Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
This time with a look at the meaning of
pflegen
Which is something very nice to do. And you can do it to your hair and skin, to your bike, to your traditions and to your sick loved one.
The younger readers among you might now be like “Oh, pflegen means to post on social media.”
But of course that’s not quite it.
If I had to pick one translation for pflegen, I would say pflegen is taking care.
But we need to be a little more specific, because taking care is VERY broad. Cleaning the bathroom, updating your computer, making sure that there’s enough beer at a party – there are plenty of little things like this we need to take care of in daily life. And all that is NOT what pflegen is.
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In “Eigentum verpflichtet. Property entails obligations.“, I’m assuming you mean “Ownership entails obligations.“
Is that how it is in English? Because to me, I always thought of that saying as relating specifically to real estate. I might be wrong, it just never occurred to me that it could be otherwise.
I think someone might “knock back” a beer. ;-)
Camille
Hi there! I´m grateful to this site, the sponsors and most of all to Emanuel. I have been given a 1 year schoolarship! Ich bin glucklich, denn kann ich Deutsch lernen.
You can tell a German fron an Austrian by the pronunciation of the affricate ‘pf’ . The Austrians prounounce the full sound, the Germans tend to drop the ‘p’. By the way, why do you not capialise the adjectival noun ‘Cooles’ as in “was Cooles’? Schönen Urlaub in Italien!
I’m not so sure about the dropping of the “p”. At least it is not a general thing. Don’t get me wrong… I’m just worried that beginners read this and think “Okay, I can skip the p” which is not really gonna sound authentic.
As for “was Cooles”… I don’t know the rules there :). Yeah, shame on me.
And oh… I myself am not in Italy. I’m actually working quite a bit. German, the language is currently in Italy ;)
Hallo Emanuel, was bedeutet “bepflegen”? Geht es hier um Altdeutsch?
“Wir werden die Seite mit einem Archiv an Bildern, Zeitungsartikel und Planungsabsichten bepflegen…”
Hmm… ich hab’ das noch nie gehört. Der Kontext macht klar, dass es irgendwie um “raufmachen” geht. Keine Ahnung, ob das alt ist, oder tatsächlich Fachsprache. Aber im Alltag benutzt man das nicht.
I big thanks the patrons for supporting this best work
Me too :)
nice post
Danke :)
Ich pflege zu dieses Blog. Aber pflege ich mein Aussehen.
Hmmm… der zweite Satz ist perfekt, aber den ersten verstehe ich nicht.
What are you trying to express? To pledge?
Happy one-year membership anniversary! Hard to believe wie die Zeit vergeht…
I think it’s worth mentioning “-pflichtig” as a pretty common suffix in everyday life, especially “kostenpflichtig” (unfortunately).
How unusual is “pflegen, etwas zu tun”? I’ve seen it in Bible translations (of course) but not elsewhere that I can remember. “Used to” is so common in English that it’s basically its own tense, so it’s hard not to want to use/overuse “pflegen” that way. Sounds like it might be good for English speakers to think of the default translation as “be someone’s custom to…” or something in order to avoid that tendency.
By the way, in earlier modern English there was actually a verb “to plight,” which was either a synonym or a previous version of “to pledge” (not sure which). In the old marriage ceremony of the Church of England, the bride and groom would each say “to thee I plight my troth,” meaning “I pledge my faithfulness to you.” Nowadays “plight” exists only as a noun, meaning something closer to the German “Not.”
Hmmm, I don’t think you’ll come across “pflegen zu + Verb” in daily life. It’s more for books and stuff and it sounds a bit scripted or high brow if someone uses it.
So yeah, you’re probably right that it’s better to NOT think of it as “used to + verb”. “habe/bin immer + geverbt” is the most common way to express that.
Oh yeah, and happy member birthday indeed :). That went by super fast. For how long have you been a reader now by the way? 4 Years?
I think about three years, starting in the autumn of 2014. It’s been a good run so far!
So would you say that compared to pflegen, versorgen doesn’t feel as loving or compassionate?
To my American ears, neither “bring forward” nor “antedate” are at all idiomatic in that context. “Knock-off beer” also sounds strange, since knockoff can mean an unauthorized and cheap replica, e.g., a knockoff Rolex.
I would probably say it this way: Maria’s granddad (used to / would sometimes) drink his post-shift beer during his lunch break.
Great question!! “versorgen” and “pflegen” do overlap in so far as that they can be used in context of medical care. Then, “versorgen” sound more momentary, while “pflegen” takes more time.
You can versorgen a wound in 10 minutes and then pflegen it for a week. And you’re right that “versorgen” sounds a bit more technical.
Hope that helps :).
Oh and thanks for the translations! Someone once suggested “knocking off” as a translation for “Feierabend machen” and I just used it freely :)
Seems you can’t please everyone. “Knock-off beer” (or knocking-off beer) sounds fine to my, admittedly elderly, English/Australian ears. Despite the other (more recent/US?) meaning of “knock off” the context makes the intention clear. “Antedate” seems rather odd as there is no change of date, but “bring forward” sounds entirely reasonable and the meaning is clear. It actually seems to me to be the best way of expressing it.
“Pflegen” and “Pflicht”, huh. Cool.
You are definitely right, there isn’t any other important prefix version of “pflegen” than “verpflegen”. The only one existing that comes to my mind would be “einpflegen”. That is used in IT and is about adding new data or a new system into the machine. (Daten einpflegen) It gives the whole very mechanic process a rather emotional and caring sound. No idea how that came to be. Maybe because people like to personify their computers.
What I want to elaborate on is the “pf”. Many non-Germans might ask themselves how you can pronouns something like: “Impfpflicht”, especially the “pfl” part. The answer of many Germans is, you don’t. “pf” in the biginning of a word is very often reduced to an “f”-sound. That is one of the reasons why all those word beginning with “pf” or “f” are considered as orthografically difficult. Like “der Flug” (the flight) and “der Pflug” (the plough) or for “pflegen” you have the very similar sounding “Flegel” (an unpolite man). Many people (I have done it too) already fail at “das Pferd” (horse). It just sounds like “Ferd” if you aren’t careful. There is even a joke about that:
“Papa, wie schreibt man “Pferd”? Mit “PF” oder mit “F”?” – “Nee, mit “V” wie “Vingsten”.” (actually “Pfingsten”/Pentecost)
So “Impfpflicht” would be more commonly heard as: “Impflicht” with a long “f” in the middle. That is still a lot of consonants to take care of but it might save the first line in audience from having to pack a raincoat.
*pronounce
Oh man, “einpflegen” … it’s one of the stupidest words in the language in my opinion and I REALLY would love to know how it came to be. I mean, you can “pflegen” a data-base, sure, but some IT guy must have just combined that with “ein” at some point. It sounds sooooo weird to me :).
Gibt es mehr als zwei “pf” in einiges Wort?:)
Danke!
“pfpfpf”… nee, das ist zuviel :)
Ausgezeichnet. Danke…!
Gerne:)
“Wash and wear” bedoitet “kein bügeln”. :)
chg
Oh, achso… für mich bedeutet jedes Programm “kein Bügeln” XD
Hi Emanuel! Danke dir! For giving me 1 year of scholarship. I thanks the patrons for supporting this good work.