Hello everyone,
and welcome back to a brand new episode of the biggest, most epic series ever – no, not Game of Thrones and not The Mandalorian.
I am talking about Prefix Verbs Explained.
And today, we will have a look at the meanings of
anhalten
And anhalten is really special because it means to stop AND to continue.
OMG, what a #contradiction.
Gee, I actually just thought that I maybe should start making little explanatory TicTocs for these.
Like… the first part could be a guy in a car, coming to a halt with a caption “Thomas hält an.“.
And the second one could be the same guy in the same car, coming to the same halt, but then spraying us with water, and then an hour later, he’s still spraying. And the caption would be “Der Regen hält an.”
That would be cool.
Anyway, for now we’ll stick to boring ass reading, so if you want to find out how anhalten means those two things and also what the difference is between anhalten, halten and aufhören, then let’s jump right in.
English has the two verbs to hold and to halt. Both are of course related and the common theme they share is an idea of “preventing movement”. Or more generally, we could say “preventing change”. If you hold your cup, you prevent it from changing position (e.g. falling down), if you bring something to halt, you also prevent further change in location. And if a friendship is holding, then it doesn’t “change state”.
And in German, the two verbs got fused and halten covers all those ideas. So you can halten a cup, or you can halten with your bike and the cease fire between unicorns and squirrels can halten.
The meaning that matters most for us today, though is the idea of stopping. Because to stop is the main meaning of anhalten.
“anhalten” as “to stop”
And big question is of course how does the prefix an change the meaning. Like, we’ve just learned that halten itself can be about stopping at a red light. And most of you know that bus stop in German is Bushaltestelle and not Busanhaltestelle. So what’s the difference between halten and anhalten?
Well, one idea an often adds to verbs is a notion of starting. The an-version of a verb often describes the beginning of that action.
And so anhalten has the focus on the pure act of coming or bringing to a halt.
- Kannst du kurz anhalten? Ich will ein Foto machen.
- Can you stop for a second? I want to take a picture.
So you can anhalten in front of the drive through window and then halten there until you have passed your order.
Halten can express that as well, but halten can also describe the period AFTER the initial anhalten.
That’s why the no waiting sign in German is called Halteverbot, for example. You may well come to a stop there, if there’s traffic for instance, but you can’t really “stay” there.
Now you might be like “Wait, so if it works for both anyway, can I just use halten all the time and be on the safe side?”
Well, technically it would work, I guess. But as we’ve mentioned, halten has quite the range of meanings and it’s not always clear.
- Das Auto hält.
This can mean two things:
- The car stops.
- The car is holding (as in not breaking
And even though the context would make it clear, using anhalten for the stopping is much more idiomatic.
Especially, if you add the location where something is coming to a halt. Because that is usually connected by the preposition an, which means that we have a nice double an.
- Ich halte an der Ampel an.
- I stop at the traffic light.
German looooves that kind of stuff.
Cool. So the bottom line is: anhalten is the best choice whenever the context is stopping in the sense of bringing an actual movement to a halt. No more, no less.
For all the other contexts of to stop, German has different options.
And because I know you’re all gonna ask about them in the comments, let’s take a quick look at them right now :)
The other options for “to stop”
And the first one we need to mention is of course aufhören. We’ve talked about it in a separate article, so if you you want to find out WHY exactly it means to stop, you can check that out (I’ll leave the link below).
Today, we’ll focus on the difference between anhalten and aufhören. And that difference is HUGE.
Aufhören and anhalten are NEVER interchangeable, because the better translation for aufhören is actually to cease.
So someone or something is doing some sort of activity, and then stops that. THAT is aufhören.
- Der Regen hat aufgehört.
- The rain stopped.
- Das Einhorn hört auf zu rennen.
- The unicorn stops running.
Now you might be like “Wait a second, the second example is about halting a movement, right? So can’t we also use anhalten?”
Well, yes, we could say this:
- Das Einhorn hält an.
- The unicorn stops.
And the effect is pretty similar to the first sentence. However, the version with aufhören is entirely about stopping the activity and it just coincidentally happened to be a movement. The version with anhalten on the other hand doesn’t even mention the running. It’s purely about the unicorn coming to a halt.
Just to make sure though – the following would be completely wrong:
- Das Einhorn hält an zu rennen! WRONG
People wouldn’t even know what you’re trying to say.
So… aufhören is for ceasing, not doing something anymore while anhalten is about literally coming to a halt.
Here they are back to back in the same sentence:
- Hör auf zu reden und halt an!
- Stop talking and pull over!
