When my daughter started school in Germany, I wondered how long it would be before she learnt something in her English lessons, that I did not agree with. A piece of grammar maybe, or a translation.
Regular readers of this site may recall that she is being taught “school English”, which was defined as spelling “colour” with a “u”. Whilst not exactly the words “British English” that I would like it to be defined as, I am at least happy that I do not yet have to explain that other countries leave that “u” out and in some cases even use other words for the same things.
It was whilst I was helping her revise for a vocabulary test a few days ago, that I suspected the time may already have come, and further inspection of her vocabulary book confirmed my suspicion. In some cases, I found the translations to be unusual, but in some to be down right wrong.
And since there were some entries from her teacher in the book, I am assuming that she has seen the offending words and that this is not just a mistake that took place copying them from the blackboard. [Read more…]
The 
When I hear the term “parent’s evening” in English, it conjures up an image of parents talking at tables to teachers about their children’s progress at school. But the German translation, Elternabend, means something completely different – as I quickly learnt when my daughter 