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
- Check "indem" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "indem" 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.
Regarding grammarians & Lexicographers and using this word indem as an example.The online duden has various ‘veraltet’ definitions and one current definition which it describes as a conjunction rather than and adverb.
I have also noticed that the likes of Dict.cc will very often describes words as having multi functions such as adverb and adjective.
My feeling about English adverbs and adjectives is that trying to differentiate between them is almost pointless. People often say or write things like “it comes natural” instead of “it comes naturally”
So my main question is with German is the language ruthless about observing and keeping all this functions separate and not blurred like in English.
Secondly are dictionaries just being unhelpful or over observant about applying these grammatical categories?
I will much appreciate your views.
That was a mistake on my part. It’s definitely subordinating conjunction, not an adverb. I have fixed that now.
But yes, many words have more than one grammatical “type” and classifying words by word type is only helpful as a rough guide, but it’s better to think of a word IN CONTEXT.
I classify words as “one” type, but only because it’s too much hassle to classify them as multiple things.
“schnell” for instance, I list it as “adjective” but of course it can also be an adverb. It just pick the type that’s the “most common” for it.
Generally, German tends to use different words for different functions more so than English, particularly in the contexts of space and time – vor, davor, vorher, bevor for instance.