Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new episode of Geletor.
Sounds like a superman villian. Or an ice cream maker.
But what it really is, is it’s short German Learning Tool Reveal.
Hooray.
New tooooooys, let’s gooo!
But seriously, today I am telling you about a new tool that is special in two ways:
First of, it’s a really helpful tool that has been missing for a long time.
And second of all… I made it :)
I am talking about the
Prefix Verb Dictionary
I have been tinkering with this idea for years and originally, it was only meant as a reference for the prefix verb card game that I’m making. And it still is that, but over time, we’ll include more and more verbs until it is a pretty comprehensive resource for all German learners, regardless of whether they have the card game or not.
Anyway, for a long time I didn’t have neither time nor resoruces to make this happen, but I have teamed up with Vítor, a programmer from Brasil and we ran Kickstarter this winter to gauge interest.
And yeah… interest is definitely there :).
So now we have the resources to really make it happen, the card game as well as the dictionary.
And the latter is now officially a thing.
A fledgling still, but the German learning world has officially changed…dunn dunnnn dunnnnnnnn
Wow, sounds great.
Erm… What is it though?
I’ll give you a quick rundown of the project below, but if you’re impatient and just want to check it our for yourself, here’s the link.
German Prefix Verbs – The Dictionary
(But make sure to come back here for a discount code ;).)
So, let’s go.
The Prefix Verb Dictionary is a dictionary specifically for German prefix verbs – you know… aufmachen, angehen, bekommen, verstehen. These verbs are a core part of German, and yet they don’t really get all that much attention. Well, they’re starting to get some attention now by German teaching Youtubers and TikTokers because they need content, but all they do usually is just list a bunch of versions for one verb, and usually it’s neither the complete list, nor do they cover ALL the meanings of each version.
Anyways, of course you can look up all the prefix verbs in a normal dictionary, but there, you just get a bunch of translations thrown at you without any “logic” or coherence.
And also, it’s really not convenient to compare different versions or one verb or see what a prefix does with two verbs.
The goal of the prefix verb dictionary is to solve exactly that.
And here’s how.
What makes the prefix verb dictioanay special?
1. Idea Based, handcrafted translations
It uses the handcrafted and idea-based system that I am using already for the dictionary here on YourDailyGerman. So I am grouping up meanings by underlying themes and if there are many possible translations, I pick the ones that I think are most relevant. I do all this by hand (and mind) so I’m not just automatically copying stuff from other sources
2. Usage notes for English speakers
For many of the themes or translations, I am adding some notes about the usage that are relevant to German learners and especially English speakers (native or not). That can be the grammar, the tone or what common English phrasing is NOT covered by the word – all handcrafted so no generic ChatGPT nonsense. Again, you might be familiar with that from the YourDailyGerman dictionary.
3. Designed specifically to browse prefix verbs
So far, there was nothing that you don’t already have by using my dictionary here on YourDailyGerman. What’s completely new though is the interface.
Because the prefix verb dictionary is designed specifically for the purpose of quickly and easly looking up and comparing prefix verbs. With just two clicks, you can get from a prefix verb to its base verb or its prefix and with another click you can reach all prefix verbs with that part.
Here’s a screenshot of our current layout for a prefix verb entry:
You can expand each meaning and you’ll see the usage note and examples.
And when you click on zu you’ll go to the entry of zu where you find a short explainer of what it can add to a verb (and soon a visualization of that idea). And there’s a list of all verbs with zu that are in the dictionary.
And the same when you click on ziehen… you go to the entry for ziehen, where you can find some useful information about it and a list of all verbs with ziehen.
We actually have some more ideas, like for instance the option to show all prefixes here as a horizontal scroll bar and you can “apply” one to ziehen with just one tap. But that’s for the future. For now, we need to get all the basics sorted and of course add more verbs.
And midterm we want to make it into an app, so you can use it on your phone without opening the browser.
