a game with words, with the "un" inserted it means something like "uninsurance". It is one of my favourite bands, next time you should help us pronounce titles like Banküberfall (English version is Bankrobbery), Märchenprinz (Prince from a tale or sg?), or my all-time favourite Küß die Hand schöne Frau (Kiss the [your] hand pretty lady, btw "küß die Hand" used to be a greeting form here in Hungary too, thanks to the unforgettably beautiful times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, long live our Kaiser und König!) :)
In my humble opinion (as a linguist): The ability to differentiate between [z] and [s] strongly depends on the region you're from. In the far north and the south people mostly don't hear a difference, but I'd say that a plurality of germans can hear that they aren't the same sound.
Germans know that difference. In my humble opinion (as a German), I would say all of them. They are completly different letters in German - almost no chance to be mixed up.
@@zauberfee4403 Moritz Lauer was referring to the sounds of a voiced and voiceless "s" ([z] vs. [s]). Personally, I come from a region where there is practically no voiced "s" sound and therefore consider his opinion correct: Before I learnt about linguistics I couldn't tell the difference between both sounds.
In my childhood, we had this joke:
How does a nun count? Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, Pfui Teufel!, sieben, acht, neun, ... 😁
@@christian_w. it's about s and z. And they are completly different. What has it got to do with "sex" and "sechs"? I never even heard there was a difference in the prnounciation between thise two words, before.
@@zauberfee4403 No, it is not about the letters "s" and "z" (which are in fact different for virtually every German native speaker). Moritz's comment was about sounds. He used IPA, an alphabet to communicate in written form about sounds. And in IPA, [s] stands for a voiceless "s" sound like in "Tasse", "fließen", "Sex", "reißen". And [z] represents a voiced "s" sound like in "Sonne", "Lisa", "sechs", "reisen".
And my comment meant that in my region there is no difference in pronunciation between "sechs"/"Sex", "reisen"/"reißen", "Muse"/"Muße". All "s" sounds are voiceless, here.
@@christian_w. So you say, the "z" he wrote does not mean "zet" but "s"?
To all the foreigners I want to point out an important feature of the language which is necessary to understand first, otherwise you will not get the pronunciation right.
German is one of very few languages with a feature called terminal devoicing or Auslautverhärtung.
It means a native speaker will automatically, subconsciously HARDEN any "soft" (voiced = with your voice = your vocal cords resonate/vibrate) consonants into their "hard" (devoiced = voiceless = your vocal cords do not resonate/vibrate) counterparts.
Auf Deutsch: Die stimmhaften Mitlaute (Konsonanten) b, d, g, w werden zu stimmlosen p, t, k, f.
The voiced consonants b, d, g, w are devoiced into p, t, k, f.
This feature is VERY distinct and VERY noticeable the other way around, which means, whenever a German speaks English his Auslautverhärtung is one of the most prominent speech patterns contributing to a thick cliché German accent. Most Germans don't even know what terminal devoicing is and they don't realise they do it all the time on a subconscious level. Auslautverhärtung is acquired very early on as a baby from listening to the parents. It takes years of training and/or intensse excercise to lose terminal devoicing as a German when speaking English.
Terminal devoicing does not apply when the voiced consonant is not at the end of the syllable or at the end of the word.
Here is how a native speaker would pronounce things:
the wheel - das Rad ([ra:t]), correct pronouncatio is with a "hard" devoiced t --- but:
the wheels - die Räder, where the d is truly a "soft" voiced d.
der Schlag [schla:k]), ausgesprochen mit stimmlosem [k] - die Schläge, ausgesprochen mit stimmhaftem [g]
brav ([bra:f]), das [v] wird als stimmloses [f] ausgesprochen - jedoch: "das brave Mädchen" where the [v] is pronounced [bra:ve] as a German voiced [w]
der Zug [tsu:k] mit stimmlosem k - die Züge mit stimmhaftem g
das Haus mit "scharfem" stimmlosen s - die Häuser mit "summendem" stimmhaften s (equivalent to the English [z])
das Kind mit stimmlosem t - die Kinder mit stimmhaftem d
der Raub mit stimmlosem p - der Räuber mit stimmhaftem b
This rule is effective even within compound words (Determinativkomposita) as long as the voiced consonsant represents the end of a syllable:
The g in Schlaglicht is devoiced into k because it's the end of a syllable/stem word even though it is inside of a longer word.
And both g's in Flugzeug are pronounced as k's -> [flu:k][tseuk]
And of course, there are exceptions ;-) ....words ending on -ig such as Honig, König, richtig etc. are pronounced correctly with an [ich] sound, NOT an [ig] or [ik].
