Hello everyone,
and welcome, I hope you’re all well. So today, Steve my producer here at German is Easy gave me the results of our annual audience survey … that is like… our network checks once a year who is listening to this show. That helps them chose and sell only those advertisements that are interesting for our audience… by the way… have you guys checked out the new Caterpillar Off Shore Generator yet? No? Well, you should. It is awesome!
Anyway… so Steve gave me the results of our survey and guess what… turns out pretty much all of you agree on one thing: you all want shorter posts. Many also want them to involve less or no reading. Because reading is lame and exhausting and takes concen ooh look a link… they’re playing chess… so cute… where was I… oh yeah.. so you want shorter posts with less reading and we have just the right topic for that:
German internal politics…. hoooooray. That just can’t turn out long.
In a couple of weeks there will be Bundestagswahl… or just short die Wahl. So today we’ll find out what that is and how that works. First, the word itself
die Wahl
Wahl. Waaaaaaaahl. With aaaaaaa… hey… Let’s be crazy for a second and switch vowels…
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Good old times where the AFD was no part of this Toppic…
“When Thomas is drunk he always hits at women at random.” I found this page while looking for a good German word for “random,” and I seem to have found it. Thanks!
The phrase Thomas’ behavior, however, is “hits on women.” At least in US English. The phrase “hits at women” isn’t idiomatic in any meaning I’m aware of; it sounds like an ungrammatical way of saying he tries to punch women but misses. Which, I suppose, some dudes do when they’re drunk, but it’s not what the German says.
* The phrase for Thomas’ behavior…
Fixed the preposition error, thank you :).
“random” doesn’t actually have the one good translation. There are several options and which to pick depends on the contexts. “wahllos” sounds a bit negative and lacking effort.
Yes, thanks for pointing out that there are a multiplicity of translations of random. I was looking for a way to describe my cat’s way of interacting with a visiting dog. She seems very friendly, nuzzling up against it and licking its fur, but then she randomly hisses at the dog. That is, she hisses without any apparent provocation. I had quite a back-and-forth with a tandem partner about how to express this in German.
The cat’s behavior seems somewhat analogous to Tommy’s drunken behavior–is “Die Katze faucht den Hund wahllos an” how you’d express it? We also talked about using “willkürlich” instead of “wahllos.” What do you think?
I don’t like “willkürlich” too much in this context, as it implies too much conscious for me, but that might just be my personal perception.
The sentence with “wahllos” works well, but I think in conversation, I’d probably use “ab und zu” or “plötzlich” or “aus dem Nichts” to describe the random hissing.
OK, thanks!
Das Wahl-Programm von CDU und CSU. Für die Bundes-Tags-Wahl. In Leichter Sprache
It has been 7 years, next year Die Wahl. Reading the CDU site you linked today was… enlightening?!
I noticed they forgot to mention… it’s only a small oversight.
“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”
“We want everyone to have snacks and magazines, and enlightenment. And, the factories that make them, they are important too!” ;-)
I thought our system in America was difficult! No longer do I think this.
They two system are definitely very different :). Hard to compare, honestly.
What I can say with quite a lot of certainty though is that the system of voting in the US is 100 times more difficult than here. Here, you get a letter, and either you request a mail ballot with the letter or you go vote in perosn with it. By hand with a pencil on a paper :). No registration or voting machines or stuff like that.
how about auswählen? is it similar as wählen? or similar as aussuchen? or it has complete other meanings?
Thanks!
Part of this is in this comment thread:
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-wahl/#comment-27889
“aussuchen” is more colloquial and casual sounding than “auswählen”. That’s the only difference, pretty much.
Hope that helps.
Hello, could you please explain the difference between “wählen” and “stimmen” in a political context?
“wählen” is for electing people only. “stimmen für/gegen” can be used for laws but also for parties and people. But you cannot “wählen” a law.
Does that help?
another wahl in the hammer
Great post! You are certainly the best German teacher ever! :)
You solved a lot of my doubts about “Wahl” and “wählen”, but I’m still not very clear about the difference between “Wahl” and “Auswahl”, or between “wählen” and “auswählen”, something I expected to find in this post. Thanks for everything Emmanuel! :)
Yeah, there’s definitely an overlap between these. “Wahl” always refers to whatever has been chosen as one solid unit, even if it consists of several items.
– “Ich hätte gerne die Wurst de Curry, Pommes au Rouge Blanc und ein Jus de orge.”
“Sehr gute Wahl, mein Herr.”
This is a fictional dialogue from a fancy (really? ;)) restaurant. The person choses several items and yet the waiter calls it “Wahl”. “Auswahl” would technically be correct too, but it wouldn’t sound as fancy. “Wahl” sounds generally a bit more epic whilst “Auswahl” sounds a bit factual and has a focus on selecting several items from a larger pool. Sometimes a soccer team is called “Auswahl” as well. It is one thing but consists of several players chosen from a pool of many players. I think “Auswahl” is not often used if what you choose is really just one thing.
The difference between the verbs is similar to that between the nouns. “Wählen” sounds a bit more epic to me. Like “elect” and “select”… well, maybe not as strong. And “wählen” is usually used for just one item.
But these things are not strict so you can find examples that don’t line up with what I just said. It’s just how it feels to me.
