Hello everyone
And welcome to a new episode of … uh… active learning
Hooray!
I mean, we do learning around here, but often it’s me explaining something or telling a story.
It’s been a while that we’ve done something actively and that changes today, because it’s time for another learning quiz.
A learning quiz is basically a quiz, but along with each answer, I give you a little explanation about the question and answer.
So you get the reasoning right the moment when your brain is most primed to want to have it.
Now you’re like “Oh… Oh my god, I found it. I’m there!”
Yes, you are indeed. Welcome to Didactics City, traveler!
And the topic I have for you today is
The difference between “erst” and “nur”
Both words are translations for only and learners tend to use use nur all the time. But of course erst and nur don’t actually mean the same. There’s a subtle difference and when you use nur instead of erst, it can sound quite strange and really ruin an otherwise nice idiomatic sentence.
That’s what we’ll practice today, so if you’re ready, let’s jump in.
And let’s start with a quick primer about the difference. If you want to do the quiz first and see how you do, just skip right down.
“nur” vs “erst” – The difference
One translation of erst is only, but the core idea of the word is actually first.
- erst A, dann B
- first A, then B
- das erste Mal
- the first time
The thing is when you have a first, you usually also have a second and third. If not, then the first is actually the “only”.
Like… Imagine you meet at a bar with a friend. You get there, and you order a beer. Then, for a while, it’s actually unclear whether it’s the first or the only beer. That’s how the ideas of first and only are related and erst is basically the idea of only with an added notion of there possibly being more.
In a way, it’s basically like saying “only one for now” or “only one so far“.
This is the vibe that it has and if that’s what you want to say, if whatever you’re “counting” is ongoing, you should use erst.
You can add that vibe to nur as well by adding bis jetzt or bisher. Like… if your friend asks you how many beers you had that evening and you’ve had one but the night is not over yet, you could say “Nur 1 bis jetzt” or “Erst 1.”.
But I actually don’t want to spoil too much from the quiz by giving too many examples.
The key thing is this vibe of “so far” and the undertone of “more to come” that erst has basically built in.
I’ve actually done a longer article on this topic a while back where I also talk about einzige and give lots more examples. So if you want to check that out, I’ll leave a link below.
But now, let’s jump right into the quiz.
“erst” vs “nur” – The Quiz
What we’ll do is I’ll give you a sentence IN ENGLISH and you have to pick whether you’d use erst or nur in German or whether you could use either one with a slight difference in tone. If you want to treat it as a translation exercise, you can do that too. I have added the German translation (without the answer of course) as hint, so if you click that, you’ll see the sentence in German.
I’m now thinking that I should maybe switch that around, and have the original in German with gap and then put the English into the hint. Let me know in the comments what you think.
Oh and just a quick heads-up… the quiz is exploring the “fringes” a bit, so not every question will be super clear. Don’t go into this thinking you should get a really high score. If you do, great. If you don’t, also great.
What matters then is that you understand the reasoning behind the answer. And if you don’t, please do ask in the questions. This is not about scoring, it’s about learning after all.
But enough with the words, let’s get going!
Viel Erfolg.
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So, how’d it go? Was it too difficult? I’m almost certain that there are one or two questions in there that might not be 100% clear so please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
And if you didn’t ace the quiz, do come back and redo it in a few days to cement the vibe differences in your mind.
Like I said… mixing up nur and erst is quite common mistake especially by people in A2 and B1 and it’s definitely worth a fix.
Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this and learned something, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.
Further Reading:
- How to say “only” in German – nur, erst, einzige (deep dive)
This is a very interesting topic with plenty of nuances.
I note that if one can replace “only” with “just”, using “nur” is generally correct, especially if we’re not referring to counting or time in some sense (which is the theme of your article and quiz). For example:
• Ich will nur helfen. I only / just want to help.
• Es ist nur ein Spiel. It’s only / just a game.
But this is not an infallible test. The better test as you suggest is to consider if “so far” or “up til now” is implied.
Indeed sometimes, if “just” works in English, usually combined with “only”, I think the better (correct?) German word is “gerade” or “eben”. I suppose this is grammatically a different part of speech than the nur/erst usage you describe.
• Ich habe ihn gerade gesehen. I (only) just saw him.
• Ich war eben dort. I was (only) just there.
It’s not a different part of speech grammatically (they’re all adverbs), but it’s filling a different role.
“(only) just saw him” – the “just” gives information about “when”.