It's "Honich" ([ho:nich]) not "Honik" ([ho:nik]).
Also, words ending on -ung do not get subjected to Auslautverhärtung either.
Terminal devoicing is the most tricky thing for people who want to learn German and improve their pronunciation because it is such a difficult yet subconscious mechanism in the language. In English, aside from some inherited Old German remanence which survived the centuries, terminal devoicing does not exist at all.
@dattel diskussion There is no such thing as standard Austrian German. It's a dialect.
@dattel diskussion There is no Austrian language. They speak German with an Austrian accent and in Austria itself there are some Upper German (oberdeutsche) dialects. Those are the philological facts.
I’ve been watching your videos for a year or two and I still marvel at your English pronunciation. 😁
Wunderbar, mein freund
18:41 funnily enough, another diminutive of Frau is sometimes used to describe a dog owner: das Frauchen. Also for men: das Herrchen. For animals on the other hand, you would say Weibchen (female) and Männchen (male).
I wonder if you have heard about "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain (from A Tramp Abroad). Sam Clemens (pen name "Mark Twain") (1835-1910) was an author and humorist who was incredibly popular in the U.S. and Europe. But that was over a century ago so you may not be familiar with his work. 'The Awful German Language' can be found online.
At least the author Mark Twain is well known in Germany. But I've never heard about his book "The aweful German language".
@@jurgens.3964 You would probably be amused by it. It is more of an essay within a larger text.It spends a lot of it on the grammatical gender paradoxes. Also, delete the “e” when spelling “awful”.
@@Markle2k Well, it's Mark Twain, how could you not be amused by it? 😀
And at least this German here actually knows where his pen name came from. He worked for a while on river steam boats, where it was often necessary to measure the water depth to see if it became dangerously shallow, and it was usually communicated as "mark six ... mark five ... mark three" (getting shallower). And of course, "twain" is just "two". (How's that for a typical German reaction?)
@@jurgens.3964 I've read it (years ago), it's actually a short story which can be found in one of the short story compilation books.
@@KaiHenningsen typical German reaction machst Du gaaanz toll! Kennst Du auch Susanne Klickerklacker? 😇🤭😃
Hi Feli! This is one of my favorite sessions because I pride myself for knowing music all over the world even being here in the backwards US (music scene) :-). You didn't mention & what a lot of people don't know about the Nena song is the 99 luftballoons German version was by far a bigger hit in the US than the English translation which basically made no sense. Here's the German bands/artists I know of and have listened to.
1. Alphaville. Yes that catchy "Forever Young" song is from a German group
2. Sarah Connor. No not the Terminator person but a great German pop singer
3. The awesome Reamonn when they were fronted by Irishman Rea Garvey. There's a concert of theirs available on Blu-ray worldwide that's just incredible.
4. Tangerine Dream is German
5. The Notwist is German
6. Mando Diao is a Swedish group but they made major strides in Germany and actually came out with another great Blu-ray unplugged concert filmed there that still ranks as one of my favorites.
7. Of course the great Herbert Groenemeyer and the song "Mensch" (Human). The video with the polar bear and the catchy song I still remember vividly from my visit to Germany in 2002.
8. The legendary Giorgio Moroder famous for Donna Summer and memorable songs on the Top Gun soundtrack was italian, but was pretty much Munich-based from the 70s on.
Finally I love all those Aspres Ski (after skiing) compilations with great one hit wonder bands like Bluelagoon ("Break My Stride" remake) and one of my all time favorite covers is Fun Punk featuring Radspitz bizarrely epic cover of "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini".
We learned Fahrvergnügen from a Volkswagen commercial back in the 80's I believe it was. Does 'eidel' mean anything in German? Is it a common surname?
The Raycon ad was actually very helpful. 😄I have some, but I didn't realize they have so many button functions.
Volkswagen USA leaned heavily into the use of the catchword "Fahrvergnügen" in TV, radio and print ads for about 20 years; I was never clear whether that was done worldwide, or just in North America. At the time, my assumption was that their advertising copywriters just made the word up. If there's some use of the word in German-speaking countries that doesn't stem from those Volkswagen ads, I've never herd of it.
Are you too lazy to use google translate? It means noble as in eidelweiss.
