Hello everyone,
And welcome to a new episode of the epic YourDailyGerman – Learning Quiz®™!
Horror!!
Oh… I meant hooray!!
For those of you who don’t know – a Learning Quiz is basically a small lesson about a topic, but instead of me info-dumping the important points on you, we’ll slowly explore them through questions and answers.
So I give you a question, you see if you can figure out the answer, be it through knowing, inferring or guessing. And then I give you the solution along with an explanation WHY and some background.
That way, our brains are REALLY engaged. Like… the solution to a problem is way more interesting and memorable if you actually had the problem :).
So that’s a learning quiz and today, we’ll learn about
The meaning of use of “nämlich”
Which is a very useful word in daily life that helps you express… but hey, I’m not spoiling it, let’s jump right in.
***
Now, the quiz is based on my article on nämlich, which I recently gave a quite intensive do-over. There, you can dig deeper and also see plenty of examples for nämlich in use. I’ll leave the link below
But the quiz will teach you the key points and I really recommend taking it first BEFORE you go to the article.
Remember… the goal isn’t to test how well you know the topic. The goal is that you LEARN about the topic.
I actually doubt many of you will get 100% in the quiz, there are some questions in there regarding word order with nämlich that are hard to infer. Maybe Berlingrabers (one of my long-term readers) gets it all right because he is super fluent with intense Sprachgefühl. But yeah… do not go into this thinking you have to “get it right”.
Go into it to learn how and when to use nämlich.
And with that said, I’d say… viel Spaß :)
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I only had one wrong and I’d never heard of ‘nämlich’. I think this way of instruction is brilliant.
Happy to hear that. I’ll do many more of these. Lots of material!
This learning by quiz method works great for me, I’ve taken several to date and you set the quizzes up in a very structured way so that the user learns progressively more as the quiz progresses and we’re typically quizzed on details after they’re presented. I knew nothing about the #reason use for nämlich and scored 7/9. Aber keine Hilfe für die erste Frage, ich wusste nämlich nichts über dieses neue Thema. If that sentence is correct then your quiz was a success.
Yup, perfectly used :)!
Yeah, the way I structure them is basically how I would walk through the topic in an article. There too, it’s basically raising a question, answering a question, but it’s a monologue while in the quiz, it’s easier to involve the learner.
This is great for the “Key takeaways” while the articles still have their purpose for nuances, examples, fun family connections and they can be longer because the learner gets into “story mode” while a quiz is info-harvesting mode.
I got 77%!!! YES!!! Great way to introduce something new!
Not 100% :) but I find this style of learning/information presentation very helpful. I am going to revisit this in a week or so to assess retention.
This is the first quiz I got 100%! :D
Wow, I really thought the word order stuff would throw more people off. Happy to hear it wasn’t frustrating after all.
Great quiz, and the original article is also great.
There is an English expression to capture the other use of naemlich, meaning “namely” but with tadaah! Naemlich:
“… naemlich mit Maria!”
“… with no less than Maria!”
To me as a non-native, if completely fluent, English speaker, ‘”namely” is not a proper translation for “naemlich”. It just sounds/reads too literal.
“No less than” reminds me of a phrase I read in an old German book, “…nichts Geringerer als…”.
I really enjoy the quiz style of learning! I only got one question wrong but I think I’m a little confused as to why. I missed one selection in the question, because I didn’t select the one that said it rarely comes a the end. I’m comfortable with it in the middle so the first part wasn’t the problem for me, its the rare use case.
Earlier in one of your explanations it says, ” And with very very few exceptions, it does NOT sit in position 1 of a sentence.” The way this is phrased made me think that when it doesn’t come in the middle, that position 1 is where it would go? Sorry if I just misunderstood.
So it can show up at the end from time to time, simply by virtue of the sentence being too short to have a proper “Rheme” section.
“nämlich” sits between the “setup” and the “payoff” of a sentence but if the payoff is just the verb (which has gone to position 2 to work conjugation), the it’ll look like it’s at the end.
– Ich kann jetzt nicht telefonieren. Ich arbeite nämlich.
“Warum hast du Kekse?”
