“The Mystery of Rordr” *** *** Hallo Adventskalenderisten, and welcome to the final stretch of the epic German Learning Calendar, door number 19. And today, it’s time to get a little active, because behind the cryptic title that sounds like a name of a dwarf in a fantasy novel is actually a little quiz about one of the burning questions about German: “r” or “dr” ? Yeah… it’s so burning, many of you didn’t even have it :). But you actually do have it, because it’s actually a common thing in spoken German and also a common mistake. And I don’t want to talk about grammar today, or what’s a prefix and and what’s a da-word and what’s an adverb. It gets quite messy and none of this really matters, at least not for speaking properly. What we’re trying today is to build some intuition for these things, because that’ll help us much more with sounding idiomatic than a bunch of rules. So… many of you probably remember this from one or the other article here: German tends to be quite “explicit” when it comes to expressing location and spatial relations. And one example is that German really likes…
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Excellent! For the first time, I scored 100% on a quiz!! Das hilft! Danke noch mal, Emanuel!
Camille
That has cleared up something that was bugging me – danke!
6 / 7! yay! but I had to keep picturing the cat example. So it doesn’t come naturally …yet. I struggle with the dative and accusative articles also.
How much calories….. how many calories.
Just a little slip.
Merry Christmas
What if they’re too numerous to count :)?
Then you break the cookies so some calories fall out. Works for anything really. Diet companies hate this one trick!
Obviously I had this completely wrong. E.g. Ich komme drüber – I thought that was Ich komme da (location) + rüber (direction) and you could leave out the da, just like in English you could say I’ll come over or I’ll come over there.
Ha, no :).
“darüber” and “da rüber” are two different things :)
Vile Spaß!
Quiz was straightforward for me, in part because of the movement/location emphasis from the two-way prepositions. I too was afraid one might encounter a “both” answer but never saw one that tempted me enough to give in. Are there situations where both are idiomatic?
Yes, there are, but the verb needs to be “unclear” in whether it is a directed or stationary component.
Here’s an example where I talk about my pizza:
Here, “drauf” stresses the fact that they’re ON the pizza, while “rauf” stresses the fact that they’re PUT ON the pizza.
So in essence and practice, it’s the same.
7/8 Punkte! Woo hoo!
Happy to say that the quiz seemed almost too easy (7/7)! To be honest, the hardest part was getting over the suspicion that at least *one* of the answers had to be something like “both are idiomatic”. But then I remembered the hint at the start about how, errr, *anal* the German language is about the whole destination versus location thing, so I tightened my sphincter and made it through intact.
*anal* is the appropriate word for how German is about this stuff!
By the way… is there a word or phrase in English that would describe this lurking suspicion that something “can’t be so easy”? I don’t think there’s one in German, but it would be a nice word to have.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell that’s also a gap that English suffers from (then again, my newly COVID-addled brain is functioning even worse that it feels… which is, in a word, yech…)
*than it feels. (I rest my case!)
Just so that this comment isn’t solely a pathetic attempt to save face, I’ll mention that I tripped over a somewhat odd book that I’ve had for a while, which lists “German Words for the Human Condition”, together with an explanation and a few notes about each entry. It didn’t reveal anything remarkable about the question under consideration in this thread, but there was the vaguely related word “Geheimgangsverlockung” (“secret+corridor+seduction”), said to mean “The conviction that all old, large houses must contain secret passages”. The fun part about this book is that I’m still not 100% certain whether it’s some, most, or *all* of the entries that are just made up solely for the fun of it. (Hey, compound-noun building is a popular sport amongst some German speakers, oder?). I strongly suspect it’s *all*, but something like “Fingerspitzentanz” (“Tiny triumphs of nimble-fingered dexterity”) does appear in odd places online, and “Gaststättenneueröffnungsuntergangsgewissheit” (“Total confidence that a newly opened restaurant is doomed to fail”) surely deserves wider currency, regardless!
Ha… At first I was like “Wow, that sounds like a neat little book.” but then I took a look and yes… I think they’re all made up.
And the current trend is away from compounds.
People do on occasion construct a new one, yes, but chances are increasing that when writing, we’ll break them with a hyphen at a position where we feel like “looks better that way”.
