Hello everyone,
And welcome to a new episode of What is the Difference.
I ask myself a lot.
Like.. I tried showering last week and I still have a girlfriend, so what IS the difference.
Anyway, there are quite a few German words that seem to mean the same but don’t.
And today, we’ll discover:
The Difference between ‘falls’ and ‘wenn’
Both are translations for if and they don’t really mean different things.
But they’re not always interchangeable either, because there are differences in usage and tone.
In a nutshell, we could say that falls is more like in case while wenn is a more broad if and also when.
Today, we’ll explore this in detail, see examples for when to use which and what to watch out for when using falls.
So if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.
Now, as a German learner, you’re most likely familiar with the noun der Fall. This can mean the fall, but it’s also the German word for case.
Not the fun case though. A case of beer is Bierkasten.
Fall is for abstract cases, like a case of emergency or the boring grammatical case.
You might secretlyt be like “German is so weird, what does the word case have to do with falling.”
But English is actually no different. The word case comes from the Latin verb cadere, which meant to fall.
Think of a case as something that “drops” into reality.
Or just think of phrasings like “Things fall into place.“. There is a connection between the notion of something happening and the idea of “dropping”.
But anyways, the word falls comes from the noun der Fall. It’s kind of a frozen Genitive actually.
And it’s kind of the direct counterpart to English in case – historically and also as a translation.
It’s much better to think of falls as in case instead of if.
Because both have one specific quality that not every if and wenn has.
Let’s look at those one by one
‘falls’ is for reality
The English word if expresses a hypothetical and it covers the full range from quite likely to absolutely impossible.
- If I study, I’ll definitely pass.
- If I had studied, I’d have passed.
The first one is a completely realistic statement that can become reality.
The second one is completely hypothetical. There is NO way it becomes reality, because the ship has sailed. The exam is over, I failed and there’s no way for me to ever change that.
And the key point is:
falls does NOT work for impossible hypotheticals.
Wenn ich gelernt hätte, hätte ich den Test bestanden.
Falls ich gelernt hätte,… is wrong!
Okay, the second one might not be wrong grammatically, but it sounds super off and people don’t usually use it that way.
I believe it’s the same for in case.
- In case I had learned I would have passed.
I don’t think that’s good or proper English. Let me know in the comments if I’m wrong here.
- If Thomas had known that Maria needed the book he would definitely have brought it with him to school.
- In case Thomas had known that Maria needed…. sounds weird to me
- Wenn Thomas gewusst hätte, dass Maria das Buch braucht, hätte er es auf jeden Fall mit zur Uni genommen.
- Falls Thomas gewusst hätte…. sounds WRONG
Now, those two examples were in the past.
How about the future, though?
- If tomorrow were yesterday, I would be surprised.
- Wenn morgen gestern wäre, wäre ich überrascht.
This one is truly impossible and here, in case and falls sound very off.
- In case tomorrow were yesterday, I would be surprised…. NAH
- Falls morgen gestern wäre…. sounds WRONGISH
And it’s still the case even if the scenario is not completely impossible.
- If aliens landed tomorrow I would be surprised.
- Wenn morgen Aliens landen würden, wäre ich überrascht.
- Falls morgen Aliens landen würden…
- In case aliens landed tomorrow…
I wouldn’t say that these are grammatically wrong, but they do sound odd.
We can’t be 100% sure that the aliens won’t land tomorrow, but it’s super unlikely. They told me they wouldn’t come till Covid 2.0 when they proved me a few weeks ago.. wait… you should not know this. Forget what I just said.
Seriously though: falls and also in case are kind of grounded in the real world and it’s potentialities.
Or we can also look at it from a grammatical angle: falls just doesn’t sound very good with conditional forms of verbs. Falls is more like this down to earth kinda guy. It hangs out with normal honest verbs, verbs that get up every morning and conjugate every day to earn their living… not some snobs from the could-should-would-club.
In fact, we can even use an unrealistic example and it’ll sound fine if we phrase it without a conditional.
- Wenn morgen die Aliens landen würden, … fine
- Falls morgen die Welt landen würden, … sounds very meh
- Falls morgen die Welt landen, … fine
The last one sound completely fine, except that it makes the Aliens landing tomorrow sound like a real possibility. It sounds less like a theoretical mind game and more like something that could really happen.
Now you might be like “So does that mean falls is more realistic than wenn?”
But the answer to that is:
No!
‘falls’ is less likely than ‘wenn’
I know, I know. We just spent the last section talking about how falls doesn’t work for impossible things and doesn’t go well with conditional.
