Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "denn" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "denn" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
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Hey Emanuel, not quite concerning the topic, but I’d like to ask you if you have an article about some kind of archaic things in German, like for instance in English I can say thy, shalt, lest, sometimes it’s with the pronouncing the “-ed” ending (PledgED instead of pledgd, at least from what I’ve noticed) and so on, I simply fell into exploring such things in English recently and now wanna see some to know how to sound like a German Shakespeare, not that it’d be too useful as I don’t plan on becoming a writer or speaking like that, but still would be quite interesting to read yk
Oh I forgot my personal favorite “betwixt”, a fancy “between”
Hmmm, interesting, I never thought about this as a topic. I don’t have anything but maybe it’s a nice addition to an advent calendar. Not sure if I have enough ideas though. I’ll have to let it rest for a bit and see if it grows.
(Jemand / die Firma)… hat zwei Aktivist*innen auf Schadenersatz von fast 100.000 Euro verklagt. Man würde auf die aber großzügig verzichten, wenn denn nur die schlimmen Bilder verschwinden.
I’m not entirely sure what denn is doing here?
Oh, nice question.
– ,… wenn () denn (nur) [some conditional statement].
This is a fairly common phrasing that sounds a bit more “first person” than without the “denn”.
If you phrase it with just “wenn”, you’re basically just neutrally reporting the condition that the one party put out.
If you use “wenn denn”, it gets a vibe of “and then they were like”. It feels closer to the action, like, you’re kind of capturing a bit of the direct vibe of negotiating going on.
You can also find this outside of negotiations though.
– Morgen gehen wir wandern oder?
– Wenn es denn nicht regnet.
Again, this sounds a bit more personal than just the “wenn”.
Not sure if I’m making sense. This would be a nice one to ask on Reddit to see how other native speakers would approach this. Maybe I’m completely off base.
I’m not so clear tbh.
Is it related to the third definition on DWDS?
https://www.dwds.de/wb/denn#d-1-3-1
Hmmm, there is a slight overlap in vibe, but the paraphrasing “ausgenommen” absolutely doesn’t fit what we’re talking about.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “first person” but I was wondering if it was somehow similar to the idea of “free indirect speech” which is a literary technique where the subjective thoughts /speech / vocabulary of a person is incorporated in 3rd person text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech
If you aren’t familiar with the term scrolling down to “description” gives you a neat quick demonstration of it.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean. It’s not as strong, and the third person can be you yourself but that’s a bit of the vibe. You give a “fact” (usually “wenn/falls”) that is someone’s thought and you use “denn” to make the statement a bit more like we’re watching the thought, as opposed to just reading the facts stated.
Are you on Reddit r/German? If not, I’ll actually ask it there. I’m curious what other native speakers would say about this.
I deleted my reddit account as I was spending far too much time on the platform but I would be interested…
Lol, I can relate!
I’ve asked now:
https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/1lcxp1c/nuances_of_denn_in_a_specific_type_of_phrasing/
Thanks for posting that! I’ll check back again for sure but its really interesting how many different ways people interpret it.
is it a bit like “if only” here:
he won’t sue if they delete the pics
he won’t sue if only they would delete the pics
i know “if only” would translate as “wenn nur” but i’m wondering if its somehow a bit similar
“if only” feels like making it sound more desperate than just “if”. “wenn denn” does not have this level of “yearning”.
btw really cool that you have dwds and etymonline linked on all the defintions !
Added that recently.
I’d love to link the Indo-European root for etymonline, but the way I spelled the roots is inconsistent and a mix between DWDS spelling and English spelling.