KLASSE means "class" as you may have guessed. It's also used when you're impressed with something, in the sense that it's "great" or "class". Great lingo to use if you're a footballer: "Das ist klasse!"..."That's great."

But before you think I'm giving German an easy ride, then you've got the word UNTERRICHT, which means "teaching" or "instruction".

I'm a happy bunny today as my team, Birmingham City, have just thrashed Reading 6-1 at home in the Championship -- English football's second tier. The club's fortunes have turned around massively since the start of November following the appointment of former defender Gary Rowett as manager. The new gaffer has so far led us to four wins, two draws and just one defeat in his first seven games in charge. (Typically, the defeat occured to Blackpool, whose new manager is our old boss Lee Clark.) Rowett took over following a disastrous 8-0 defeat at home to Bournemouth, which means that today's result does wonders for our goal difference too.

As things stand, though, 1860 are doing much worse in the league than we are, currently third from bottom, lying in place SECHZEHN, or sixteen, in the table. We're 15th in a much bigger league of 24 teams so thing are definitely looking up for us. What I'd love would be for the run to carry on and for the Blues to end up in place SECHS in the table at the end of the season, which would get us into the play-offs and possibly back up into the Premier League.

As it's near Christmastime, I've been thinking about the word TANNENBAUM, which means fir tree and is the theme of the famous carol "O Tannenbaum" that may have been sung, by the way, during the truce between British and German soliders at Christmastime during the First World of War. If you look up the lyrics, they commend a fir tree for its loyalty (in being green all year round) and durability (in not losing its leaves in winter). But why is "tree" BAUM? I mean the words don't even sound similar. In fact, English has the word "boom", which is the bottom, horizontal, wooden bit on a sail. Boom traces its roots to BAUM -- in fact, so does the English word "beam", which generally also refers to long piece of wood.

So it's simple really -- a Baum is a beam.

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.

For some weird reason, the part of Bristol where I live seems to abound with disgusting slimy slugs that creep under the back door and into our kitchen. I've lost count of the number of times I've come down in the morning only to be greeted by a trail of slime meandering across the floor. The only solution is to get up early when no-one's around and see if you can catch the blighter mid-journey and chuck it out, or worse.

So I have absolutely no love of these creatures, whose point is beyond me. But no matter how vile they are, the name in German makes them sound kind of cute. Kind of. That's because NACKTSCHNECKE is literally a "naked snail", as opposed to an ordinary, SCHNECKE, which has a house on its back. I'm wondering, though, given they tend to show up at night, if they shouldn't really be called NACHTSCHNECKE.

Either way, they're still disgusting.

I've come across a bunch of interesting German words starting with a "K" that are almost the same in English, except that in English that first "k" is mysteriously silent.

So you've got KNIE, which is knee, KNOTEN, which is knot, and KNETEN, which is to knead. The one I've picked out here is KNECHT, which is a knave, although strangely a knight in English is RITTER, or rider, in German.

Then there's KNÖCHEL, which is knuckle and also ankle. I'm sad to report that KNOBLAUCH is unfortunately not "knob-leek", but actually garlic. Though on second thoughts, garlic is a kind of stubby leek so maybe that is really the origin of the word after all. And perhaps KNÖDEL, which is dumpling, is really a kind of "noodle". But what about all those words like "knackered", "knackers" and "knack" -- do they have anything to do with KNACKWURST sausages? I wonder...

Well it's been a while since I've added anything to this blog -- the reason is my Netbook was on the blink and the screen broke. Anyway here we are again

I was thinking about this word the other day when a colleague flung an envelope on my desk at work that had been sent from the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the German Centre for Air and Space Travel. "Fahrt" of course always elicits an amusing snigger for English speakers, but I wondered for a moment why "Raum" meant Space. But then of course, Raum just means "room" and of course there's plenty of room in space, which is infinite to all intents and purposes. And English speakers use the words interchangably when, for example, asking someone if they've got any room/space in their car/house. In a much more sinister context, Hitler used to rant on about LEBENSRAUM or "room to live" when he annexed territories neighbouring Germany that had large numbers of Germans living in them.

For some weird reason, I really like this word. It has nothing to do with Turks, but is made up of two halves – TÜR meaning door and the other half meaning "handle". Hence door handle.

To me it just sounds right -- I think "klinke" is exactly the sort of clinking noise a door handle makes when you open it, particularly if it's actually a handle, not a knob, fnarr fnarr. Of course TÜR shouldn't be mixed up with TOR, which means "gate" as in the BRANDENBURGER TOR – the famous monument in central Berlin. You know, the one with the pillars and the horses on top.

When it comes to football, TOR is also a goal, which is why TORWART is a goal keeper. Germany's produced its fair share of top shot-stoppers in the past – from the kindly-looking Jens Lehmann who was at Arsenal for years to nasty Toni Schumacher who bulldozed that French striker in the 1982 World Cup semi-finals in Spain and never even got a yellow card. Not that I'm bitter or anything – it was, of course, Germany who got through at England's expense in the previous round, partly because former Hamburg striker Kevin Keegan couldn't find the back of the German TOR.

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.)

Cracking word, this one. It means "to snore".

I learned today from my brother-in-law's sister that in French "to snore" is "ronfler", which is a nice word but sounds just too polite. Schnarchen, on the other hand, gets the message across much better. I mean, you can't even say the word without wrinkling up your nose –, go on, try it. The only trouble is, tell someone "you snore" and it's DU SCHNARCHST, which is a bit tricky.