@@drcthru7672 it is „edelweiss“
Eidel has no meaning, sorry to break that to you 😅 And it’s the first time I’ve heard it. I live in the west of Germany. It might be common in other parts but I haven’t heard it before
I'm German and I've never heard anyone pronounce Ballon like you do 🤣
I believe Fahrvergnügen was known in America mostly because of Volkswagen commercials several years ago.
I believe that the Volkswagen ads that used (made up) the word Fahrvergnugen were used beginning in 1990. I haven't seen that word used in a long time.
Audi - Vorsprung durch Technik
I think I remember seeing this commercial in the nineties when I was on vacation in the States, but I did not recognize the word they were saying for it. It did not have even remote similarity to the actual German pronunciation. They messed up the "v" (must be like "f"), the "gn" (the "g" must not be silent), and the "ü" (sounded like "u" ("oo" in English), but "ü" and "u" are very different sounds).
Sex is six in Latin as well. Interesting. I do listen to one German singer fairly regularly. She used to go by a stage name Oonagh but she has since gone to using her actual name Senta. Her latest song 9Was immer es ist” is quite delightful. Thanks for another enjoyable video, Feli! Hope your weekend is going well.
I know you say Americans use “Gesundheit” as a joke, but myself and a lot of people in my neck of the woods (upper Midwest) use it as a response to someone sneezing. Lots of descendants of German immigrants up here (the state capital of North Dakota, for example, was literally named after Otto von Bismarck)!
There are a good many people in Indiana and Ohio that will reflexively say gesundheit in response to a sneeze as well. It is just part of the lexicon borrowed from the old world.
I picked it up from my mother who lived in Germany twice when her father and later my father were stationed in Germany in the Army, but also was common to hear on US Army bases here as many other families have been stationed at times there.
Americans know #37 because of an ad campaign for Volkswagen back in the late 80s and early 90s. While on vacation with a friend's family we made it into "Fart Fig Newton"...
Love Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, 90% of Bach's music, and of course The Scorpions.
Got to see the 9th live with the Cincinnati Symphony Orch and the Maifest Chorus this year. it was magnificent.
All of Beethoven's symphonies are great.
@@kkampy4052 So jealous ... !
When I lived in Germany many years ago, we would joke that all roads lead to Ausfahrt. Love your videos!
Feli, I’ve long enjoyed your videos, and I think that you speak beautifully both English and German. I find your English pronunciation, phrasing and grammar to be very close to those of native English speakers, without your incorporating native-English bad habits.
One native detail that I hope you’ll purge is the use of the term “you guys” and all its various related forms, especially “your guys’s”, which you used at around the 5:00 mark. “You”, “your” and “yours” are perfectly clear. Adding “guys” is not only unnecessary, it makes for the nonsensical double possessive: both “your” and “guys’s”. It’s also a mouthful to pronounce, and in any case, the possessive plural of “guys” is “guys’”, not “guys’s”.
Thanks for all your great videos about your US and German adventures.
Me as a German have a question. Isn't guys originaly used only for males? If so, why is it used nowadays for both sexes?
Or just the more appropriate southern US version, “y’all”! I also like when there are a bunch of “y’all” and we say, “all y’all”.
@@dj1rst : it happens mostly at the workplace. This is because in the past it was rare for boys and girls to be seen together except they are kins or husbands and wives. Nowadays, men and women work together at workplace, work out together at the gym ...so it is more convenient to address them both as guys in a meeting.
Geiss in german is the female goat....🐐😂🤣
@dattel diskussion : The English have a word to show the plural of 'you' and that is 'you people'. The American version of you people is you guys.
7:24: Der Eisendrache - more like The Iron Dragon, Ice Dragon would be Eisdrache
13:56: Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung - Its a play of words on the name of an austrian insurance company "Erste Allgemeine Versicherung" (First General Insurance). That Insurance company even tried to sue the band for their name, but withdrew their lawsuit after a while. A similar thing happened to a german pop band with the name "Die Allianz", which also got sued by the german insurance company of the same name, but indeed had to rename their band (to "Die Band ohne Namen" - "The band without a name").
14:11: Versengold - Indeed another play of words which is based on the (outdated) german saying "Fersengeld geben" (loosely translated "paying heel money" ), which means turn tail and run/to bail out of something or to scram. They obviously changed Ferse to Verse as a reference to verses (since they are obviously a band) instead of heel. Maybe they changed Geld (money) to Gold so the pun isn't too much on the nose. To be fair, I find many similar names of german folk rock bands and bands of the "Neue Deutsche Härte" kinda cringe.
15:37: I guess the pronunciation of "Dankeschön" as something like "Danke sheen" or "Danke sheyn" isn't of genuin german origin but sounds more like jewish (or yiddish), maybe even Pennsylvania German dialect.
