Yellow of the Egg Luke Green

“Words are not just words. We do things with words.” And among the things we can do with words is express our attitude towards something. We can say things in a certain way to express it as a fact, or as something unreal, or to show that we want to be neutral about whether something is true or not. For these purposes and more, we have the subjunctive mood – in German, the Konjunktiv.In this episode I talk to Verena Hofstätter, a linguist and German teacher from Vienna. Together we take a dive...

NOTE: In this episode, I say the following: "In simple terms, an AFAB queen is a cisgender woman who does drag as a drag queen." While AFAB queens are very often cisgender women, and the term is typically used to describe cisgender women doing drag, this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Anyone who does drag and was assigned female at birth can be considered an AFAB queen, and this can include trans men, non-binary people and more. Apologies for the confusion and the inaccuracy!*****R...

Moving to a new country and starting a new life there is no small undertaking. There are some major changes that you can foresee, like having to get used to a new language, but there are so many smaller, day-to-day differences that you might not see coming and that can catch you off-guard.In this final episode of series 2, I talk to Dana Newman (YouTube "Wanted Adventure"), an American living in Germany. We talk about what it’s like to move abroad to Germany as an American, what culture shock...

South Tyrol is an autonomous, majority German-speaking region in Italy bordering Austria and Switzerland. It's one of the few places outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland where German is an official language, alongside Italian and Ladin. But while these three languages are all recognised today, it was a difficult road to get here - the people of South Tyrol suffered some dark chapters which had awful consequences for families and communities, throwing their identity as South Tyroleans i...

This episode is all about idioms in German! We look at a few German expressions, what they mean and where they come from. What does it mean if you plant someone, if you leave the church in the village, or if you throw yourself over the houses? And when is it good to be punched in the face?I talk to Vanessa Krebs about some of her favourite German idioms and expressions, as well as a couple of her favourite English phrases too.Content warning: Mention of the Holocaust. If you do not want to li...

How can corporate language contribute to a company’s brand? Why do companies often have at least two different voices that they use to speak to the same customers? And how can organisations deal with the issue of gender-sensitive writing in German, maintaining the balance between inclusion, readability and aesthetics?In this episode I talk to Martin Dunkl, a public relations consultant who specialises in corporate identity. We talk about ways a company’s language can be used to build its bran...