“Frag Papa, der gibt mir die nämlich.”
In the second example, we have nothing but callbacks and those belong to the setup phase. That’s why “nämlich” looks like it’s at the end.
Now, it CAN also show up in position 1 sometimes. That’s then by virtue of people just putting it there.
– Ich habe eine Frage. Nämlich habe ich das Spiel installiert aber als ich es starten wollte…
These instances are arguably more like the “Namely”-nämlich, but I do feel a sense of “because” in that too.
Does that help?
I like this learning method for something new, combining a learning quiz with a lesson. Taking the quiz (with explanations) the first time is an ‘aha – got it’ experience, so I repeat the quiz immediately to reinforce that I indeed got it, then I read the lesson for nuance, context and examples. And repeat the quiz the next day and a couple of days later again helps to lock it in. The first score doesn’t matter.
That’s the perfect approach :)
OK, so that was easier than expected ;-) Full marks, or at least full if one of my answers had actually registered instead of being submitted “blankly”. Silly quiz software that lets you that happen that when it’s a “radio button” question, and doubtless a silly user who actually inadvertently fires a blank! But regardless…
Oh it lets you do that? I didn’t know that, but yeah… it’s quite “2010s” this software. The backend is awful.
Not sure why I was whining so much earlier today: it’s totally fine, and I’m quite fond of the new quiz formatting you seem to have instituted. (Hey, it *does* give you a dotted green boundary around the correct answer if you hadn’t selecting anything before pressing “Submit” on a radio button question. So you’re “one half/third correct”, or some such nonsense, at least graphically…)
„Ya know“might be a colloquial translation for nämlich. Btw „ Nämlich ist dämlich.“
I wanted to look at „vorhin“ again.
How does one do that?
You can just go to the home page, https://yourdailygerman.com/
It’s a screen or two below the top.
I’d format that link better, but my editing areas on here are now *wie eine Wüste*, with just a place to type :-( Seems to be one of the slight disadvantages of going with “Brave” as a browser.
Actually, it’s because I removed the formatting buttons options on desktop.
The thing is that most people don’t use them, but they load a full editor and a HUGE css file and I am fighting to get my loading speed down for SEO. I can’t selectively turn it on for logged in users so I have decided it has to go.
Also, for links like this, I kind of like this old school direct way, so long as it’s a short slug.
If someone posts a long google search slug for example, I usually edit it to make it look more pretty.
By the way… doing a proper homepage and a “recent articles” is coming soon.
Aah, fair enough: no real loss, in my book at least, given that I have about 40 years of experience at ascii representations of such emphases and/or decorations. Just clicked over 40 years, now that I think about it, having sent my first email message in late 1985. IN ALL CAPS, NO LESS (AS THE RECIPIENT WAS FOND OF REMINDING ME) :-)
Good times!
“Wer nämlich mit h schreibt ist dämlich. ”
That did help me as a kid, because I would spell it “nähmlich”.
As for finding older articles… just use the “search my articles” option and type in “vorhin”. It’s the easiest way.
100%! Woohoo! I keep seeing it and sort of skipping over it, but apparently I’ve picked up enough of the meaning and placement. Or your learning quiz was just that good!
Wow, that’s amazing, especially the fact that you seem to have a feeling and intuition about the position. That was kind of crux of this quiz. Now it’s time for you to start using it.
I’d heard the word used, but wasn’t too familiar. Certainly is not in my vocabulary yet. I didn’t read your other article yet either (but I’m going to). Got 13 of 13 on the first try. Must be my lucky day! I think I’ll go buy a lottery ticket.
Hi! It was a good learning experience. Except that I don’t know what a modal particle is. Is it like a adverb like gern?
Also I’m hoping to get my hair cut in Germany. Maybe you would like to write an article with all the words that I will need, including bangs and layers?
Heidi, sorry if it’s off topic, but in Germany we usually have more funky hair styles than in the States.
Teen girls wear bangs, we call them “Pony”, literally “Zopf” and the front of the face, we say, “gerade abgeschnitten”.
Apologies for the digression!
