ein Wort pro Tag

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to start on a "One Word Per Day" post, where I'll blog about a new German word, or new German words that I learned.

I have been traveling a lot the past three weeks (Halle, Leipzig, Stockholm, etc), and it's kinda wearing me down.  Hopefully, I'll be able to write more soon.

Genau

After living in a different language and culture for a certain period of time, there are words that become your favorites.  Maybe because it rolls off your tongue easily, it sounds good, or maybe you just like how it's spelled.

One of mine is "Genau", the Deutsch expression for correct or exactly. 

Nowadays, when in a conversation with my boss, co-workers, etc., I try to suppress blurting out "genau".  I don't know why.  It's a confidence thing, but still, I should use it more often.

Genau.

first post

I have been in Heidelberg for a little over 4 months now, and I'm not sure if those 4 months have gone to waste, language-wise. 

Today, I wanted to cook Tom Kha Gai (Thai coconut chicken soup) and the recipe called for mushrooms.  I went to my local Kaufland to buy the chicken, mushrooms and lemon juice.  In my mind, I asked, what are "lemons" auf Deutsch?  Zitron!!!  I remembered.  Menus and ingredients are pretty easy for me now - knoblauch, zwiebeln, kartoffeln, karotten, blumenkohl, bohnen, hahnchen, rind, etc etc.  I didn't want to use fresh lemons since I saw that one of the Thai restaurants I frequented used bottled lemon juice, so I tried to find those.

"Haben Sie eine Zitronnen in flasche?" I asked the girl.

Translated literally, I was asking politely, "Have you lemons in bottles?"

She looked at me funny, smiled, and led me to the correct aisle.

On hindsight, I could have asked for Zitronnensaft or lemon juice and not Zitronnen which is lemons.

I still felt damn proud.

Natürlich!