Hello everyone,
And welcome to a new episode of what is shaping up to become my new favorite series – How To Say In German?
And I think I have also found a great shorthand for it: HOTSIG.
HOTSIG… that sounds very German, but it also has hot in it, so I can find myself in there as well.
Uhm… yeah… anyways, so today, we’ll take a look at
How to translate “to mean” in German
Because there are two distinct cases, that call for different verbs.
You’ve probably already heard of the two main options: the first one is meinen, and the other one is bedeuten. And believe it or not, mixing them up actually sounds surpisingly bad.
Like… I’m not even sure I would understand.
Today, we’ll explore the difference between the two, and we’ll also take a quick look at what other uses and meanings meinen and bedeuten have that are NOT translated as to mean.
So are you ready?
Then let’s go.
“meinen” and “bedeuten” – What’s the difference
Luckily, the difference between the two is quite clear and simple to grasp.
Are you ready?
Here it is:
- meinen is about what’s in the head of a person
- bedeuten is about objective meaning, significance of something
And I have a really simple mnemonic for it:
meinen is the mind.
bedeuten is the… uh… bedeuten is the… the real world thing.
Well, okay. I have the first half of a really simple mnemonic for it.
Anyway, let’s do an example
- Ich meine den Film, nicht das Buch.
- I mean the movie, not the book.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Kein Internet bedeutet kein Netflix.
- No internet means no Netflix.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Can you see the difference?
The first one is about what I have in mind, the second one is about what it signifies to have no internet.
This distinction actually also fits perfectly with the families they come from. meinen and to mean as well as mind, mantra, mental and even music all come from a root *men- which was about thinking. About what’s going on in our mind, and that includes believes.
bedeuten on the other hand belongs to a family of words that revolves around the idea of making clear, pointing out reality. Well, originally, it was about tribe, which is also where the word deutsch comes from. But many of the modern words with deut in them are about clarifying or pointing out.
Anyway, let’s do another example.
- Die Erde sieht flach aus. Das bedeutet, dass sie flach ist.
- The earth looks flat, that means, it is flat.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Meine Haare sind speziell?! Was meinst du mit “speziell”?”
“Ähhh… gut! Ich meine gut!” - “My hair is peculiar?! What do you mean by “peculiar”?”
“Uhm… good. I mean good!” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now some of you might be like “Wait a second, Emanuel, the earth is NOT flat. So that’s clearly not a statement about objective reality. Shouldn’t that be meinen?”
And I totally understand the logic there.
However, it is PRESENTED as a statement of objective meaning. It’s an “when A then B” statement. It’s of course just an opinion of the person saying it. Maybe the person doesn’t even really think that. But that doesn’t matter here. What matters is what TYPE of statement it is.
See, the first statement is about something in the world. The second one on the other hand is about something in someone’s mind. That’s the difference.
Like… take this example:
- A broken fridge means warm beer.
If we were to translate that with meinen, it would sound like the broken beer fridge has an opinion.
I mean… maybe in a few years from now, with all that AI stuff going, maybe a broken fridge does have an opinion. Maybe it’s even on X. Or has a podcast.
“Welcome to the Broken Beer Fridge podcast. Today, I’m here with my buddy, the airfryer and we want to talk about the elections…”
Hell yeah, I say. The future looks bright.
But seriously, in a nutshell, bedeuten is used in contexts where someone talks about what SOMETHING means or signifies in terms of reality. That can still be purely their opinion, and complete nonsense. Factualness doesn’t matter. I mean… it does, but not for the use of bedeuten.
Anyway, we will go over some more examples of course, but I think it’s actually better to do this directly as a quiz, so you don’t just passively soak something up but actually have “skin in the game”, so to speak.
I just want to talk about the two nouns real quick, because there, the distinction is even sharper.
“die Meinung” vs. “die Bedeutung”
And here, we have a proper false friend. die Meinung looks like it could be meaning. But it’s not. die Meinung ONLY means opinion. It’s what’s in your mind.
