What are some traditional German desserts? Are they similar to American desserts or different?

Volker Eichener

We have several types of desserts.

First, we love to eat cakes and pies, but usually not as desserts, but rather as a seperate meal in the afternoon (comparable to British Afternoon Tea, however mostly served together with coffee). Often, cakes and pies are homemade, but we also buy them at bakeries, cafés or even frozen.

Second, we have traditional desserts which are considered as simple. Most typical are simple puddings, including rice and semolina pudding.

This would be a rice pudding with cinnamon:

Even simpler a desserts based on yoghurt or curd (Quark), beaten, sweetened and flavoured with fruit.

This is what we call “Rote Grütze” (actually red grout), cooked berries, served with vanilla sauce:

Children like to eat Wackelpudding, here with woodruff flavour. American friends, does it look familiar?

Fruit salad is also a popular, simple dessert:

Sometimes, we eat desserts which are more filling, often after a smallish lunch or dinner (like a soup), e.g. pancakes, which are made with eggs in Germany, so they are richer than American breakfast pancakes.

Or, we eat just ice cream.

The third type of desserts are the more fancy ones, reserved for festive meals. Here, we eat everything you would find on international menus, like

• Bavarian cream
• Italian panna cotta
• French mousse aux chocolat
• French crème brulée
• Charlotte russe
• Salzburger Nockerln
• etc.

Which German language level do I require for doing a job in Germany?

 

Arun Mahajan

Career Mentor I Ex-Amazon, Zalando (Germany) I Ex-Flipkart

The question is flawed.

• If you want a successful career in USA, you need to know fluent English
• If you want a successful career in China, you need to know fluent fluent Mandarin (Chinese is not a language, same way as Indian is no language)

In exactly the same way, if you want a successful career in Germany (or any European country for that matter), then you need to know the language at fluent level.

So, the answer is - Learn German as much as you can. Its an investment that will benefit you, in career and life in Germany.

If you will like to discuss something about your career, connect with me on ——> LinkedIn

Check out my Medium articles

I share more career related posts on CDG

Is it true that Germans greet each other using only their first names...

 

Volker Eichener

Professor at Hochschule Düsseldorf

Studied Political Science & Sociology at Ruhr University BochumGraduated 1999

... and do not use honorifics like Mr. or Mrs.?

Volker Eichener

Professor at Hochschule Düsseldorf

Absolutely untrue.

Strangers usually adress each other as “Herr [last name]” (male) or “Frau [last name]” (female). Also, you mention academic titles like “Herr Professor XY” or “Frau Doktor XZ”. If you omit the honorific you are considered very rude. You also use a special grammatical form to adress each other, the “Sie” (instead of the familiar “Du”).

If you are becoming friends, you agree to change to the first name and “Du”, often in form of a brief ceremony that involves interlocking arms and having a drink together.

Exceptions apply for special communities:

• In the Social Democratic Party and in Trade Unions members use “Genosse [last name]” (= comrade) + Du or “Kollege [last name]” + Du.
• In sports, people use first names + Du.
• Students use first names + du (used to be different some 100 years ago).
• In colloquial situations (like in an informal bar, in a rock concert) people use Du.
• At workplaces, colleagues who are on the same hierarchical level often use first name + Du. For adressing higher ranking officers, formalities are even more important, however. In business environments, this is a highly sensible matter. Better start with “Herr” and “Frau” and see, how things evolve.

What are some good German wines?