Stop talking an stop! (lit.)
Cool.
Now, another option for to stop is beenden. Technically, it is to bring to an to end but sometimes people also use it in a sense of just knocking off something. Like… think of two co-workers who are having a little something something and then they have to stop it, because one is getting the feels.
And then, let’s not forget about aufhalten. And that one can be about simply holding up someone on their way somewhere, but it can also be to stop in the sense of prevent from doing. Like… the kind of stopping the Avengers want to do to Emperor Palpatine.
Yeah, nerds. Feel the rage. I just said it. You read it. Feel the desire to correct me. Feel it, it’ll lead to the dark si… anyway, uhm…
examples.
- Das Formatieren hält mich total auf.
- The formatting holds me up a lot.
- Wir müssen Palpatine aufhalten.
- We have to stop Palpatine.
And then, finally, there are some situations where it is not that clear…
- My internet connection sucks. When I watch a movie it always stops for a few seconds because it isn’t loading fast enough.
Honestly, I don’t really know what to say here. None of the ones we’ve mentioned really fits and I think I’d use stocken (to stutter, get stuck) or simply stoppen. Because German has that, as well :).
Anyway, so now we know which kind of stopping anhalten is used for, namely the… uhm….what was it again…. ah yeah, the kind that’s about coming to an actual halt.
But as we’ve learned in the intro, it can also express the idea of continuation.
So let’s now take a look at how that works.
anhalten as to continue
And as counter-intuitive as it may seem at first glance – it’s actually not that crazy. Just think of a big fat cloud of rain. If that comes to a halt right across your area, then that means the rain will continue. And if that doesn’t convince you, well do you remember the core theme that we found for halten itself? It was the notion of “preventing change”.
And what do you get without change? You get continuation of the current state, right?
So both ideas, stopping and continuing are just two sides of the same coin. And they’re actually also both visible in English.
- Hold on a sec!
- Love is holding on.
Neither of them will be translates with anhalten, because, confusion. BUT the two examples show the same ideas – the first one is about stopping, the second about not stopping. And you know what – about 700 years ago “Hold on!” actually meant “Continue, stay the course!”… here’s the source, if you don’t believe me.
So yeah, German anhalten isn’t THAT twisted, after all.
IN practice, this continuing-anhalten is not very common, though. It sounds a bit formal and you’ll usually find it context of weather or broader trends, like the demand for something.
- Das gute Wetter hält an.
- The good weather continues.
- Der Trend zu überteurten Vintage-Möbeln in Berlin hält an.
- The trend to overpriced vintage furniture in Berlin is continuing/here to stay.
- Wegen dem anhaltenden Applaus gab der Musiker eine Zugabe.
- Because of the continuing applause, the musician gave an encore.
I don’t actually think that you’ll need this anhalten in your active vocabulary. But it can sure be hella confusing if you see it written and you have never heard about.
Which brings us to all the other meanings that anhalten also has… nah, don’t worry, it’s not that many, and neither one is really common :).
But lets go over them real quick.
other meanings of “anhalten”
And those two seem to have nothing to do with anything we have mentioned so far.
The first anhalten – the full phrasing is jemanden zu etwas anhalten – is about a mix between urging and encouraging.
- Thomas hält seinen Sohn dazu an, die Hausaufgaben zu machen.
- Thomas mildly urges his son to do homework.
- Der alte Chef hat uns immer dazu angehalten, keine Überstunden zu machen.
- The old boss always encouraged us, not to put in overtime.
For a connection we could maybe think of a police officer stopping us to tell us to switch on the light or to stop speeding, and then the verb shifted from halting toward the advice itself. But I don’t really know if this is the connection, or if it’s even helpful.
The phrasing is definitely not very common, so don’t worry about it too much.
And the same goes for the next one, which is actually REALLY specific and we ideally only do it VERY few times in our lives.
- Thomas hält um Marias Hand an.
- Thomas asks for Maria to marry him.
Sounds a bit like we’re doing a casual afternoon ride over to the farm of our love, and there we stop and pop the question. I honestly don’t know how that connects to an and halten. But yeah, I just wanted to mention it because it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to guess if you just randomly see it in a novel.
Cool.
Now we’re almost almost almost done for today. But of course there is one more thing we need to talk about for this to be a proper episode of Prefix Verbs Explained – and that is the r-version.
ranhalten
If you’ve read a few episodes of Prefix Verbs Explained, you might know that the r-version usually tends to express the most literal meaning we can create from prefix and verb. That’s true also for ranhalten because it literally describes the act of holding an object at/against something. Like… imagine you want to hang up this old vintage “No bad vibes allowed”-sign you bought from the thrift market to hipster up your apartment. Then you could tell your friend to “ranhalten” the thing for a second so you can see if it fits at the spot.