- Viele Deutschlehrer finden der, die, das echt wichtig. Ich bin anderer Meinung.
- Many German teachers find der, die, das really important. I have a different opinion.
(Lit.: I’m of a different opinion. ) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Meiner Meinung nach ist Satzbau viel wichtiger.
- In my opinion, sentence structure is much more important.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Bedeutung on the other hand is about what SOMETHING means. And it can be about the “signification”, so what something is code for for instance.
- Wenn man das Wort Narzisst zu breit verwendet, verliert es seine Bedeutung.
- If you use the term narcisist too broadly, it loses its meaning.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Das Verb anstellen hat eindeutig zu viele Bedeutungen.
- The verb anstellen definitely has too many meanings.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And it can also mean significance in the sense of how “significant” something or someone is.
- Wie man etwas sagt, hat eine große Bedeutung.
- It has great significance/impact how you say something.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And if you were to use Meinung in place of Bedeutung that would be REALLY confusing, and the other way around as well.
- The verb anstellen has too many opinions.
If someone said that, you would probably not understand what they’re trying to say.
And that’s kind of sort of how different meinen and bedeuten feel to a German native speaker.
So, are you ready to practice this a little bit?
Then let’s do it!
meinen or bedeuten – A Small Practice
Here’s how it works: I’ll just give you a few English examples for to mean and you’ll have to decide if you need meinen or bedeuten.
The hints have the German version without the verb.
And I’ll give a little explanation about every answer, to really drive home the difference.
Viel Spaß!!
Cool!
So that was it for the difference between bedeuten and meinen.
But before we wrap up this article, I want to talk about… drumroll… Other Meanings™.
Both verbs, meinen and bedeuten, are used in contexts where they do NOT translate as to mean and this might actually confuse you if you’re not aware of it.
So let’s look at that real quick.
Other meanings of “meinen” and “bedeuten”
Let’s start with the side meaning that’s LESS important, and that would be the one of bedeuten.
Here’s an example:
- Und plötzlich waren sie da. Einhörner. 30 Meter vor uns auf der Wiese. Ich wollte rufen, doch die Fee bedeudete mir zu schweigen.
- And then suddenly, there they were. Unicorns. 30 meters ahead of us on a meadow. I wanted to shout, but the fairy signalled/ indicated to me to be quiet.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
bedeuten can mean to signal in a sense of doing a small gesture or even just a way of looking at someone, a sense that ties in well with the branch of the deuten family which is about pointing or indicating.
But you do not need to really remember this one, because the example above is the only kind of context where you’d see it – in a novel.
The side meaning of meinen on the other hand is daily life material.
Here it is:
- Mein Date meinte dann, dass in Deo Stoffe sind, die das dritte Auge verschließen und da bin ich gegangen.
- My date then said that in deodorant there are substances that shut the third eye, and that’s when I left.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Kommt Maria heute?”
“Is’ noch nicht klar. Sie hat gemeint, sie muss gucken, wie lange sie arbeiten muss und entscheidet dann.” - “I Maria going to come today?”
“Not clear yet. She said that she has to see how long she’ll have to work and then she’ll decide.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Yes, that’s right. meinen is used in the simple sense of to say. And there wouldn’t be any difference if you swap in sagen in the examples.
What’s important is that it doesn’t work for sagen if it’s really only the act of pronouncing a word.
- The cat said my name.
- Die Katze hat meinen Namen gesagt,
gemeint.
meinen wouldn’t work here, because this example is really only about the act of pronouncing the name, while meinen is still about “the mind”.
Oh, and another important difference is that this meinen works best in the past tense. So basically, when you “narrate” to someone what you or someone else said.
- Thomas hat gemeint, dass wir kein Bier mitbringen müssen.
- Thomas said that we don’t have to bring beer.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
If you use it in the present tense, it tends to shift its meaning toward … well.. meaning.
