Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day, this time with a look at one of the most German sounding words ever:
schrumpfen
A word like the smell of moss on an old musty oak tree deep in the forest where a boar forages for truffles.
Or the sound of an old, giant steam engine piston moving.
Or the name of a German metal band.
A word that seems like it’s a freeze dried version of a real word and you have to pour water on it to make it expand.
And a word that describes what happens to our self confidence when we make our first attempts at speaking to a native speaker.
Because schrumpfen is the opposite of wachsen and means to shrink.
- Wie schnell schrumpfen meine Muskeln, wenn ich keinen Sport mache?
- How fast do my muscles shrink when I don’t work out?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Nach dem letzten Date ist Thomas Selbstvertrauen sehr geschrumpft.
- After the last date, Thomas’s self confidence has shrunk a lot.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Die Wirtschaft ist im dritten Quartal um zwei Prozent geschrumpft.
- The economy contracted two percent in the third quarter.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Schrumpflation ist, wenn der Preis gleich bleibt, die Portion aber schrumpft.
- Shrinkflation is when the price stays the same, but the portion is getting smaller.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, just like English, German has more than one option to express the opposite of growing.
Like kleiner werden and abnehmen or eingehen.
And I know your brain is yelling at you that you need to know the difference between all of them RIGHT NOW! But trust me… the opposite is true.
You do not need to know that now. I’ll give you a little overview at the end of the article, so tell your brain to chill.
Schrumpfen is definitely not all that common in daily life, but it’s a good choice for shrinking that you want to sound “severe” and colorful. And there are a surprising number of compounds with Schrumpf-.
Most of them are technical terms for industrial parts or processes, or they’re niche words like Schrumpfkopf, which is a shrunken head (and a great name for a metal band, once again) or der Schrumpftrank.
Those of you who are into role playing probably intuitively know what that could be right away.
I mean… the D&D style role playing. Not the adult, fifty shades of gray style role playing. You’d probably want the opposite of a Schrumpftrank there. Unless you’re super well hung.
Anyway, so now you know schrumpfen, one of the German translations of to shrink. Are the two related? Well, no, most probably not.
But schrumpfen does have a close relative in English. And at least if you’re into seafood you’ll have had a fair share of it.
Any idea what I mean?
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I came across this sentence “Nach dem ersten Waschen kommt es zu einer gewissen Schrumpfung des Stoffes.”
What does the “kommt es zu” part mean? I’m not sure what I’d need to search for to get a dictionary result
The phrase “es kommt zu” means that something happened with a slight undertone of “culmination”. Think of English phrases like “It came to a head” .
The most common context is when during a protest or a soccer game at some point people start a scuffle with the police.
Then the newspaper would write
I think in the sentence you gave I’d translate it as “there may be”.
Hope that helps :)
I see what you’re saying thank you. Is it really just a maybe that the shrinking will occur or does it sound more certain? “There may be” sounds kinda like “this is a potential side effect we’ve observed before, so don’t complain to us if this happens”
Oh, I actually put that in because I falsely remember the sentence to be “kann es zu Schrumpfungen kommen”.
The sentence as you stated it is definite, so there WILL be shrinking.
Re: the moon…
I wasn’t sure what you meant by decreasing.
Does abnehmen mean the moon going down (i.e. setting) or the change in visible shape of the moon caused by the earth’s shadow (i.e. waning)?
Ohhhh…. “waning” is what I meant.
In German it’s “abnehmen” and “zunehmen”. And the rising/falling is like for the sun… aufgehen/untergehen.
Ooook make sense with the losing weight concept as well. The moon and the person both get narrower and more angular when they abnehmen.
Thanks!
Just wanted to thank all the people that payed more than they had to and gave me this oppurtunity to study from these great resources!
Schade dass die von diesem in der Naehe Supermarkt verkaufende Obst, sind immer ganz verschrumpelt worden.
Schade dass die vondiesemindernaehesupermarktverkaufende Obst, sind ploetzlich verschrumpelt worden wenn ich in diesen Geschaeft ankomme.
Hmmm ich muss die zweiten Satz aendern ein bisschen
Versuche N. 2: Schade dass die indiesemindernaehesupermarkte Obst, werden immer ganz geschrumpelt wenn ich ankomme.
Besser oder?
Nice trying!!
There are two issues with all of the attempts.