“I have just 10 Euro” – he “just” gives additional (opinionated) information about “quantity”.
“just” probably could use an article too. You’re right, the time-sense if captured well by “eben/gerade”.
It’s often combined with “erst” by the way.
– Ich bin gerade erst aufgestanden.
– I only just got up.
actually no one ever explained this to me. I think i’ve been using nur as the default and have picked up a vague idea of “erst” from Sprachgefühl. Great article.
I usually also ignore it when people who are learning German use “nur” when they should use “erst” because I don’t want to explain and maybe lots of Germans feel the same. It does stick out, every German hears it, but explaining it takes a bit of time and insight.
well, yes, thats sort of the dilema of being a language learner – you make mistakes and no one tells you. That is what it is, but when you don’t seem to learn this in class either then you are forever making mistakes
I often have the nagging feeling that many foreign language programs purposely ignore the necessity of Sprachgefuehl as something which most learners might never internalize and therefore is best not mentioned in the equation.
In one instance recently, a student told me they were interning in an office in order to acquire experience working abroad. When they asked a German colleague how to say a rather involved concept in German, the colleague told them not to worry about it, as EU-foreigners in the firm were strictly “encouraged” to use English in all inter-office communication!
Rather a silly rule, I feel.
Thanks for this, I managed 9/11. With reference once again to the article about Präteritum and Perfekt, a while back I asked you about “eines” in the following sentence:
My query today is regarding another “eines”:
Is this “eines” genitive? I’m translating this sentence as..
.. so I’m reasoning this “eines” is not the same as the first-mentioned, rather genitive.
Yes, this is Genitive and you cannot replace it with “eins”. That would sound surprisingly bad, and I’m not even sure I would understand.
Yay, 11/11! But I have to say even though I’m around C1 now, I often forget that “erst” exists and would just say “nur” for everything, even when it’s not correct. In a quiz like this I totally know the difference, but when speaking I often don’t think about that.
Also, I like it when the sentences are in English at first. It really forces me to think about the logic and not just what “sounds right” in a German sentence. Ideally I try to answer without even imagining the German sentence, which is more challenging, and then I really feel like I understand the logic. Otherwise I might guess correctly because I’ve heard similar sentences (and I have heard a LOT of sentences in podcasts and songs), but not understand why it sounds right.
If you add “bis dahin” or “bis jetzt” to your statements when you speak (when it’s needed) then you won’t need “erst” but if you just use plain “nur” all the time… that does stick out sometimes and ruins the smooth C1 vibe :).
Homework: use your first only-erst in a sentence next week!
That’s true, Amanda.
However, sometimes what feels right, could in fact be wrong. On the other hand, the reverse is true, that what feels or sounds wrong, will be right!
Had a student some years prior who swore up and down that “fahren” could ONLY be used as an intransitive verb and that I had to have been mistaken about the following sentence, since even natives make mistakes, including teachers, right?LOL:
Er hat seinen neuen Mercedes nach Hause gefahren.
vs.
Er ist mit seinem neuen Mercedes nach Hause gefahren.
I explained that the first sentence uses “fahren” as a transitive verb, because “seinen neuen Mercedes” functions here as the direct object.
While both sentences are correct, the second sentence might mean that the person in the Mercedes is being driven by someone else, whereas in the first sentence, it’s clear that the person is driving the Mercedes himself.
It can be tricky when one’s learning.
Meanwhile I’m trying to convince my kids that you don’t “drive” your bike in English (at least not where I come from)
One rides a horse, a bike, but “drives” a car.
We often make that mistake when learning English:-)
Yeah, it’s a funny little mentality marker – is a bike more like a horse or more like a car? One of those late-19th-century linguistic forks in the road.
A lot is determined by the metaphors built into your verbs too. Fahren is chill and flexible, but drive meant “compel your beasts of burden to pull the wagon” and so that’s implicitly what you do with the gas pedal in a car, but I guess that just feels too different from what you’re doing on a bike for English speakers to use.
I know you know this but for those reading the comments who stumble across this:
I’d add that this strong connection between “fahren” and “driving a car” is new, seeing how “fahren” for a long time more generally meant “to (far) travel”. It’s related to “to fare” and phrasings like “zur Hölle fahren” still have the original sense.
So “Fahrrad fahren” is more like “bike travel” than “bike drive” maybe.
Yeah, good clarification. Really, probably the best English gloss for “Fahrrad fahren” (or “Radlfoan” around my neck of the woods) is probably just “to bike” as a verb.
