Hello everyone,
And welcome to our German word of the Day. Which today is actually three words, because I have a special episode this time called
3 German words you’re not using enough
I feel like there’s a whole bunch of German words that are an integral part of everyday German, and while most learners do know them, they’re not really using them all that much, mainly because they’re not used to using a particular word in a given context.
That’s a huge missed opportunity though.
Or let’s say it the other way around: there’s HUGE potential for making your German a lot more authentic and idiomatic by just using these words more. And the cool thing is that it’s really easy to achieve. All you need is a bit of awareness.
Today, I’ll show you three uses of words that are particularly underutilized by learners – at least in my experience. And if you like this article, I’ll make it into a little series and give you some more like this every once in a while.
So if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.
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I was thinking about the explanation that gehen, when used literally, uses the spoken past, but when it’s used abstractly, it uses the written past. What about fremdgehen (to cheat on one’s partner)? That seems like an abstract use to me, but “Er ging fremd” strikes me as wrong, and “Er ist fremdgegangen” sounds right…
Great question, yes, “fremdgehen” is way more common with spoken past.
It is abstract, but there is an element of actual “going” in there. At least more than in the functioning-gehen.
Quatsch! Pappalapapp! Or in other words, poppycock! :D
Poppycock?? Wow, British English has the funniest words :)
Codswallop is another favourite, and on the rare occasion my dad chose not to swear he might refer to something he didn’t believe as “a load of old cobblers”, or simply just, “Cobblers!” And then of course there’s twaddle, tosh, and balderdash!
Too cute. All this sounds like legit straight out of The Shire from the Hobbits.
Weil wir heir beim Thema “sound more German” – Habe ich eine Frage für dich (an dich??).
Auf English (American) nach “I think” oder “I believe” ist es sehr häufig das wort THAT zu benutzen.
I find that movies by Wes Anderson totally suck. I think that you suck. I believe that you watch the suckiest movies.
Perhaps in example 2, many people would drop the THAT, but certainly without the word THAT in example 1, we would have to change suck to ‘sucky’.
Also…meine Frage ist: wie oft benutzt DASS nach Ich finde oder Ich fand?
Wann würde man das Wort DASS in dieser Situation benutzt? Ich will wie ein Deutscher sprechen, soll ich nach “Ich find” dass or kein dass benutzten?
Schwer zu sagen, ich würde sagen es ist 50/50 mit und ohne.
– Ich finde, Filme von Wes Anderson sind scheiße.
– Ich finde, dass Filme von Wes Anderson scheiße sind.
Ich persönlich benutze mehr das zweite, da es “smoother” ist (nicht zwei Hauptsätze zusammengeklebt… two kings in a VERY small castle).
Aber eigentlich würde ich einfach sagen “Ich finde Filme von Wes Anderson scheiße”. Und das ist übrigens ein Fakt. Ich habe neulich Asteroid City gesehen, und es war einfach schön anzusehender Müll für mich. Oder ich bin zu dumm und verstehe das Genie dahinter nicht. Einfach langweilig. Das sind alles Kurzfilme, die unnötig auf Kinolänge gezogen werden.
Danke. Ich werde mit Dass fokussieren. Ich brauche das übung (practice as a verb?) damit – Nebensätze. Ich stimme dir zu. Ich habe den Film mit meiner Familie gesehen (vor zwei Jahren) und alle uns gedacht – Es hat sich nicht gelöhnt. Die “sets” sehen eckt cool aus, und zwar Die Figuren ‘interessant’ war, aber war mir egal.
“ich brauche das üben” – “I need to practice that”
Nope :)
Das funktioniert NUR in Verneinung in Deutsch.
Ansonsten sagt man “Ich muss das üben.” oder Ich brauche Übung damit.”
Das trifft es echt perfekt. Optisch interessant, emotional leer. ChatGPT kann das bald auch so machen.
Ugh, Yep, in my mind all I heard was “I need The Practice” aber wie du gesagt, das geht nicht.
