Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time, we’ll take a look at the meaning of
der Kummer
Kummer is related to the English stem cumber. Not the cool cumber from salads and sandwiches that we nerds know as “Cu2MBER”.
I mean the bad cumber known from words like encumber or cumbersome.
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Hey Emanuel, is “kümmern” the most idiomatic word to use for phrases like “why should I care?” or “who cares?”? I lean a lot on the word “egal”, but it doesn’t always quite fit. For example, I could say, “Mir ist es egal, dass der Goldfisch von deinem Cousin heute Geburtstag hat,” but what I really want to emphasize is, why would you think I would/should care about that? Why would *anybody* care about that? (Or I could just work on being less rude, haha)
“kümmern” is definitely NOT the best choice for contexts like this. “egal” is the way to go for sure.
You can also do something with “interessieren”…
– Niemanden interessiert, wann der Scheißgoldfisch Geburtstag hat.
or, if the focus is more on you not caring, “drauf scheißen”.
– Ich scheiß drauf wann der Goldfisch Geburtstag hat.
Super helpful as always, thank you!
German is such a rich language. Thank you for this enjoyable blog!
I really like listening to the audio samples and the phrases you use as exemples are clever too! :)
Thanks, I’m happy you enjoy this! I do try to make them interesting.
I wondered about the word ‘das elend‘ which seems have meaning in the same territory as Kummer?
there is also a connected adjective too?
what usage would they have?
or redundent?
Thanks.
“Kummer” is what you have inside, “Elend” is about the outside and cirumstances.
Think of a slum … you can see a lot of Elend there (suffering, sick people, hunger, trash, despair).
The adjectives/adverbs are elend and elendig. You can find “elend” here and there to describe how people feel when they’re really sick.
But none of the words are something you really need actively.
The celebrity drowns his sorrows. This is such a fixed phrase you don’t even need to specify the alcohol
In the proverb: Was kümmert es den Mond, wenn ihn der Hund anbellt. I don’t understand the grammar of the initial phrase, that is, besides the verb ,,kümmern” what parts of speech are Was and es. Clearly den Mond is in the accusative. Thanks for help
That’s a great question!!
So the “es” is the subject of the sentence. It is kind of a dummy functioning as a stand in for the sentence that describes what I’m actually worried by.
– Mich kümmert [es] nicht, [was du denkst.]
– Was du denkst, kümmert mich nicht.
You could skip it here, but it’s often used anyway.
The “was” is a bit hard to figure out but it becomes clear once you know that this “kümmern” is one of the very few verbs that can take two direct objects.
– Es kümmert mich einen Dreck, was du denkst.
“einen Dreck” basically quantifies how much “it” is “kümmering” me and the “was” is asking for that position. It’s a rhetorical device of course. Besides “wenig, ein bisschen, einen Dreck/Scheiß” there are not many more options for this slot.
Let me know if that helps :)
At the risk of proving that fools rush in where experts fear to tread, I am wondering what it is about the “was” that is “a bit hard to figure out.” One of the meanings of “was” is the interrogative pronoun “why”. If it is thus translated, then the proverb itself translates as: “Why does the moon worry if the dog barks at it?” (Or perhaps more idiomatically: “Why should the moon worry if the dog barks at it.”) Am I missing something?
The tricky thing is to understand why “was” means “why” :).
Hi friend,
well, learning a language needs to take time. I remember there is a philosophical story which I read in French as a student:
– there was a intelligent provocative schoolboy as a Socrate who asked his teacher: “what for our studies? What we have studied about two and third is forgotten and the rest will be not used.” You know, the teacher knows that this boy is awesome he may be in his trap If he gives the boy a straight answer. Then he replies: “étudier, c’est pour le plaisir!”
Well, that’s a good answer which I have ever heard. “To study is just for fun!
Don’t set up your mind on learning a language. It’s just for fun! Then somehow your mind works well.
A humble suggestion given to you when you get engaged into learning new vocabularies, do not set up your mind to learn by heart 100 words a day, that’s really stressing the more you learn the quicker you forget all. When you forget it you are getting worried due to your attachments to the language you have done. Just be relaxed and happy with the word you are doing, then learn with its example like here, excellent! Be at the present moment when you are learning that word, your mind remembers it deeply and long, check with your eagerness to jump to learn new words while that word is not finished. Whatever languages you learn in that way it helps!
I got BA in French at university in 2004, and I quit using it 15 years ago now I really forget all. I got a certificate of C1 in German in 2008, then I came to Burma for my meditation practice, and now I also forget it all.
I come to understand that the boy’s question is right for us, one day we will forget all even our native language because of death. So I learn from that great lesson that I really want to learn something truly meaningful to my life: you know what? That’s meditation. I spend 10 years on meditation which is totally different from the way i would learn French or German. Meditation is a kind of mental activities which teach you to let go of your defilements whatsoever when you have your little defilements, your mind is calm and peaceful, it remains in silence. It does not matter about a language.
instead to learn a language is to get hold of or to grasp what you want to master. This wanting never comes to end. It gives rise to Sufferings.
