“All about asking”
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Hello everyone,
day20 of our German Learning Advent Calendar, and today, I want to talk a bit about a rather common German word.
One of the absolute essential German words even, because without it, we won’t ever get any answers.
I’m talking of course about
fragen
Now, of course you all know what it means, and you probably have used it many times already.
But let’s go over the basics real quick anyway, because why not. Feel free to skip it if you want to miss out.
fragen – grammar and usage
The conjugation is 100% organic, free range, grass fed Irish beef…
aka 100% natural, aka 100% regular.
- ich frage
- du fragst
- er/sie/es fragt
- wir fragen
- ihr fragt
- sie fragen
And the same goes for the past tense, which would be ich fragte, du fragtest and so on. But fragen is definitely one where people use the spoken past in daily life and that is also super regular.
- ich habe gefragt…
In terms of structure, the person you ask is the direct object, so in German that means it’ll be in Accusative.
- Ich frage mich, warum du mich fragst.
- I’m asking myself, why you’re asking me.
And just like in English, you can also add the question as a direct object.
- Ich frage dich eine Frage.
- I’m asking you a question.
This is actually VERY unusual in German, having TWO Accusative like that. There’s only a handful or verbs that do have two Accusative objects. Like kosten for example, or lehren. Or nennen.
- Das kostet mich ein Vermögen.
- That costs me a fortune.
- Ich nenne meinen Chef einen Idioten.
- I call my boss an idiot.
So fragen is actually pretty exclusive and cool. Or just a weirdo. Depends on how you look at it.
Anyways, the last thing we need to know to get the full usage picture is the verb’s pee-pee. Which stands of course for preferred preposition.
You see, verbs often have a pee-pee, that they use to connect objects. For the English to ask that is for.
And for German fragen, that is of course für.
Nah… kidding. It’s nach.
And before you ask… nach makes just as much sense as for does in English. For might just “feel” more logical because you’re used to it. But pee-pee just evolve and sometimes they do line up and other times they don’t.
Anyway, here’s an example
- Ich frage dich nach dem Weg.
- I’m asking you for the way.
And that leads us right over to the one important difference between German fragen and English to ask – requests.
English to ask for is commonly used in contexts where you actually kind of demand something.
- In the email, the manager is asking for peak performance.
If you translate that with fragen, it would sound like the manager is like
“Hello team, does anyone have an idea where peak performance is?
I kind of need it, but I can’t find it.”
Actually, this sounds like a pretty passive aggressive manager, but I hope you get what I mean. fragen is only about legit asking in the sense of wanting to know or sometimes asking for permission.
For asking in the sense of “give me!” either use bitten um or just go for fordern or verlangen.
Cool.
So that’s the little overview over how to use fragen.
But the real reason I decided to include this word in this year’s calendar is its origin.
The origin of “fragen”
Obviously, fragen has no family ties to to ask. Nor to demand or request.
In fact, I wasn’t able to come up with any potential English relatives.
Actually, maybe take a second to brainstorm – Just based on looks and sound, which English words could be related to fragen…
…
…
If you can’t think of anything, no worries. As I said, I couldn’t either.
But there actually are some.
The origin of the family is the self-indulgently ancient Indo-European *prek-, which was about the core idea of asking, entreating.
And one of the English offspring of this is … drumroll… precarious. Today, this is about uncertainty and danger, but in Latin, it was more about depending on favors, asking for something. Which is what you’d do if your situation is precarious.
But there’s an even more surprising relative: the verb to pray. Which is in essence also about asking for something. And while we’re at it, to pray is pretty much the cousin of the Spanish preguntar. And that means… to ask. fragen – pray – preguntar… all cut from the same cloth. I was surprised when I found this and also a little bored. Like… can these languages never do anything original? It’s almost like modern movies. But that’s a different topic.
So, that’s it for today. Let me know in the comments if you have any Fragen about fragen and I’ll clear them all up.
Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Emanuel
Are you saying that the “nach” is optional?
Are these two sentences equivalent? Is either preferable?
You translate the first of these as:
If I met that sentence, I would struggle to know what it meant.
For me once I put “for” after “ask”, I am changing it from a proper question into a request. A “bitten um” sentence.
A person who asks “for” something, wants me to give them something.
John
Only the first version, the one with “nach”, is correct. The other one is wrong. The “object of desire” of “fragen” is always connected with “nach”.
Does that help?
Interesting that “asking for the way” actually doesn’t really work.
Thanks, that does help.
So when you say: “you can also add the question as a direct object.”, that is only true in a very limited sense.
John
Fragen is froge in Pa Dutch interestingly enough. Du fragst mich eine Frage: du froogscht mich e Froog (there’re various ways to spell all of that and some of it depends on the person, and the loan of ‘question’ might also be used). The odd thing is that the G in froge is pronounced a lot softer than German fragen, almost completely disappearing.
Is the “g” pronounced like a German “j”? Like “frooye”? Then it would be like Berlin dialect “g”. All in all, the PA versions sound a bit like Plattdeutsch to me (a Northern variant) but it’s similar enough to standard German that I would understand it without issues, I think… at least based on this example.
Most closely related to southeastern varieties of Pfälzisch interestingly enough.
G only becomes J around front vowels, so like Regge (Regen) is ‘Rejje’ essentially. Lügen > liege (lieje).
Back vowels has them going almost silent, but still somewhat there. Like a really weak version of the Dutch G (and still voiced) that can be somewhat rounded depending on surrounding vowels
So froge in that context, would be the weaker back vowel sound. Though it returns in conjugated versions like ‘froogscht’
Gets spelled as ‘frohwa’ in some American English based orthographies.