Your program tells me I’ve reached my free limit. I haven’t. If I had more time, I would be here more often because I think your lessons are excellent. I have not read two posts this week. I have only read this one in the last month or more.
Did you try copy paste the link from the newsletter? If that doesn’t help, could you try a different browser with the link?
very great and super useful article. hope readers know how worthy this is. please post more articles like this. (most useful, repeated, native words/expressions/verbs.
Thank you for all your effort!
When I first saw the title I thought it would be about those filler words that are hard to translate like “mal,” “schon” and “ja.” As a beginner I was afraid to use words like that, but as I heard more colloquial speech and heard some explanations of their usage, I started peppering my sentences with them, but I’m still not sure if I sound natural :D
I have a question about gehen from something my partner says a lot. Is “ging” also another tense besides past? He says it a lot to mean “would go” or “will go” like if we’re planning a time to talk, he’ll say “Morgen ging es wieder” and I always find that grammar confusing. Or is that a regional thing?
For these filler words, my take is actually (hot take incoming) that learners should use them LESS!
Once people get to like B1 and they have had a couple of explanations about these words, they start using them. Which is understandable… like… you really want to sound like a native speaker and crack that code.
But most people use them the wrong way in wrong places and too often.
Using “doch” to revert a negative is great, but putting it into the sentence on a whim… meh.
My experience is that learners get very mixed results with this :)
As for “ging”:
What your boyfriend is saying is “ginge”, which is the real conditional form – the counterpart to “würde gehen”.
Any verb that uses the written past in spoken german will also use the “real conditional” in spoken German. The two forms are brethren after all.
– können – konnte – könnte
– haben – hatte – hätte
– finden – fand – fände
– gehen – ging – ginge
He does say the “e” though, you just don’t here it as it might blend with the “es” beyond perception. But in his mind, he’s saying “ginge” and any native speaker will hear “ginge”. It’s not like “habe” and “hab” where you know that you’re skipping a letter.
Thank you, that helps so much! Actually, he texts it as “ging” too, but he also texts without the “e” for ich verbs and even words like heute. Probably not a good idea when you’re texting someone who’s still learning! I just kept putting it into Google Translate and finding only past-tense translations. (Of course I could have just asked him too…)
Also I try to use the words when I know they make sense. Like I know “ja” is good for “as you know.” And I noticed if you put doch in the middle of a sentence it can mean the same as “aber”? But mostly I learned that from German songs, so hopefully it’s not too poetic :D “Schon” is the one I haven’t figured out yet and that I probably hear most often – now I’m going to look up your articles about it and work on that :)
“he texts it as “ging” too, “
Wow, this is weird to me and would confuse me. I would not understand that as conditional. But of course I’d get used to it quickly. Maybe it’s a Bavarian thing or just a your boyfriend thing. But do NOT pick that up. You should definitely say and write the “e” in “ginge”.
“And I noticed if you put doch in the middle of a sentence it can mean the same as “aber”?”
Uhm, no. “doch” can mean “aber” but then it’s at the beginning or (very very rarely) after verb and subject.
As for “schon”. You can think of it as an opposite to “nicht”. NOT to “nein”, but “nicht”.
– Das ist nicht schön.
– Das ist schon schön.
That’s of course not the full picture, but it’s a key for sure.
Fun fact: finden and gehen have the same figurative meaning also in Italian :D
So you could say “Domani non va?” for “Morgen geht nicht?” or “Telefono non va”?
Similar to Spanish as well: “El coche no va.” = Das Auto geht nicht, Der Wagen ist kaputt.
Wow, I didn’t know that it’s the same in Spanish, too! Nice to know!
