Guest Posts

Working from Home IS All Beer and Skittles!

Evolution is in all fields, including translation Being a teacher, translator or creative writer in a language that you enjoy using on a daily basis has a wide range of advantages of all kinds. Some of them are related to the equipment or aids you are likely to need along the way and others envisage…

German

10 Totally Weird German Signs – Can You Make Sense of Them? [QUIZ]

Have you ever been to a country where people speak a foreign language and tried to make sense of the strange sounds and signs around you? It’s actually a fun and effective way to learn a language. But we don’t always have the opportunity to do that. This is why, today I’ve collected 10 totally…

German

Learn German With Comics: 17 German Comics – Classics & Contemporary

Learning a language, any language, is hard. Especially when it comes to learning German, with all the endless grammar rules and exceptions, you’ll need to find ways to make your language study fun. And comics can be a great way to practice your text comprehension skills. Here are three reasons why comics are great language learning…

German

7 Untranslatable German Words

One of the great things about learning a new language is that you gain access to a whole new range of words that don’t exist in your mother-tongue, boiling certain concepts down to an essence. German is infamous for having a lot of words which are untranslatable, or at least difficult to translate, such as Schadenfreude, Zeitgeist, Wanderlust and other popular…

Culture

Why You’ll Never Get The German Sense of Humor Unless You Learn the Language

Have you ever heard the saying that Germans have no sense of humor? Well, it’s a fairly widespread belief. In a 2007 study more than 30,000 people in 15 countries were asked to rank the world’s countries with the worst sense of humor. Guess which country earned the title of “Unfunniest Nation”? Yeah, you guessed it … But…

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…

Guest Posts

What Ambitious Parents Can Teach You About Freelancing

When I first started with Fluent Language Tuition, I had no idea where the whole experiment was going to go. I was so hesitant to consider this a real business that I tried to hide my name from the website, the flyers and all business cards. My brand was not a consideration in those days,…

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…