Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time, we will have a look at the meanings of:
lauter
If someone had told me a week ago, “Hey Emanuel, instead of writing about the cases next, why don’t you talk about the word
lauter?” , I would have probably said: ” …. lauter really ???… it is just louder, what’s there to talk about?”
At first sight, lauter really doesn’t seem to be a very interesting word as it is just an amplified laut if you will. And laut itself … well it would probably be enough material to write about … and it would give me the chance to make an INCREDIBLE funny Fat Boy Slim reference…
“Write about laut, my funk soul brother” … but then again, it is not that interesting. And lauter… well there are definitely more important word to write about… that’s what I thought.
But then, I had a dream…. I still remember it perfectly… (cliché harp arpeggio up)
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Emanuel is the man who brings humour and German together! Who would have thought this is possible?
I think you forgot a ‘zu’ in the example “- Im Wald war es extrem still. Minutenlang war kein Laut hören.” Just checked the comments and a confused guy 4 years ago brought it up, but with typos so im not sure you got that he was talking about this article. in any case its still there :)
Oh true, thanks for the reminder :)!
I fixed it now!!
I was looking for the most correct way to ask “What is the WLAN password please?” I was told by the google gods “Wie lautet bitte das WLAN-Passwort?”. Ich hat “LAUTEN” gesehen. Hmm – was ist das? Ich hat hier gesuchen – und gelessen. Interessant. So…züruck zur meine Frage: was ist am Richtigsten Weite für: “What is the WLAN password please?” Danke.
I never answered this comment, I’m sorry!!
I always say “Wie ist euer W-Lan-Passwort”. “lauten” is correct, but it sounds quite formal, so you don’t typically hear it in this context.
Oh, to soften the question, I’d throw in a shortened “denn”
Kein problem. Your answer also solved another question; to use ‘Euer’ or Sie for all my customer service interactions. “Y’all’s” is the way I would say it in my world (from the south). :)
However, you are saying “Denn” softens the question. I was taught (by Anje) that denn strengthens statements “Hä? Verdammt, wo ist denn mein Anschnallgurt?” Opening scene from her video series. Obviously the verdammt is the real power here…but… I will just stay away from these flavoring words :) Wie is euer WLAN password? is the way I will memorize. Thank you.
Ha, yeah a common danger with analyzing these particles is to look at them used in context and then making assumptions without ever doing A/B testing… Anja’s example does get the intensity from “verdammt” as you rightly noted and the “denn” doesn’t make a difference in that regard. If anything, I’d say it makes it MORE “casual” sounding, like
A nice backtest is to make the statement REALLY intense, like
And I’m pretty sure all Germans would agree that “denn” has NO place anymore in this sentence because it simply ruins the tension.
So yeah… I’m not saying my analysis if these particles is flawless, but I think I’m more analytical in my approach and I NEVER check what other teachers or textbooks have to say about these :D.
ha ha – this helps a lot. Even with verdammt, I can almost ‘feel’ how denn rounds-out the hard edge. So in general, denn is a ‘softener’ or a way to make an otherwise possible strict or stern statement/question more casual (?)
In the brewing industry we use a lauter tun. Lautering is a process in brewing beer in which the mash is separated into the clear liquid wort and the residual grain. Lauter is an English word with the meaning ‘to make pure’. I am sure that in the past, brewer’s from Germany immigrated and probably other brewing terms have the same origin.
Ah, so that’s probably where “lauter” in sense of sincere comes from. An “unlauterer Wettbewerb” is a “dirty” competition. In German, this is called “läutern” by the way.
Oh, and in case you’re interested in the topic and want to train some German:
here’s a podcast… three hours about brewing and beer types.
https://cre.fm/cre194-bier
Hallo Emanuel,
ich hätte gern eine Frage. Es geht um einen von mir unbekanntes Satz in diesem Artikel: “Minutenlang war kein Laut Minuten hören”. Ich habe auch mal in deinem anderen Artikel ein ähnliches Beispiel gesehen: “Wir waren gestern ein paar Bier trinken.” Die beiden Sätze haben ein Konstrukt von “sein+Verb”. Ist das wohl ein keines Irrtum, oder?
Danke im Voraus!!
Interesting question. The first example is just plain wrong. “minuten” is in it twice and there’s totally missing a “zu” before “hören”. No native speaker would say that intentionally.
The second one on the other hand is correct. I have an article in the pipeline about phrasings like this one. Using “zu” would be wrong here.