Thank for your kindness and sharing with your knowledge from which I start to do German again.
Anybody here wants to do meditation, I am here for you free! I can help you gain your Insight knowledge. My email: [email protected]
First off, I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate everything you do here for those of us learning German. As a resource, your website is unsurpassed. I’ve already seen in other comments a lot of very effusive praise, but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus just in case you needed to hear it again every now and then.
In any event, I had some questions concerning learning strategies. I’ve studied German in school for many years and even spent a few months in Berlin, but I feel as if I haven’t really been able to get over the hump of the “high intermediate” stage. I’d like to feel like I could turn on German radio and understand it without difficulty, or read a German book without needing to look up words all the time.
I’ve made some headway with grammar, and I feel I’ve gotten to the point where I can learn more through listening and reading than I can through grammar exercises in textbooks (which I never felt like I got that much out of anyway).
But my principle focus right now is vocabulary. Just the sheer magnitude of words there are to learn is daunting. very time I sit down to read an article or something of that nature, the number of words I have to look up is quite extensive. I’m wondering if you have any tips for how to learn and how to retain the amount of vocabulary necessary to become proficient in German.
I realize one can (and should) devote a lifetime to learning a foreign language, but it would be a huge bummer if it’s really only after ten, twenty years of learning that one becomes proficient enough to turn on the radio or read a book without it being laborious.
So, I guess my question then is whether you have any advice for how to learn a significant amount of vocabulary over the course of a shorter and more manageable time-span (a year or two). Would you rely just on reading and listening? Or would you suggest using flashcards in some way? I’ve seen some comments where you’ve seemed not to have anything against flashcards, but I would expect that you would be skeptical of the approach some learners adopt of learning 100 words a day, or something like that.
Anyway, I’m sorry this is so long, but this has been on my mind for awhile, and if you have any thoughts, I’d be grateful. Many, many thanks.
Hi Karl,
I actually do have recommendations. First of: flashcards is great but you need to think quantity, not quality. Don’t waste your time making elaborate flashcards with example phrases and stuff. Just one card one word (maybe with a little clarification as to the usage). And then you need to start just throwing them at yourself. Forget 10. You need packs of 100. Use two packs and go through them whenever you have time. Don’t count how many you got wrong or right, don’t beat yourself up if you get something wrong. Just put it back into the stack and continue.
Think of it as throwing pasta on a wall… the ones that don’t stick, you just pick em up and throw them again, but some will always stick. If you cut out counting by using insane numbers to begin with, you’re completely free. No need to track progress. In fact, DON’T count how well you’re doing.
You know you’re done with a pack when you get bored going through it. And maybe it takes 2 weeks and 12 repetitions for a word but the time WILL come when it sticks.
I’ve done this rote learning method for Finnish, French and Italian and regardless of how well or not well I actually speak… I have had impressive vocabulary in those languages in my prime (and for French and Italian I still do… it just doesn’t go away anymore).
Oh and use redundancy. If there’s a word that just won’t stick… give it 3 cards.
So yeah… you need to expose yourself to LOTS of words again and again and again and your vocab will grow.
Now, about reading:
what I found back when I was learning languages was that articles in journals and newspapers are like the final boss. We think “Oh they’re not that long” but that’s actually a problem. A newspaper article is short, dense and requires you to have a lot of “frame information” to fill in bits you don’t understand. Information you don’t necessarily have.
Novels are the MUCH BETTER read because there you get to know characters, settings, story and you KNOW what’s going on after a while. So when you get to a weird sentence then you’ll have much less problems with that than in a short newspaper article.
Also, each novel has a specific set of words. A science fiction novel has a different set of words than, say, Harry Potter. And each author has of course their own set of words.
In the beginning of a novel, you’ll run into these novel specific words all the time and you’ll be looking up a LOT. But once you have these words, it gets MUCH easier. I remember reading a novel about World War 2 in French (quite a challenge as I was roughly B1). The first 30 pages, I had to look up soooo much. No idea how many times I looked up Flak or machine gun or bullet. But after a while you just know these words, you know the novel specific dictionary and it becomes much easier from there.
This is different for newspapers. Each article has its own set of words and you got no time to get used to it. Also, it tends to be more dense and stiff.
So… take a novel and walk the walk for 40 pages. You’ll start enjoying it then, I believe.
Last but not least… read the novel out loud to yourself. Slowly and PROPERLY. That way, you’ll train your muscles to produce proper German and talking will be easier.
Oh and as for listening… movies with sub titles in German. And you have to rewind whenever you can’t match what’s written and what is said.
I do this up to 5 times, until I really hear that they’re actually saying what’s written there.
Hope this helps :)
Just a little after thought: German indeed does have an insane amount of words. A friend of mine, who’s quite good at speaking, used to skip the B2.2 course in favor of the C1. And he said the amount of new words he came across every day was insane.