Also, I will never stop giggling internally whenever I’m wished a “gute Fahrt”
The inner child :). Shall you never lose it!
Especially if a native English speaker with next to zero German knowledge transposes in their head “Did they just wish me a “good fart”??!”
LOL
Interesting, never really thought about it, in either language:-)
Ich steuere ein Flugzeug. = I steer a plane.
Ich sitze am Lenkrad des Autos.= I’m at the wheel..
Ich komme ans Steuer des Autos. = I’m gettting behind the wheel..
Merely an aside, but curiously in Dutch, one (literally) “rides” [rijdt] a car, one doesn’t “drive” [vaart] it.
“It’s a short hike. Only 3 kilometers to the summit.” – do we know the hike ends at the summit? For example, if the first section is to the summit, then down to the nearby village in the valley, wouldn’t “erst” fit? Overall, it’s still a short hike, and the first section, to the summit, is 3 km.
I get your reasoning, but if you phrase it that way it would be:
– First 3 kilometers to the top and then another 4 to the valley.
It works in German, but I think in English, if you say “It’s a short hike, only 3 kilometers to the summit.” , people will hear that as a definite.
You can also test it by adding “so far”.
– It’s a short hike, only 3 km to the summit so far.
That doesn’t really make sense. So the only you’re looking at here is a “nur”, not an “erst”.
Emanuel, in the introductory newsletter, Nasenloch should be translated as nostril.
OMG, I KNEW there was a word for it, but couldn’t think of it so I just decided to use “nosehole” to have the haiku translated super literally. No idea why I didn’t look it up.
A synomym for “Nasenloch” is “Nuestern”.
Hallo,
Some typos (nur 4):
“”nur” vs “erst” – The” (you missed the rest, or maybe it didn’t fit in the first box)
“how many beer you had that evening” (how many beers you had that evening)
In Q2: “seit 3 Montane Deutsch” (seit 3 Monaten Deutsch)
In Q6, you have 3 instead of 8 in the explanation
I had real trouble understanding Q1, I would have thought that “erst” would only work if it were a new city, something still in the construction stage… I realise that other bars may open but the vibe I get is something like “this is a s**t town – there are only 2 bars”…
Gute Besserung, eigentlich werde ich Dresden im Dezember besuchen!
Bis bald!
Ohhhh, that makes perfect sense. Someone else also mentioned struggling with Q1 and your reasoning makes perfect sense. I was thinking of a quarter being gentrified, but without any context, it is a bit odd indeed. I have changed it to “I have found only 2 good bars in this neighborhood” now.
Aside from my American objection to “I have” (we would always say “I’ve”, but I know Brits and especially German schools do say “I have”) the new sentence works much better for being ambiguous.
That’s my first exercise on the site. I got my subscription for free because I couldn’t afford it. I’m enjoying it so far. Thank you, everyone.
This is about question 5. I’m leaving in the blank space so I don’t spoil it for anyone.
— “Wir sind gleich da, oder?”
— “Nein, wir haben ____ die Hälfte.”
Are there any other ways you would normally say “we’re only halfway there”, or is this pretty much it?
I was trying to think if I know how to say this, and the only thing that comes to mind is “auf halbem Weg”. But I don’t know if that’s used much in everyday life.
The other option I could think of right now is this:
– Wir sind erst bei/auf der Hälfte. (the latter only works for actual travel, the former also for a long movie)
Or some variation where we have a second verb along with “haben”.
“auf halbem Weg” is not common in daily life and it feels less precise to me. Like could be “half” +/-20%.
Oh, that’s interesting about the different prepositions (auf/bei). I guess that makes sense because you can be “auf” a road or path, but not a film. Unless that’s slang, “auf einem Film sein”? I think I’ve heard that in a song and it seemed to be along the lines of imagining something.
Also interesting that “auf halbem Weg” is that flexible. If someone told me we were almost halfway there and it was only 30%, I wouldn’t be too happy. 40-45%, no problem.
“auf einem Film sein” fits in with “auf [substance] sein”, I think.
Maybe 20% was a bit too much but if someone says “Ich musste auf halbem Weg umkehren, weil ich meinen Schlüssel vergessen hatte” I don’t really perceive the actual amount of “way” to be very important. Definitely not at home anymore, and definitely not there yet.