Ausfahrt is definitely a running gag with military personnel.
The people who have been stationed in Germany a while will tell the noobs about the town of Ausfahrt and how it has the best bars and the hottest women and such just to have them driving around lost taking every exit on the highway trying to get to Ausfahrt.
Now that's funny!
Man würde echt denken, dass "Quirky Unterschiede zwischen USA& Deutschland" als Kanalkonzept 2022 schnell ausgelutscht wär, aber 4 Jahre UA-cam and it's still your whole personality gurl
Bei den Namen habe ich meinen eigenen Vornamen vermisst. Bislang hat ihn noch kein English Muttersprachler sofort korrekt aussprechen können. In Kombinaton mit einem Nachnamen ergibt mein Vorname dann Uwe Seeler (Fussballspieler beim HSV und leider kürzlich verstorben) einen Name der passen würde für das Video.
In Bezug auf die "Ausfahrt" gibt es ein Strassenschild in Dänemark das unsere Freunde aus Michigan sehr lustig fanden: "Fart Kontrol" dieses Schild warnt in Dänemark vor einer Geschwindigkeitskontrolle.
I don’t listen to a lot of German music but Kraftwerk is a must. Their Trans Europa Express has been sampled so much. I also like Glasperlanspiel, Tim Bendzko, Lotte. Oh and I used to be really love listening to this American Schlager singer, Sarah Jane Scott.
Martin Luther King jr was was born Michael King jr. His father like him was a Baptist minster and was born Michael King and named his son Michael King jr. He went to Germany befor WWII to a Baptist convention and learned about the protestant reformer Martin Luther and changed his name to Martin Luther King and his son's name to Martin Luther King jr.
7:42 The Nürburgring actually consists of the north loop (Nordschleife) and the Grand Prix track. The south loop (Südschleife) was partially demolished, most of it is now a public road, only a few areas are still in their original condition. The start-finish loop (Start Ziel Schleife) was even completely torn down. Even before Niki Lauda's accident, many Formula 1 drivers refused to continue driving on the north loop because the track was becoming too dangerous for them due to the faster cars. After Niki Lauda's accident, the Nürburgring was removed from the racing calendar. After that, the Grand Prix track was built on the area where the start-finish loop and the northern part of the south loop used to be, so that Formula 1 returns to the Nürburgring.
Greetings from Germany
Entertaining video as always. You mentioned that the word Schadenfreude is somewhat unique to the German language. There is in fact an English equivalent - epicaricacy - but it is rarely used. Most English speakers are more familiar with the German word.
I think even for English speakers the German word would be easier to pronounce 😂
❤❤🤗🤗
I was reminded of a train trip where my fellow passenger, a man whom I took to be Indian or Pakistani, was reading a Sydney newspaper and sneezed several times.
Some Australians, including myself, say, "Gesundheit!", which I did.
He jumped like a shot rabbit. "Was hast Du gesagt!?" He wasn't even polite to an older man!
It emerged that he was in Sydney for post graduate studies, was of Afghani descent, and came from Hamburg. In two weeks in Australia, he had not met anyone socially, and, at first he was more than a little suspicious of how I "knew he was German".
Eventually I persuadex him that "mehrere Australier sagen "Gesundheit", auch wenn sie außerdem kein Deutsch sprechen."
Once he relaxed and was confident I wasn't from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, we had a good chat for the rest of the journey.
So "Gesundheit" has migrated here as well, though, I suspect, not as commonly as in the US.
"Gesundheit" is fairly common in the US, but it's a regional thing -- from Pennsylvania through the Midwest, where there have been large German immigration, but not as much in other areas. I never cared for saying "Bless You" so I adopted "Gesundheit" after taking German in high school...
Hi Feli, enjoyed the video.
Rammstein has a song (and great music video) called Deutschland ( ua-cam.com/video/2nmxqHJZvO8/v-deo.html ). It has many references of Germanys history throughout the video and the lyrics are mentioning the duality many Germans can feel when thinking about current Germany and it's history. Would be great if you would watch/react to it and break the historic referenced down.
Well, this is kinda hard, simply because Rammstein "plays" a little bit with history here. Although some scenes are quite easy to name (like the references to the Third Reich or the GDR), others are quite metaphoric and abstract.
There are already videos here on YT, giving an analysis on Deutschland. 😉
You're right on the origin of the Borussia in a football club's name, but specifically for Borussia Dortmund the name originates from the Borussia beer.