It has been 8 months since I moved to Munich. I used to be completely ignorant of the German language. In fact, it never crossed my mind that I was going to live in Germany one day. However, life has a funny way of working out. I remember that even pronouncing U-Bahn station names was a hard task for me at the beginning. Although I am still a beginner learning the language, it has been interesting to see my progress in learning the German language and its peculiarities. I noticed that, besides the easy words you initially learn, there are some phrases and slangs that help me to be fully engaged with the language. My favorites are:

– Ich glaub’ ich spinne: The actual meaning is ´´I believe I spider´´. In English, it means ´´I believe I am going crazy´´.

– Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof: If you translate word by word it means ´´ I only understand train station´´. This phrase is used if someone is not understanding anything of what is happening.

–Du beleidigte Leberwurst:  It is technically translated as ´´You offended a liver sausage´´. In other words, it means that you are in a mood.

–Du gehst mir auf den keks: Word by word it means something like ´´ You get on the cookies´´. But what it means is that someone is getting in your nerves (for some reason this one is my favorite).

–Ich mach mir vom Acker: This expression is used when someone wants to say ´´I am getting out of here´´.

As you can read, these expressions cannot be translated word by word because they would not make sense. These types of words are called idioms, and these are just a few. Feel free to comment your favorite if it is not listed above 😊

Blog entry submitted by Eugenia Sanchez