By Volker Eichener

I start with the most obvious and best-known: riesling. Riesling is a grape that grows well in the rather cool German climate. It is also found in Alsace, California and South Africa. Riesling wines are usually very crisp and have delicate citrus notes, often combined with mineralic accents by the terroir. Good rieslings come from Mosel, Rhein, Ruwer, Nahe, Pfalz, also Baden (where riesling is called Klingelberger). Rieslings can be dry, sweet or very sweet, especially late harvests, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese or the rare Eiswein (wine made from frozen grapes, happens not every year). If the harvest is late, the wine may get a botrytis aroma. Some famous wineries include: Kloster Eberbach (Rheingau). Dr. Loosen (Mosel). Maximin Grünhaus (Ruwer). Robert Weil (Rheingau). Schloss Vollrads (Rheingau). Van Volxem (Mosel). Markgraf von Baden (Baden). Besides riesling, there are some other grape varieties to taste. Something very special is the wine region of Franken (Northern Bavaria). There, the sylvaner grape produces exzellent, aromatic wines with fine mineral tastes. Zehntkeller and Wirsching from Iphofen are great, also Juliusspital from Würzburg. The grape variety that is usually called pinot grigio, in German Grauburgunder, can be excellent, especially in the region Baden. Great producers are Alde Gott and Kellers Schwarzer Adler. A rare and lesser-known grape variety is Auxerrois which grows on the upper Mosel. Fruity, floral wines. Herber is an excellent winery. Germany is not so famous for red wines, but you may give these ones a try: Red wines from the Ahr, both fruity and mineralic, sometimes volcanic: Stodden, Meyer-Näkel, Adeneuer are the best wineries in the region. The premium red wine from Alde Gott, Alte Reben, from Baden is also recommendable.

How did you learn German quickly?

Florian

432 followers

155 following

Hi.

I was born in Germany, so I cannot tell anything other than I have learned it since birth, so German came naturally to me.

But maybe I can give you some insight on how to quickly learn the language as a foreigner:

• Speak with German people
• The Internet is filled with German speaking folks, just choose a community that fits your interests.
• Make an account on Quora in German (Quora auf Deutsch)
• In my honest opinion, even as someone who has a great standard even by the means of a German citizens, I learned a lot on the Website.
• Additionally I sincerely believe Quora is the best place to learn a new language
• Buy German literature
• And start small!! There is no shame in starting with children´s books, the more time you invest in learning the basics, the less effort you will have to put into the “higher” fields of German
• German is very hard to learn, but relatively easy to master
• Visit a German speaking country
• I can´t stress this enough, as I firmly believe that anyone can only truly speak a language when they visited the country it is natively spoken in.
• Have fun
• Anything is learned faster when you have fun while doing so
• Listen more, speak less
• If you have the ability to listen more than you speak, you have the world´s knowledge at your feet.
• If not, try your hardest to achieve this skill
• Rest enough
• Someone who chooses quantity over quality, e.g. learning a lot without taking regular resting phases, will actually forget most of what he/she has learned.

Thanks for reading, and good look with learning such a beautiful language.

Mit freundlichsten Grüßen,

~Flo

Why is the bread in Germany so good? What is the difference from other countries’ bread?

 

Thomas Jollans

Trans-European human

Why is the bread in Germany so good? What is the difference from other countries’ bread?

There are two main distinguishing features of the breads of Northern Europe (including Germany, Scandinavia and Poland) as compared to the breads popular in countries like France, Italy and Britain:

• They typically use rye rather than just wheat for flour. In Germany, breads made from mixtures of different grains are quite popular, but breads made predominantly from rye are also common.
• They normally use sourdough for leavening rather than baker's yeast; this gives them their characteristic sour flavour.

Whether they’re better is a matter of opinion. Some people hate the taste of sourdough bread. I love it.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other wonderful styles of bread. Take a nice baguette, for instance!

Depending on what you’re comparing it to, there may be more to it, though: a good German or Danish rye bread, a fresh baguette, a warm pita bread, or even a roti – those are solid. They have substance. They’re made of bread and you can taste it.

An American-style sandwich bread, on the other hand, is usually made of nothing but air, deceit, and sugar. (Not that there isn’t good bread in the US. There is. But you know the type of ‘bread’ I mean)

How does the Filipino language sound to foreigners?

 

Cjure FX

Financial Consultant

414 followers

14 following

I am professional trader/Analyst I help people trade and make them good profit daily and have over a decade experience in trading, and in the course of management I’ve learnt greatly on risk management and profit maximization The probability of gaining is ridiculously high.

