Hi there everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And as much as we all love talking about grammar and dig deep into words, we still need something light-hearted every once in a while, something that is easy to consume.
So today, we will not look at one word in particular. Today we’ll look at a lot of words.
We’ll take a fun little stroll along a lush field of vocabulary. You can stop and take pictures if you feel like it, or you can just enjoy the moment and then just forget without regret. Think of it as a quick summer flirt with a beautiful other.
So… drumroll…. what we are going to do today is… drumroll getting louder…
Look at the different ways of walking.
If you’re reading this before 2020, it doesn’t sound very interesting. But trust me… you’ll have a new found love for taking strolls after that clusterf… anyway, that’s still a bit away. Forget what I said.
So, are you ready to explore some German walking styles?
Then let’s go. Or walk. Or waltz. Or stride.
And we’ll start with the most “basic” one.
“laufen” – Normal Walking
Laufen is kind of the default of walking. One could think it is gehen, but gehen has soooo many different context-dependent meanings, that it can’t really be used for the mere movement. So if you’re bein’ asked how you’ll get to the bar you can say:
- Ich laufe.
- I’ll walk (as opposed to taking the bus).
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Apart from that default to walk, laufen has a shit ton of other meanings, but that’s a bit too much for today.
Now, here is the laufen grammar in a nutshell.
The vowel becomes an Umlaut for you and he, the spoken past is built using sein and the ge-form gelaufen and the real past stem is lief.
- Ich laufe – Ich bin gelaufen – Ich lief.
- Du läufst.
- Er/sie/es läuft.
One other meaning however is a walking style. Laufen can also mean running as in jogging.
“joggen” (vs “laufen” for running)
Together with Fitness and Work out, German also imported the word jogging and Germanized it, creating the verb joggen, which means to run as in: jogging.
Now what about laufen then? Are the 2 synonymous? Well, I think it works like this… people who are really serious about it, like… they do it everyday and they have incredible stamina and really expansive shoes and eat a power bar before, they call what they do laufen and if you tell them that they joggen they will be like “Pfff come one, joggen is for all those losers who just circle 2 rounds in some park nearby.”
So joggen is for everyone as an alibi “I need to do something for my body”, but laufen is the real jogging as a sport. But to be serious… it doesn’t really matter :)
Here now an example and the grammar.
- Ich gehe gerne joggen/laufen.
- I like to go running.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
The past comes with sein, the ge-form is gejoggt and the real past stem is joggte.
“rennen” as “to run”
Rennen is the German brother of to run. But rennen is really only to run really fast so it is NOT like jogging at all. Also all the other meanings of to run, like water or business etc., are very likely NOT included in rennen, so don’t try. Rennen is to run fast and that’s it.
- Scheiße, der Bus kommt schon. Sollen wir rennen oder auf den nächsten warten?
- Shit, the bus is coming already. Should we run or wait for the next one?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
The past is build with sein, the ge-form is gerannt (pron.: gerunnt) and the real past stem is rannte.
By the way… the German title of Run, Lola run! is Lola rennt… which also makes for a decent plot summary :).
What is “schlendern”
Good god, so much sport right in the beginning… we’re sure in for some relaxation now so schlendern is just the right thing for us. Schlendern is a kind of slow, very relaxed walk with lots of looking here and there,
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Hi
Illuminating as always
A few tweaks
To limp implies injury. It does not have a subtext of tiredness as to trudge or to plod does
To walk without lifting one’s feet is to shuffle or, literally, to drag one’s feet (which is also to delay or do something inappropriately slowly). While scuffle works according to the dictionary I would not immediately know what that is in regard to walking.
Usually applied to a fight.
scuffle is a short, rough, and disorganized fight or struggle,
Bye
Thanks a lot, I have modified the entry in the dictionary!