- Thomas meint, dass wir kein Bier mitbringen müssen.
- Thomas means that we don’t have to bring beer.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And actually (and this is really the last point for today), this example can also mean that Thomas THINKS we don’t have to bring beer.
- Thomas is of the opinion/thinks that we don’t have to bring beer.
This is actually kind of a second side meaning of meinen. To think.
- “Ich muss für die Prüfung nicht lernen. Ich kann alles.”
“Wenn du meinst.” - “I don’t need to practice for the exam. I know everything.
“If you think so.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So let’s maybe recap this real quick: the main meaning of meinen is to mean in the sense of “wanting to say”.
And in the past, meinen can be used as to say and in the present it can be used as to think. And the overarching theme is clearly “what’s on one’s mind”.
Now, some of you might actually have been sitting on a question for almost the entire article. And that question is:
“What about heißen?”
Because that one is also a translation for to mean. A fairly common one, actually. And I did want to include it here at first, but then I felt like it’s better if we focus fully on meinen and bedeuten first, and it was already long enough, I feel like.
So we’ll talk about heißen in the next article.
But for today, we’ve done enough :).
As usual, if you have any questions or suggestions, just leave me a comment. I hope you liked it, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bis dann.
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I receive the newsletters. is that enough for me to learn German? What else should I do? Sincerely, GS (a nonagenarian ! Please don’t laugh.)
The newsletters are absolutely not enough :). They’re just reading practice.
It’s hard to recommend anything because I don’t know your level of German, your learning type and your preferences and your specific goals.
I personally learn in the Goethe institute in my country. I find it super helpful learning in an actual course, speaking to other students, doing homework and marking your progress with the official German levels A1-C2. I use the newsletter as a fun addition, while also trying not to read about stuff I have not yet encountered in my course. I feel like one must know the basics to really benefit from the newsletters – they are (an important) extracurricular.
Hi Emannuel! Danke für den Artikel!! Ich bin schon gespannt auf den Artikel über “heißen”.
I wanted to ask you something, if you let me:
“Ich wollte rufen, doch die Fee bedeudete mir zu schweigen.”
I thought that “rufen” was calling someone by shouting. But it seems that it´s a synoyme for “schreien” is it always so?
No, it means “to shout”. It’s not about screaming in fear. The example leaves it open what the person was wanting to shout. Maybe shout over to a friend to hide or shouting to the unicorns like “Hey, come here.” but it’s definitely shouting not screaming.
A huge thank you to Emanuel and the community for donating sponsor accounts to help those learning German but can’t afford it. Your support is really making a difference, giving people the chance to keep learning and improving. If you’re serious about learning German, don’t be shy – just shoot him an email and ask about the sponsor accounts. It’s an awesome opportunity to kickstart your language journey.
Also, I want to mention that this blog has been super helpful for me while learning German. It’s cleared up so many questions I had along the way
Yup, great that you mention that!!
Many people who ask for a sponsorship say in their email that they hesitated sending the email or that they feel bad.
And I imagine, some people never write because they “don’t dare”.
There is no shame in having to ask for help, so do it :)
Even though I am a customer of the non-paying kind, yet for my part I’m burdened with the duty of performance when your lesson arrives.
I don’t understand what that means.
I just mean that I don’t down-value the lesson because it is received for free. I always do it.It would be like getting invited to dinner and leaving food on the plate uneaten.
This website is the closest to a German gold mine out there. Not only is it very helpful for beginners like me, but the community is so kind to have given multiple people sponsorships to allow learning German for people in need. Thanks to Mr. Emanuel and the community for giving me and a lot of others sponsorships to learn!
There is an English verb from around 1557AD “to opine”, meaning to speak one’s opinion (or perhaps simply to hold the opinion), parallel to “meinen”. It’s rare, but still occurs in some US novels.