Now… as you browse around, you’ll sooner or later run into restricted sections. That’s because the dictioanary has a premium portion.
What About Premium
Most of the dictionary is free, including all entries, but some parts are premium, like for instance the lists of verbs and probably also asking questions in the comments.
The price currently is $25 (US) for a lifetime membership, but since you’re a reader (and possibly member) of YourDailyGerman, we’re offering a $10 discount, so you can get it for $15. Here’s the code:
YDG-Fan
With that you’ll get lifetime premium access to the dictionary, including all the content and features to come, and also the webapp, once we get to that.
Now…. To those of you who have supported our Kickstarter in winter:
!! You get a free premium account !!
I have sent all of you a message on Kickstarter with a discount code that gives you 100% off the price. So if you haven’t done so, please check your inbox on Kickstarter.
Also, if you have questions, it’s best to ask me over there, because I’ll also handle the card shipping through Kickstarter later when we’re done with the print.
But you can also ask here in the comments.
Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for today.
Here’s the link to the dictionary again:
German Prefix Verbs – The Dictionary
Let me know any thoughts or questions in the comments, here or there, wherever you prefer :).
I really hope that you like this tool and that you see the potential and what it can become as we slowly build it.
Have a great week and I’ll see you next time, either with an exercise or with a regular article… I haven’t decided yet :).
But yeah… schöne Woche und bis dann!
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This is amazing! I am so happy that it is finally out. But to test it out, I searched for a word that I find very confusing: “absehen”. Unfortunately, there were no results.
“sehen” is not in the dictionary yet, I’m doing this one base verb at a time. I want the dictionary to be “complete” in that when “sehen” is in there, then ALL the existing versions are in it, not just some. The dictionary here on YDG is way more comprehensive and “absehen” is in it.
That looks amazing. Do you have any discounts for Yourdailygerman premium members?
Not beyond the code that’s already in the post :).
Thanks, helps a lot ! Didn’t see the code prior – Oops apologies!!
This is amazing! Thank you Emanuel and Vitor! mega well done :)
Danke dir!!
Do I register again for the verb prefix site, or do I use my YDG profile? Thanks
It’s a separate project, so you’ll need a new account. You can of course pick the same username and password, but the sites are not connected.
Very valuable resource! One suggestion for a future project – or maybe you’ve done this elsewhere: Take a paragraph or two from an article in a major German newspaper like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and translate it, showing all the different verb pre/in/suffixes in action. It’d also be helpful to go over what a native English speaker should look for first when encountering one of those longer sentences. Look to the first verb and then jump to the end? What is the thought process as you approach such a sentence? There seem to be few useful guides to this. Thanks again!
Actually, you just have to read any sentence from start to finish, imo. That’s how we read. Maybe speed readers do it differently, but I have never tried speed reading.
I would recommend AGAINST jumping around in a sentence. If you can’t remember the verb once you reach the end, then read it again. It’s a sign that the sentence is too complex for your level. This happens to me for instance when I try to read Kant in German.
If you have trouble reading newspaper articles because you can’t keep the verb in mind, then newspaper articles are too hard. It’s actually the hardest type of writing, in my opinion. Novels are much easier to follow once you’ve worked your way into the story.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, but I think that lends itself more to video format, and I don’t want to do Youtube at this point. I have enough to build out first :)
I like that there’s audio for (it looks like) all of the examples. I did have trouble playing some of the examples on mobile (Chrome and Firefox on Android). I hit the button, it turns green, but there’s no sound. I noticed that for “abmachen” and “lassen.” But they both work fine on desktop.
I was curious what other resources for prefix verbs are out there, and it looks like it’s mostly the same stuff as a few years ago. Dartmouth still has one of the better explanations, I think, but it only gave me a vague idea of how things work.
To some extent, that’s a problem with English phrasal verbs too, which is a shame. You can find some great explanations, but you have to sift through a lot to get there.
Oh, the audio :).