Filipino is the national language of the Philippines. Filipino is also designated, along with English, as an official language of the country.

It is a standardized variety of the Tagalog language, an Austronesian regional language that is widely spoken in the Philippines. Tagalog is the first language of about one-fourth of the Philippine population while mostly speak Tagalog as their second language. Tagalog is among the 185 languages of the Philippines identified in the Ethnologue.

Officially, Filipino is defined by the Commission on the Filipino Language as “the native dialect, spoken and written, in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region, and in other urban centers of the archipelago.

Vlogger Diego says Filipino language is pleasant to him

Foreigner's Opinion Of The Filipino Language

FROM: R. Jackson – Causacian

Concerning the way Filipino languages sound to us foreigners, I can comment to an extent but I’m no linguist or expert. One must remember that there is something like 67 dialects and maybe 47 qualify as distinct, but related languages.

I commonly hear two, Tagalog and Cebuano, because I’m around people who speak them. They are quite pleasant, but that may be partly because the love of my life speaks both and there are a lot of memories surrounding scenarios where I listened to her talking to others as I was doing whatever I might be doing nearby.

Spanish and English words are mixed into both languages because of the Spanish and American colonial experiences in the Philippines. I believe that Spanish is more beautiful and musical than the Filipino dialects, but they are pretty as well. They seem to flow better than some other languages from the Southeast Asian region.

FROM: Eun-Kyung – Korea

I have some Filipino classmates. They talk to each other in Filipino I guess, but I could almost still understand what they’re talking about as most of the words they use are in English. Is that normal?
Yes, it’s normal. This is called code-switching in linguistics. It’s very common among people who speak more than 1 language fluently.

Almost all Filipinos speak at least 2 or 3 languages, and one of them is English (which is one of the 2 official languages of the country), so it’s very common for Filipinos to mix native languages with English. It depends on what language is easiest to express something. Some sentences or phrases may be easier or better understood if it’s spoken in Tagalog, some may be better in English, etc.

FROM: Mac Mccarthy – English

I’m a foreigner who’s lived in the Philippines for many years. Filipino (the national language, as opposed to the various vernaculars) like Tagalog, has an awful lot of A’s…most all of them pronounced as “ah.” There are plenty of double A’s & even triple-A’s. This makes attack articulations crucial…a voice heard unclearly or at a distance can sound like “ah, ah, ah ah ah, ah…” pa, sa, na, ba, besides being syllables, are words in themselves.

The difference between ba & pa, for instance, requires good hearing…or advance expectation or understanding likelihood from context. Sound engineers like myself use more treble on voiceovers, for instance, so that the subtle articulations are clearer on radio or TV.

The grammar also has interesting effects. The Filipino language depends on simple root words conjugated by prefixes, suffixes & (most unfamiliar to English speakers) infixes. A Filipino root can be cut open in the middle to insert an infix that changes the grammatical use of the word—and that’s in addition to whole strings of prefixes & suffixes—think, “antidisestablishmentarianism,” as an English example—the root word is “establish.”

This means that even words you know—or have the feeling that you do or should know—can be hard to recognize in the grammatical wild. (Even learning to use a good translating dictionary requires you to be able to discern what the root is…the meaning of the usage of the word you’re looking for will be listed under the root.)

Then there’s the complication that Filipino accepts almost any foreign word, from almost any language as a root to be conjugated—”bumasketball” is a verb conjugation of basketball—the um being an infix. I once met an Israeli girl here who asked me why, when she asked her Filipino friends what the word for such-and-such was, they’d usually “just say the word back to me in a funny way.” Well, if it’s something modern—something that’s entered the culture since Spanish colonization—that’s probably the real Filipino word.

Island-style feast in Daku Island, Siargao Philippines

FROM: Kyla Lee – Chinese

As a Chinese, the Filipino language sounds like a mixture of different languages — Spanish, English, and maybe Malaysian language. A typical Filipino sentence consists of different words from different languages.