Oh, I’ve definitely heard that one, even in YOutube essays :)
I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the community for sponsoring my membership! I’m so grateful for your support. It means a lot to me. I’m really looking forward to diving into the resources and continuing my German learning journey. Thanks again!
There’s another form for “to mean” = “to intend” using wollen and sagen (or fragen) and usually a daß clause. It’s best illustrated as follows…
Wollen Sie sagen, daß… Do you mean to say that…?
Was wolltest du damit sagen? What did you mean by that?
Das ist nicht das, was ich sagen wollte. That’s not what I meant to say.
Ich wollte nur helfen. I only meant to help.
Ich wollte dich fragen, ob… I meant to ask you if / whether…
True, and for that matter there’s also “be meant to do something” (although AE speakers generally use “be supposed to” for that sense). That’s going to be a form of sollen.
Damn, I forgot about those. I know them, of course, but they were kind of so “removed” from the meaning cloud my head was in, that they didn’t occur to me at the time.
“Mean” just means a lot of things in English haha
I think the focus of the article is good – it would be easy to distract from the basic meinen vs. bedeuten explanation with all sorts of things. The article as it is is about what I’d expect from the title, so I think these are more just little side-note “oh hey there’s also this” stuff for anybody who’s interested.
Perhaps. But the article is titled “How to say “to mean” in German.” I might have expected something more broaden. For example “heißen” was added.
In any case, it’s up to the author. Maybe a follow up article is warranted.
Here’s another “to mean” form:
– Das Buch ist für dich bestimmt. The book is meant for you.
– Das Buch ist zum Zeichnen bestimmt. The book is meant for drawing.
– Er war nicht zum Führer bestimmt. He was not meant to be a leader.
Here’s another possibility.
– Was verstehen Sie darunter? What do you mean by this?
There are no doubt others. “to mean” is very versatile!
I can’t cover all possibilities though, that would overwhelm most of the people.
I think the first one you mentioned, the one about “intent” really is an oversight and could well have been in the article. Probably should have been.
Now it’s in the comments, which is great, too.
– “vestehen unter”
For this one, “to mean” is not the first translation that comes to mind and “meaning” is not the core of it. And “is meant” is a fixed phrasing of sorts in that I cannot really say “I mean this book for you.”. These smaller instances are definitely something I usually leave for the comments.
I know that prepositions are completely crapshoots sometimes, but I’m wondering why we use “nach “for meiner meinung nach.
Oh that’s an easy one to clear up – one of the core notions of “nach” is “following” (the other one being “near, going near”).
Does that help?
So one is saying “My opinion is as follows..” (?)
“Meiner Meinung nach blah blah blah”
Then could one back-announce* it at the end of the sentence” “blah blah blah, meiner Meinung vor” (…but that is my opinion).
*Back Announce is what DJs used to do on the radio (and tv people still do) “That was Taylor Swift with her new hit song _____”. “That was reporter Max Moritz reporting from Berlin”
It’s more the other way around: “If you follow my opinion, you will see it this way…”
Ohhh, now I see how it could be confusing.
So it’s like Berlingrabers said.
The “nach” is a postposition here, but its effect is the same as for a preposition:
– following my opinion
– according to my opinion
Now, some of you might actually have been sitting on a question for almost the entire article. And that question is:
“What about heißen?”
LOL. How did you know? I’ll have to go back and reread to focus on meinen and bedeuten because I was in fact looking for heißen.
Hallo,
Great article, I though I had a feeling for this difference already, you you managed to trick me with the “Philip” question :)
Some (few) typos:
“And believ it or not” (And believe it or not)
“what TYPE of statement is it” (what TYPE of statement it is)
“so don’t just passively” (so you don’t just passively)
Bis bald!
I do feel like I run into “was meint das?” or “das meint _____” now and then, even from native speakers, as what seems like just a shorter alternative to bedeutet. Searching “was meint das” on Google turns up close to 90,000 hits, so even if a good number of those aren’t relevant, it does seem to be a thing.