That’s one thing I am on the fence about right now. On the one hand, it’s great to have them, on the other, examples and audio take a LOT of time, so if I do one baseverb with all its versions, I can do it much faster if I DON’T add examples and especially audio. So it’s really a tradeoff between how many entries there are and how complete those are.
So it’s good to get some feedback as to how important that is to users.
That bug you mentioned … are you sure that it’s just those two? Because on my phone, it looks like no audio button is working. (*sigh)
English phrasal verbs and German separable prefix verbs are really the exact same thing, just written differently in a dictionary. Have you read my three part series on Prefix Verbs in general?
By the way… I have yet to add your examples :).
I checked just now and can’t get any of the audio to play on my phone. Desktop is still OK.
In the first day or two after the prefix dictionary came out, it seemed like it was mostly working. “Nachnehmen” and “nachsetzen” definitely worked. I think I listened to most of the “nach” and “zu” verbs, plus a handful of others.
“Abmachen” and “zuziehen” are two that never worked on mobile.
Audio is…I treasure it if it’s there, but it’s not a dealbreaker or anything if it’s not there, especially for words that are less common. For the really common words, I do think it’s a must-have. But if it wasn’t in the YDG dictionaries (which have a lot), I would just go to dict.cc or Youglish or whatever.
I think the audio issue is a javascript cache issue, which should resolve itself in time :/. We made some small changes there, and the phone needs to load the new script (but it wants to save data, so it doesn’t always load it).
Yeah, those were some of the first ones I read. Link for anyone who’s curious.
The Latin prefixes are pretty similar too (detain = hold back, sustain = hold up). It’s just that the “root” verb can’t stand by itself. Although it can in other languages (Spanish tener, Romanian a ține, to have or hold). But I think you touched on that in one of the articles.
Now that I think about it, English also has the thing where changing the stress can change the meaning. Turn someone on = get them horny. Turn on someone = betray them.
That’s more a distinction between phrasal verb and verb+preposition combination. The “on” in the second example is a preposition, while in the first one it’s an adverb.
Turn on is a phrasal verb in both meanings. The particle can of course be an adverb or a preposition. The difference isn’t always that clear, but you’re right that the preposition-like one is unstressed here. That fits with the tendency for prepositions to be unstressed in English. I won’t call it a rule because there are quite a few situations where they can be stressed (including if it’s part of a phrasal verb).
It’s not always that simple. There aren’t too many phrasal verbs that (1) take an object and (2) can be separable or inseparable. Separable meaning that a noun or pronoun can go between the two words that make up the verb (phrasal verbs with a verb and 2 particles are inseparable). But here are a couple examples:
In the example with the fire, “put out” can sometimes be separable (put the fire out). But that’s 3-4 times less common than “put out the fire” according to Google search results and ngrams.
Here, “picked up a book” is about 10 times as common as “picked a book up.”
“Turn on” and “turn on” is the only example I know of where one is 100% separable and the other is 100% inseparable.
The difference in stress might be more subtle than something like “umfahren” and “umfahren.” One giveaway is how clearly the vowels are pronounced. Something like “out” can’t turn into a schwa, but you can say it more lazily. You basically keep the same position as for the surrounding syllables.
(Figuring out if something is a phrasal verb can be tricky. This site has a nice overview of some ways to find out.)
coleussanctus, your post is my point exactly!
English-language expressions such as “to put out”, “to pick up” among so many others, really have no direct valences in German.
This is why I as a German native speaker sometimes still hesitate when to use these phrasal idioms, even though my English is fairly fluent, I think.
To put out = wegbringen, loeschen (to put [out a fire]), veraergern
To pick up = aufheben, in die Hand nehmen, anmachen/flirten, etw. aufnehmen, aufzeichnen
Do you grasp the multifacited difficulty here?
Yeah, phrasal verbs can be tricky. I think that’s probably one of the harder things for a lot of people learning English. Or for me learning German, I have to put a lot of time into learning prefix verbs.