Hi Emanuel, thank you for the post! I don’t know if I will be able to incorporate it into my active vocabulary, but at least I will understand them :)
I had 2 questions while reading:
Thank you in advance !! :)
1)
If you’re clearly talking about doing sports, then it’ll be okay, but if it’s in a context of just “hobbies”, it’s a bit unclear and I’d then go for “Ich jogge gerne” instead. Because yes, it can be understood as just walking.
2)
“über den Markt” – across the market
“auf den Markt” – onto the market (from not on it to on it)
“auf dem Markt” – “on” the market
“auf dem Markt herumschlendern” could also work, but “auf den Markt schlendern” means you’re not there and you stroll there.
It’s not connected to the verb directly, so you could replace “schlendern” with “gehen”.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the great article. My German friend suggested “hoppsalalaufen” for “to skip”.
I’ve never heard that and I don’t think I’d understand it without context.
I was intuitively thinking of the child’s game where you jump over a rubber band in a pattern.
With the rubber band I would call it French skipping (I don’t know why)
Hmm, maybe I spelt it wrong. This is what I would simply calling skipping, but it looks a bit too controlled here: https://youtu.be/hn5iuCYCJUc
Yeah, that’s what I had in mind for skipping, as well, and I do feel like I have heard “Hopserlauf” before.
And yes, the way he does it in the video is like he’s warming up for a soccer match.
Die richtige Seite für den Pons Eintrag ist https://de.pons.com/übersetzung/deutsch-englisch/laufen
Would a diminutive form of tanzen, taenzeln, work as a translation for the English ‘skip’?
Nope, “tänzeln” to me, implies a slightly erratic trajectory with curves in it and not very energetic steps.
When I was learning German at university (in Australia) I was taught that “Ich gehe spazieren” is the only way to say “I’m going for a walk” or “I walk”, so this article is interesting. I’m sure I was taught a very limited vocabulary!
Yeah, a course can only cover so much… broadening the vocabulary like that is more like “solo”-work, as I call it :)
Was ist der Unterschied zwischen humpeln und hinken?
Gute Frage. ich würde sagen “hinken” ist ein bisschen ordentlicher und kann immer nur auf einer Seite sein. “humpeln” ist etwas genereller und geht für mein Verständnis auch beidseitig.
Hoffe, das hilft.
Your articles are good except for one thing…the swear words. You know, if you leave them out, no one will be offended, and you’ll still get your point across. I was just about to recommend your website to my whole German class until I started coming across the bad language. Are these words really necessary?
That’s a tricky issue. IN the beginning, I would use the f-word here and there because I wasn’t aware how offensive it really is for people, so I stopped using it (there are some scattered in older posts though).
I don’t think there’s an f-word in this one so I guess you’re referring to “shit” or “crap” or “ass”, which are the only ones I can think of that I use regularly (I don’t use “c__” or “retarded” or “bitch”, I believe). Are they necessary to get my point across? Certainly not. But then again, they are part of how I talk in daily life and they help me to express some sort of emotion or intensity, if that makes sense. And I kind of don’t want to tone that down. I would definitely miss something and the writing process would feel less natural. So I’m really on the edge on this one… I do have under aged readers but I don’t think anyone below 12. If you don’t want to recommend the site, I fully understand that. But I hope you can also understand why they’re in there. I’m trying to use them only when I “feel” it (as dumb as that may sound to you), not to copy “cool” American talk.
Thanks for replying.
Sure thing. I always welcome constructive criticism!
I wasn’t aware of “race-walking” as a sport, maybe because Americans don’t seem to win very often (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racewalking#Top_performers). However, that style of ambulation is very recognizable to me as “power walking.”
Isn’t ”hüpfen” a good translation for skipping around ??
Not really, “hüpfen” is more with both legs at the same time, in sync. Or just hoping on one leg but not this specific skip walk.
Love the post as always. Walking has always been a difficult one for me to translate. And you’ve cleared a lot of it for me. But still some sentences i!m not clear on like “I’m just going to take the dog for a walk” Or that classic opening for a joke “a guy walks into a bar”. How to translate these? Also, since I am a new father, how to say “finally she can walk”?