Since the Philippines has been colonized by multiple countries, Filipinos have adopted many words from Spanish and Americans. The numbering system of the Spanish (uno, dos, tres, so on) and many American words are still used by Filipinos today.

I’ll give you an example, “Dos na lang natira sa wallet ko.” which translates to “I only have ₱2 left on my wallet.”

With the use of “dos”, a Spanish word meaning “two”; the English word “ wallet”, a sentence is constructed. See the existence of multiple languages used in a single sentence? This is what I find amazing with the Filipino language. It is really flexible and could easily adapt to multiple languages.

FROM: Wayne Spillitte – British

I’m a Brit living in Manila with my wife, who speaks two of the Philippines’ languages, Bikol and Tagalog. On a technical level, there is a big Spanish influence, so many words seem familiar to speakers of Latinate languages, and also to English speakers even though our linguistic links to Latin are mainly through French.

In terms of how the Filipino language sounds when its spoken, it is very animated. My wife often laughs because she can finish a conversation with family or friends and I’ll ask her if anything is wrong, Filipino speakers often sound angry when they are not – but to a European ear, this is true of many Asian languages.

Luneta Park one of the largest urban parks in Asia. A map of the Philippines inside the park.

- The Filipino Language -

FROM: Leave Velasco – Filipina in Germany

I made a German friend listen to some Filipino music just recently, and what he said was actually very interesting as it’s the first time I’ve ever heard a non-Filipino tell me how the Filipino language sounds like to them.

He said, “The Filipino language is like a mix of Bahasa and Español.” I can quite understand this interpretation, and it’s so perfectly well put.

It’s basically breaking down the ingredients that made the Filipino language what it is now; southeast Asian (More probably Malayan) + Spanish influences.

FROM: Jarrold B – American

As a full-fledged American-born citizen, I’ve been taught primarily in English. My parents and grandparents never bothered to teach Filipino or Ilocano to me and instead talked to me in English.

Filipino language sounds a bit like you’d expect other foreign languages in the geographic region to, down to the emphasis on the hard “k” sound, the “a” in “father” sound, and the “long e for the letter i” sound. Filipino, when spoken really quickly, can actually sound as coherent as it is spoken slowly, in my opinion. It’s the same when Filipino is spoken loudly.

FROM: Haya Blue – American

A few summers back, I had attended a summer school in a foreign country and had instantly clicked with a Filipino girl. Since we were roommates, I’d hear her talking or skyping with her family. It was a beautiful language but I found it really… I don’t know… how to say it – but I think the Filipino language is a bit harsh? Half of the time I thought she was screaming into the phone. But I guess it depends from person to person.

FROM: Billy Long – Indonesian

I am English speaking with a university education The Filipino language sounds very harsh to my ears and it sounds like fighting This has no reflection on the people though They are warm and friendly people I married one 2 years ago

A Russian vlogger thinks that Filipino language is sexy

FROM: Valentine Santos – Filipino American bred

Depends on what kind of Filipino language do you mean, we have lots of languages here. Cebuano and Waray both sound angry/aggressive, Ilonggo sounds sweet and melodic, Tagalog is kind of soft and feminine(depends how they use it). Kapampangan/Pampango sounds like a mix of Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia, Ilocano sounds funny to me, Panggalatok/Pangasinense sounds like Ilocano but a lot lesser when it comes to the ‘Ilocano sound’ since some words are borrowed/originated from the national language, which is Tagalog. We have more languages as well like Maranao, it sounds fast, uneasy, quite mad, and a bit gibberish. Maguindanaon is the slower and more casual version of Maranao, Tausug sounds casual as well, quite the same with Cebuano.

FROM: Daniel Pegg – Filipino Chinese

A small bit of context: I am half Filipino (Mother’s side), but my Dad has no siblings, and only one Aunt. As you might know, Filipinos generally have really big families.. so I am more exposed to my Filipino side rather than the other. I still don’t speak the language though.