There’s the grammar on one hand, and then just learning which verbs to use in what situation. It’s easier if you think in terms of ideas or specific contexts. Like if you can ask someone, “There’s a problem at work and I want to tell my boss I’ll take care of it. How would you say that?”
Maybe “easier” isn’t the right word, because it’s a lot of work, but with enough bites you can eat an elephant.
Prefix verbs can be kind of fun. Wegdenken, zusammensparen, sich reinknien. But I wouldn’t want to have to try to learn if it matters whether I tell a friend to come over sometime, come up, come down, or come by.
“to pick up” is a great example for how there’s virtually no difference to the “randomness” of German prefix verbs. There is a common theme which then gets molded into a bunch of seemingly unrelated meanings.
Exactly. Basic German verbs, for example, “bringen” along with all the possible permutations of meaning with their accompanying prefixes can indeed be dizzying.
My advice though to you and the rest who are learning, practicing German, is NOT to try to learn these verbs by somehow reading them off in a dictionary, but instead, to see, then say or pronounce each of them aloud, afterward, listening to them on an app in context to see how they’re used from daily usage.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do.
Puzzled by the zuziehen example. One of the meanings given is “to move somewhere.” Do you mean “move house”? I.e. nach … umziehen”? If not, can you put “zuziehen” in an example sentence? Also, if it’s intransitive, it will take “sein”, not “haben” …
Well, you can just look all of that up in the dictionary :)
https://germanprefixes.com/zuziehen/
If I might briefly interject (einhaken), “zuziehen” is similar to “umziehen” (to move one’s place of residence etc.), with the difference that the former is close to “zureisen” or in English “to naturalize” aka “to move somewhere for the purpose of fitting into the community or society.
That separable prefix “zu” gives the meaning of almost like “moving to or getting into a place laterally rather than than straight through the front door”!
When boarding a train, we use “EINsteigen” (to get on) vs. “AUSsteigen” (to get off), “UMsteigen” to transfer to another train. However, “ZUsteigen” means to board the train BETWEEN station stops and rather than from the starting out point at which the train trip began. “Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren! Ist noch jemand zugestiegen?” (as the conductor enters the compartment) “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen! Did anybody just board?”
Hope this clarifies somewhat.
I think this may be misleading because it sounds like you’re boarding a driving train ;).
“zusteigen” in the context of a train is about NEW passangers joining the ones that are already there, like you illustrate in your examples.
Righteeo!
My explanation was to be sure incomplete.
Thanks for drawing it to my attention:-)
I’ve only poked around a little (with the full experience, having jumped on board), but it’s already clear as day that this is going to be a fantastic resource for learning: I’m particularly enamoured of the usage hints, which are pure gold. The phone-friendly layout is also appreciated, as I think this is something I’m going to using quite frequently while on the hoof.
Glad you like it!
We’ve decided to do the phone layout because midterm it should run as an app anyway, and having only one design paradigm makes things actually easier :)
Das finde ich schade und ehrlich gesagt ein bisschen faul. Das Layout sollte von der Auflösung des Screens oder dem Fenster und der Größe der Zeichen festgestellt werden. Natürlich ist es zu erwarten, dass die meisten Benutzer (oder zumindest ein großer Anteil davon) das Wörterbuch auf einem Handy verwenden, aber auch unter Handys gibt es keine Standardgröße. Apples iPhone-Sortiment schließt Modelle von 4,7 bis 6,7 Zoll ein, und die Auflösung reicht von 1334×750 bis 2796×1290 Pixel. Das beste Layout für ein Handy hängt von dem Handy und seinen Einstellungen ab, genau wie das beste Layout für ein Computer-Fenster von den Abmessungen des Fensters und den Einstellungen (Schriftart und -größe) des Rechners abhängt. Es ist weder sinnvoll noch hilfreich, Informationen auf einem Computer-Screen im Form eines Handys zu formatieren, und als Computer-Benutzer mit einem großen Bildschirm, möchte ich nicht mit leerem Platz bestraft werden, weil andere Deutschlernende lieber mit dem Handy umgehen.