I encourage you to give it another try :)
Vielen Dank fuer das Korregieren. Versuche N 3: Wenn ich diesem Supermarkt besuche, der in der Naehe von meinem zu Hause ist, sind die Obst immer verschrumpelt.
Viel besser!!
Hier mal komplett richtig:
This sounds quite formal though. German uses “besuchen” very rarely compared to English. Germans just say “gehen” hier.
Aha! Danke sehr! Einfach ist immer besser!
V. N.4: Wenn ich zu diesem Supermarkt gehe, . . ., ist das Obst immer verschrumpelt.
A quick shout out to the people who sponsor others’ memberships– vielen Dank für eure Unterstützung! :)
I am not quite sure, but I seem to have seen a certain discrepancy between the German sentence and its English rendition. Sorry to have mentioned this, if I am wrong.
Do you mean the quarter?
Das war Grossartig! Danke, Emanuel.
Eleanor
Danke :)!
Good…. but SO talkative!
You don’t need to prove that you can write and be whimsy and be cool all the time.
Keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it humble … please!
I’ll keep it in whatever way I actually enjoy writing. Sometimes, that’s simple, sometimes it’s wordy and full of unnecessary tangents.
I know that it can be annoying for some people sometimes, but lots of people also enjoy all the stupid detours.
Personally, I love your writing style! Entertaining and engaging. I guess you can’t please everyone!
Oh no, no way to do that :).
That’s primarily why I am now mostly focusing on how much fun I am having while writing.
I used to force jokes and tangents, but now, if I don’t have any ideas, I just stick with information.
The only thing I am really spending time crafting is the structure and progression of the article. So what information comes when and why and what’s the transition.
I remember learning a long time ago, in an undergrad psychology course, about studies showing that people tend to retain information better when it is accompanied by jokes and funny stories. Your sense of humour is not always an exact match for my own, but you are justified in incorporating it into your articles on pedagogical grounds. I agree there is no need to force it when it does not come naturally, but there is nothing wrong, in principle, with a bit of silliness.
I just wanted to say that I absolutely love the style of your articles, please DON’T “Keep it simple and keep it clear”!
If I wanted straight up grammar explanations then I would just read a dry grammar book… I think most of your readers enjoy the articles specifically because of the added whimsy. :)
It keeps saying I’ve reached my limit of two posts per week. It’s bad enough that I paid up for a subscription and through some weird problem with the log on on my phone I lost about 3 weeks. Maybe more. But I haven’t seen,/opened an email from this site in several weeks due to illness. So how did I over do my ^free” articles? Please unsubscribe me.
I have absolutely no problem to refund you or extend your account for three weeks.
However, you’re commenting here without a name, so who am I supposed to unsubscribe?
Are you even logged in?
Have you sent me an email about the issues?
If you follow the link from your email, your browser doesn’t automatically log you in (unless you clicked “remember me” when you logged in last time. Click the top right icon and log in and it should take you back to the article ;)
Vielen Dank Emanuel, das war prima.
Danke Emanuel, super wie immer. Mit lustigen und Kreativen Beispielen, so man kann begeistert lernen
Thanks- soooo very interesting and informative wie gewönlich!
Freut mich :)!
Thank you for this post. You describe it so well and the article is so entertaining I will never forget the word now!
I’m happy to hear that :)!
Hello,
Let’s schrumpfen the percentage of typos:
self-confidence (has a hyphen)
“there are a surprising number of compound” (there are a surprising number of compounds)
Do clothes schrumpfen or eingehen (or either)? Which is more idiomatic?
Bis bald!
Ahem…. there is a surprising number (no s) of compounds…. Or, you could say, “a lot of compounds”….
The standard is “eingehen”. That’s what you’d use for a t-shirt shrinking after laundry.
But you could use “schrumpfen” as well, if you are jokingly talking about a shirt magically “getting smaller”.
Schrumpeln and Schrumpfen put me in mind of the English adjective „frumpy“, meaning wrinkled, ill-fitting, the opposite of elegant or stylish.
Diese Worte machen mir Spaß!
Frumpy does sound really cool :). Could also be a mix of friendly and grumpy.
Frumpy is often used to describe women who dress older than their age or who don’t dress sexy. I imagine things like long skirts, loose blouses, cardigans, sensible shoes, etc.
It’s probably sexist, because men aren’t being criticised in the same way so gender clearly plays a role.
Yeah, that is sexist. I’ll stay away from that word then :).
