Shout Out For German is an initiative of the German Embassy, Goethe Institut and DAAD:

It’s time to celebrate the German language in the UK! The German Embassy, together with the Goethe-Institut UK and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), invites you to take part in our social media campaign #ShoutOutForGerman – your chance to share your language learning highlights with the world.

 

Whether you’re a student, a teacher, or just a fan of the German language, from 19 to 24 January 2026, show your enthusiasm for Deutsch on social media. Use the hashtag #ShoutOutForGerman and tag the German Embassy London to showcase your school’s activities, your favourite German words, travel memories, a clip of you dancing to a viral German song – anything goes!

I was thinking about German words, though I don’t have a favourite.

Some time ago, I started a vocabulary book for words I had problems with when speaking German, though I’ve since abandoned it. I noted Gummiabzieher for wiper blade or squeegee. Der Code (masculine), Berliner Zimmer, which I keep meeting in literature, Abschlagszahlung. Verpeiltheit, Völkerball, blühende Landschaften (Boris Johnson’s sunlit uplands), paraphieren (to initial). I also put in some English words I did not know, e.g. the Singularity. I didn’t put the meanings in because I remembered those, more or less.

Here is what President Trump said at Davos yesterday:

After the War, which we won – we won it big – without us, right now, you’d all be speaking German- a little Japanese perhaps.

Presumably this was not directed to the Swiss. Like me, Trump wasn’t actually born during WWII.