It does (mostly) remain a plosive at the ends of words though so for example ‘Weg’ is still got a K sound at the end rather than a CH sound (some exceptions are words like gluuch (klug, I’d normally use gscheit) and Zeich (Zeug) and -ig endings which are thus spelt -ich)
Froge thankfully is fairly easy, words like Schtarem and Mariye might be a bit more difficult maybe? lol
“seller Schtarem waar demariye e Bissli schtarick awwer der Regge waar waarem”
“that storm (I’d normally use Gwidder though) was a bit strong this morning but the rain was warm”
Wow, okay, I would never have figured out that “Schtarem” is “Sturm” :D. Same for “demariye”.
what about “fragment” in English ( something missing or the unfinished sentence – requiring something or needs something ( asking for some additional part ) as a related word ?
Great idea! But it comes from a root that was about breaking. Same as “break” and “fraction”.
Pray is also used in archaic English synonymously with ask, such as “Pray you, sir, whose daughter?”, and “I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this…”
Wow, so weird how close the languages seem when we look at their older versions!
I love your discussions of word orgins. Fascinating!
“Ask” has several pee pees: Ask about, ask for. “Inquire” also can be paired with: inquire about, inquire after (which is similar to fragen nach).
There is some german language YouTuber that I stumbled across one day, obviously a random video in an ongoing series, but he without any sense of explanation, just started saying pee-pee over and over. You need a pee-pee. Where is the pee-pee? …It took me about 10 minutes to figure out he was referring to the past participle.
Do you think he was going for the adolescent humor or just for the abbreviation :)?
After hovering and benefitting from this site for too long, I finally signed up for a year membership. Now I don’t feel so guilty!
I wanted to share a thought about “fragen nach.” I occasionally hear that expression in the US–to “ask after” someone. It usually means to inquire as to the person’s health or well-being.
Oh nice. Maybe some leftover of the German portion of immigrants in the US.
Happy you joined :)!
I’ll be adding more member exclusive stuff next year, so I hope you won’t regret it.
Yes, such leftovers are encountered every once in a while, Not too infrequently one hears “this here” in the sense of “this here is the library.” That is not proper English, but I believe “Das hier ist die Bibliothek” is proper German. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) In cities with a heavy German immigarnt ancestry like Cincinnati people will say “please” when they don’t understand something, an obvious direct translation of “bitte.”
I am quite certain I won’t regret the membership. I am sure I’ve already received benefit that outweighs the annual cost just in my past hoverings!! At least now I have a clear conscience!
To “ask after” someone is actually a common expression in British English, at least among folk of my age. “This here” (or “this ‘ere”) doesn’t seem particularly American, to my English/Australian ears, either.
One piece of US usage that does seem to me to derive from German is of “already,” which around New York especially can be used very much as German “schon.”
“This here” is absolutely 100% how I would say these things in German.
“Das hier ist… ”
This is SUPER COMMON!!
My smart*** son thinks there should be a postcarious condition. :-D Like what happens after you’ve hung in there.
It’s still fun to know that the word stem is precar-, not -car-.
Postcarious, I like that. Just might steal that one.
“Prec” is actually the stem, from Latin prex (prayer, request) + arius (suffix that turns nouns into adjectives). I’m so used to “pre” being a prefix too, but you can see “prec” in a couple other places like deprecate. Which originally meant to pray away, and then turned into expressing disapproval of something. Imprecate is another one (to call down by prayer –> invoke a curse on someone).
Edit: prefix, not suffix. Woops.
:-))
Nice, I’d throw “ambicarious” in there, when you don’t really know :)
Ooooh! I like ambicarious!! Can’t wait to use it on my son!
Ja, okay, gut, aber ich frage mich, warum nichts über fragen-Freunde wie befragen, ausfragen, nachfragen, oder Umfrage zu sehen war. Vielleicht kannst du diese in einen anderen Eintrag eingehen. Oder möglicherweise könntest du einen neuen Eintrag über die Wörter schreiben, die man verwendet, wenn eine Frage gestellt ist, und zwar antworten, beantworten, erwidern, usw.
Siehst du? Wie gierige Kinder zur Weihnachtszeit wollen die Leser immer mehr!
Hahaha… ja genau :). Nie ist es genug.
Im Ernst… du kannst im Prinzip alle Präfix-Versionen in meinem Wörterbuch hier finden. Und dann frag gerne, falls was nicht klar ist.
Aber als Advents-Artikel wäre das hier zu lang geworden.
Über “antworten” und “beantworten” habe ich übrigens schon geschrieben :)
Ich esse die heutige Schokolade aus meinem Adventskalender, während ich Emmanuels Adventskalender lese. Pur Genuss.
Gönn dir :)!!
Ask is derived from heischen says wiktionary. What happened to heischen?
Wow, “heischen”… that’s a surprise.
It is very rare these days, but “erheischen” still pops up from time to time.
Hallo,
Two lil’ typos:
gras fed Irish beef (grass fed Irish beef)
surprsied (surprised)
I have a Frage about fragen: which is most idiomatic, “Ich frage dich eine Frage” or “Ich stelle dich eine Frage”?
Bis morgen!
One more: I’m guessing you meant to say “Obviously, fragen has no family ties to to ask.”
It’s “stelle DIR eine Frage”
Yup, true :)!
I’d definitely say
But that might be because I dislike the doubling of the stem “frag”. But that doesn’t mean that all people think that way.
I think the most idiomatic is