Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time with a look at the meaning of
folgen
Now you’re like “Folgen?! Isn’t that kinda boring?”
But no, quite the opposite: not kinda boring.
Actually, it’s super exciting. We’ll see the full scope of what you can do with the idea of following. And we’ll gain incredible, mind boggling insights into English and Latin, and super useful prefix versions that’ll twist our minds. and see heaps of useful words. And plenty of boring, dry phrasings that can help you give your B1 writing assignment just the bloat it needs.
Pretty cool right?
So follow me into the wonderful world of folgen.
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Folglich, the Indo-European *sekw– segues to the Latin verb sequi’ ?
Yes, that’s the family. To which also “social” and “suit” belong by the way.
is “zufolge” the same or similar to gemäß? Are they interchangeable?
Dem Einstufungstest zufolge bin ich B1.
hi. what is the meaning of following sentence?
(( Der internationale Durchbruch folgt im Jahr 2000 mit dem Coversong ‚‚ Hey Babe‘‘. ))
it means « Der internationale Durchbruch » come after « dem Coversong »?
It means that the international breakthrough come after whatever has been said before and the reason for the breakthrough was the song “Hey Babe”.
Hope that helps.
why are we using auf here
Where? Please clarify your question.
From what I understand these are interchangeable in meaning:
Den Eichhörnchen folgten die Einhörner als Herrscher des Waldes.
Auf die Eichhörnchen folgten die Einhörner als Herrscher des Waldes.
Does any one construction sound better than the other?
The first one sounds a little more elegant, but it is a tiny bit harder to parse the meaning.
And if you have names for instance, the first one becomes quite a challenge,
So here, the version with “auf” is definitely preferable as it is clear right from the get go what we kind of grammar we’re looking at.
Hi Emanuel
Is there a difference between folgendermaßen and wie folgt?
If not do you recommend one over the other?
Thanks
Hmm, I can’t really think of a difference, but I’d definitely recommend “folgendermaßen”. “wie folgt” is more for writing, I feel like.
sir, what is the root of each part? and what is the meaning?
folgen———der————–maßen ?
The roots are “folgen” and “das Maß”.
The mean is “as follows”.
sir, why Maß means “as”?
It doesn’t.
Verbatim, the word means “following-measure”.
Emanuel, could you you explain why is “nicht” before auf Fleisch required please?
The verb “verzichten” is somewhat connected to the item you “deny yourself”. So it’s natural to treat those as a unit.
You can, however move “nicht” right in front of “verzichten” and it wouldn’t sound wrong, and it would mean the same.
Thank you! Actually I meant why you need “nicht” in that sentence it all, but now I see that was a silly question.
I never would have thought that social and suit have anything in common. Really neat! It’s kind of abstract but I guess the basic idea is a group of people or things are following a pattern. I was doing some googling and it looks like the Spanish verbs for teach and mean (enseñar, significar) come from the same root. Which I think makes sense when you think of follow in the sense of to understand. Especially for teaching.
Also folglich is a charmingly precise way of saying also. Kind of like if therefore had a less formal cousin, maybe :)
Wait, just to make sure.. “folglich” is for German “also”, not English “also”, right? :)
Yeah, I wrote so at first, the English so, and then I changed it. I couldn’t figure out which way was less confusing. Easier if I just got up the courage to write in German. (That was me btw, I just didn’t realize I was logged out.)
Kind of like also is the basic version and folglich is maybe not totally formal (?) but it seems like a step or two up. It makes me smile because I use therefore a lot in my line of work. Sometimes I use it jokingly with friends, but you really have to change your tone so it doesn’t sound too stuck up. I feel like if there was an English equivalent of folglich, it would come in handy.
More like two steps, definitely. I never hear it in daily life. But you can find it a lot in context of university.
Actually, this notion of consequence is very important. Not every German “also” has that…
– Also… was wollen wir essen.
You can’t use “folglich” here. (I’m alomst certain you know that, but I wanted to put it out there :))
Yeah, that makes sense :) But I think this would work?
Das Einhorn hat keinen Führerschein. Folglich darf es nicht Auto fahren.