Hope it helps :)
On the German Dictionary of Synonyms I read that “Wahl” is the “act of choosing or selecting”, while “Auswahl” is the set of things I can choose
That’s not entirely correct.
In Photoshop for instance, a selected area is called “Auswahl” and also in other context you can find phrasings like
– bestätigen Sie Ihre Auswahl
– treffen Sie Ihre Auswahl
Here, it refers to the selection you make, not the selection you have in front of you.
“The current queen in Germany is called Angela Merkel and everybody loves her, especially myself. ”
Not everybody loves her, she was a spy and you can buy her vote for dollars. Ask Oncle Sam.
please can you explain to me how could verbringen means to spend time
phew… that is a tough one… the only way I can make sense of it is when I think of it as “to bring by/to bring away”… similar to the English “to pass time”. In fact, “to pass” and “bringen ” do overlap a bit… for instance you can “durchbringen” a law which is “to get it passed”.. so you don’t really need to always bring something somewhere
Hope that makes some sense :)
For the first time in 3 years, I have a clue what’s going on in this country :-D
Great, then you know more than some of my politically ignorant friends :D
I like the question of lucius and the answer for it was worderfull
and I have a similar question :
How can Einstellungen means settings or even employment
The german meaning that I understand is that Einstellen mean to set something in(inside something else) , how it is related to the word settings and also how in earth can it mean employment ( I found it on google translate)
I know that my questions aree so many , but I hope that you have a wide heart to accept that
I would like that you recommend to me some resources about etymology of the german language so that I would be able to understand the german inseparable prefixes and many questions that may come to my little mind
mit meinen herzlichen dank
and thanks in adavance
I have good news for you… I have already done einstellen. here’s the link.
https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/einstellen-meaning/
Einstellung is just the noun for it so once you understand the verb it should be clear why it can mean all those things.
As for sources… if you are interested and you have a little spare money I would totally recommend buying an etymological dictionary of German…. there is just sooooo much to discover in those. But there is also one online which I always use….
http://www.dwds.de
But I must warn you… the interface looks a bit scary at first. The etymological information is in the upper right box :)
Hello Emmanuel, thank you for a very interesting post. If you have time, there are 2 words that I cannot get in my head because I do not understand the relation between the English and German meanings. How can Zwickmühle (nose clip and mill) mean predicament? And how can eingetragen mean registered or listed when tragen means to carry? Herzlichen dank lucius
Zwickmühle :)…. nice question, I have nevered asked myself that and the answer was very surprising. It probably originated from the board game morris (mill, morelles,… don’t know exactly how it is called in English). In German it is called Mühle… maybe because the stones you play with look like mill stones.
Anyway, in this game you have to move one stone at a time and try to align 3 in a row. If you do that you can pick one stone of your opponent off the board. Such a 3 line configuration is also called a “Mühle”. Now, there is this special configuration where you can move one stone out of one Mühle directly into the next one. So you can close a Mühle with every turn and pick off one stone of your opponent. You have a double-Mühle, a dual-Mühle, a two-Mühle… do you get what I am going for yet :)… “zwick” in this case is not related to the verb zwicken but to the number 2. And because it is a pretty bad situation for your opponent if you can move between 2 Mühlen all the time, a Zwickmühle (double mill) is a situation in which there seems to be no way out… a dilemma or predicament.
As for eingetragen… this is kind of random. Eintragen literally means to “carry into” but you can also see in an abstract way… like to contribute or to earn… so some virtual container into which something delivers. And from the actual contributing to the signing up for it is not that far any more… “tragen” in general is very free in its interpretation when it comes to prefixes… ertragen, betragen, vertragen, etc… all quite random :)
I know that you are busy nowadays in the Bundestagswahl in deutschland in der letzten Zeit but I need that after you get free from the state of business(busy+ness) I want that you would be able to explain the difference between diese woerter
hierfur , hieraus and other hier+prep. words
and hinaus hinvor hinein
like the article you did about da-words
thanks in advance
looking forward to your next article
my goodness, you have many questions :)… that’s good because it means that you really want to learn and that means that you will be successful… and I can at least answer one of your questions right away… the “hier”-words (hierhin, hierfür, hiernach,…) are just the counterparts of the da-words… so if “damit” means “With that”, then “hiermit” means “with this” and so on. There are also some hier-words in English (hereby, hereon, hereupon) but the German ones are more common… as for the hin-words… well the system is the same so all you need is to understand the essence of “hin”, which is a word I ill have to do at some time I guess :)
“Die endgültig Teilung Deutschlands – das ist unser Auftrag.” I’m laughing my lungs out here, heuahueahueaheauheauaehueahu. By the way, do they broadcast the add in prime time? If so, it must be hilarious!
Well, not really… it aired at 22:35 :)… in 2005 they (Die Partei) apparently sold part of their legally granted air-time to private companies :)
Here’s a link for more info about all this stuff
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/medien/tv-wahlwerbespots-wie-kleinere-parteien-mit-ihrer-sendezeit-umgehen/8787738.html
Maybe it is a nice German word out :)
auswendig , anwenden ,verwenden , überwinden.
I would like that you explain to me the difference between wenden and winden verbs and the combination of these verbs with prefixes
and I asked you in another comment to explain the prefix ver-
thanks in adavance