I’m grumbling at Q9. Honestly, I say this often to my students almost every day around 12noon. I KNOW I am going to drink more that day, but it won’t be coffee because “I drank only coffee today” – and my stomach is getting raw. Now if it were nearing midnight, I’m in bed and I said that same sentence, I would use NUR for sure.
No matter. I liked this a lot and I will be in the lookout for when I overuse nur.
I think it might actually be because “Kaffee trinken” in the context of time often comes early in a sequence of “What I do in a day” that makes “erst” so weird.
“bis jetzt nur Kaffee” would be totally fine.
Or it might be the fact that we don’t actually have any quantity involved.
It’s a tricky question, for sure. I might change it.
“Soeben” can have a meaning similar to “erst”.
Manne ist erst _______ Jahre alt. = Manny’s “just”______.
Soeben um 15oo Uhr klingelte es Telefon.
At “exactly” 3pm, the phone rang.
That’s about the different translations of “just” though. I didn’t really want to mix that in here.
I know, guess I got a little over zealous there, apologies:-)
In certain contexts, erst can mean either “not until” or “just”, occasionally, such usage may be regional as well:
Du, Martin! Kommst du zu meiner Geburtstagsfete heute abend?
Ja, du, erst morgen frueh komme ich aus Muenchen zurueck, also leider kann ich nicht kommen, echt schade!
Erst um 14oo Uhr habe ich Mandantengespraech.
Sie haben schon drei Kinder, oder? – Nee, erst zwei!
Nur is somehow easier for my students to handle.It can be used either to mean “only” or as an untranslated modal particle:
Darf ich nur eben mal wieder ‘reingucken?
Klar, guck nur!
(Can I just go take another look inside? – Sure, go take a look or go ahead!)
Ich habe nur eine Stunde, das Examen fertig zu machen! – I only have an hour to finish the exam!
“erst morgen früh” and “erst um 14 Uhr” are surprisingly hard to translate and it’s a quality of “erst” that I found English speakers struggle with. The idea is “no earlier than” with an added notion of “hmm, later than expected/wanted/usual”
Quite so, the distinction can seem maddeningly subtle for foreigners, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I think that’s a job for “until” or “not until,” although you don’t always have to word it exactly that way.
– erst morgen früh
– erst um 14 Uhr
Hmm, to me, these option completely lose the key feature of “erst” which is expressing a sense of “late”. The speaker considers it “late” or “not much”.
– I don’t get back from Munich until tomorrow.
This sounds neutral to me and I would translate it as
– Ich komme nicht vor morgen aus München zurück.
The same sentence with “erst” has a different vibe to me.
– I don’t have any client calls until 2.
– My client call is at 2.
Here, it’s even stronger.
These completely lack the notion of “erst” to me. The fact that having the first client call at 2 is LATE for me. I would just translate them normally as
– Ich habe bis um 2 keine Kundencalls.
– Mein erster Kundencall ist um 2.
How would you express that 2 is “late”. Is there any way to do that without a full extra phrase?
I don’t think you can really do this, no. But to me, the “until” plus negation really does carry that sort of vibe. To me:
…sounds genuinely different from:
or
It would be even more marked with the erst vibe if you said:
That really sounds like the expectation would be that you’d have calls earlier, but you don’t. I would hear “I don’t get back from Munich until tomorrow morning” the same way – like, if there were no reason for that to seem (too) late, you’d just say “I get back from Munich tomorrow morning.”
Actually, you can use “only” in this sort of a way, but I feel like you’d be way more likely to use it retrospectively:
Trying to think if it’d sound weird to use with a future referent…
I think that actually works too. Maybe?
I thought “only” wouldn’t work in the present tense, but now that you say it, I think maybe it could. I don’t think it’s very common, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before, and I see a few Google results for that kind of thing. Some British and Australian sites, but at least one example from the US (“we only get back from Machu Picchu the previous evening”).
Interesting.
Since you have endboss level sprachgefühl for German by now, considering how long you’ve lived and worked here and how much you’re into languages in general , do you feel a difference here:
– Ich bin erst Mittwoch wieder in Berlin.
– Ich bin nicht vor Mittwoch wieder in Berlin.
I do and it’s basically that you think or acknowledge with “erst” that it’s “late”, while in the second version you really don’t care, you’re just giving hard facts.
– Wegen der Bahn bin ich erst Mittwoch wieder in Berlin. (natural match)
– Ich bin nicht vor Mittwoch wieder in Berlin, habe ich gesagt, warum machst du einen Termin für Dienstag? (natural match)
I have to say, I feel like I’ve hardly ever (if at all) heard “nicht vor,” at least in personal/casual conversation.
