Word of the Day 5 - sweatheart

Hello everyone and welcome back to our journey through the wood of die, der , das and many many other words that at first glance don't seem easy to learn...yup, we're back on German stuff :)

This time we will have a look at the meaning of the word:(der) Liebling – (pron.: leab-ling) 

Now you might say: “Yeah I know where that comes from – love!” And of course die Liebe and Liebling have the same origin and stem – lieb.
Lieb can mean different things between the poles dear, nice and well-behaved.

• Liebe Maria, heute bin ich in Berlin angekommen…
• Keine Angst, keine Angst! Der tut nichts… der ist ganz lieb.

The first sentence could be used to start a letter with while the second one is something you are told by an old lady when one of those little dogs barks at you as if you just took away its bone. You have to be careful though because lieb does not apply to things the way dear or nice do. If your room looks lieb, it looks like the room of a person who is not going to harm anyone and if a good beer is lieb to you, it means that it treats you nicely and makes all your worries disappear but it does not mean that the beer is dear to you. So its better to use it only for living things for now.

But back to our actual word of the day Liebling. The two best translations in my opinion are darling and sweetheart. You can use it for your dog but it is also used by lovers of all ages. Of course there are many words lovers call one another. The animal kingdom provides dozens of possibilities like Hase, Maus ,  Schnecke oder Bär. The most common one, according to the German Wikipedia, is Schatz. Schatz literally means treasure so it is not a bad choice but the pronunciation really might bring it down because it sounds like… shots or shuts.
Now imagine yourself on a couch in a candle-lit room sipping red wine and you break the silence with “SHOTS!”. A soft “Liebling” with an optional sexy tongue flap for the ‘l’-sounds might be more appropriate :) .

Now if you have had a look at the Wikipedia-list of the most common words of endearment in German you might say “So why do we have to learn Liebling? It barely made it onto the list…”.
The answer is the second meaning of Liebling. If you are not quite ready to say ‘darling’ to your crush as you are only on your first date, Liebling still is a very handy word to know as it also means favorite. Just put a little ‘s’ at the end and then add whatever noun you want and you can start to exhaustively interrogate your love interest about his or her likings.

• Was ist dein Lieblingsfilm?
• Was ist dein Lieblingslied? (song)
• Was ist dein Lieblingsessen? (food)
• Was ist deine Lieblingsfarbe? (color)
• Was ist deine Lieblingspferderasse? (horse breed)

Note that Lieblings alone doesn’t work. So if you want to say something like :

•  ”Oh my god, they have Tastybeer ™ here??? That is my favorite!!!”

you will need to say beer again:

• Oh Gott, die haben Tastybier™ hier??? Das ist mein LieblingsBIER!

To wrap this up here is that little bit of grammar you have all been waiting for.
The plural of Liebling is Lieblinge. You don’t have to add extra letters except for case 3 plural where you will have to add an ‘n’. It just never gets old.

Hope you enjoyed the word of the day and see you next time.

Just in case you ended up here doing a Google search for “Leibling” … if this is really the word you are looking for… it is NOT a German word. If you have seen it somewhere it must be a typo.

Special thanks to yourdailygerman :)

Take care everybody and don't forget to have fun,
Cheers, Bryvus:)