Daumen drücken, ins Wasser fallen: the bits that do not translate
CEFR C1
The same thing said to a friend and said in a reportChoosing between two forms that are both correct. Spoken German uses weil with the verb…The German that turns verbs into nounsTurning a verb clause into a noun phrase and back, which is what separates school German…Three-storey sentences: how every verb gets closedWriting and above all READING the long German sentence, the one with a clause inside a…Words that look like yours and are not, and the ones that travel in pairsThe two things that make a correct text sound wrong. False friends —Gymnasium is not a…Reading German aloud: ei, ie, z, v, w, chReading any German word aloud, knowing which letters sound different from how they are…Every noun takes a capital letterCapitalising every noun, and using those capitals when reading to find what a long…The rule, in three lines
The expressions a German uses without thinking and that you cannot work out: die Daumen drücken is to cross your fingers, ins Wasser fallen is for a plan to fall through, unter vier Augen is in private, den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen is to hit the nail on the head. And the most useful C1 skill: knowing which ones sound dated, and not using those.
The usual slip. Translating your own idiom word for word, which produces sentences nobody understands and occasionally something funny. And the level mistake: filling your speech with idioms because you have just learnt them. A native uses two or three in a long conversation; ten in a row sounds like a textbook, not like fluency.
Why it catches you out. English and German share a surprising number, because they are cousins: to hit the nail on the head is den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen, word for word. That makes this the easiest C1 unit for an English speaker, and also the one where the exceptions bite hardest, because you stop checking.