Wouldn’t get me high grades on a thesis, but I could plug in “as a consequence” in English and it doesn’t fall apart.
Yup, that’s perfect :)
That’s perfectly fine :)
Hey Emanuel , does word ‘erfolgen’ also works on similar line ,could you explain please with an example
It’s in the second part :)
https://yourdailygerman.com/2017/07/13/verfolgen-befolgen-erfolg-meaning/
Genau :)
Danke, Person243, “das” is my “missing link”!! Das hilft viel.
I’m finally working my way, slowly, through the online course here. My learning is almost all informal, so I’m missing lots of grammar!
Danke alle, noch mal! :)
Camille713
Eine kleine Korrektur:
“das hilft sehr” nicht “viel”.
That’s a VERY common misake for English speakers :).
“Sehr” is kind of tricky in general for us. It just seems to mean “very,” but you can’t use “very” like you use “sehr” in “das hilft sehr,” and “very” is one of those modifiers you sort of get trained in school to avoid, especially in writing, because it’s so bland. (E.g., don’t say “very hot,” say “scorching” or “blazing” etc.) It’s kind of like the passive voice – you have to get used to it being way more common and acceptable in German.
The soup is still scorching. I recommend abstaining from ingurgitation. :)
The best German learning Blog ever !
Ich lerne zu viel hier und demzufolge schreibe ich ein Kommentar.
Danke!!!
“einen Kommentar”, sonst perfekt. Aber du lernst “zu viel” (too much) ?? Das geht doch gar nicht :)
“Und sehe ich” diene Korrekturen??
You probably already know that the verb comes second in a German main clause. So “Und sehe ich…” seems to conform to that. But some conjunctions do not count for this system. They so to say do not take space. Some common examples of those are: “und”, “oder”, “aber”, “doch”.
Thus you had it right the first time. “Und ich sehe jetzt deine Kommentare.” Although “Und jetzt sehe ich auch deine Kommentare.” or “Und jetzt habe ich auch deine Kommentare gesehen.” would sound a bit more natural.
I think I know what confused you though. Emanuel corrected you for “Ja, ich bin.” which you thought means “Yes, I am.” And it does, but not in the sense you used it. “I am.” on its own is a statement about being, existing. But here you use it in context meaning: “Yes, I am the one you think.” or “Yes, that’s me.”
These informations that in English the context adds are not supplied in German. You need a kind of pointer. Like “that”. Which connects this nonsense sentence back to the context. So the closest translation is: “Ja, das bin ich.” with “das” pointing to what was said before. And now, that must sound super strange, you can omit the “das” in colloquial tone. That is because the sentence begins with it, and a sentence beginning with a verb that is not a question is idiomatically understood as beginning with “das” or “es”. It’s kind of like saying: “No problem.” instead of “That is no problem.” or “Makes no difference though.” instead of “That makes no difference though.”
Now, you can ask, why not: “Ja, ich bin das.”
Interestingly, that sounds totally wrong, although you only changed the order. For that you might want to read Emanuel’s article about sentence structure and word order. In this case, it is about what is new and what is old information (old comes before new) which matters.
Dear My Friend,
Just message is no other than the thank-you I want to say to you because of your support. Trust to be told, I have just granted a Free Subscription from Emanuel and his team. I’m aware that some of you have paid more extra mounts and that help me and other people who are unable to finance our study. I really appreciate all of your support. I wish everything best for you
Oops. Und ich sehe jetzt deine Korrekturen. Danke!!
Ja, bin ich: wieder Korrekturen brauchen. : /
Tut mir leid!! Du bringst MICH immer zum Lachen.
Vielleicht, manch mal, du kannst mir/mich unterrichten.
“Vielleicht, manch mal, du kannst mir/mich unterrichten. ”
Du meinst sicher:
Vielleicht kannst Du mal (im Sinne von “irgendwann einmal”) die Verwendung von “mir und mich” unterrichten/erklären/behandeln.
Have I ever told you that I do mathematics? You could say that that is a language on its own. And it heavily depends on “folgen”.