Sure. Think back several decades to the failed US-ad campaign for the then brand new (funkennagelneue) “Ford Nova”. It failed throughout all of Latin America, since it appeared as “NO VA” – the car which couldn’t drive!! LOL
If you want to say that you can’t do something tomorrow then yes, although I’d say “domani non va bene” (Morgen geht nicht gut or Morgen passt nicht gut) but other Italian regions may say something similar but not identical. “Il telefono non va” -> “Das Telefon geht nicht” this is idiomatic
Ah coo, das wusste ich nicht. Gut zu wissen, ich bin im April in Italien :)
Super! “Domani non va” heißt “morgen geht nicht” und ich könnte dich fragen, was nicht geht aber auch WER nicht geht. ZB, “domani (lei) non va” heißt “morgen geht sie (irgendwohin) nicht”. In diesem Beispiel haben wir eine grammatische Eigenschaft, die unausgesprochenes Subjekt heißt. Mach dir aber keine Sorge, der Kontext macht es klar, was du meinst
Thank you for the Belles Lettres link. I promise today to keep it focused and not become animated with arcane details. I have question regarding 3 sentences from that web page.
[1] My understanding is that the first “eines” (and by implication the others) takes its gender and case from “System”. Is that right?
[2] The “vom” is singular but “Simple Past & Present Perfect” is plural. Is it because it’s one to one comparison respectively?
[3] In this text there are several examples of where the adjective becomes the noun, as the noun goes-without-saying. When I’m seeing “im Deutschen”, “dem Englischen”, “das Deutsche”, it confuses me because I’m thinking the unwritten noun is “Sprache” which is feminine. Especially “wie dem Englischen” etc, because it’s clearly referencing the preceding “Sprachen”.
Glad you enjoy that article!
It’s a great site from an actual expert. Which doesn’t mean that he gets it all right all the time (because no one does, and we wouldn’t need science if consensus were obvious), but he does know his stuff, unlike Bastian Sick, the author of the famous “Der Dativ is dem Genitiv sein Tod” books. The Belle Lettres guy likes to dunk on Bastian, and I very much don’t like Bastian because he’s a petty “prescriptionist” who likes telling other people how to talk and I don’t like that, funnily enough :).
And he published at least one book where he just printed pictures of spelling mistakes on store signs, laughing about them like “Let’s laugh at these plebs, what silly mistakes they make. I as a Master of “Germanistik” know much better.”.
That’s the vibe I got anyway, but that might be just my trigger.
Anyways, on to the questions:
1)
Yes, “das System” – “ein(e)s”.
The “e” is the high register version that you’d use in “proper” writing. He has to use it clearly, otherwise he’d lose linguist cred :). But there’s no difference in meaning here between “eins” and “eines”.
2)
This is interesting, I wouldn’t have noticed that, but you’re right. It could be read as a plural. However, what’s really going on is an omission (not a comparison).
– … vom englischen Simple Past und vom Englischen Present Perfect
If you want to use plural, you’d kind of have to add “Vergangenheitsformen” again.
– … von den englischen Vergangenheitsformen Simple Past and Present Perfect unterscheidet.
If you do plural without the extra noun, you’d have “von den englischen Simple Past und Present Perfect”, which sounds REALLY weird to me. My brain would need a second to fill in what noun is in plural, because neither of the two words are. Simple Past is singular and so is Present Perfect.
– Die neuen Ikea-Möbel sind viel weniger stabil als der alte Stuhl und Tisch von meiner Oma.
– The new ikea pieces are way less stable than the old chair and table of my granny.
These feel singular to me, though I would add “sind” if I had to add a verb. How does it feel in English? Does it feel like one plural or a list of two singulars?
As you can see, I’m struggling to explain this one, but yeah… it’s not a comparison.
3)
Languages are neuter, das Deutsche, das Englische, das Italische, etc. They’re nouns in their own right, so they’re NOT just nounified adjectives of Sprache here.
They could be.
– In Germanischen Sprachen, wie der Englischen, der Deutschen…
But this is less natural.
It’s not specific to the languages either.
– Viele Rohstoffe, wie Holz, Eisen oder Öl….
We don’t have articles here, but it’s der Rohstoff and all the others are “das”.
So yeah… the language names are proper nouns here, not just stepped up adjectives :)
I think, now, what caused me to regard them as “stepped up adjectives”, is the ending in “n”. But now I realize they are an example of N-Deklination.
