Prefix Verb Shorts – “betreffen”

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Hello everyone,

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Anyway, do you know YouTube Shorts? And TikTok? Yes?
Well, great news.
It’s coming to YourDailyGerman in my new series

Prefix Verb Shorts

Amazing! A new frontier. Getting short form brain-rot while learning German.
And if you’re wondering if its AI — of course it is.
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From your LLLM — Large Language Love Model 😅.

Okay, I’m kidding of course. Of course I’m not doing TikTok. It’ll stay the written radio show podcast Ted talk blog that it is.

Prefix Verb Short is basically part of the Prefix Verbs Explained learning branch or series, but with a focus on inseparable prefix verbs. There are loads of useful ones obviously, and we’ll go over them one at a time, see how to use them, what to look out for and we’ll talk about why they actually mean what they mean. So it’s a great way to slowly build an intuition for the inseparable prefixes themselves.

So, that’s the new series and if you’re ready, let’s jump in with a look at the meaning of

betreffen

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treffen itself has two meanings. One is to hit in the sense of hitting a target, and the other one it to meet in the standard sense of meeting friends. The difference is just speed and intent.

• Maria trifft Thomas.

This could mean that she meets him or that she hits him with something. A bit of a weird double meaning, but if you think of it in terms of “crossing paths” it kind of makes sense.The context will usually clear things up though, so it’s not like there’s a lot of confusion in daily life.
I have an article about treffen and sich treffen so I’ll leave the link below if you want to explore.
Same for my article about the prefix be-, I’ll also link that up below.

But in a nutshell, the be-prefix has a sense of “inflicting or directing onto” that it adds the verb.
That’s also why verbs with be- usually need a direct object as the “target” for the action.

A good and not too abstract example is the pair sprechen and besprechen. Sprechen is just to speak and of course you can add a topic or “target” by using über (about).
Besprechen on the other hand is about “directing talk onto”. You have a topic and then you and someone else direct your talking onto it and “hit it from all sides”, if you will.

• Wir sprechen morgen darüber.
• Wir besprechen das morgen.

Both mean “We’ll talk about that tomorrow.” but the second one sounds WAY more focused and solution oriented. English has the same, by the way. A bespoke suit is a suit that you talked about in detail before.

Anyways, many of the common be-verbs are quite abstract, so the core idea is obscured to the point of being hardly there, so the meaning the verb has might feel a bit arbitrary.
And that’s kind of the case for betreffen too.

Are you ready for the reveal?

“betreffen” means “to affect, to apply to”

It’s clearly based on treffen‘s idea of hitting, but it’s in fact sounding less direct, and more neutral and focused on consequences.

• Die Steuer-Reform trifft vor allem Autobesitzer.
• The tax reform hits primarily car owners.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

This is clearly negative for the car owners.

• Die Steuer-Reform betrifft vor allem Autobesitzer.
• The tax reform mainly affects/is relevant for car owners.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

This is neutral so it’s not clear in what way the reform affects them.
That’s kind of a the vibe of betreffen. It’s neutral and a bit technical sounding.
Let’s look at some more examples:

• Der Stromausfall betrifft fast die halbe Stadt.
• The power outage affects/involves almost half the city.
  (“hit” would sound too emotionally charged here)
  
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Marias Team ist nicht von der Kündigungswelle betroffen.
• Maria’s team is not affected by, included in the wave of layoffs.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Die von euch, die das betrifft, kommen nach der Vorlesung bitte kurz zu mir.
• Those of you who are concerned/affected by this, please come see me after the lecture.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

In the last example, I used concern as a translation, but note that it’s NOT usually about concern in the sense of worry. It’s concern in the sense of affecting or being relevant for.

That’s where der Betreff comes from, by the way, which is a formal German option for subject line.
You can find that in formal letters mainly.

• An: Hausverwaltung
  Betreff: Einhorn-Junkies im Hauseingang.
• To: Property management
  Subject/Regarding: Unicorns are taking drugs in the building entrance.

This is basically what topic the letter “affects” or “targets” if you will and if you ever write something formal in German, including a Betreff-line is a really good. It can even just be a ticket number.

Now, we learned that betreffen is somewhat formal and I just said that betreffen is NOT for concern in the sense of worry.

That is true, but there’s also a but.

Because betroffen is also used as an adjective and in that role, it CAN actually be about the emotional state, rather than technicalities.

• Das hat mich sehr betroffen gemacht.
• That made me quite sad.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Betroffen guckt das Kind auf seinen Teller – schon wieder Spinat.
• The child looks sadly/”emotionally hit” at their plate – spinach AGAIN.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Er konnte seine Betroffenheit nicht verstecken.
• He couldn’t hide his “being emotionally affected“.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

These do still sound a bit formal, but they’re 100% about the emotional state, a negative one, and NOT about whether or not something “applies” or “affects” you. It’s not really something you need to use actively, but it’s good to be aware of it if you read it in a book somewhere.

And I think that’s pretty much it for today :)
Yup… shorts are short like that.

This was our look at the meaning of betreffen and why it means what it means.

If you have any questions about the usage or meaning, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.

Further Reading:

• Word of the Day – “treffen”
• The Prefix “be-” Explained