Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And this time with a look at the meaning of
bereit
Which is the German word for ready.
And the two are not only translations, they’re actually brothers.
And they’re related to a verb you’d never expect… to ride, or reiten in German
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“Äh… doch, doch, alles gut. Ich war einfach nicht darauf vorbereitet.“
In this example from your article (regarding cleaning the kitchen), why doesn’t this require a reflexive reference? The examples prior to this one (Maria prepares for a date, I prepare for a marathon) use reflexive references and, other than past tense, their construction seems similar to this one: I wasn’t prepared (for this). What am I missing??
Good question!
– I prepared for the meeting.
This is a statement about what you did. The verb is “to prepare” and the context is preparing yourself, so you’d have a self reference here because “vorbereiten” ALWAYS needs a direct object… either someone or something or you yourself.
– Ich habe mich vorbereitet.
Now, for comparison:
– I was prepared.
This is NOT a statement about what you did, this is a statement about how you were at that time. Your state. You were prepared. Prepared is like an adjective here, so no different to “tired” or “young”. There is no implication as to why you were prepared and who prepared you or if you prepared (yourself) on your own. It’s just about the state.
– Ich war vorbereitet.
Does that help?
Yes! War (form of sein) is like an equals (=) sign. I should have figured that out (forehead slap….). It makes perfect sense. Thank you!
> vorbereiten = to prepare (not for food, needs direct object)
Funny thing, I googled vorbereiten to get a picture for the word, and there were lots of pictures of food. So vorbereiten is frequently used for food, but only for preparing food in advance?
Examples from articles:
> Fangen wir mit dem einfachen an: Fast jedes Essen kannst du vorbereiten – zumindest in einigen Schritten. Denn wäre das nicht der Fall, könnte kein Restaurant der Welt bestehen. Nur wenn vorher schon viele kleine Handkniffe erfolgt sind, kann Essen zum richtigen Zeitpunkt auf dem Tisch stehen oder aber so vorbereitet werden, dass es auch noch 2-3 Tage später auf der Arbeit richtig gut schmeckt.
> Halten Sie sich eine, besser aber zwei Stunden am Stück frei, in denen Sie das Essen oder die einzelnen Zutaten für die ganze Woche vorbereiten.
Yes, “vorbereiten” for food basically means preparing the food preparation.
About this sentence: “Die Zubereitung dauert in etwa eine Stunde.”. When does dauert require “in”?
Ah, that is not connected to “dauern”.
It’s the phrase “(in) etwa” (roughly, approximately) where the “in” is optional but it’s better to use it. Think of it as a fixed phrase.
Hope that helps.
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning/etwa/in-etwa/
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guten tag
Thank you.
I loved the Quiz, not too tricky and gives me selbstbewusst.
It did what a Quiz should do. It made sure you have read and understood the material.
Der Lehrer hat das Quiz vorbereitet. Jetzt kann er zum Bar gehen :)
Freut mich, dass es dir so gefallen hat :)
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I bumped on the English in one example above, and I wonder if that may be a window into a close-but-not-quite-matching expression in German. “The manager has prepared the meeting well” sounds odd to me. The manager has either prepared [herself] well for the meeting, or she has prepared someone or something well for the meeting – maybe meeting attendees, or slides. But a meeting is an event at a particular time, and I don’t think the meeting itself would be the direct object of “prepare” in English. Maybe that’s because the meeting can’t be ready just before it starts, unlike the people or the room, which can.
I’m guessing it’s different in German, and man kann ein Meeting vorbereiten. Would that imply getting the people ready, or reserving the room, or what?
Ah, very interesting!
In German you can indeed “vorbereiten” an event, like a conference or a meeting. It involves all the things that you’d do to make sure the event goes down smoothly and without hiccups. It’s not so much about preparing the audience, though. Maybe organize would be the word of choice then, though the vibe of that is a little different to me.
Thanks! “Coordinate” is also used sometimes for this, as in making people and things work together well (in an orderly way, if the etymology were to be trusted here). Though in real life, it’s usually used to mean just making the event happen, logistically. I’d probably sooner compliment someone for organizing an event well (You made great choices for the session schedule!) than for coordinating it well (You really got those rooms reserved!).
I love this about your blog – the opportunity to reveal this kind of nuance about German words and expressions, and challenge faulty assumptions that can grow out of simple translations.
I love reading your articles. They include so much information (etymology!!), clear explanations, great examples, and lots of humor!
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Vielen Dank für das schöne Feedback :)!!
