Indie Publishing

What’s The Best Software For Writing Ebooks? – A Brief Introduction

Once you’ve made the decision to write your first ebook and self-publish it or just finally release that epic fantasy tome catching dust in your drawer, the inevitable question arises: what’s the best software for this? How much should you spend? Is there something open-source, perhaps? Can you just use good ol’ Word? Since I’ve been asked this…

German

10 Ways To Find Simple German Texts and Stories For Beginners Online

Reading can be a great way to learn a language, but it’s not always easy to find texts which are both simple and interesting enough, especially for beginners. When you ask people for easy-to-read German texts, they will often recommend children stories, or books for young adults. That’s a great idea, but not everyone will want to read about…

German

How To Watch German TV Online In Your Browser Or Mobile Device

Learning German with apps and self-study textbooks is a great way to start, but after a while translating isolated sentences and stuffing your brain with flashcards and grammatical explanations will not be enough anymore. Whether you start looking at German children’s books, easily written short stories or German novels, eventually you’ll have to expose yourself to more…

German

Never Get Lost In Our German Learning Dungeons Again With These New Maps

Recently, I’ve heard from some readers that they were getting lost in the mazes of Genowrin and Shanima. For those who don’t know these books, they are part of an interactive German learning adventure, where the reader has to choose one’s path through the story by jumping in between pages, selecting dialogue options and navigating through forests, dungeons…

Culture

7 Strange German Superstitions And Slightly Crazy Cultural Beliefs

A Badly Timed “Happy Birthday” in Germany Brings Bad Luck No Eye-Contact While Clinking Glasses = 7 Years Of Bad Lovemaking Lighting Your Cigarette With a Candle Causes a Sailor to Die Crossing Your Fingers Means You’re Lying Cover Your Mouth While Yawning, Lest Demons Enter Your Soul Leaving Without Goodbye Is Something That Bad…

Culture

7 German TV Series To Make You Laugh And Learn The Language In No Time

Tired of struggling with irregular verbs and breaking your head over declension rules? Why not put your textbook aside for a while and watch some German TV series? Even if you don’t understand everything at first, you’ll be surprised how much you can glean just from body-language, mimicry and context. In this post, I’d like to…

News

3 Ways to Use Smartphones To Learn Foreign Languages By Reading Books

There are many ways in which smartphones have come to encroach on our ability to enjoy some quiet time with a good book or even replaced the pulp in our life all together. The sense of immediate gratification — or should I say procrastination — and the constant stream of notifications can make periods of uninterrupted…

German

Add a German-English Dictionary To Your Android Kindle App

After writing a tutorial on how to enable a German-English dictionary on the Kindle app for iPad and iPhone, today I’d like to share with you how to enable the same functionality on your Android Kindle app. On your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, you can just purchase a dictionary from the Kindle store and…

Lifestyle

Movies for Your Ears, and other Podcasts

Last week, I met a lot of amazing people and learned many new things. I sat down with the German that landed a Cessna on Moscow’s Red Square in the Cold War, listened to the Choirboy Robber’s exploits, and found out that the key ingredient to a successful marriage are multiple bathrooms. And best of…

German

10 Tumblr Blogs For German Learners

After giving you a quick list of great Twitter feeds for German learners, let’s have a look today how you can boost your German-Fu while traversing the Tumblrverse. Whether you’d like to discover more German songs, learn new words with shiny photos or just want to feast your eyes on quaint city centers, there’s something for everyone. Note:…

German

How German Detective Series Can Spice Up Your Language Learning Journey

Germans just love their Krimis (crime fiction), whether in paperback format or on the silver screen. One of the most famous German detective series on TV is probably Tatort which has been serving fresh murder mysteries since 1970 and still captivates millions of viewers each Sunday evening. Today, I’d like to talk a bit about how detective…