That sounds kind of like, “nothing but”
At the party there were purely idiots (what? okay that’s kind of the old lauter)
at the party there were nothing but idiots (i see, has this connotation of pure but doesn’t necessarily have to be taken literally)
I would use the slang word ‘stacks’ of………. IE I am having stacks of ideas, there were stacks of pretty women, etc.
Interesting suggestion. Just to pin it down a little better… what part of the English speaking world uses it? And is that limited to a certain peer group? (Like… is that something only teenagers would say?)
I would think is is used all over the English speaking world. It is more of an informal expression than a slang word. This comes from the Oxford English dictionary: “(a stack of/stacks of) informal A large quantity of something: there’s stacks of work for me now”
Yet another fabulous article, Emanuel–thank you so much! Another colloquial way of translating the adverb “a lot of/everywhere” meaning into (American…maybe even just Midwestern American) English is “all kinds of.” That seems to fit for everything: “There’s all kinds of cat hair on my couch!” “There were all kinds of cute girls at the subway.” “I’ve been having all kinds of good ideas lately!” “There were all kinds of idiots at the party.” It doesn’t literally mean “a bunch of various types,” but rather “a lot of,” and it can be used in all the various sentences you were saying, like “lauter” can. :) (And I guess the “There is/there are” modifies the actual noun, rather than “all kinds of,” which kind of makes sense because if one were to say, “there are all kinds of cat hair on my couch,” then the meaning becomes more literal, and the implication would be that your cat had a party, invited a bunch of friends over, and now there is cat hair from 100 different cats on the couch–haha) It also helps if you add a little extra stress to the word “kinds” because you’re emphasizing just how much/many there were. Thanks again–this was extremely helpful!
Cool, seems to fit perfectly :) Danke!!
What might the name Lauterbach mean? Loud / Clear / Noisy / According to / Sincere / Everywhere / A whole lot of Johann Sebastian Bach? No? Thanks
Haha… that’s a good question :) ! I’m strongly leaning toward noisy creek because there are real creeks with that name as well as districts of small towns.
I was also wondering about place names, specifically in Switzerland there is a town called “Lauterbrunnen.” The region is famous for spectacular waterfalls and springs, but it seems any of the meanings of Lauter will fit here.
“Loud Brunnen” (yes, the waterfalls are loud)
“Pure/True Brunnen” (pure water, as in lauteres Gold)
“Many Brunnen” (there are waterfalls everywhere you look)
It’s kind of cool that it works with all three meanings, so maybe it can also have three meanings at once in this case, which it could not in English. What do you think?
What a funny name, in that context :).
I checked on Wikipedia and there it says that it was first mentioned as “claro fonte” which was then translated to “lauterbrunnen”. So it’s about “pure” for sure.
But yeah, technically all meanings match!
Hi, I was just wondering if maybe you could do “lauten” as a Word of the Day too, at some point? The “dictionary cc” website tells me that this can variously mean ‘to sound’, ‘to read’, ‘to be’, ‘to run’ and ‘to acclaim’ in English – how can that possibly be?! Help!
Seeing these translations I have the very same question :D… I mean “to run”? I really don’t know where they got that from. Makes no sense to me. Anyway … I’m on the case!
Excellent! Many thanks! : – )
So, case solved. The core idea is “to sound like”. German basically uses the idea of saying/reading something out loud for various situations.
– Mein Name lautet Emanuel (stilted)
– My name “lit.: sounds, super lit.: louds” (is) Emanuel.
– Der genaue Satz lautet: “…
– The exact sentence “sounds”: “…
In the second example, English would use “to read” but “lauten” really only makes sense as “to read” when it’s about what’s there to read. Same for “to run” which is another option for this kind of “to read”
– The headline runs: “Tiger found cuddling with Penguin.”
So those 3 (to sound, to read, to run, to be) are all the same stuff. … how is it when vocalized.
As for “to acclaim”… that was kind of a gotcha entry in dict.cc
– lauten Beifall spenden
The verb is actually “spenden” (to give, to donate) and “lauten” is just an adjective for “Beifall” (applause) in accusative, masculine
– Ich spende lauten Beifall.
Hope that helps :)
Ah fantastic! Yes, it does, thank you so much! I’m struggling my way through Google Translate and came across this and thought better look this up and then was like – what????
Aha! Da muss ich klarkommen! I’m sorry I carelessly assumed you knew the english expression. “You can say that again” is exactly what “Das kannst du laut sagen” means. It’s not usually used to ask someone to repeat something. In your own words “What you just said is damn right so you don’t need to be ashamed /scared to say it out loud” is what it figuratively means.
