Within the mathematics classroom, connections to the everyday world are frequently used to catch the pupils’ attention and to foster their understanding. Presumably, especially in primary school they are used with the aim of building bridges between the familiar ‘everyday world’ of the pupils and the more formal and abstract ‘world of mathematics’. The presented study examines how language use looks like in situations with a lifeworld connection and to what extent this might have an impact on the pupils’ supposed opportunities to learn. Within this paper, the focus is on the meaningfulness of the lifeworld connection and the assumed learning opportunities. Based on the interpretative paradigm of interpretative classroom research, interactional analyses of selected passages of everyday mathematics lessons will illustrate how mathematical classroom discourse is affected through the use of lifeworld connections and to what extent this could affect the learning of mathematics.