To me, Filipino language sometimes comes off a bit funny, A lot of the time it sounds like two speakers are angry at each other, even when they’re joking.

I also feel like it’s usually spoken very fast, words like “magaringganap” or “maalaala” or “nililibanan” are hard and feel like tongue twisters (even when I try to pronounce them slowly TT) but my aunts and uncles speed through them, no stutter, no pause.

News reporters (women, mostly) have a very specific way of delivering sentences when they speak. I also just generally hear it anytime someone is doing public speaking from a script. It might be hard for me to explain it through words, but if you can imagine the intonation being: A sentence starts off at a low intonation, moving higher, has a pause in the middle of the sentence, and then starts going back down again. Like a mountain with a ravine at the peak

Most tourists think that the Philippines is just about beaches but actually, it’s much more.

- The Filipino Language -

FROM: Jeff Tam – American in the Philippines

I’m an American living in Binalbagan, Negros Occidental. The language sounds like a combination of South Pacific Islander and Spanish.

FROM: Gil Lambert – Scottish

A bit sing-song, depending on the person. The really sing-song exponents just put it on and sound so fake. See them on morning tv shows. I live in Mindanao, CDO area, where the Visayas is spoken which sounds a bit harsh, I don’t speak it except for a few common greetings and salutations

FROM: Mark Riley – Australian

Many nouns use the same or similar Spanish word. The language used around Zamboanga sounds a bit like Spanish. Tagalog, one of the two dialects/languages I am most used to hearing is heavy to my ear on the hard ‘g’ sound particularly at the end of syllables and the K sound is used frequently. Illongo, the other I m used to hearing, is softer and more pleasant though to be fair I am under some family pressure to think that.

FROM: Ethan Coronel – Spanish American

Most Filipinos find it easy to speak in mixed English and Filipino language, but find it difficult to speak fluently in purely Filipino and purely English manner. Why is that so?
It usually has something to do with the lack of fluency in one or both languages.

Filipinos who speak Tagalog as their native language aren’t technically fluent in it. They actually speak Taglish with more Tagalog words than English, obviously because they’re not proficient in the latter.

FROM: Sherwin J – Filipino in the USA

Why do many Filipino languages have somewhat American-sounding accents? One reason is the prevalence of American movies, TV dramas, sitcoms, magazine shows, and cartoons on TV. Like for example, the Voice of America and the American Top Forty radio programs broadcast for several decades on the airwaves. It’s only in certain films (James Bond or Harry Potter) where the British accents and manner of speech were presented to the Filipino people and this still confuses many Filipino viewers.

Even today, and especially after their liberation during World War II, Filipinos tend to hero-worship most Americans. They adopted their fashion (Converse, Levi’s, checkered shirts, hippie culture), sports (boxing, basketball, bowling, baseball), vehicles (jeeps, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Ford, and Cadillac). Even the appliances (Frigidaire, Hoover, Kodak, IBM, Remington), music (rock-and-roll, folk and country music, Gospel, Motown sound). The outlook throughout the 1920s to the 1960s was mostly pro-American with a slight influx of British, Aussie, and European influences during the 1970s to the present. American-style English is still much easier for Filipinos to understand and copy than British- or Australian-style accents, pronunciation, tone of voice, and choice of words.

Finally, the initial wave of call centers established in the Philippines catered to North American companies and their American or Canadian customers. Voice coaches tried to “neutralize” the choppy-sounding Spanish-influenced Filipino accent. How? Well.. by Americanizing it into the smoother and slower drawls and blended syllables of the American cowboy or teenager. It’s only recently that call centers for British and Australian clients have been set up.

The Filipino accent is not just one accent because the Filipino speakers could have different mother tongues depending on where and how they grew up. However, the Spanish pronunciation and articulation of syllables had long been adopted by Tagalog. And other local languages so the Filipino’s “not-yet-neutralized” English accent sounds somewhat similar to a general Spanish speaker’s accent (but still different from a Mexican’s).