And now I’m saying that wenn is more realistic than falls?! Sounds like Captain Contradiction is around.
But I can explain.
Falls only covers a subset of if-potentials while wenn covers the full spectrum. But in the area that falls DOES cover, it sounds LESS likely than wenn.
Falls sounds doubtful, or more skeptical.
- If I have time tomorrow…
- Wenn ich morgen Zeit habe…
- Falls ich morgen Zeit habe…
The wenn-sentence is indifferent with regards to the probability of my having time. It may or may not be the case but there is a fair chance for it The falls-sentence is more like a “Well, there is a chance that I have time but I can’t by no means guarantee it so don’t be disappointed if I don’t”.
- If Marie has studied…
- Wenn Marie gelernt hat… (and there is a fair chance she did)
- Falls Marie gelernt hat … (despite her laziness or her being busy with work)
So in the realm of reality – and only there falls is used – falls sounds less likely than wenn does. The following dialog happens millions of times in some form and it perfectly shows it.
- “Alles klar, also, du rufst morgen an, wenn du Zeit hast…”
“FALLS ich Zeit habe…”
“Ok, ok… FALLS du Zeit hast.” - “Alright, so you’ll call me tomorrow if you have time….”
“IF I have time…”
“Ok, ok… IF you have time.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, this is kind of hard to translate to English.
We can’t use when because the difference between wenn and falls is NOT the same as the one between when and if. Anyways… I think and hope you can understand it.
The person saying falls just found the statement of the other person presumptuous and wants to stress that it is not just if but really IFFFFFFF.
This skeptical nature of falls makes it a nice counterpart of wahrscheinlich.
- Also, ich habe morgen wahrscheinlich keine Zeit aber falls doch,…
- So, I probably won’t have time tomorrow, but in case I do….
All right, so let’s recap a little. Falls is a real world word for real situations, not hypothetical thought games with could, should, would.
However, falls is skeptical, so you’d use it for real world possibilities that are not super likely or if you want to stress the IF-ness (vs when-ness)
You can always replace falls by wenn but not vice versa.
And I think that’s it. That was our German Word of the Day falls.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave me a comment. It is really always great to read them.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
Further reading:
- Word of the Day – ob
- Word of the Day – als
- Word of the Day – wann vs wenn
- Word of the Day – wenn (outdated and a little wordy :)
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So, use falls wenn possible?
I’d say use it
a) if you want to emphasize the “if-ness”
b) you’re being formal
And don’t combine it with conditional unless you have a lot of Sprachgefuehl for it :)
I loved discovering your blog, it has many very interesting articles.
I’m an English learner who learned that in case of/in case (that) basically means because of the possibility of/because it’s possible (that)… The two sentences:
(1) means we will 100% meet at my house because it might rain, whereas (2) means only when it rains, we will meet at my house. So my conclusion is falls, as explained in this article, is basically a special if that does not work hypothetically and is a bit skeptical, and it unfortunately does not have a direct, short equivalent in English.
And, as pointed out in another comment, in case is kind of idiomatic and not the same as in the case (of).
Please feel free to correct me.
Oh, that’s interesting, I never really noticed this but this is indeed a facet “in case” can express – a notion of “giving a reason”.
I wouldn’t say that all instances of “in case” are like that though.
– Call me in case you need something.
I’m not an English native speaker but I’m 99,9% certain that this does NOT mean that the person will definitely call. It means the same as “if”, in my opinion.
If you DO want to express something like your example 1, then “falls” does not really work. It sounds too much like “if”. The better choice then would be “für den Fall, dass es regnet” or simply “weil es eventuell/vielleicht regnet.”
Agreed that “giving a reason” is just one facet of “in case”. The English example you give is a good one that points that out, and I suppose casually people would just use it interchangeably with “Call me if you need something”. Though, technically, in case is not the same as if, even in your example:
Now, if you were to say (2) in German, which one would you say:
I’d say version 1 (falls) but I wouldn’t misunderstand version 2 either and I wouldn’t notice.
Anyways? That must be an American thing. We English speakers who are from countries that aren’t America certainly don’t substitute anyways for anyway. Sounds like a rather dumb expression to me.
Hi Emanuel, I searched to see if you had this article because I was frustrated that ChatGPT always corrected me whenever I wrote “Wenn du Fragen hast, melde dich gerne bei mir” and said I should write “FALLS du Fragen hast…” But I read your article and still don’t understand the logic. Is my option wrong? Hope you can help me! :)
Your option is perfectly fine and I use it all the time.
“falls” just sounds like you consider it less likely that there are questions than it would with “wenn”.
Not sure what ChatGPT’s problem is but it needs to chill out.