It helps if you learn a bit about word families and keep an open mind for such things.
So if you see “Bezug”, there should be a voice saying “probably something related to beziehung/beziehen”.
That’s really excellent advice, thank you for being so thorough.
Mein lieblings Ohrwurm mit “Liebeskummer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju2fedOZw_U
Groovy daddy!
An appropriately contrasting “Todeskummer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hIDGRbdfM
So heavy :)
Ja. Danke! Ich war ganz unsicher darueber.
I realize in the context of the phrases in this article “darum” is the da-form of “um das” or “um es”, but all of my German learning material always says “darum” means “That is why” or “Because of that”. What is the connection there. Do you just have to figure it out based on context?
I think I’ll just do a short article on that one. It’s nothing complicated but I don’t want it buried in the comments :)
Warum keine Korrekturen betreffend ,,Meines neueste lieblingswort” oder ,,problematic” oder Wortstellung (oben)? Schweigen heißt nicht Billigung?
Ich korrigiere fast nie alles, sondern nur das, wo ich denke, es löst ein systematisches Problem. Adjektivendungen finde ich da eher unwichtig, da man eine super spezifische Situation korrigiert. “leiden an” statt “leiden womit” bringt glaube ich einfach mehr als “mein neuestes”, zumindest auf dem Level, wo die Person gerade ist. Perfekte Adjektivendungen sind für mich eher Feinschliff, den man machen kann, wenn der Rest gut klingt.
Und wenn ich in einem kurzen Kommentar 4 Sachen korrigiere, kann das auch leicht frustrierend sein und die Person wird traurig, dass sie soo viele Fehler hat, und nimmt die Fehler als problematischer wahr als sie sind. Meine Erfahrung aus der Praxis war “weniger ist mehr”. Deshalb korrigiere ich fast nie alles.
Bei “problematic” glaube ich übrigens, dass die Person das irgendwie auch weiß, und nur einfach ein bisschen nachlässig. Soll ja auch Spaß machen :).
Keine Ahnung, ob das der richtige Ansatz ist, und das mag auch für jeden anders sein, aber für mich fühlt es sich so richtig an.
Danke vielmals für diese klare und ausführliche Erklärung. Ihr Ansatz scheint mir ganz vernünftig—zwar fast unvermeidlich angesichts der Vielfältigkeit der vorkommenden Fehler–solange die Lernende verstehen, dass das Schweigen nicht Billigung bedeutet.
Heute sah ich mit großen Kummer deinen neuen Anti-Bot Standpunkt. Wir sollten uns auch um Bots kummern, Bots sind auch Menschen! Da ich bin so oft für ein Bot gehalten, sie muss sein.
Ich bin verwirrt! Was meinst du denn mit meinem neuen Bot-Standpunkt? Und wo wirst du für einen Bot gehalten? Im Netz? Von Bot-Detektoren?
Ich mag dieses Wort. Es klingt richtig zärtlich, nach meine Meinung. Ist auch irgendwo ironisch, dass du um so eines Wortes heute geschrieben hast… Lange Geschichte. Hoffentlich kommt das nächste Artikel schnell :) Pass gut auf!
Klingt ja spannend :). Nächster Artikel kommt in ein paar Tagen, also “Kummer” bald vorbei ;)
Auf englisch heißt es ,,don’t count your chickens before they hatch” . Also, man soll darum nicht kümmern, was noch nicht passiert ist.
Ah, cool, danke. Eine kleine Korrektur:
– Man soll sich nicht um das kümmern, was noch nicht …
Das “darum” funktioniert hier nicht wirklich (und wenn, dann muss es unbedingt hinter das “nicht”). Da-Wörter klingen nicht gut mit “was”
– Ich erzähl dir davon, was ich gestern erlebt hab.
Das klingt komisch. Der Grund ist, dass so ein Satz mit “was” eigentlich ein “das” ausfüllt, und das könnte man auch weglassen.
– Ich sage das, was ich denke.
– Ich sage, was ich denke.
– Ich kümmere mich um was noch passiert.
Dieser Satz ist idiomatisch. Und man kann das “das” auch einsetzen.
– Ich kümmere mich um das, was noch passiert.
Aber sobald du “das” und “um” zusammenziehst (wie es die normale Regel ja will), ist das “das” eben NICHT mehr optional und der was-Teil bezieht sich auf das ganze da-Wort. Deshalb klingt es komisch.
Lass mich wissen, ob das Sinn macht, oder du eine Übersetzung brauchst :)
Gibts auch die Redewendung ,,kümmere dich nicht um ungelegte Eier “.
Stimmt, ist nicht so häufig, aber ich kenn die auch. Weißt du was sie bedeutet?
Meines neueste lieblingswort is nun Kummerspeck! (womit ich leide aber so klingt wenig problematic)
Eine kleine Korrektur: man sagt “leiden an etwas”, also “woran ich leide” statt “womit”. Hoffe, das hilft :)