Aah, OK, no real surprise that they’re all ex nihilo. It’s actually a sweetly produced and typeset little book, published in Australia (but –shock! horror!– printed and bound in China), and manages to tie together enough gentle humour, literary references, and the occasional piece of silliness for silliness’ sake (“Überraschungspartyüberraschungsheuchelei” == “Feigning surprise at a surprise party”) to make it eminently, well…, glanceable ;-)
Ha… that’s a good one!!
Really useful.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some pop-author actually used that in ther early 2000s.
Wait, you’re having the bug right now?! Gute Besserung dann :)!!!
Thanks! Yeah, lost my covid virginity on Monday, and precious little fun has been had since then… Starke, ständige Kopfschmerzen, hohes Fieber, viel Husten, usw. Blrrk…. 0 stars out of 5. But starting to sense it lifting just a little now, which is something for the “good news” column.
Good to hear that!
Make sure to take it easy long enough, so no intense sports or anything.
I’ve heard quite a few stories where it dragged on for weeks in a mild form, basically lurking.
You do make me chuckle away!
Brilliant method, got me almost 100%. Do the written versions obey the same rule? Like “Ich gehe nicht heraus, es ist kalt daraus”?
Forget about this! It’s not a thing.
“rausgehen” is NOT “just” a shortened version of “heraus”. It is historically, but thinking that in writing you can just add “her” is wrong.
It would be “hinaus” if you want to be bookish. And “daraus” means “out of that”, not “outside”.
I did very poorly because in all my years of study I never heard of “r” words, except in “Horch were kommt von draußen rein” and I didn’t even know it was an “r” word, until now! I thought it was simply a matter of dialect.
wer kommt
Well, that’s kind of good actually, because if you get used to these things, your German will sound much better!
Wonderful and clear! Thanks!
Ich glaube ich gehe ____ .Ignoring the english “I think I’ll go inside” if we were to talk about “gehe” as “to walk”……”i will walk around inside” (i don’t know , like inside a large building for example) would “ich gehe drin” be an acceptable sentence? Like “ich gehe im Park” as opposed to “ich gehe in den Park”. I’m guessing “ich gehe drinnen um herum” would be the way to say it is “ich gehe drin” total wrong?
You’re right in theory, but in practice, “Ich gehe [fixed location].” is not idiomatic.
People would use “laufen” or “spazieren”. With “gehen”, you’d definitely expect some directionality.
That works,
ok cool thanks
Viiiiielen Dank!!!
What about “ Die Katze springt auf dem Tisch nauf” – rauf, drauf, und nauf? oder runter, drunter, nunter?
“nauf” is pretty much dialect for “rauf”, common in the South. Same for all n-versions, pretty much.
Still, it should be “auf den Tisch”
The quiz does not work. I tap on “start”, it gets highlighted and nothing happens (iPhone + Safari)
It’d be helpful if you could give some info about what device and browser you’re using, as the quiz does work for many other people.
Hi, iPhone 12 mini, iOS 16.1.2, Safari 6533.18.5 (from User Agent).
Thanks for the blog!
Thanks! I think I found the issue. My cache packages up script files and serves them after initial page load. And for some reason it ignored that I set jquery to be an exception.
It gets loaded now, but the phone might not actually pull all files from the server (browser cache).
Could you try again and let me know?
Works now, thanks a lot!
Same problem like Dmitri, but here Android v.12 with a Realme 7 5G phone
I think I fixed it but it might take a bit till the phone actually feels like loading the new files.
Could you try again and let me know?
I’m experiencing the same problem
The only quiz of your that I got 100% As my cat lies down on the ground DReaming.
Wow, that’s great. And a surprise. I thought this quiz was going to be difficult for the vast majority, but seems like people are doing great.
I got them all right by remembering that they correspond to the cases for wechselpraepositionen – drative and raccusative. :)
I think you were going for der Bach on #7. :)
Yup!
But now at least due to checking, I know that die Back is German for the forecastle of a ship
7 von 8 richtig – gut zum Üben!
I got them all right by following your rule. But, I still have no feel for it!