Good questions! So “walking the dog” or “taking the dog for a walk” is called…. drumroll
– mit dem Hund Gassi gehen.
“Gassi gehen”… that really only means “walking the dog”. No idea where it comes from :). Oh, you can also say
– Ich gehe mit dem Hund raus.
That’s the same meaning.
The classic joke opening is done with “kommen” … kind of like a movie. We have an establishing shot and then the guy enters. The style of walking doesn’t matter at all, hence the generic “kommen”. However, German joke intro sentences actually have their own sentence structure and (better sit down) the verb is NOT in position 2.
– Kommt ein Mann in eine Bar…
– Sagt ein Mann zu einem Pferd..
– Treffen sich zwei Erbsen auf einer Brücke…
Last but not least, babies learn “laufen” so it is
– Sie kann endlich laufen”
Glückwunsch zum Papa-Sein :)
Amazing and entertaining post, congrats!
Thanks :)
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=mooch “loiter in a bored or listless manner! (loiter’ being another term for walking slowly). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/mooch: ‘INFORMAL: walk or act slowly and without much purpose. “period of time spent walking around slowly and without much purpose: I’m going for a mooch round the shops (= to look at what is there, not to buy a particular thing).
I’m convinced… I think it was mainly the rain that gave me doubts :D
…whereas to an American, “mooch” has zero to do with walking. “To mooch” means to somehow come into possession of a thing you did ‘t really earn, or that isn’t really yours, but you didn’t really steal it either because the person who you got it from would totally have given it to you if they had known about it. You mooch food off your office mate’s desk, for example– to “cadge” might be a good synonym.
A desultory, not-unpleasant day spent wandering aimlessly from one place to another would probably be called “bumming around” in America.
Wow, “mooch” is a pretty specific term then. I can’t think of an equivalent for that in German… like “steal but not steal”… no idea :)
Just reading through this again and making some mental notes, now my German is getting a bit more advanced! By the way, I think the English equivalent for “schlendern” would be “to mooch” as in ” It was raining and there was nothing to do, so we mooched around the town for a while” :- ) Keep up the good work!
Wait, “schlendern” while it’s raining?? That doesn’t sound like very pleasant “schlendern” :).
I looked up “mooch” and based on the translations I feel like it’s more about sitting in different bars while it’s raining … schlendern really is about walking. As soon as you enter a place, heck even if you sit on a bench, you stop “schlendern”
:- ) Okay, maybe not when it is raining! But, trust me – English people “mooch around town” and “mooch around the shops” – this is a walking activity (and a pointing out (upper body) activity ….)
Hello. You are doing a great job. Really.
I have one question, about verb “spazieren”. What is difference between spazieren and bummeln (or schlendern)?
p.s. Is it possible to make something similar to the “Time” miniseries, only for the space. That and “da-words”, “her”, “doch” were so useful that I can not express it enough. Thank you for your effort.
Yeah, I definitely want to do a place-mini-series. But at the moment I am trying to finish my damn book and I don’t have enough energy to take on a topic like “place” on the side :). Also, I guess I should finish the past tense mini series first.
I’ll have to see, but you might be fluent by the time I do it ;)
As for the three verbs “spazieren, bummeln and schlendern”… “spazieren” is the most generic one and it is not very focused on the style of walking. “Bummeln” has a focus on slow, very slow, and it’s often used in context with shopping, so stopping and looking around is part of it. There’s the word “Einkaufsbummel” for example, which is a walk combined with shopping. When I think about it though, “bummeln” sounds a bit dated. It’s more something that old people “bummeln”.
“Schlendern” finally is closest to be really a style of walking. You can “schlendern” into the office for example but “bummeln” would sound a bit odd. Often “spazieren” does involve “schlendern” but I think you can also “spazieren” at a decent pace and that wouldn’t be “schlendern” anymore.
But these are all nuances. The words are really very close together.
Hope that helps a bit.
