Five common mistakes German learners make, and how to fix them
Coffee Break German

Five common mistakes German learners make, and how to fix them

C1AdvancedJuly 6, 20267 min

I bet you've done at least one of these. In this episode I walk through five mistakes German learners make all the time, from getting the construction behind "recht haben" right, to knowing when to use "wenn" and when to use "als", to the little contrast between "ich bin ..." and "mir ist ..." when you talk about how you feel. We'll also sort out "machen" versus "nehmen" and why fun "macht Spaß" rather than "ist Spaß". None of these are hard once you see what's going on, and fixing them makes a real difference to how natural your German sounds. ...

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So in today's episode, we are going through five very common German mistakes,

, ,

a few simple tricks to help you actually remember the right version,

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  • 19 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

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0:00

Hello and welcome back to Coffee Break German. My name is Thomas and today we are looking at something that every German learner experiences. Those little mistakes that just keep appearing again and again, even when you feel like your German is improving.

0:19

And honestly, these mistakes are completely normal. Some of them happen because English and German sentence structures are so different. Some happen because certain expressions simply don't translate directly, and some are just traps that almost everyone falls into at some point.

0:39

So in today's episode, we are going through five very common German mistakes, how to correct them, and most importantly, a few simple tricks to help you actually remember the right version, so you won't make them again.

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