Coffee Break Spanish Magazine Episode 107

The latest edition of the Coffee Break Spanish Magazine is now available. Join the team and improve your Spanish! In this edition:

  • Alba asks her interviewees, ¿ayer hiciste algo especial? Answers cover a range of topics – and accents!;
  • Laura teaches us what hablar por los codos means;
  • and JP and Nahyeli discuss medical Spanish in response to a listener’s question.

On Location German – 5 Dec 2012

121205-hollyHallo! It’s Holly here again with another blog post from Germany.

I have now moved in with a German family, so I am getting to speak lots of German and I am learning lots of new things about German culture and new words every day.  When I was moving out of the Jugendgästehaus (youth house/accommodation for young people doing work placements) where I was previously living and moving into my new house, I learned the words ausziehen (to move out), einziehen (to move in) and umziehen (to move house). It’s interesting to see that in German, like in English, adding different prefixes to words can change the meaning!

We have dinner together as a big family and the other day I was told that das Leitungswasser means tap water in German. In the UK we drink a lot of tap water, whereas Germans seem to like all of their drinks to be carbonated. When you buy bottles of water or juice you will often see mit Kohlensäure which means that it is carbonated. Literally, Kohlensäure is carbonic acid, and it seems strange to be buying a drink and asking for it “with carbonic acid”, but this is very common in German.

In the same week as moving in with this family I also needed to visit the doctor for the first time abroad. It is much harder to get an appointment here than in the UK but I did, however, manage to get an appointment with the local Hausarzt (GP). I was given a Rezept (prescription) for an Inhalator (inhaler) and I had to take it to the Apotheke (pharmacy). I feel like I have learned so much new vocabulary this week! For example, Der Husten is a cough and Der Hustenbonbon is a cough sweet and these two words have come in very useful as I’ve coughed and spluttered my way through lessons in the past few days! Another phrase that I have heard all of my friends saying recently is:

Ich bin erkältet
I have the cold.

On a brighter note, I am loving the crisp winter mornings here and can’t believe how quickly everything is going! I hope that you are all enjoying these blog posts. Bis bald!