Regarding the title “Der Dativ is dem Genitiv sein Tod”, is that Bastian Sick’s name for his book series, or how the public humorously began to refer to them? If his own title, is it simply revealing the state of affairs? Or is it sincere and urgent announcement to the public? Or is it said sarcastically?
You should correct people, but to label them as plebs in so doing, would be wrong. Rather be an example. Use the genitive unashamedly. I saw a sentence in the article which I liked a lot:
The title is the actual title of the book (series).
It’s a collection of short “Kolumnen” he has written for Spiegel, called “Zwiebelfisch”, which usually deal with typical “mistakes” German speakers make.
“Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv…” was the title of one of these short articles and they used it for the book(s).
For me personally, if Bastian says I should say a certain thing a certain way, that’s all the reason NOT to do it, but that’s just me :).
And to make sure… he did not call anyone plebs. That’s the exaggerated undertone those kinds of books have for me. He did a “stand-up comedy” show once for some reason where he presented lots of these sign typos.
Here’s a snippet of the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8tIq4P0A2o
It’s not as bad as I remember it. Something just rubs me the wrong way about the guy.
Despite all my dislike, I think, the “Dativ”-books might be an interesting read for learners who are into languages in general.
You do have a point about Sick. However, any language needs a normative standard in order to ensure that certain conventions are upheld, if for no other purpose than a uniform code of initial comprehension!
For example, in German there’s an unmistakable difference between “Hier ist ein Bild VON meinem Vater.” (This is a picture/portrait BY my father.) vs. “Hier ist ein Bild meinES VaterS.’ (This is a picture OF my father).
Bloss will ich meinen Senf da d’reinmischen:-)
“any language needs a normative standard in order to ensure that certain conventions are upheld, “
Oh, I absolutely agree. Common spelling is an achievement for sure. It’s a question of balance, and I feel like Sick is complaining about a lot of things for which the ship has essentially sailed and it should be accepted as a variant.
AS for “Bild meines Vaters” and “Bild von meinem Vater”… I do not really feel the difference you described and I’d use “von” for both contexts in daily life and I would also not be sure what “meines Vaters” means (by him or of him).
Interesting. Probably a contextual, perhaps even, as you’ve said prior, a generational thing:-)
Will confess to you though, when I sometimes look through of old newspaper articles from the ’80’s, even the early ’90’s, I find the quality of the German much higher on average than these days.
However, the SPIEGEL remains at its usual high standard, I must say.
Danke wie immer für den Artikel. Ich habe mich sehr über deine E-Mail über diesen Artikel gefreut. Mir gefallen nämlich solche Themen, z.B. wie man Fremdsprache so spricht, wie ein Muttersprachler kann.
Ich bin leider wegen dem Wort ‘gehen’ ein bisschen verwirrend. Ob ‘es geht’ und ‘das geht’ eine ähnliche Bedeutung haben, frage ich mich ab und zu. Könntest du das beantworten?
Übrigens: Woher kommen die Profilbilder? Meines sieht ganz lustig und besonders aus. Ein bisschen spooky diesmal.
Kleine Korrektur:
– ich bin ein bisschen VERWIRRT (nicht: verwirrend)
“es geht” vs “das geht”… das hat nicht so viel mit “gehen” zu tun, sondern eher mit “es” vs “das im Allgemeinen.
Lies mal den Artikel hier:
https://yourdailygerman.com/this-that-in-german/
Und bald kommt auch was Längeres zu “er, sie, es vs der, die das”. Das klärt dann glaube ich den Rest auf, deshalb spoilere ich das jetzt hier mal nicht.
Profilbilder:
Die sind automatisch algorithmisch kreiert basierend auf der email-Adresse. Das ist ein super alter Service, von Gravatar, glaube ich. Ich finde es auch süß.
Danke für den informativen Artikel. Freue mich sehr auf den nächsten. Schönen Tag noch!
Meine Wahl: mehr, mehr,mehr! Das war schon ausgezeichnet !
Ohne “schon” ist besser :)
Super praktisch. Danke, Emanuel. Ich finde, ich verwende das Verb denken viel zu viel :-) Kein Quatsch!
