Mistakes I still make in German

I have technically been learning German now for 14 years (woah).
But, I will never be able to master the German language. Punkt.

I can sometimes feel on cloud nine, breezing through a conversation, when BOOM I say the wrong gender for a word or a use the wrong type of word, mistaking verbs and adjectives and nouns… Or sometimes I get into so much detail, that I suddenly lose my trail of thought and forget which verbs I have to say at the end (for example, the word order of a long sentence may be something like: “Well, so far I know, would have he his homework for his English class already last week do should” (or, in English: “Well, as far as I know, he should have already done his homework for his English class last week.”) – I get entangled in the object of the sentence that I forget what is actually happening to that object. Worryingly, this also happens when I write emails, too. I just completely forget to write the verb at the end and carry on merrily with my email, thus having to add about 3 verbs when checking through again.

There are some certain things, however, that I say wrong quite often. As a kind of small list of “Bloody hell, Dan, will you FINALLY get this stuff right?” and also to show you all, I thought I’d compile a list of things I say wrong often. Or, at least, the things that I’m aware I do wrong. I will add to this list or write a similar new post when I come across more stupid stuff I say in German!

Trousers are a singular noun in German

Starting off with such a simple thing that I constantly forget – in English, we say: “The trousers are blue” – ‘trousers’ is plural. In German, as trousers are technically one item, they refer to it in the singular (i.e. “the trousers is blue”). This also applies to words like ‘scissors’. If you asked me how you say it correctly in German, I’d tell you. But if it’s thrown midway into one of my sentences, 9 times out of 10 I will refer to ‘die Hose’ as “sie sind”. But somehow I’ve managed to get over the fact that ‘scissors’ has the same rule. Not sure why, but at least it’s better than getting it all wrong.

The difference between ‘verheiratet’ and ‘geheiratet’ (both meaning ‘married’)

Another thing I constantly get wrong (and I’m genuinely going to have to look this one up to check I get it right here) is the fact that Germans have a word for ‘married’ as a state (‘They are married’, ‘They have been married for 10 years’), but they have a different word for ‘married’ as a verb (‘They got married last year’). The state is ‘verheiratet’ and the verb is ‘geheiratet’. And I always, always, always get them mixed up!

The phrase ‘she fainted’ in German

OK, this was a one-off, but I got completely laughed at by Tim for this. I wanted to tell him a story about how somebody fainted. Now, I knew it had something to do with the word ‘black’, as in ‘blackout’. The actual way of saying it is: “Ihr ist schwarz vor den Augen geworden” (which kind of means: “For her, it became black in front of her eyes”). Did I say that? No, of course I didn’t. I wasn’t sure about it, so as to not break the flow of the conversation, I said to Tim: “Sie ist schwarz geworden”. In other words, I told him she turned black, which could be (and was by Tim) understood in terms of her skin colour. Whoops.

Verbs with prepositions and their damn cases

This is one of my pet hates in German and something that really annoys me when I can’t remember which case a preposition takes. The thing is, in German, there are some prepositions that always take a certain case (such as ‘mit’ (with) also taking the dative case, and ‘für’ (for) always taking the accusative case). Simple. However, there are some evil prepositions that like to be case-fluid. Prepositions like ‘an’ and ‘über’. Phrases like:”I am working on the book” (Ich arbeite an d?? Buch) always get me, as I’m never sure if I’m working on das Buch or dem Buch (I just looked it up – it’s dem Buch because it takes the dative. Must try to remember that). So, in my head I think – OK, in this case, ‘an’ takes the dative. Awesome. But, lo and behold, the phrase “I am thinking about the book” (which also uses ‘an’) translates to “Ich denke an das Buch”, because, of course, it takes the accusative. There’s no wonder I keep getting that stuff wrong!

Not knowing the genders of new brand names

The Nintendo Switch is feminine according to the German language!

This is also a weird one and of course something that I can’t work out myself as a non-native, but it occurred to me that I sometimes find it difficult to talk about something new as I don’t know the gender of it. An example being the Nintendo Switch (I now have one – it’s so good!). I wanted to talk about it and say: “I’m going to get a Nintendo Switch”. But, is it ein Nintendo Switch or eine Nintendo Switch? Of course, if you were to say either, every German would understand you. But I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I wanted to know the correct way. It turns out it’s die Nintendo Switch, probably because it’s die Spielkonsole (but let’s not get started with that again). And then, I wanted to talk about the amiibo (a Nintendo figurine thing that can unlock things in your game) that I’d just seen in the shops, and wanted to say: “I’m wondering whether to get the amiibo we saw over there”. And there I was completely stuck: der, die or das?! After considering it a bit himself, Tim said he would say die, because it’s die Figurine. Would other Germans agree?!

Yet, despite the suffering I go through, I still enjoy the German language!