Just great, Emanuel. Some of the differences are subtle to my American ear but rereading it makes loads of sense. Thanks!
Happy to hear that :)
I loved this article so much!! Now “falls” has its own personality in my mind which makes me remember much better how to use it. Thanks a lot!!
Awesome, happy to hear that :)
When using “in case” for skepticism I personally like to think of it as “in the case…”.
E.g., “in the case that Marie studied, she would pass the exam.”
or, “in the case tomorrow were yesterday, I would be surprised.”
That certaintly sounds skeptical to me, where “in case” can sometimes sound more like the person is concerned about the circumstance occurring.
Sort of hard to get across the feeling, but your use of all capitals IF also works pretty well!
Word of the Day – “falls”
What type of condition is this ? I have studied the conditions in your website very well. I can’t find this mixed coniditon. Do we use Perfekt tense in conditions !! Thank you.
I don’t really understand your question, I think :). Are you talking about conditional mode? That has nothing to do with this example.
Just because a sentence starts with “wenn” or “falls” doesn’t mean we need to use conditinal forms. English is no different.
– If I study, I’ll pass.
No conditional needed.
Let me know if that helps or if not, what you want me to clear up.
“Alright, so you’ll call me tomorrow if (here I would translate rather “when”, because the German “wenn” implies that the person would have time) you have time….”
Was that supposed to be a note?
“Thomas has certainly brought the book with him to school provided he was aware that Maria needed it.”
*blink*
*rereads…a few more times*
*blinks more*
Yeah, that one gets a “sounds WEIRD” in red text, too. :D
Great explanations! (Good enough to convince me to try a membership :P).
But i didn’t find anything regarding the sentence structure / word ordering of falls-clauses in the article.
From the examples it seems they are similar to wenn-clauses, so when starting a sentence with Falls… it counts as position 1 and then comes verb and subject and so on. But now I’m trying to use google translate and deepL for the following sentence and they both seem to offer this same word ordering:
“In case you haven’t heard yet, I’ve been moving from the city to the country these past few days.”
Falls Sie es noch nicht gehört haben, ich bin in den letzten Tagen von der Stadt aufs Land gezogen.
I know these translation tools are not quite reliable but I was wondering if there is some special grammar rule I’m missing here. Can you explain why we don’t say the following instead?
Falls Sie es noch nicht gehört haben, bin ich in den letzten Tagen von der Stadt aufs Land gezogen.
You’re right that “falls”-clauses are like “wenn”-clauses and “dass”-clauses. So they’re subordinate clauses, or side sentences, as I call them.
Inside them, the verbs are all at the end.
The clause itself is like one block and if you start a sentence with it, then the verb of the main sentence has to come after it.
What Google and DeepL are offering is not wrong, but I would read that more like this:
Or a hyphen to connect them.
The “standard” way to really connect the two sentences with a comma is definitely the version you suggested.
Hope that helps :)
What about fall in the word fallschirmjager
What about it? It’s Fall+Schirm+Jäger.
Can you please describe some Nebensatz with Falls?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Do you want me to give you an example? If yes, then why? What do you want to see in the example?
This is the only resource I have found capable of explaining clearly to me the mechanics of the German language. My Austrian girlfriend gives me so many oversimplified and unhelpful explanations. I’m so happy this blog exists. I think I would have given up on German so long ago.
Wow, that’s such a motivating feedback. Vielen Dank :)
Besides, “case” literally derives from Latin “cadere” – to fall.
Did I not mention that?! (I really don’t remember, the article is a few years old) :)
Actually, this article really helps. I’ve been confused about , pretty much, all the German words beginning with fall, while studying Duolingo. Now it makes sense.
Glad to hear that :). Freut mich, dass das hilft!
If the world ends, tomorrow, one can’t be surprised or sad. So you can’t use falls?
Not sure I understand the question. I don’t remember the details of the post, so please help me out… what are you referring to :)?
I guess he means it is logically impossible to be sad given there would not be a world in which you would be sad ;) if i got it correctly though… thanks btw great as always
Hmmm… language is not logical like that. For these kinds of explanations, you can always find a fringe scenario where the usage trend doesn’t work :)
As a new learner of German, I love your articles! Whenever I have a specific or nuanced question, you’ve already written about it!
Als neuer Deutschlerner liebe ich Ihre Artikel! Wann immer ich eine bestimmte oder nuancierte Frage habe, haben Sie bereits darüber geschrieben.
That was probably full of mistakes, but that’s part of the journey!
Actually, that was pretty much flawless. Congratulations, you won at German :D! Spanish is next!
cringe
I know