Possible mnemonic: think of ‘Ich finde’ as ‘I fink’, easier if you are Cockney.
LOLOLOL…. this “f”-“th” is so funny to me, I don’t know why.
Surprised no one has mentioned this, but this translation is obviously incorrect:
Oh wow, that is so obvious that it’s easy to miss. I think it’s one of these instances where the brain knows EXACTLY what has to be there and just fills automatically. Good thing you caught it, thanks :)!
As always, loved this article and how you presented the info! I was more familiar with the ‘gehen’ part, and I hear ‘finden’ in this context a lot (like on the Easy German podcast), but I don’t use it very much, myself, because of exactly what you pointed out- saying in English that you ‘find something to be boring, fun, etc’ sounds higher-register than we would use every day. I will definitely start to use it more now that you explained that it’s not high-register in German! Vielen Dank, Emanuel!!
Great post!
In my part of the English-speaking world in Canada, the comment “I thought the film was garbage” would suggest that the film was a documentary whose message you disagreed with. For example, a film that suggested that forest fires were the result of climate change if you believed that they were caused by poor forest management–or vice versa.). Garbage = bullshit = Quatsch.
Whereas if it’s just a bad film (the Zombies attack the Trojans and get fought off but the special effects are terrible and the soundtrack is screechy) then we would say the film is shit, which is much closer to Ich fand den Film scheiße.
Oh, that’s interesting. So “garbage” to your ears is about the content, not the “quality as a film”, right?
What about “trash”?
– The movie was trash.
Does that work?
“Authentic” German: Hallo, die Kasse ist zu. – Baahh, so ‘n Mist, du Scheissseee!
Könnse ma ne zweete Kasse uffmachen, oda watt?
Ujj, abaa m’t Spreewassaa jetufft biste! lol
Aba sowat von!
Ick hab’ ‘n Koffer in Berlin…..bin doch jebuert’ger Dortmunder:-)
I believe Quatsch is used in Austria too but I’m not sure if I’ve ever noticed it. What is certainly heard regularly is expressions like “Dies is’ a Blödsinn!” or “Dies is’ a Wahnsinn!” — and often with dialectal embellishments eg “Ma – dies is’ a total’ Blódsinn!”
in English (at least Australian English), “reckon” is commonplace in many contexts. “Find”, I agree, can sound pompous or posh. Eg “Do you reckon that’s too expensive? – Yeh, I reckon so.” or “I reckon we should go asap.” Maybe “meinen” is the better colloquial translation in such cases — “Meinst du…?” Or denken or glauben. Perhaps this is another regional or Sprachgefühl thing to get used to
“Maybe “meinen” is the better colloquial translation in such cases”
Hard no :)!
“meinen” is one of the words that learners use too much, because it’s so common in English.
For the last “reckon” (having to go) I would say “glauben” or “würde sagen”, if we’re more decided/determined about it.
Can’t say much about Austrian variety, but I’d say that “Blödsinn” tracks.
“Wahnsinn”, at least to my ears, leans more toward a notion of “crazy”.
Interesting, I never used to say “meinen” and would always say “Ich denke” as a beginner, but as I got more advanced I noticed “glauben” was way more common in content I listened to, so I switched to that. But then when I started dating an actual German person and talking to him every day, I noticed how often he said “meinen.” Anytime he tells me a thought, his or someone else’s (e.g. “meine Mama meinte, es würde dir gefallen”), it’s always “meinen.” He also always uses it to ask me what I think. So now I use a colorful combination of glauben, denken, meinen, and finden and I hope it sounds natural :) My boyfriend is from the Munich area, so maybe that’s a factor.
– “meine Mama meinte, es würde dir gefallen”
This, to me, means that she SAID that. Of course that kind of implies that she thought that, but the important part is that she said it.
I have an article about it, actually.
https://yourdailygerman.com/mean-in-german-meinen-bedeuten/#:~:text=%22to%20mean%22%20can%20translate%20to,they're%20not%20the%20same.
As for asking your opinion:
– Was meinst du?