Ich weiß, dass gerätabhängige Layouts komplizierter sind als ein einziges gemeinsames Layout, aber es würde mich wirklich wundern, wenn es nicht einfach wäre, eine Software-Bibliothek zu finden, die das Layout-Problem bereits gelöst hat.
Das ganze ist vom Konzept here eine app, und deshalb haben wir “mobile first” gemacht. Es sollte für verschiedene Handygrößen “flexibel” reagieren. Vielleicht machen wir irgendwann eine Desktopversion, aber das ist aktuell absolut nicht unsere Priorität. Und dann ist es denke ich besser, die Anzeigebreite zu limitieren, anstatt das ganze einfach FullScreen darzustellen.
unrelated question Emmanuel: gehen Sie bitte hinaus, or gehen Sie bitte heraus – subtle difference, but are the 2 usages more or less interchangeable? Vielen Dank!
The more common choice of the two would be “hinaus”, but the most common one is “raus”. “heraus” only really makes sense, if the speaker is outside, but then they’d usually use “kommen” instead of “gehen”.
Hallo,
The usual typo section :)
“whether they have card game or not” (whether they have the card game or not)
“I didn’t have neither time nor resoruces” (I didn’t have the time or the resources)
“usuually” (usually)
“whereever” (wherever)
This is a REALLY, REALLY USEFUL feature, I struggle a lot with prefix verbs, which, IMO, are the most difficult aspect of the German language… so much so, that I actually think it should be introduced from the very start, i.e. if German learners were slowly introduced to prefix verbs along with the der, die, das, grammar, etc. from the very start, they’d slowly build this vocab along time and have a solid foundation already by the time they reach B1.
So, BIG THANK YOU to you and Vitor for creating it :))
Please help me with this, though, I have NO idea how to access this Kickstarter thing, I remember backing this project, but, not being the most tech-savvy of people, cannot navigate the site well enough to retrieve the discount…
Bis bald!
Hei hei, I emailed your discount to you :).
One question about a correction:
– I didn’thave neither time nor resources…
Is this really wrong, or just “colloquial”? And how would a proper phrasing with neither nor look like for this sentence?
Danke dir!!
Hej hej!
BIG THANKS for the discount :)))
I’ve already created the account and added the site to my favourites bar!
As to your question, it’s not colloquial, it sounds wrong, at least to my ear. But I know what you mean, sometimes we use double negations and it can be colloquial… For instance “I can’t get no satisfaction”, to paraphrase the Stones. Sometimes it sounds ok, sometimes wrong, because… English…
A proper phrasing with neither nor would be “I had neither the time nor the resources”.
Bis bald!
I have been out of action for some time and was unaware you were looking for a Kickstarter. I’m so glad you had a good response, and am looking forward to the Prefix dictionary as well as the app. I think, as someone who refers frequently to Leo on my phone, it’s a good device to select. But will it work on Android or iOS?
As for ‘time and resouces,’ fret not. It may interfere slightly in the flow of reading, but in conversation it would be easily overlooked, and not even noticed. You do have a double negative tucked in there though, so you could instead have gone for “I’ve/I had neither [the] time nor [the] resources…” As for the article, “the”, very few readers would find its absence jarred, though a proof reader might well quibble but not insist.
