Bonus: Silvester (New Year's Eve)

Hallo zusammen, willkommen bei Easy German Dialogues, leichte Dialoge auf Deutsch. Heute eine Sonderfolge. Today is a special episode because it's the end of the year. But unfortunately in the last days of December I did not have enough time to create a regular dialogue episode, which is why there is not going to be a dialogue today

But I'm going to give you some important vocabulary for the days around New Year's Eve. And after that I will have some messages for you guys as well. But let's start out with the vocabulary for the time around New Year's Eve. The first one is Sylvester. Sylvester. Sylvester is the German word for

New Year's Eve. So the thirty first of December is called Sylvester. I think some other countries like France and Italy, mm, Croatia, Poland, I think quite some countries in Europe also call it something like Sylvester. Um so it's not called New Year's Eve in Germany, but still And I think the two most important phrases that you're going to need around that time is how to wish someone a happy new year. And we have two ways of saying that in Germany. And it depends on when you say it to someone.

So it makes a difference if you're saying it beforehand, so before New Year's Eve, or if you say it to someone during or after New Year's Eve. Before Sylvester, um when you're not seeing someone on the thirty first, but you wanna tell them in advance, hey, have a happy new year, then you say gutenrutsch. Guten Rutsch means if you literally translate it, it's have a good slide.

So because in Germany you say you slide into the new year. So what you're wishing someone is that they have a good slide over to the next year. Guten Rutsch. Or sometimes you might also say Guten Rutsch ins neue Ja, which is the longer. And you say that to someone before New Year's Eve. And the other one, if uh if you're celebrating with friends or family and you meet them at twelve at night and the fireworks are going off and everyone's celebrating, what you say then is frohes neues ja.

Frohes Neues Ja, which is the literal translation to Happy New Year. Frohes And you say that when you're celebrating at twelve, at night And you also say that when you meet someone in the first couple of days in January. So for example, if you start working uh in the middle of January and you haven't seen someone Since the first of January, then you might still say to them, hey, frohes Neues ja when you meet them for the first time. And the last one that might be interesting is das Feuerwehr.

Das Feuerwerk. Feuerwerk sounds really similar to fireworks, and that's exactly what it means. Now I think those are the most important things that you're going to need during Sylvester. The first thing is Gutenrutsch before New Year's Eve and during and after New Year's Eve you say frohes Neues ja.

Now how do most people in Germany spend their Sylvester? I would say that most of the people probably celebrate with friends or family. They get together, they eat something together, they have a drink together, so they can cheers at twelve at nine. There are fireworks all over Germany and that's basically how you celebrate. There is also a very specific piece of media that you that you watch. On the night of Sylvester. It's called Dinner for One. It's a very old movie. It's in black and white.

Weirdly enough, it's a German production But it's completely In English? because it's had at I think the manor of of a very old lady, uh, Miss Sophie, and it's only her and her butler I it's a very weird kind of sketch. It only takes a couple of minutes, so you can look that up on YouTube or somewhere. Just look for dinner for one. You can watch that, that's a very German thing as well. It's it's almost like you have to do that on the night of Sylvester.

I would be very happy if you guys wrote something in the comments of this episode and just tell me what are some of the traditions that you do in your country that is customary to the place where you guys live.

And that leads me to my final messages that uh I wanted to give you guys because I wanted to say a big thank you to all of you. Over the last couple of months, this has just been a little fun hobby project that I'm doing this podcast. But there are a couple of thousand people listening to those episodes now every time. And that makes me really happy because I have the feeling that it might help out some of you guys learning German with the dialogues that I'm doing.

And you guys are coming from all over the world really. We have most of the listeners are in Germany, so probably m a lot of you guys that have moved to Germany or are spending time in Germany now and try to learn some German. Uh so thank you to you guys, but we also have listeners from the United States, from Morocco, Egypt. Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Brazil, France, Spain, Poland, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sweden, Japan.

and all of those other countries. So thank you everyone from all around the world for listening to this podcast. It really helps me out a bunch. If you didn't already do that, uh please consider subscribing. completely free depending on the the platform that you're listening this on, but it's helping me out a lot. I'm trying to continue producing fun and helpful episodes and lessons.

that help you guys with improving your German and having something to uh to practice on. I'm thinking about if in the next year in 2026 I'm going to split the episodes. So I'm going to do like the first episode is just the vocabulary and the second episode is only the dialogue. So if you wanna listen to the dialogue on repeat, then you can do that without having to skip through all the vocabulary.

Um also please uh tell me in the comments if you think that is a good idea or if you prefer it the way that it is right now with the f vocabulary in the beginning and the dialogue all in the same episode. I really like to hear your opinion on that. Okay, so I think that is everything that I wanted to share with you. Thank you guys so much to every one of you from all over the world. Um, I hope that you have a great New Year's Eve, that you have a great start into the year of twenty twenty six.

And I hope to have you guys listening in to the next regular episode of Easy German Dialogues, leichte Dialoge auf Deutsch. Danke, ihr Lieben. Einen guten Rutsch und frohes neues Jahr!