- Kannst du das kurz ranhalten, damit ich sehe, wie es aussieht?
- Can you hold it there (against the wall) for a second, so I see how it looks.
But if that was ranhalten‘s only meaning, it’d definitely be a case for the passive pile.
However, every now and then, an r-version actually picks up a nice little obscure, metaphorical meaning itself. And ranhalten is one of them.
Sich ranhalten, to be precise, is a pretty common colloquial version for to hurry.
- Wenn ich pünktlich sein will, muss ich mich ranhalten.
- I have to hurry, if I want to be on time.
And this is one of the words that’ll REALLY make you sound like a native speaker for a second. Not because it is fancy, and not because it’s some cool slang or anything. It’s just one of those words that learners just don’t know about.
You do now, so get out there and impress your friends :)
And I think that’s it for today.
This was our look at the meaning of anhalten, the difference to halten and aufhören, and all the other stuff we’ve talked about.
As usual, if you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
further reading:
Prefix Verbs Explained – “aufhören”
Prefix Verbs Explained – “aufhalten”
“My internet connection sucks. When I watch a movie it always stops for some seconds because it isn’t loading fast enough.”
In this case I would actually use “buffers” instead of stops, buffers implies that something has temporarily paused (and will continue shortly) and is loading (not loading fast enough). Stop for me in this case would imply that the movie then ended and had to be restarted, for example due to a browser crash or some other glitch.
some seconds – I think this is a countable/non-countable thing but some seconds sounds weird. “Some time”.. yes, “a few seconds”… absolutely, some seconds hmmm OK but not really.
“some seconds”… yup, you’re totally right that it’s weird. I’ll change it.
“buffer” instead of “stop”… I’ll stick with stop, as “buffer” needs some tech knowledge and also, if I take out the part about loading, then buffering might not be the reason anymore. Maybe it’s a graphic chip issue or whatever.
I think most layman would say “stop” in this case.
Hi –
Nice work!! Can you substitute anhalten for andauern? They both seem to mean continue. Are there any usage differences ?
Danke
The difference is only contextual. “andauern” to me sound most idiomatic for negotiations or other relational states.
Would it be possible for you also to explain “festhalten”? I heard about it many times in business meeting. Could you please help me ? Thank you for your help :)
I added it to my dictionary yesterday ;) (I keep track of searches that had no result and every now and then I add a bunch of new words). You can look it up and then, if you have questions, just tell me what’s unclear.
How to make the simple sentence with Wo hält der Bus? (Post, Bahnhof, Rathaus, Betrieb, Berlin )
Wo hält die Straßenbahn? (Bahnhof, Theater, Oper)
I have difficulty with the preposition related to this institution
Der Bus hält am Rathaus an. Or Der Bus hält im Rathaus an. Can someone help me with some simple examples?
“im Rathaus” would mean “inside”, so “am” is definitely the way to go.
Also, “anhalten” is more focused on just getting to a halt, like you’d do at a street light. The act of stopping at a station to pick up passengers is commonly called just “halten” .
– Der Bus hält am Rathaus.
Hope that helps.
Danke. In case of the Post. Der Bus hält auf der Post or again it is Der Bus hält an der Post
“an” or “bei”, that’s the choices generally for these kinds of stops.
In the case of the city you can say Der Zug hält in Leipzig. In this case in is correct isn’t it?
Yes, for cities it’s “in”.
Thanks a lot!
Thomas haelt um Marias Hand an. In English we have – asking for someone’s hand – bit old-fashioned but same meaning. Great post – just need to do aufhalten now. How did your driving test go?
I haven’t done it yet, actually. I had shingles in August and that messed with my vision, so I couldn’t drive. And I hate my instructor and couldn’t bring myself to restarting. It’s stressful for me to swallow all my resentment and at the same time drive a vehicle :D
Schöner Artikel. Hier ist nichts einfach.
Wenn Sie also mit einem Freund fahren und zum Postamt kommen, wo Sie ein Paket abgeben müssen, was würden Sie dann zu Ihrem Freund sagen?
Kannst du bitte hier halten oder kannst du bitte hier anhalten?
danke
In dem Kontext passt echt beides. “anhalten” klingt ein bisschen kürzer vielleicht.