Some people do that, possibly it’s a Bavarian thing, but I don’t know enough about that. But I would recommend against it for learners, because it can be understood as “What are you trying to say” and you need Sprachgefühl to use it the right way.
That article actually helps. His main usages I guess are “er/sie/ich meinte” (said), “Was meinst du” (what do you mean/think) and “Ich meine” (for clarification – “I mean”) are his main usages. But he does also use it as “I think”, but that was even mentioned in your article as another normal usage. Complicated word!
Authentic Austrian: “Na, bist sooo ‘ne Tratschtante, echt brutal!”
“Du bist schon Uebersetzer??! Laessig!”
Great article & very helpful re. the tenses to use – I’ve never heard this distinction before. BTW, « I also just got here » doesn’t sound good to me. I think we’d normally say « I’ve only just got here myself! » (True perfect, not aorist perfect).
Hola Mary, you know I think “I also just got here” sounds alright to me. The line you’d use sounds a bit posh, like you know how to speak real good and all. It’s smooth to the ears, nothing like the bums from nyc i grew up with. They’re far from 100% aorists, all of them have serious heart problems.
I feel like for anything “English language” it’d be good to have a little origin tag :). Like USA, Great Britain or Australian. Of course there are finer variations inside each of these, but there is definitely a fair bit of difference between BE and AE. A bit like Austrian and German, maybe.
For reference, what part of the English speaking world are you from?
Great article. All previous comments spot on. My question is about your use of “…. sound hella authentic.” I have several German friends who use the expression “it’s hella work” where I believe they are trying to say/mean “it’s a hell of a lot of work (helluvalotta)”. In your case I think the meaning is “… sound a hell of a lot more authentic.”
This does not detract from your post and I don’t mean to try to find faults – just curious. Thanks, as always, for your tireless work.
So what I was going for is that regional (Souther US, I think) colloquialism “hella” which is put in front of adjectives in the sense of “very”.
I use that from time to time ironically, when I want to sound over the top colloquial.
I think your friends might be going for the same, or they use it unironically, but I’m not sure if it actually works in front of verbs.
I thought “hella” was a more New England thing originally. Or is that only “wicked”?
Oh, lol. Maybe I just file anything that comes to my mind in terms of US American slang as “southern” by default :D. But clearly this one is not.
“Hella” comes from the Bay Area (California). It was born there in the 60’s or 70’s and that’s still where it’s used the most. You can sometimes hear it in other parts of the country, but usually only the way you used it (hella authentic, hella cool, hella far away). It can also be used other ways:
But you need to have a good feel for it to get away with using it like that.
Wow, I did not know that it could be used that way.
So would “This is hella work” work?
It sounds off to me, I think because “this” doesn’t fit with the vibe. But you could say “it’s hella work.”
That is so interesting. Being from Queens originally, people used “helluvalotta” quite a bit (tho I’ve been away now for 15+ yrs). And that only worked if said quickly – enunciating each word succinctly would’ve lacked any credibility.
I don’t think I’ve ever tried “hella” on its own – feels inauthentic to even contemplate it.
Though “No worries” was like that once…
It’s possible that John Lennon contributed to the decline of use of “find” in this way in English. There’s a frequently replayed clip (from 1964?) in which, asked by a reporter “How did you find America?” he replied “Turn left at Greenland.”
Wow, that would be crazy. I mean, they were an influential group, no doubt, so who knows. Or maybe it was a fad at the time to make that joke and John was just a symptom of a larger trend.
Ich finde diesen Artikel toll und sehr nützlich. The “updated” Titel ist total auf dem Punkt (sagt man das?), Your emphasis really helps me to put them into my daily thoughts/exercises correctly. Thank you for clarifying that spoken German for finden wouldn’t be the right move in past tense – that is one of the first things that I do: put the verb into past tense. There is so much emphasis in the world on how written German is not spoken, that it’s really good to point out where the written conjugation is correct in spoken situations. And what you said about “I find“ being or sounding a bit pretentious in English is totally spot on. That is exactly why I would choose ich denke oder ich glaube instead. You have put that to rest for me and I appreciate it.