Frumpy isn’t specific to women at all, it just means unfashionable. It just happens to be that women generally concern themselves more with fashion
In 31 years on this earth I have never once heard a man being described as frumpy. And I’ve also never heard it used to describe a woman who wears masculine clothes e.g. trouser suits, blazers, etc.
You’re saying it describes unfashionable people, but is applied to women because women concern themselves with fashion. But clearly unfashionable women do not concern themselves with fashion. So why are they being judged by a standard they did not choose to aspire to? If anything that makes it even more sexist.
By the way, men’s fashion is a multimillion dollar industry. It’s simply nonsense to say men are not concerned with fashion.
I’ve never heard a woman be called frumpy either. It’s not a common word at all.
When women are criticized for unfashionable clothing, it’s by other women 95% of the time. Unlike women men just don’t criticize each other’s fashion, and it’s usually considered out of line to criticize how the other gender dresses. The result is that the word is mostly used to describe females. But linguistically there’s nothing that says it applies to any specific gender and it’s a stretch to call it a sexist word.
I’m aware the men’s fashion industry exists. Did you know Zambia has a military? I won’t use that fact to dispute that the United States dominates the world militarily. It’s delusional to think that women don’t pay more time, money, and attention to their own appearance and more attention to other people’s fashion than men do. I don’t know any woman who would dispute that fact.
I’ve heard frumpy used about women many times, but I’ve probably spent more time around women than you have because I lived as a girl/woman for the first 25 years of my life. So I have experienced this first-hand.
I’ve heard it used by men and women, but only ever to describe women.
Maybe you’ve not heard it as much if you don’t concern yourself with fashion or what people look like, I don’t know.
Sorry you feel somehow attacked by me saying it’s usage is rooted in sexism, but I’m really not attacking anybody, just describing the normal usage of that word. I didn’t even say no one should use it, I just pointed out that it likely has sexist origins.
I think that sums it up pretty well.
My takeaway from your first comment was that it’s a word that MAY be taken as sexist by people.
Many words can be taken as sexist, it depends on the person. And it’s up to me to decide whether or not to use the word.
If I decide to use it, I should be able to argue, why I don’t think it is sexist. And for “frumpy” with the information I have from this discussion, I don’t think I can argue that well enough, so I’ll not use the word.
(While I can argue against Germans putting he/him, she/her in their German LinkedIn profile.)
Thanks a lot to both of you for having an adult discussion (I have seen too many rapid escalations on Twitter and Youtube, so now seeing a civil discourse is refreshing) :)
It’s such an emotive topic, I can understand why people get het up sometimes but it rarely helps the situation.
Why do you think people shouldn’t add pronouns to their linkedin?
I have nothing against that.
What I find weird is Germans using English pronouns for a LinkedIn profile that’s in German.
And also, what I don’t understand is what the purpose is of the second pronoun.
he/she/they/whatever else exists
Isn’t that enough?
I don’t think anyone has “he/her” or “she/him” or “they/her” in their bio.
And if it is important, then what happened to “his/her/their/…”. Why is that not included then?
And for the Germans… either just put “er” or put “er/ihn/ihm”
I think my real problem is that people just copy something, because they want to be seen as “right”.
A German using “he/him” in his German LinkedIn… that’s nothing different to putting a Ukrainian flag there or a rainbow flag or trending hashtag. Not that there’s something wrong with that, but these pronouns, as I understand them, are meant as genuine information on how someone would like their identity to be honored by others.
To add to that… there’s a portion of society, who doesn’t think non-binary or transgender is a thing and they will use arguments like the ones I used to score points in the minds of the vast majority who hasn’t really made up their mind.
I feel like people just doing something because it’s the trend is not a strong argumentative position.
Not sure if I’m making sense, but I’d love the indication of one’s gender identity in social profiles to actually make sense and be well thought out. Because then it’s harder to argue against it.
A random backward German right wing idiot, who is against all of this will have a much easier time arguing against another German who is using two pronouns of a foreign language, than a German who uses just “er” or “sie” or “Sie” or whatever the German equivalent is of a non-binary “they”.
Hmm… I’m not sure why people would use he or she if their profile is in German. I understand using they, because there is no German equivalent.
Actually learning German is what helped me understand the value of neopronouns e.g. xir. It actually irritates the hell out of me when English speakers want us to use neopronouns, because we already have a perfectly good set of gender neutral pronouns. Creating a bunch of new ones is just creating work for people for no real reason.
