>>>First? A noun on it's own right.
>>>A German loan word. First translates to roof top, ridge, top of a mine tunnel (how complicated to say Stollen)
>>>;)
>>I speak enough German to embarrass myself over there but I never came across that word. Can't imagine how it is pronounced. I never grasped the relation of F to V in German.
>>My late wife would have had the answer. Her first language was German.
>>Her stollen took hours to make but it was worth it.
>>So rare to find good stollen here -I 've forgotten the last one.
>
>Hi Bill,
>While not out of use, that word is not in the top 1000 words, and I guess a lot of Germans will fail. In special with the mining one. And that's not all, there is a kind of snowy surface named First and one or two I'm to lazy to describe.
>Sorry to here about your wife.
>In general like the English first but a German i (this is a lot of i here) and r.
>F you do like in English, that's the straight one. V is the one with many faces that can change between F and W, and there is no rule, just knowledge. One can assume that a V in front of an latin-derived word is a W (because the w is two v clued together like y is ij. You know, double-u, because v was tricky in Latin. Could be an u). But no.
>Stollen is one of those two faces as well. The first is the horizontal mining tunnel. And derived from that those kind of bread / cake. It's best if done in large quantities (private qty was a laundry basket full of Stollen a job done on private ingredients by the bakery), and in Germany it's a local speciality, and then one can fight about the right way to do it. Self made Stollen is more like a loaf of bread with yeast and stuff. I would ship you one, but we know the protection problems around the border.

Thank you, Lutz