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.
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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.
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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.