There are the mathematical construct of sequences (in German “Folgen”), the implication arrow “==>” which is normally spoken as “es/daraus folgt”, if you want to sound fancy you can say “das impliziert” or if you are really eloquent, you can go with a “wenn…, dann” sentence, but more often you forget the beginning of the sentence by the point you reach the “dann”. And there are of course many “Folgerungen” (conclusions) from each theorem (“Satz”) or lemma (“Lemma”). The fancy word for that would be “das Korellar” (corellary).
In a normal mathematic proof from somebody who doesn’t like to write much and hence uses mostly logical characters, the only real words you will find and which are not jargon are: “es gilt” (and variations; engl.: “it holds (true)”) and variations of “folgen” (here: “to imply”) [Ok, that might be a bit exaggerated. It depends on style. Many people use just for change words like: “damit”, “also”, “somit”, “demnach” and for backwards proving: “da”, “denn”, “weil”, “wegen”]
And something you often want to do is: “folgern” (to deduce) As in: “Folgern Sie aus dieser Ungleichung den Transformationssatz von Jacobi.” = “Argue from this inequality that the Jacobi Transformation Formula holds true.”
And as I am just writing, here are some terminology with “folgen” (you won’t need those unless you study mathematic in Germany, although you can also study mathematics in English here, so, yeah, you won’t need them):
“konvergente Folge” = “convergent sequence” – “the distance to a limit becomes arbitrarily small the further you proceed in the sequence”
“divergente Folge” = “divergent sequence” – “not convergent”
“Teilfolge” = “subsequence” – “sequence which is a subset of another sequence”
“folgenkompakt” = “sequentially compact” – “Here, every sequence has a convergent subsequence.”
“folgenstetig” = “sequentially continuous” – “For this function: If a sequence converges so does its images.”
“Nullfolge” = “null/zero sequence” – “sequence that converges to zero”
“Funktionenfolge” = “sequence of functions”
“Partialsummenfolge” = “sequence of partial sums” (used for series/”Reihen”)
“Cauchyfolge” = “Cauchy sequence” – “sequence whose element’s distance gets arbitrarily small as the sequence processes”
Thank you for that. I was working up to asking about mathematical usage despite having no practical need for such vocabulary in any language. It’s just nice to find out.
The English is actually “corollary” with two Os, and German seems similarly to be “das Korollar”.
Oh, yes. It’s also “Korollar” in German. I focused too much on getting the “r”s and “l”s in order. :\
No, you never mentioned that you do math (professionally) :). Interesting. I used to be REALLY good at it in school and everybody was like “He needs to become a mathematician” but at uni I reached my limit at “Analysis für Ingenieure 1” . Anything beyond that is too abstract for me. And “Folgen” was a topic I always hated :). I liked lineare algebra best, I think. Thanks for the math vocab. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone searching for just that ends up on this article :)
eine Frage zu “folgenschwer” und “folgenreich”;
Beziehen sie sich beide auf etwas Negatives? Oder kann es auch was Positives sein?
“folgenschwer” klingt auf jeden Fall negativ, wahrscheinlich wegen “schwer”. “folgenreich” ist neutraler, aber wenn man sagt etwas “had consequences” gibt es glaub ich auch in Englisch eine Tendenz, was negatives/ernstes zu erwarten.
Du bringst mir immer zum Lachen. ;-) Ja, ich bin. =)
Zwei kleine Korrekturen:
– Du bringst MICH (not mir) zum Lachen
– Ja, bin ich (not: Ja, ich bin)
I’ve never heard “folglich” – would you use that in conversation? Does it sound sort of ironically high-toned?
For the record, “it follows”/”does not follow” is totally idiomatic in English when talking about logical conclusions. (The Latin “non sequitur” is also pretty common.)
“ironically high-toned” … that’s a good wording for this specific effect. I’ll have to remember that.
It’s not really the case for “folglich” though. I think people do use “folglich” in spoken language, but only in somewhat longer monologues. Like… discussing politics or something. If you were to use it to justify why you’re heading home instead of drinking another beer, it would just sound odd. It’s not high toned enough to be irony :) (that’s just how it feels to me, other Germans might disagree)