It took me a decade to understand that “Pony” is in fact “bangs” and not Pferdeschwanz. I still have issues with it. Like… I KNOW what a Pony is as a hairdo but my brain still thinks of a Zopf first :)
Mine too, then again, I’m what the Americans call Fifty plus….plus ten years
Not ashamed, but I do try to stay au courant with my native language, even it is my native language.
No, I thank you for your comments! Do mature ladies wear bangs? Or maybe Pony is a teen style of bangs?
You know what?! I have a draft called “Talking about hair” in my draft folder. There isn’t much there yet, but it’s been a topic that’s been on my mind for a while :)
Really? Oh, do e-mail it to me if you would.
It’s really just material collection, nothing really written yet.
I see.
I love the learning quizzes! Much better than ann info dump and we jump right into the usage. I feel like the #reason usage of nämlich is where we colloquially use “actually” in English. It helps to distinguish it from “because”/“weil”
Great observation!!
Yes, “nämlich” does have some overlap with “actually” in vibe and what contexts it’s used in. It’s not reliable enough to be called “translation”, because the “reason”-aspect of nämlich is much stronger than in “actually” but yeah… With some examples in the article I did think about adding “actually” and then left it out to not make things more confusing.
I find this way of learning very helpful. I knew nothing about naemlich and got 7 out of 9 but I also learned about the word so I call that a win.
Wow, 7 out of 9 without prior knowledge is great!!
Great way to learn!! Much prefer this to simply reading an article. I will read the article now and I am sure it will be ‘stickier’. I haven’t used my German in 25 years, but I was able to complete this. The competitive side in me did not appreciate losing a whole point for the multi answer question 9 even though I only missed one of the selection.
I earned. 77.7% for your tracking purposes.
Sorry, my mistake. I meant to give one point there for every single right pick, but forgot to check the box.
I really enjoy this way of learning. I must have had it covered in a German lesson once, though, because I got all 9 answers right – mind you, you did hint at some of the answers before we got to the questions, which helped.
I feel like I understand it better now; the idea of #reason makes it a lot more understandable! I’m not sure I would think to use it though.
Yeah, I did try to weave information a little, so that it’s not just pure guess work if someone has never heard of it :). But one has to be present with the quiz to notice. If someone rushes, they might miss those cues :)
Ich habe vor kurzem viele Märchen gelesen, und da ist “nämlich” sehr oft benutzt, aber ich verstehe das nicht gut. Deswegen muss dieses Quiz sehr hilfreich sein.
Beispiele für irgendjemanden, der interessiert ist:
> Die Königin will nämlich die Schönste sein.
> Die Zwerge sind nämlich nicht zu Hause.
https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/barrierefreie_angebote/leichte_sprache/Schneewittchen-und-die-7-Zwerge-,schneewittchenleichtesprache100.html
Die sollten nach dem Quizz eigentlich klar sein :). Sag Bescheid falls nicht.
Alles ist klar geworden, Danke.
“Naemlich’, as with “bloss”, “mal”, “doch”, “etwa” etc., is a modal particle, roughly translated with “as you know”. For example, “Er arbeitet NAEMLICH als Bankkaufmann bei der Bayerischen Landesbank.” = As you know, he’s a bank employee with the Bavarian State Bank.
Hmmm, “nämlich” as “as you know”. I have read that somewhere a few days ago, but I do not agree with this.
– Ich gehe schlafen, ich muss nämlich morgen früh raus.
The second part, the reason, can be completely new information, so “as you know” would not make sense there.
It depends on context, I suppose.
Not sure it does. Regardless of context, “nämlich” will always express the notion of “reason”. It can of course be used in contexts where the reason is already known, so it’s easy to attribute a sense of “as you may know” to a somewhat illusive word, but I don’t think “nämlich” actually carries it.
“ja” does, as you know.
– Ich muss nämlich morgen nach Berlin.
– Ich muss ja morgen nach Berlin.
We don’t have context here, but the first one clearly marked as “reason” for something while the second is marked as “as you know”.
Hmm, interesting bend. Will have to ponder that.
Thanks for your input.
Danke Emanuel,
Das Quiz war sehr hilfreich.