Was anhaltend als ‘continuous’ anbelangt, bin ich gerade dabei, Max Brod zu lesen und er schrieb “Er war ja in frueher Kindheit seines lang anhaltenden Krankendaseins wegen….” (Der Sommer den man zurueckwuenscht). Perfect example von diesem Sinne des Wortes. Danke sehr!
oder besser auf Englisch, “enduring”
Ja genau :). “lang anhaltend” trifft man wirklich oft als Formulierung.
absolutely brilliant
Danke :)
Actually, the duality of stop and continue in “hold” is exactly the same in English. If you put a “hold” on a transaction then it stops; a traffic jam is a hold-up; and “Hold!” is what you shout on an archery line if all shooting is to stop immediately. So very definitely the “stop” meaning is there. But equally we’d say “If the good weather holds” meaning if it continues. [You should perhaps add that example above as the correspondence between the English and the German is so very close! And our language is crazy this way too!]
And yes I think that the steady-state movement example sums it up. To continue means to stay as you are … which is another way of saying you do not move from the state you are .. which means you stop there!
Is it also a similar logic to that which has “bleiben” take “sein” in the perfect, because staying is a type of movement into the future? Though that might prompt the question why anhalten doesn’t take “sein” in the same way…? *grin*
-Phil
You can also (occasionally) use the word “hold” in English for “to continue” – most often in the context of weather. “The good weather is holding”= Das gute Wetter hält an.. or …”let’s hope the dry spell holds”…another example of the shared origins of English and German.
Ah, that’s perfect :). Makes it much easier for English speakers to remember!!
[…] I found a good site explaining halten adn anhalten: https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-anhalten/#more-4610, also, […]
Hi Emmanuel. I’m curious about the stopping vs. stationary explanation you gave. In English, to stop at a light is the process of braking, coming to a stop. Holding at the light is the stationary. These are two separate words. Of course, you could use other words. However, it seems like in German, the same word, halten, can describe both concepts.
Der Bus hält an der Tankstelle.
The bus stops at the gas station.
In English, this sentence literally means the “coming to a stop”.
The bus stops at the red light.
The bus holds at the red light (or the bus is stopped at the red light)
It seems like the German halten means both, but I can’t grasp how that could be clear enough. Am I misunderstanding this?
That’s a really interesting distinction, I never noticed that. Indeed “halten” can express both ideas. However, there’s “anhalten” which is more or less like “to come to a halt” so you can still make the distinction clear (and people do).
“Wegen dem anhaltende Applaus gab der Musiker eine Zugabe”
Should this be “des (or dem?) anhaltendeN” or did I miss something?
You’re totally right, it should be “anhaltenden”. As for “des” and “dem”… Germany is a bit on the fence about that and I think that “dem” is closer to reality
Hi Emmanuel, many thanks for this wonderful blog. I’m finally boggled about something that you haven’t already provided the answer for. So I’m making a word of the day request which I hope you will feel like tackling. And that is, all the difference between all the different ways to think e.g. denken, nachdenken, halten von etc. Of particular interest is halten von. It is a verb and preposition pair which I’m just not really getting the feel for. Many thanks and best wishes for 2016
Wunderschön erklärt! Mir gefällt sehr deine Art, wie du die Wörter mit interessanten Beispielen auseinandergesetzt hast :-) Es ist mir jetzt klarer nicht nur über “anhalten” oder “halten”, sondern auch über die mit ‘an’ verbundenen Wörter. Tolles Blog von dir! Toi toi toi!
Danke für das schöne Feedback. freut mich, dass es dir gefällt :)
Great and helpful, as usual. And once more i think that german is quite like russian, we have the same two ideas with our own “halten” ;)
Every two months or so I have an (moderate) impulse to learn Russian… but why oh why do the letters have to look different, and yet similar :D
Well… I’m sure one morning I’ll wake up and be like “Today’s the day, let’s get started.”
I like your site
That was a good way of explaining. However, I do wanted to say that the Post could have been Edited and kept more concise. It kept getting unnecessorly derailed time and again. Some of the examples just felt flat. Also the idea of anhalten being used to convey continuity was a bit confusing and I couldn’t help substituting the Verb bleiben there. Otherwise it was a nice attempt. Hope next posts are even better.
what about (stoppen) ??? , or it is not -Hochdeutsch- :) ??
and how to stop someone ??? not the car of someone =D
“Stoppen” kann man auch verwenden und es funktioniert oft auch so einigermassen aber es ist ganz ganz selten erste Wahl. Aber wenn du nicht weißt, welches Wort du nehmen sollst, dann kannst du stoppen verwenden…
wow, very helpful and very clear. thanks a lot for this!