There is an (American) English phrase indicating a general laziness in being about, for example, “I’m going to bum around town for a few days,” which connotes an unhurried, aimless exploration of the area (and is not directly associated with the idea of being a useless degenerate/bum), which seems to align quite well with bummeln. Alternate concepts, like loafing, seem to be connected to this as well. Some etymology dictionaries I’ve looked into suggest that the origins of bum (useless degenerate) and bummer (sad or depressing) originated from German immigrants in the American civil war. I’m wondering, does bummeln have a pejorative connotation in modern German?
Well, there’s two “bummeln”. One is “being slow (on purpose)” and it’s often used by parents for their kids. This one is definitely negative. The other “bummeln”, the one that’s about having a stroll, is not negative sounding at all, though. I’m wondering if there’s a relation between English and German now :)
Echt cooler Post. :)
Ich finde die Vorschläge von Miles für “stolzieren” und “stapfen” sehr gut, würde aber zwischen “tramp” und “trudge”/”plod” unterscheiden. Aus meiner Sicht entspricht “tramp” der Bewegung vom Stapfen besser als die Anderen, auch wenn “trudge” onomatopöisch am besten passt. “Trudge” betont, dass man nur unter Schwierigkeiten gehen kann, z.B. durch Schnee, Matsch, Sand, hohes Gras, gefallene Blätter, usw. oder wegen Ermüdung. “Plod” ist ähnlich aber kann einfach heißen, dass der laufende schwer (oder faul) ist und deshalb langsam geht.
Gibt es ein spezifisches Wort für “sprint,” d.h. sehr schnell über eine kurze Strecke rennen?
“Amble” finde ich ziemlich gut als Übersetzung für “schlendern.” Vielleicht auch “saunter” oder “mosey” (wo es um Cowboys geht :D ). Für “bummeln” kann man auch (mindestens in den USA) “poke around/along” sagen.
Danke für die Vorschläge. Amble, saunter, mosey… habe ich alles noch nie gehört :).
Ja, es gibt das Verb “sprinten” (natürlich wird das shpri ausgesprochen). Als Nomen sagt man aber auch “Lauf”.. zum Beispiel 100-Meter-Lauf in der Schule
Können wir vielleicht einfach “skippen” sagen? Das scheint mir, wie ein echter Deutscher es machen würde. ;)
Nee, das würde keiner verstehen, weil keiner weiß, was das auf English eigentlich heißt. “Skippen” heißt, wenn, dann “to skip”.
– Ich skippe das Lied.
I’ve been studying German ten years — teachers, books, the works. Lots of good help. But your site is the best at laying out nuances simply and memorably. Just what I needed. Thanks!
This is such a great site – love it!
Freut mich :)
I have a question… let’s say that I go into my garden to go and get a frisbee or whatever, and over the last week my dog has laid many, many eggs on the lawn… so I have to be careful where I put my feet… so I lift one leg, find a safe spot, ooh find the next spot and so on… would this be “stapfen”?
I kind see it as the same kind of physical movement, you lift one leg quite high as before you place it, but I’m not sure if it fits OK. I can’t really think of an english translation though… I guess you’d just say that you went across the lawn but had to tip-toe around the eggs. But then that’s not really “schleichen” because I don’t really care about being quiet, just having clean shoes.
Interesting question :)… so, it’s definitely not “stapfen”. Yes, it is about lifting up your foot really high but more about bringing it down with force and it has no notion of care in it. Someone suggested “trudge” and “plod” as translations.
It is not “schleichen” either because just as you said “schleichen” is all about being quiet. The only one verb solution I could find was this
– Ich manövriere durch den Garten. (or ” durch das Minenfeld im Garten”)
Of course it means “to maneuver ” but the fact that it is used in combination with garden suggests that there must be a special reason for you to use this word … anyway… it is not so much about how you walk, more about the trajectory. As for the style of walking I am really at a loss… “auf Zehenspitzen gehen” maybe.