But in German, i totally get it. There is no neat solution for non-binary people in German. I know some who use “they” in German sentences, some who use neopronouns, one person used personalised pronouns and some use just their name and no pronouns.
As a compromise, I know one person who uses “es” because at least it’s better than “sie”.
As a non-native speaker, “es” seems the most logical solution to me. Some argue it’s dehumanising, but it’s technically correct to refer to ein Mädchen or ein Baby or ein Weib as “es”. So why is it suddenly dehumanising in other circumstances?
And if es is for objects and er and sie are for people and animals, then why should I refer to a ketchup bottle as female and a chair as male? Grammatical gender either means something or it doesn’t. It makes no sense to pick and choose when it matters and when not
I actually thought about “es” and then I was like “Nahhh, that can’t be it.”
It sounds awful for a person. Even for a girl, I would probably switch and say “das Mädchen/sie/ihr”.
But you’re right, German is a bit inconsistent there. Generally, the grammatical gender does not reflect real gender… except when it does.
I would have a really hard time calling someone “es” and I’d much rather learn a new pronoun, like “dei”.
I think using “they” is not a good choice though, as German does not have “th” in its phonetic inventory. Using “dey” or “dei” is the better option here. Otherwise, the new pronoun would be “languageist” in the sense that people who can’t speak English or pronounce the “th” are excluded from using it properly :).
Besides the pronouns, German has another potential hurdle… the endings.
Let’s say Alex is a non-binary coworker…. how do I say
The language really leans against these kinds of reforms. Curious to see where we are in 20 years. But so far, in the area I live in, a lively touristy area in the center of Berlin, the capital of German, you cannot pay by card in 50% of the places. Germany is the definition of conservatism sometimes.
I understand the discomfort, but also if that’s what the person has elected to be called then it’s not really up to us to argue. Trans people are dehumanised by society on a regular basis anyway without our consent. I can understand why somebody would feel differently if the apparent dehumanisation was something they had chosen, in order to avoid having it thrust upon them in another way.
In other words, is it more dehumanising to use “es” for a person, or to say “your identity labels are uncomfortable for me, so you should change them”…
Regarding word endings, how does it feel to say “das ist mein Kollegin/meine Kollege”? Is it clear that we’re blending genders or does it just sound like a mistake?
Or what about a third ending e.g. Kollegis? Not sure what to do with the articles though.
I kind of blame sexism for this tbh. If people weren’t so misogynistic in the first place, there would have never been a need for the “-in” ending for job titles, so we wouldn’t now need a neutral one.
Oh yes, if a person wants to be “pronouned” with “es” I’ll do it. I just find it hard to imagine anyone would want that, so it’s not what I’d chose automatically.
As for the job titles… I think that’s a language thing.
English doesn’t have these endings and I don’t think English society was any more or less sexist throughout history than Germany.
The thing is now that “der Anwalt” is still associated with a man, but that’s not because of misogyne but because of language.
“Der Kindergärtner” also evokes a male in the imagination, even though that is a field dominated by women.
There’s nothing sexist in these endings, they just make having a neutral speech way more difficult.
Yes i see what you mean. I agree that the UK has been equally sexist over the years, and where we did have gendered job titles these have been changed now. I think it’s because we have the neutral definite article, so words ending in “-er” in English can be neutral e.g. plumber, builder, plasterer, firefighter, so the fact that these words conjure a masculine image is purely down to sexism whereas as you say that possibility is not open in German, because of the way the words are pluralised. It would make sense to me if you could use e.g. Mitarbeiter for all colleagues, and simply change the article for the gender. But… Then feminine sounds like plural and that’s a mess again.
I would argue though that there is a slight sexism still in the German endings, because the basic word is the masculine form, and the feminine form has an ending added. It slightly prioritises and centres male as being the default and female as being a kind of extra category.
You would know more about this than me, but I heard somewhere than in English we used to have “goman” and “woman” and “man” was the collective term. But at some point “goman” was dropped because masculine became the default
It actually did originally mean grumpy according to the dictionary
https://www.etymonline.com/word/frumpy
“Cross, unstylish Person, especially a woman or girl…”
“I’ll give you a little overview at the end of the article, so tell your brain to chill.”
(Es wird ein bisschen kühl hier drinnen…)
Oh damn… I totally forgot about that :D!!
Thanks to team spirit for my membership, won’t give you up, A1 soon.=)
And then fluency next :)!
Und was uber GMbH