HONIG

This post was written 11 years ago.
Sun, 06 Apr 2014

This means honey and it's a masculine word so "the honey" is DER HONIG.


I still can't get remember a big chunk of genders in German and so half the time I'm probably talking crap. I suppose honey in French is also masculine but that's no guide as there's little consistency from one language to another. The other thing is, of course, that "der" is also used as the definite article for feminine nouns in the dative and genetive and for anything genetive in the plural. So, for example, you've got "die Schule" for "the school" but if you're in the school, you'd say "Ich bin in der Schule". Well, it's all very logical but then if you can't remember if it was "der Honig" in the first place then you compound your error if you say ask someone if they've seen the honey, which is then "Hast du den Honig gesehen". But if you thought it was "die Honig" then you're left wondering if you shouldn't have said "Hast du die Honig gesehen". And you end up sounding like a bit of a cretin all because of that one little piece of knowledge. German has that nasty habit of making you feel just a little bit thick.


Anyway, der Honig it is.



This post was written 11 years ago, which in internet time is really, really old. This means that what is written above, and the links contained within, may now be obsolete, inaccurate or wildly out of context, so please bear that in mind :)
Tags: food /
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BUTTER

This post was written 12 years ago.
Mon, 03 Dec 2012

Here's a nice easy one - this is obviously that creamy, white stuff you spread on your toast. It's also pronounced the same as in English, assuming you like short u's that is. I don't want to start blathering on about genders, which is frankly very dull, but the good news for anyone who can't remember if BUTTER is masculine, feminine or neuter - well, you've got a two-in-three chance of being right (as opposed to a one-in-three chance in most other cases). That's because it's die Butter in most of Germany but, for some weird reason, der Butter in Bavaria. So if anyone pulls you up short, just look dumb and pretend you learnt your German from some cretinous farmer in Fürstenfeldbruck.

There are a couple of other words that rhyme with butter that are kind of easy to guess: MUTTER for mother and FUTTER for fodder (food for animals). Unfortunately, if you thought other English words like "cutter", "gutter" and "nutter" had similar German equivalents, well tough - they don't. I have no idea what a gutter is in German - probably something like Dachrohrwasserlieferungsgerät. (Actually Katja tells me it's REGENRINNE.)

This post was written 12 years ago, which in internet time is really, really old. This means that what is written above, and the links contained within, may now be obsolete, inaccurate or wildly out of context, so please bear that in mind :)
Tags: Easy-peasy / Food /
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