I think maybe because it’s less familiar, it feels a bit more businesslike. Maybe that’s already influenced by your explanation. And there’s probably the cultural component where English speakers tend to be implicitly at least a little apologetic for not being able to accommodate each other’s schedules – which is why “not until” feels so close to erst.
Anyway, I think I’d definitely pick up on nicht vor sounding more sachlich and not implying any expectation one way or another (or not caring about expectations). For a wilting violet of an Anglophone such as myself, it would maybe even sound a little aggressively factual. :)
But my Sprachgefühl is definitely not infallible!
berlingrabers already said it well, but “not until” really does have a vibe of “no earlier than” and “late, later than expected.”
If you wanted a neutral way of saying when you get back, it’d be something like
The simple present in particular marks it as a fact, a scheduled event.
“Nicht vor morgen” seems more neutral than “not until.” “Not before” might be a better match, at least here.
“My first client call is at 2” is exactly what I would say at work. The idea of “that’s pretty late” comes from how I say it, and because everyone knows those usually start around 9 or 10. If I was talking to someone who didn’t know that, I would say, “I don’t have any calls until 2” or “my first call isn’t until 2.”
Definitely agreed with all of this. Although “not before” feels a little marked to me. Not in tone, really – I’d agree that it’s more neutral than “not until” – but it feels more like you’re talking about a moving target, time-wise. Like, “I won’t be back in Berlin before tomorrow […but it could be even later].”
In other words, if somebody told me either “I get back tomorrow” (or “I’ll be back tomorrow”) OR “I don’t get back until tomorrow,” I’d assume they’re confident that they really will be back that day and we can make plans with that in mind. If they told me, “I won’t be back before tomorrow,” I’d be unlikely to suggest plans that relied on them for any sooner than übermorgen, probably even the day after that. Does that make sense?
I might have a bit of a tendency to import that into how I’d understand a German saying nicht vor, for that matter.
Yeah, it is flexible. I think to me, it would sound like there’s a chance they’ll be back tomorrow, but it could be later. How likely it is to be übermorgen or even later probably depends on context and how you say it.
actually i think this is the sense of erst i picked up just being seeing it used, so it feels kinda intuitively understandable to me anyway. I wasn’t really aware of many other nuances in yr article
Das ist eine echt gute Erklärung, Emanuel! Obwohl ich Deutschlehrerin bin, habe ich den Unterschied immer ein bisschen falsch erklärt. Jetzt weiss ich die definitive Regel. Toll! Vielen Dank. Ich hatte die erste Frage übrigens falsch :(. Aber nur die!!!
Ich habe die Frage geändert. Die war auf den zweiten Blick ein bisschen unklar.
I have heard the difference between erst and nur before but this is a better explanation and I love the lesson plus practice format. The time one is super good to know. That’s one of those “Germans think differently” things that you just have to get used to.
I got two “both work” questions wrong (the bars and the coffee) because to me both of those sentences in English are not at all ambiguous in meaning.
Quick typo. You have two subtitles in the article and the first one seems incomplete.
I just changed the bar-example to “I have found only two nice bars in this neighborhood.”. It was indeed misleading before.
“Imagine you meet at a bar with a friend. You get there, and you order a beer. Then, for a while, it’s actually unclear whether it’s the first or the only beer. That’s how the ideas of first and only are related”
I always appreciate your effort to put this into something relatable in English. It’s these little things that make it stick in the longer term memory.
The quiz is great – a bit tricky but I can see the fine lines.
One thing that I would like for future quizzes that are in that type of format is to have the English sentence exactly like you have it, but underneath it have the same in Deutsch just so I can see both sentences in their native languages.
Yes, that would be great.
Quick follow up question about your suggestion:
Do you mean that you want to see that along with the answer note?
Right now, you can pretty much see them back to back when you open the hint, so I’m wondering what you two mean exactly.
Gute Besserung!
Danke dir!
Ich wünsche dir auch gute Besserung. Hoffentlich kommt noch der “Indian Summer”. Es ist ja grade erst mal Oktober.
Ein Altweibersommer kommt schon!
@Emanuel, gute Besserung auch von mir:-)
Danke!
Super helpful! I am not sure what level of German I got up to, but it must have been higher than B1…yet I never really learned to use erst. So, thanks!
Yeah, there are quite a few of these little “everydays” that get lost over the course of a course. “erst” is one of them for sure.