For better or worse, it’s another bit of Denglisch (like “das macht Sinn”) that seems to have a foothold.
That said: you definitely can’t mix up Meinung and Bedeutung and expect to be understood.
Hmm, interesting. To me, this sounds 100% like an Anglicism, like “Ich bin fein damit.”
But I now googled it too and did find quite a few instances by “reputable” sites and publications.
I then checked Google ngram for “was meint das” vs “was bedeutet das”, and that kind of reassured me that sticking with “bedeuten” is the better choice.
I also checked for “das meint nichts” vs “das bedeutet nichts” and the results are similar.
And the phrase “das meint, dass” really doesn’t seem to be a thing.
I would recommend learning and applying the distinction, but I can’t deny that Germans do use “meinen” in a way that REALLY strikes me as weird :).
(The shortness is not a factor, I don’t think, as “was heißt das” already offers a short alternative. And it looks like “das meint” has been around for a while so it’s not a modern import. )
Yeah, I mean, just glancing over the results, I think you can for sure make the case that “was meint das” is just sort of blurring the distinction and projecting the source’s intention (meinen) onto the content (bedeuten). It’s something like “what is the intended meaning behind this.” Although maybe if you dig deeper there are other things going on.
Just before the quiz you write, “And that’s kind of sort of how different meinen and bedeuten feel to a German native speaker.” and I was thinking, “Yeah, but I totally get it”
Then I kept missing quiz questions and realized I didn’t get it nearly as much as I thought.
Well done.
“Sagen wollen” seems like another option for “to mean.”
Of course, it can have different translations, like “what are you saying?” or “what are you trying to say.” But the basic idea seems to line up with “what’s in your head?”
For question 3 on the quiz, I think the double meaning in English would work a little better if you said something like
Just because it feels a little weird to refer to “your cat” as “it.” But I did get what you were getting at :)
Yeah i had the exact same thought about the cat and „it“ I guess if its unknown cat id maybe go for „it“ but especially if its a talking cat it seems to have way too much personality to use „it“‘
What would a vet use? Do they ask the gender and then use that or might they use “it”? Just curious.
maybe it if its not clear. But that said people tend to use he or she to talk about their own pets so maybe the vet picks up on the pronouns the owner uses…
Yeah, “sagen wollen” fits the bill, but I left it out because the same “alternate phrasing” exists in English.
I was actually thinking about the “Rosebud” thing and was pondering giving it to a tree, just to make it really “it”. But then I was like “Nah, they call animals “it”, it should be fine.”
Well, I guess not after all :).
I used willow tree now, for extra mystery.
It just depends on the critter and the situation. A stray cat that I only see once might be an “it,” but a friend’s cat is pretty much always “he” or “she.” Although if you’re really frustrated, you might say:
BTW, “gestured” or “motioned” could be good options for “bedeutete.” The fairy gestured/motioned for me to be quiet.
“Thomas hat gemeint, dass wir kein Bier mitbringen müssen.”
Can “nicht” be used instead of “kein” without changing the meaning?
+is there an article on heißen?
“..I wanted to shout, but the fairy singalled, indicated to me to be quiet.”
I’m not a native speaker so this may not be super accurate, but I feel like “indicating” would be a better fit here.
Indicating would indeed probably be what you’d use in standard english.
That said i feel like this use of indicated has the kind of sentence structure you might see in some literary fiction or more experimental writing , so I wouldn’t necessarily say it feels completely wrong.
In that case it would feel like a suggestion for an alternative to “signalled”- more in the spirit of listing, rather than functioning like a “relativsatz”
Do you mean “indicating” as a form specifically (as opposed to “indicated”) or just as a verb?
I did mean “signalled/indicated” as a pair of alternatives, not as a poetic specification. I realize that the comma made it super confusing.