„Es bereitet mir keine Freude = wegwerfen“ ist die Marie Kondo Methode von aufräumen.
Hahahaha… ja stimmt!! Ich sage da aber immer “Dieses T-Shirt sparkt keine Joy”… ihre Worte sind so “iconic”.
Just one little error I noticed… It should be “there are even rats”. “even are” sounds funky to my ears. I cannot figure out why, because it seems usually the “even” goes before the main verb e.g.:
– Mike has so many categories on his licence, he can even drive an 18-wheeler!
– I always wake up at 6:30am. I even do it on Sundays.
And weirdly if you used a slightly different construction it would go before the verb e.g. “They even have rats in the kitchen.” But “there even are” just doesn’t work.
Maybe “there are” as a construct is too strongly linked so it feels wrong to separate them
“Even” modifies whatever comes after it, and that usually isn’t a form of “to be.” But it’s not impossible. “There even are” just sounds more colloquial to me. Like this example from 2019:
I want to say it’s getting more common to say it like that. That’s mostly just a gut feeling, but you can just barely see it here on this Ngram.
It’s slightly more visible for “there even is, there is even”, probably because “there’s even” take up market share :)
This ngram doesn’t prove much tbh.
“there even is/are” works in a context like:
– I have no idea how many rats there even are in this kitchen
To me there is no other sensible place to put the “even” in that sentence. And sentences like that would probably account for the numbers on the ngram.
In question form I would probably write “how many rats even are there?” Or say “how many rats are there even?”
But “There even are rats in the kitchen.” sounds like a grammatical mistake to me. It doesn’t sound so terrible, but I think that’s also because I’m used to hearing Austrians speaking English so I’ve heard this mistake many times and I’m used to it now
I agree
LOL
Small typo on the test: “You’re friends are going to the bar but…” It should say “your friends”.
PS: you are awesome!!! I love your website
Ewww, I hate it when that particular mistake happens to me, because I actually try to pay extra attention to that. Danke für’s Bescheidsagen und für das tolle Kompliment :)!
Yeah, totally!! Thanks! I thought I’d already fixed that one, but clearly it was still there. Danke :)!
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So fun, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it :)!
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Thanks
Hi Darren, the membership is for unlimited access and the premium features like pdf download, csv download, mark as complete, note taking and a few more that’ll roll out soon.
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Maybe the misunderstanding comes from “word of the day”. It’s the word of that day but there isn’t one for every day.
But… There are a loooooot of previous articles to look through. I’m on my second year of membership and I have only read a small fraction of them.
Ha, yeah, that is kind of the point. You can make it daily, if you want to, there’s enough material :).
Thanks for the article, which definitely filed down a few rough edges in my usage of bereit/bereits/fertig.
A couple of minor typos/queries: ( in the text => should probably be)
vorbeiten => vorbereiten
goo => good
You also wrote: “Die Zubereitung dauert in etwa eine Stunde.”
Is that “in” really meant to be there?
Thanks for the corrections!!
Yes, the “in” is actually meant to be there.
“in etwa” is a fairly common option for roughly and sounds more idiomatic to me in daily life than pure “etwa”.
You can find a few more examples in my dictionary:
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning/etwa/in-etwa/
Aha, thank you very much for the pointer! “Groovy”, as the folk back in the 1970s used to say: I think my ears and mind are now both attuned to the “in etwa” combination, or at least *on the way* to attunement. Gah, I’ll stop right there, before this starts sounding like a(nother) Heideggerian treatise: Das will doch keiner!
Doch!!
OK, OK, da hast du Recht. Nur wenige wollen das ;-)
Love the article, just realized there is no “mich” in the sentence “Äh… doch, doch, alles gut. Ich war einfach nicht darauf vorbereitet.” Is “mich” optional in here?
Nice question!
This is NOT a past tense of “ich bereite mich vor” but rather of
“vorbereitet” is basically an adjective here.
You can’t use “mich” here, because we’re not using the verb “vorbereiten”. Our verb is “sein +adjective”.
Does that help?
Yup, thank you :)
Great article. And how timely – I was just today walking into town and saw a sign for “Deinstbereit” – and I knew bereit = ready and (as I only recently learnt) Dienst is service, but I couldn’t figure out what it meant together. Now I see it was about being on duty.
(Oh, I was a bit confused by the examples using ‘ich bereitet” in the ‘prepare’ section, but I see in the audio you say ich bereite.)
I would think of “Dienstbereit” as “ready for service”, rather than “on duty”. Do you remember the context?
Thanks for the correction, that was a confusing typo, for sure!