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The long-awaited Ach-Laut video is here! Hurra!

The "Ach-Laut" means the "ach sound" and it is the airy, throaty sound you hear in the words "ach" and "machen."

Phonetically, this sound is written as /X/ and to that we say "ach." In this video I've broken down for you:

1. What the sound /X/ is and what it isn't.

2. How to feel where it takes place and

3. How to practice the sound, first slowly and then speeding it up step-by-step.

The words we concentrate on in this video are Ach, Bach, Sa…

“How do I make time to learn German?” you ask? The answer is to choose to work at learning German instead of other things. You can only spend your time once, so adjust a few things in your life to make serious progress for German.

Some of these tips listed here are things I’ve seen clients do to make themselves some more time for G…

Time is the most precious commodity we have—and once it’s been spent, it’s gone forever. When you’re learning German, you of course want to know how much time you need to put in to really learn it! It’s vital that you use the time that you have wisely. Thus I say:

Think in terms of learning sessions,
not in minutes of study time.

This helps you break down the work you need to do related to the time you have available. Schedule the work that needs to be done, not the time you think you should sp…

When the calendar turns to the holiday season, it's time to talk about holiday greetings! This year Christmas and Hanukkah even take place at the same time. So here you've got all the holiday greetings you need for this week & next!

But wait! It's still Advent--it isn't even the Christmas season yet!

Advent! - die Vorweihnachtszeit

In the US we fever and shop and practically race our way to Christmas and Advent is often left up to the church calendar. However in Germany it's also cultural--Ad…

Besides books and reading, it's safe to say the board games are an important German cultural element. Games are so important to Germans that there is a Verein (club) that reviews games every year known as the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year).

German board games are awesome and some of them are now cult games of epic proportions. You might have seen Catan spread out on the coffee table in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. (Das war echt toll zu sehen.)

Here are a few games you could get to …

When you're buying a Christmas gift for someone who is studying German, you may not know exactly what they need. With one small piece of information, that is which level of German they are at, you can do some quality gift buying right here.

Be sneaky! Look on your German learner's book for one of these combinations: A1, A2, B1, B2, or C1. There might be a "+" after it or the book might show a range of levels, for example A2-B1. Sometimes the letter/number combination is on a blue square with th…

Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser,

This is a safe place. This is a safe place for you. This is a safe place for you and me to be together.

Here at GermanWithNicole I have purposefully created a safe place for people to explore the German language, Germanic culture, thoughts about elements of our lives that vary from culture to culture. The main goal of this work is education and cultural understanding. At the heart of everything is compassion.

Here there are visitors from all over the world every d…

Suchen Sie einen neuen Job?

Brauchen Sie neue Kunden?

Wollen Sie jemandem helfen, eine ganz neue Karriere anzufangen?

Dann brauchen Sie Vitamin "B".

"B" für Beziehung

Everybody knows you need vitamins, preferrably from fruits and vegetables, or from vitamin tablets. There are real B vitamins in Germany, like Vitamin B12, however they also have this special vitamin known as "Beziehung"...relationship.

This gets at the heart of all networking and elbow-rubbing and shmoozing that goes on al…

I have a confession to make:  my first German teacher was so bad, I blocked him from my memory.

For years now I've been working on this website, cultivating each page and making everything as genuine and transparent as possible. And then it hit me:  I have indeed had another German teacher (a professor, actually), from whom I learned exactly 3 words of German in 2 semesters at college:

ein Glas Limonade

Yep, das war alles.

So it's no wonder I'd blocked it all out. It was just that bad.

In German there are a few words that express something so specific, so perfect, that we really need them in English. Like Gemütlichkeit! We don't have a word or a specific concept just like that to describe feeling "comfortable, happy, and content" in English, and we also don't have the slang use of Schmerzensgeld that the Germans have--and sometimes we really need it.

The dictionary definition of Schmerzensgeld is "money for pain and suffering." As in the legal term, if you are wrongfully inju…