I kinda think you can do this with any verbs. Its poetic and maybe not proper grammar (im out of my depth here as i know what sounds good in English but I can’t explain it.
I brought a fish, cooked it, fried it.
Or “drove the car into a wall, smashed it, fucked it up completely, trashed it”
I don’t think this would be considered standard English but I think the doubling has a nice poetic effect. I realise i may be sowing confusion here though .
Nah, all good. I think I understood the various configurations and what they each are in terms of meaning and tone.
I went for the most boring “signalled/indicated” now.
“nicht” would sound really really odd.
– …, dass wir nicht Bier mitbringen müssen.
Article on “heißen” is coming soon.
Danke
P. S. The comment notifications are again not opening in Google chrome. It was easy to reach this one because it’s on the latest article.
I think you mean “signalled“.
Its a shame that you ran out electrons for “heiẞen”. As a dumb American i keep saying “bedeutet” but the Germans around me always say “heißt” in that same context. I was really confused the first time I heard it, and it was from a 7 year old so i was a bit suspicious. Two years later and I don’t recall if I’ve ever heard “bedeutet” outside of a class or book. The explanation of “meinen” as a synonym of sagen is also super helpful. I never knew if there was some extra connotation there. Thanks!
Edited to add: why heiẞen feels so wrong to me is also why your duck meme feels wrong: a german word can mean something in English, but an english word is something in German.
Meinen means “to mean” in English — check
“To mean” is “meinen” in German — great
“To mean” means “meinen” in German — uhm, what?
To me, heiẞen sounds fine as “pancake heißt Pfannkuchen auf Deutsch” but “Pfannkuchen heißt pancake auf Englisch” sounds so weird even though I’m pretty sure it is totally normal German.
Wow, now that is a VERY peculiar intricacy of English… accepting “mean” in one direction but not the other.
I’m curious if other native speakers feel as strongly about this.
For reference – what part of the English speaking world are you from? BE, AE or AUE?
Yeah, that resonates. I think that last example – “‘to mean’ means ‘meinen’ in German” – really sounds like you’re saying:
Does that make sense? Like, as though to mean and meinen were synonyms in German.
I actually think the first example sounds odd too, for the same reason (although if you took out “in English,” I think it would be fine).
However:
is totally fine. :)
Yeah , i have to agree with the observation. I still like the cartoon a lot tho!
I think imma leave it as is for now. Just think of it as two German ducks arguing in English about German :).
I didn’t say you should change it! He should be an odd duck
Yeah, the ducks are great
Oh, I was just thinking about changing “means” to “is” :). The ducks took a while to prompt into existence, so they’re going nowhere.
I’m gonna go against the flow a little and say I think it works here. Yeah, it sounds kind of off. Eigentlich. But you do hear that sometimes from native speakers (especially younger people, I want to say).
And it sounds like a real online debate. An overly opinionated duck who doesn’t sound all that edumacated :) Plus I just like the sound of all the M’s.
Yeah, I left the “in English” in to keep with Emmanuel’s flow, but I doubt I’d ever say it since it’s redundant.
I’m American from the Midwest. I’ve been around a bit, but my idioms are mostly standard 1980s American.
Du hast Recht Jeffrey
I’d never thought of this before, and I had to read it a couple times to understand it, but I agree with the trilogy of “to mean” / meinen sentences in English! (I’m a native English speaker from the US.) It’s sort of like German (or other foreign languages) are code, whereas the words in my native form of English are the “real” ones.
“‘Lorry’ means ‘truck’ in American.” –check
“‘Truck’ means ‘lorry’ in British.” –weird
On the other hand, “Pfannkuchen heißt pancake auf Englisch” sounds normal to me, perhaps because I’m translating it and it comes out in mind as “Pfannkuchen is called ‘pancake’ in English,” and because I think (rightly or wrongly) of “Pfannkuchen” and “pancake” as referring to related but distinct types of food.