Hi again! checked it out on the net and the expression is “Das kannst du laut sagen” Seeing as though it is not familiar to you am guessing it’s not familiar to most germans so i guess i’ll forget about impressing Deutscher Leute with this phrase hehehe
Ohhhh… now I get it :). I do know that expression. It’s an idiom. The idea behind it is something like this:
– What you just said is damn right so you don’t need to be ashamed /scared to say it out loud
People use it to agree to people
– “Heute ist es echt schweinekalt.”
“Das kannst du laut sagen.”
-” It’s really cold today.”
“Indeed!/Hear hear.”
But you wouldn’t use it to actually tell someone to repeat something.
wow! maybe i misheard but i was pretty sure that’s what I heard. I stutidied in a Goethe Institut in my hometown and this is what I thought I heard my teacher, die kommt aus Koeln say. Another teacher (who is native Indian) tried to get creative and said “Du kannst das wieder sprechen (or is it sagen?).” And the german teacher said in germany the equivalent is “Du kannst das lauter sagen/sprechen.”
Is there a german phrase that goes “Du kannst das lauter sprechen!” which I was given to understand is the equivalent of “You can say that again!”
Hmmm… not that I know of. I mean
– Can you say that louder.
this can imply that it has been said before already so it does imply that it should be said again. But it’s not a common phrase, especially not with “sprechen”. At least in Germany.
It doesn’t work with every single example, but “left and right” is a pretty good match for the adverbial “lauter”:
– On the subway today there were (or “it was”) pretty girls left and right.
– Man, I’m having good ideas left and right these days!
Awesome! That fits perfectly.
Does the “so many” version of lauter decline? z.B.: Gestern habe ich mit lauter schönen Frauen gatanzt?
Your sentence was perfect. Good question actually… it is as if there is no article, so the adjective gets to carry the load
– Lauter schöne Frauen stehen hier (nom.)
– Ich sehe lauter schöne Frauen (Acc.)
– Ich tanze mit lauter schönen Frauen (Dat.)
– Lauter schöner Frauen wegen bin ich nervös (Gen.)
Vielen Dank. Another possible translation, then, might be ‘plenty’. I danced with plenty of women last night. It sounds almost proud in english.
I don’t know actually… in this example, the German version with “lauter” sounds a bit like you’re surprised that it was so many women you danced with…
– “Wie war die Schwulenparty?”
“Och irgendwie voll unschwul… ich habe mit lauter Frauen getanzt.”
– “How was the gay party”
“Meh… pretty ungay somehow… I was dancing with all those women.”
Recently discovered your website and really enjoy it. Reading these articles I feel really fill in gaps with how people actually speak that you really can’t easily learn any other way.
FYI, I found a few typos:
In der U-Bahn waren viele hübsche Frauen.
In der U-Bahn there were many of cute women. <- der should be “the”
Ein Saxofon ist laut, 2 Saxofone sind lauter und 1000 Saxofone sind am lautesten.
One Saxofone is loud, 2 Saxofones are louder and 3 Saxofones are the loudest. <- 3 should be “1000”
Thanks for another great post!
Corrected the typos and found some more while doing so… in the text there are “lauter Fehler”. I really should proofread… but will I ever :D. Thanks a lot for finding those and thanks for your nice feedback too.
I think the slang you are looking for in the last examples is “a ton”. As in, “I’ve had a ton of good ideas recently.” Or, another one that’s even more colloquial: “loads”. “In the U-Bahn were loads of cute women.” Nyah. “A ton” is better. Seems to fit perfectly from the feel anyway…
I think I prefer “loads” of women rather than “a ton”… oh that was soooooo mean :D. Thanks for the great translations, they seem to work for me too.
For the last one, I’d understood it meant ‘nothing but’
Hmmm I’d say this isn’t really a good match. Lauer something means that there is something in abundance but it doesn’t exclude other stuff from being there too. “Nothing but” would be “nichts als” in German and it means that there is exclusively only that. Lauter is more open than that…
‘nothing but’ in English isn’t taken literally, it’s hyperbolic. Just like how ‘a ton’ of women isn’t interpreted as 907kg of women. It’s 100% the go-to phrase for exaggerating a surprisingly large abundance of something.
Ah, okay, but I still think there’s a difference in tone/vibe.
“Nothing but”, I would definitely translate that as “nur” even in the hyperbolic sense.
“lauter” feels more like “oh man, soo many XYZ”.
Also, es war sehr lustig, noch einmal. Freue mich!