“”viel or sehr – A quick exercise”
Halli, hallo
door number 11 of our Advent Calendar aka. the least surprising door of them all :). A few days ago, we talked about the rather common mistake of using viel instead of sehr as a translation for a lot.
Today, it is time for a little practice.
If you missed it or you want to review it, you can jump through this time portal:
But here are rules of thumb in a nutshell:
- if you talk about amount use viel
- if you talk about intensity, use sehr
- if you talk about frequency, use oft
“Wait, Emanuel… that third one is new. That wasn’t part of the article.”
You’re absolutely correct. Well done. You read the article carefully and … erm… you passed the test :).
No, seriously… I kind of forgot about the oft-option when I was writing the article but while work out I realized how common it is and that it would make no sense to exclude it.
So… I give you sentences in English and you have to decide how you would translate a lot: viel, sehr or oft. If you want, you can also translate the sentences and leave your translations in the comments, but the main thing really is picking the right word. Or words ;). The solutions are in the audio.
Oh and as usual, it’s not really a mechanical exercise you breeze through. It’s more to really make you feel the differences and also the blurry areas because
“Edges are always blurry”
(20th century, Physics)
There are a few tricky ones in there. So if you make mistakes that’s great or feel confused, that’s great. We’ll can talk about it in the comments and clear it up and then the “normal” use will be much easier.
So basically… it’s like jogging in sand.
Viel Spaß :)
- I like a lot.
- I like that a lot.
- I really like you a lot.
- I eat that a lot.
- I ate a lot of that.
- It’s just a little scratch but it hurts a lot.
- Thomas says a lot.
- Thomas says that a lot.
- Thomas says a lot of shit.
- Thomas says “shit” a lot.
- Maria loves that dress a lot.
- It means a lot to her.
- I admire that a lot.
- That rule helps a lot.
- It explains a lot.
- Nicht and kein – that confused me a lot in the beginning.
- I confused nicht and kein a lot in the beginning.
So, how did you do? Was it difficult? Which ones were you having problems with? Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments and we’ll talk about it.
Hope you enjoyed this, have a great day and bis morgen.