Test Your German Vocabulary Online

My new addiction: Vokabel.com. Don't be thrown off by the rickety, 90's-tastic look and feel to the Web site. It's actually an incredibly effective tool for learning new German words and bolstering your German vocabulary.

It's typing intensive because you actually have to type in the German version of the English word generated. (It's not multiple choice). So as with any typing it can, after a while, begin to strain das Handgelenk (wrist. I learned it on Vokabel).

Probably the worst of the stylistic downsides to Vokabel is the lack of an umlaut - you have to add "e" after whichever vowels you want to be umlauted. But that's fine by me because I don't have umlauted letters on my keyboard anyway.

I'm recommending this online German vocabulary test for one simple reason: it works. I learned new words yesterday that I found myself thinking about today, and even identified one in a book I'm reading in German.

So now test your German vocabulary online, and learn new German words here. Good luck!

Fascist Austrian Politician Joerg Haider Dies

Here's a German word you might already know: Schadenfreude. It's also an English word.

Joerg Haider died today. Gawker.com highlights a few of Haider's most fascist moments as:

...the extreme right wing Austrian politician who once said the Nazis had "an orderly employment policy" and referred to the concentration camps as "the punishment camps of National Socialism,"...

One commenter reacts:

My father was born on an abortionist's table in the summer of 1938 in Vienna, my grandmother failing to gain entrance to a hospital. One of the nurses spit at her while she was in labor and said, "We don't want your kind here." All of her family was killed, except her brother, and a few cousins who were part of the Kindertransport to England.

I respect Germany and its anti-fascist laws and genuine attempt to deal with the atrocities of the Holocaust. Austria has done nothing, and continues to elect these horrid apologist. I am glad that Haider died a violent death and I hope my dead relatives are laughing.

I live in Klagenfurt, the capital city of Carinthia where Haider reigned as governor until today. My neighbor just called me about the news and openly wondered if someone had actually intended for Haider to be run off the road. NPR reports that an investigation is under way while the AP writes, "Authorities said an initial investigation showed no signs of foul play."

CNN also reports Haider's death.

Read German language news about the death of Joerg Haider

Listen to German politicians and friends react to Joerg Haider's death.

Now, I really, really want to go to the funeral procession and take pictures. I have no idea when it will be. Does anybody know? Seems like tomorrow, which promises to be a crisp, bright October Sunday, would be nice. To help me in my online search, I need to look up the word for funeral in German. FYI: it's die Beerdigung.

A German Saying About The Weather, Translated

This year, the weather has been strange. Time for another German saying about the weather. Let's see if I can translate this. If not, hopefully our Austrian transplant Ramsey or our native Swiss friend Roman can help us out :-)

Here's we go:

Geht die Sonne feurig auf, folgen Wind und Regen drauf

Okay, I'm closing my eyes and not going to the German-English translator Leo.org for help. Here's my first take. I think this is a very, very simple expression about how when the sun is fiery, the wind folds under and the rain stops.

Now, let's see how close I am. First, I'm going to look up the words I'm not sure about:

geht...auf, well, I told you that I already studied German. So I know enough about German's separable prefixes to save time and look up the single word aufgehen:

aufgehen - to rise. Well, that makes sense :-)

feurig - I was right! It means "fiery" in German! Sweet.

folgen - to ensue, to follow.

drauf - to be on the ball

or it could be a shortened version of darauf:

darauf - upon

Hm. Upon the ball? The ball being the "fiery sun"? Ouch. I'm confused about drauf.

Let's try it anyway. How about something like, "If the sun rises brightly, it will be followed by wind and rain". (Here in Austria, truer words have never been spoken). I think we're good to go. And now I'm also way less confused about drauf. It's short for darauf and one of the infinite definitions of darauf generated by Leo.org was "afterward".

This was a pretty good German sayings sesh. If you want more, visit our master page of German sayings. Enjoy!

German Word for Juice: Apple, Orange, Lemonade & Tea

I recently blogged the German words for healthy foods. Now let's focus not only on the German word for juice, which is Saft, but on what seems to be a specialty at the market here in Klagenfurt, Austria:

Orange-Karottensaft

Can you guess what that means? Fresh squeezed and grated, it's delicious.

The German names of other typical juices are:

der Apfelsaft - apple juice
der Orangensaft - orange juice
die Limonade - lemonade
der Eistee - iced tea
die Saftbar - juice bar

As you might have guessed, the sometimes-sweltering Austrian August has made me thirsty. Speaking of which, hears another near-cognate:

der Durst - thirst

Have another juice you love? List it in the comments below!

Translate German Words Online with New WordReference.com in German

I begin this post with a confession: German is not my only love. Before German came Spanish.

It was Spanish that taught me about WordReference.com, an online dictionary that has frequently been an indispensable Web resource to me when professionally translating text from Spanish to English.

WR is also my go-to resource to satisfy any sort of vague curiosity about Spanish. So when I decided to really set my mind to learning German, I felt a bit lost without WordReference because at that point (like two months ago) they simply didn't do German.

Times have changed.

Not sure exactly when, but less than two months ago they up and rolled out an online German dictionary! If they'd only been an itsy bit quicker to the draw (like by about two months, or less) I probably would never have gone over to their formidable competitor in the German space, Leo.org.

It's for the better, though, because now I have two great online German dictionaries which do translations and forum discussions about translating words from German to English and from English to German.

What's the difference between Leo.org and WordReference in German? From my limited knowledge, here's a quick comparison between WordReference German vs Leo.org for English-German, German-English:

An immediate deduction (not observation, I haven't had time yet) is that the forum discussions in WR won't bear as much fruit as Leo, because WR in fresh out of the gate for German. Duh. But while we're talking about online language forums, the quality of WR's for Spanish was always exceptional in my experience, and while I don't know French and never go into the French section I am a good friend of the second-ever mod for WR for French and he's a bright guy so I get a sense that WR, in general, does bitching forums. Can't comment on Leo simply because I haven't been in there yet. But from what I can tell their online German-English, English-German dictionary is awesome, perhaps even better than WR was for Spanish.

Have you had a chance to use either one of these online tools? If so, what are your thoughts on the dictionaries and forums? Can you compare the two?