Random lessons from a Tourist Brochure

Describing English-speaking locations in German.

I was just doing some end-of-the-year procrastination in the office the other day, and in between marking exams, working on the manuscript of an article inspired by Dalibor Markovic’s text kopf gegen systemrelewand, and general tidying-up, I came across a folder that I hadn’t looked at in years, I guess. It was for a course in our German major (we call them Units, since a course would be the Bachelor of Arts) called German for Business and Tourism.

HEG203 German for Business and Tourism, ca. maybe 2015?

It’s been a while since we’ve taught the unit, but flicking through the folder, I came across an interesting print-out of a web-article on Tasmania that I’d forgotten about. It was called Tasmanien, die Inseln hinter der Insel.¹ The article—and others like it—was useful because it provided examples of ways to talk about the island home of my English-speaking students in German.

At the same time, I remembered a video that we made a number of years ago on our (now dormant) trail-running channel. In case you have no idea where Tasmania is or what it’s like this video shows our Tasmania. Check it out below:

In the following, I want to pick out some handy phrases that my students found useful for their own writing and speaking.

Here’s how the article starts…

Tasmanien, die Insel “hinter der Insel” am (anderen) Ende der Welt ist der kleinste Bundesstaat Australiens und wird aufgrund seiner Größe und seiner isolierten Lage […] häufig übersehen.

Tasmania, the island behind the island at the other end of the world is the smallest Australian state and due to its size and its isolated position it’s frequently overlooked.

Giving reasons for things

There are lots of ways to give reasons for things. Here the word we’re using is aufgrund. We can see where this word comes from. It’s related to the noun der Grund which means the reason, the basis, or the cause. Here, the article is telling us

Tasmanien wird […] häufig übersehen

Tasmania is often/frequently overlooked.

[The reason is the bit in brackets]