Reiner Schleicher

Lately, Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice has been springing to mind more and more often whenever I look at the world: on the one hand, when I read and hear about all the things AI is now capable of, and on the other, when I look at how much children and young people, but also many adults, […]

Recently, a German expert living in an English-speaking country did it again and talked about “Tarife”, when he actually meant “Zölle”. Typical false friend, because he had the English word “tariffs” in mind. Conversely, all interpreters who regularly interpret for works councils and trade unions know that ”tariff” must never be used in English when

Was it only during the pandemic that you also only learned to appreciate how much natural space we still have in Germany? And since then, have you also felt that our natural heritage has to be preserved at all costs? If so, then you feel the same as way we do. Since the end of

Die KÄS The pandemic was no walk in the park for any of us – but it hit companies that perform live on stage particularly hard. As a Frankfurt-based company, it was clear to us that we had to something, so we simply chose our favourite cabaret: Die KÄS – which, incidentally, stands for Kabarett-Änderungs-Schneiderei.

Since 2005, we have been donating to a good cause in January. It all started with the Frankfurt women’s shelter ‘die kanne’. That’s where the idea of yoga classes for children came up. The project was well received, so for almost ten years we made regular donations to the shelter in January, sometimes adding a

Schleicher Sprachservice celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year, which is why I started thinking about what we have achieved during all this time. No question about our job being highly interesting. Specialising in Legal & Finance, we cover a broad range of topics. The day I’m writing this text on is typical: it started

Trend 5: The “Konjunktiv” is being used increasingly rarely to express indirect or reported speech Nowadays, most Germans would not see any problem in the following sentence: „Der Vorsitzende der Gesellschaft hat mitgeteilt, dass er nicht plant, an der Versammlung teilzunehmen.“ This is somehow surprising, as the Duden, which is, in terms of authority, a

Trend 4: The definite article is omitted more often than in the past. As late as 2000, the style guide of a then quite conservative German “Anwaltskanzlei” that was on its way to becoming an international law firm specified that company names should have the definite article in the genitive case – e.g. “Die Webposts

Trend 3: More prepositions, fewer datives: Whereas in the past the German verb “haften” – which means to be liable – had to be followed by the dative case, nowadays collocations of the type “haften gegenüber” – literally speaking to be liable to, towards or vis-à-vis somebody – are used more frequently: “Der Verkäufer haftet

Here comes part 2: Trend 2: Legal terms that have been used for decades become replaced by Anglicisms Let’s take the matter of control in company law, which in German legal terms used to be named as “Beherrschung”. Twenty years ago, we never had German texts that spoke of “Kontrolle” over a company or that