I’ll toss in my (unsolicited) 2 cents since this one jumped out at me and i had to read it a few times to mentally correct it
“i had neither the time nor resources” is easily interchangeable with “i didn’t have the time or resources…” and it’s not one of those grammatically-correct-but-sounds-stuffy situations imo though people probably slightly prefer “no(t)…or” structure when communicating. personally i tend towards the neither/nor structure but that’s just me, either way works and on a different day i might go w/ the “no(t)…or” construction
The way you phrased it just used too many negatives, not … combined with neither…nor and while in everyday speech people (including myself) will use double negatives and the other person will know what they mean, the combination of Not + the Neither…Nor structure in this case just immediately felt off to me that I had to re-read it once or twice to distinguish what bothered me about it
Hallo, I’m a 17 year old student who couldn’t afford this subscription. But with the help of the community and Mr. Emanuel i was able to get a subscription to this wonderful site. Ill be sure to make use of it. I cannot thank the community enough. Ill be sure to payback to the community once i have anysort of income. Danke
Wunderbar! I so appreciate all the hard work you and your colleague put into this tool – and the tremendous work you do with the blog and its many features. Vielen Dank!
It’s really been a marathon, but things are really starting to fall into place :). Thanks for all the support and for being a follower over the years!
Servus Emanuel, und vielen Dank für dieses ausgezeichneten “Wörterbuch” das so viel mehr als ein Wörterbuch ist.
Es hat mir als Gast reingelassen, aber konnte ich nicht einloggen. Es hat mir gesagt, dass meine E-mail Adresse nicht stimmt, aber es ist die gleiche, die ich für dein Blog benutze. Was gibt?
Hi Marko, es sind getrennte Projekte und du musst einen neuen Account da machen :). Sag Bescheid, falls du Fragen hast.
My dream come true! I think I manifested this. #Manifestation
Looove the format. Very soothing, these ovals, collapsing and uncollapsing the menus, being able to see everything at a glance…
Well done guys!!!
Oh, so it was YOU!! Vítor and I, we were like “Hmmm… the code works on first try. I feel like someone is manifesting this.” multiple times over the last months.
Just noticed your blog – had never even seen reference to it.
It is very thorough.
I do have a question on your dictionary.
You say:
And the same when you click on ziehen… you go to the entry for ziehen, where you can find some useful information about it and a list of all verbs with ziehen.
Do you mean that the dictionary returns all the prefixed versions of ziehen?
Such as first the core inseparable prefixes: beziehen, erziehen, verziehen,
Then with all the preposition/adverb prefixes, such as
abziehen, anziehen, aufziehen, ausziehen, …….. thru vollziehen, zuziehen.
Can’t get this in a normal alphabetic dictionary. They give you all the ab-…, then all the an-…., etc. So the root verbs are scattered throughout.
But sorting by root verb seems a great way to get a ‘feel’ for its core meaning.
Is that what your dictionary does?
Hi Philip, yes, that’s one of the features. You look at the entry for “ziehen” and you’ll have a list of all the prefix version of it that you can click.
Right now, this list is sorted alphabetically, but I actually really like your idea of sorting it by type, so we’ll add that as a feature.
Also, someone else suggested adding the translations directly. I’m kind of on the fence about that, because some verbs have like 4 or 5 translations, but it might be helpful because you can quickly compare without having to switch pages.
Just to make sure… the dictionary has 19 base verbs at the moment. I will add more over time, but as of now it’s for from being “complete”. For the base verbs and prefixes that are in there, I do lost ALL combinations though. So if for “ziehen” for instance a certain prefix version is not in it, even though the prefix is in the dictionary, that means the version does not exist.
Wow, that sounded confusing :D. I hope it made sense.
I frankly think the goal of such a dictionary is awesome. My problem in the classroom continues to be that no matter how fun, even transparent, I try to make learning German, can’t tell you all how many of my students are scared off by the prospect of grammar.
Unless I break it down in a some sort of relevant manner, a number of them will plain zone out.
Even though prefixed verbs are NOT identical with phrasal verbs or prepositional phrases in English (anymore than verbal aspects in, say, Russian or Polish are identical with German and English tenses), I do attempt in the lesson to roughly equate English expressions such as
“to get out” with German parallels, cf.”Get out!” = ‘Raus mit dir!” etc., it can get quite confusing at times as American idioms using phrasal verbs often have NO translation in German, compare “Huh? Get out of here!” (Du, Quatschkopf!) and so forth.