Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And today, we’ll take a look at the meaning of
leiten
Leiten is the German brother of to lead. And they do share a common theme. But leiten does quite a few things that lead doesn’t do. Like giving us water and electricity, for example. Or setting up this Ikea rack Fälör. Or even giving us a nice start into a text, like right now.
So, are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s goooo.
So, the core idea of the family is of course the notion of guidance, leadership and it came from the simple act of walking or travelling in the front, showing the way. And while most modern day leading is actually done from a comfy chair, the vibe of “leading from the front” is still pretty present in the English to lead.
But the better match for that is actually the verb führen. Führen has the same vibe as to lead and it’s often the translation. We’ll look at führen in a separate article at some point, so I don’t want to get too much into the nuances, but let’s look at a few examples.
- Die Elfe führt mich durch den Einhornwald.
- The Elf guides/leads me through the unicorn forest.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Merkel hat Deutschland durch einige große Krisen geführt.
- Merkel has led Germany through some big crisis.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Zuviel Bier führt zu zuviel Bauch.
- Too much beer leads to too much belly.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Die Führung durch die alte Fabrik ist sehr interessant.
- The guided tour through the old factory is very interesting.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying that leiten never translates to to lead or guide. It’ just important that you remember that it doesn’t have this vibe of actively leading the way. Leiten has more of a vibe of giving a way/directions.
Like… much of today’s “desk”-leading would actually better called leiten than führen. And you can find it in that sense here and there. In the business world in particular, führen and leiten are equally common and which one is used often comes down to what’s idiomatic in a certain context.
- Der Geschäftsführer leitet ein Unternehmen und übernimmt die Geschäftsführung
. - The manager leads the business and is in charge of leading the operations of the business.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Tried my best with the translation there, but I don’t really know business English. Oh and no… didn’t make that sentence up.
It’s actually literally the first sentence of a definition of Geschäftsführer from “Gruenderszene.de” a very BIG German website for founders and founding.
Brace yourself silicon valley, the German Gründers are coming. And they’ll bore you to death.
Seriously though, so the core idea of leiten is not really leadership, it’s a sense of giving a way.
And that’s a makes it much easier to understand and remember what might be the most important use of the verb and its related nouns: to conduct, in the sense of conducting liquids or electricity.
- Metalle leiten gut Strom.
- Metals conduct electricity well.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Halbleiter sind für Computer essentiell.
- Semi-conductors are essential for computers.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Wenn es in Berlin stark regnet, werden die Abwässer in die Spree geleitet.
- When it rains heavily in Berlin, the sewage is being channeled into the Spree.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Das Leitungswasser in Berlin hat eine echt gute Qualität.
- The tap water in Berlin has a high quality.
(literally “conduit water”)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
By the way, the verb to conduct is actually closer to leading than you might realize . It’s a combination of the prefix co(n) and the Latin verb ducere. And now guess what that meant… exactly: to lead. And there are other prefix versions of it like to reduce (“lead back“) or produce (“lead/bring forth”) or seduce (“lead to sex“). Meh… okay, not sure about the last one.
But yeah, if you’ve read my articles about prefix verbs way back when 2020 was still normal… duce /duct is a great example for how English has a bunch of prefix verbs hidden in plain sight (I’ll leave a link to the article below, if you want to check that out).
And speaking of prefix verbs… of course leiten also has a few really nice ones, so let’s take a look.
Prefix versions of “leiten”
So far, we’ve learned that the core notion of leiten is a sense of giving a way, a direction. And this totally fits the prefix versions as well.
- Wegen der Baustelle wird der Verkehr umgeleitet.
- Because of the construction site, the traffic is being redirected.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich hab’ dir die E-Mail weitergeleitet.
- I forwarded you the email.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Viele Länder leiten langsam das Ende des Lockdowns ein.
- Many countries are introducing an end to lockdown.
(another prefix verion of “duce” :)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Aus deinem Gesicht leite ich eine gewisse Unzufriedenheit ab.
- From your face, I deduce a certain dissatisfaction.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And here are some examples for related nouns.
- Das war eine gute Überleitung.
- That was a good transition.
(only for switching topics!!)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Eine gute Einleitung ist sehr wichtig.
- A good introduction is very important.
(only for texts and topic, NOT for introducing people)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Thomas ist soooo kompliziert.”
“Ach ja… warum gibt es keine Bedienungsanleitung für Männer.” - “Thomas is soooo complicated.”
“Oh well… why isn’t there a user manual for men.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Was ist das auf dem Dach?”
“Das ist mein neuer Designer-Blitzableiter aus Mahagoni-Holz.”
“Äh… sorry, ich will nicht negativ sein, aber… “ - “What’s that on the roof?”
“That’s my new designer lightning rod made from mahogany wood.”
“Uhm… I don’t want to be negative but… ”
(Lit.: “flash away-conducter”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, the contexts in these obviously vary quite a bit. But I hope you can see that in all of them, there is sense of a path being offered, a direction. Traffic is directed elsewhere, the reader is directed into the text or to a different topic, the lightning is directed down into the ground.
There’s really only one prefix version that’s kind of surprising. And it’s not surprising because of the meaning. It is surprising that it’s actually a prefix version of leiten. I am talking about begleiten, the German word for to accompany.
Begleiten looks like it’s the be-version of gleiten, which is the German version of to glide. But that’s not what’s really going on. Begleiten is actually the be-version of geleiten, which itself is the ge-version of leiten. Geleiten used to be more or less a synonym for leiten in a sense of guiding, bringing but it sounds quite theatrical nowadays and I only ever see it in the phrase freies Geleit (safe conduct).
Beg(e)leiten on the other hand, which had an emphasis on guiding “in person”, became the German word for to accompany and is still very much around today.
- Der Hund hat uns beim Wandern fast einen Tag begleitet.
- The dog kept us company/came with us at hiking for almost a day.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Der Wein ist eine ausgezeichnete Begleitung zu dem Steak.
- The wine excellently accompaniment the steak.
(lit.: “is excellent company”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Seit der Nacht im Zauberwald ist eine unsichtbares Einhorn namens Bob mein ständiger Begleiter.
- Ever since the night in the magical forest, an invisible unicorn with the name Bob is my constant companion.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
What… what do you say, Bob? No, I have not told them about the German word for ladder… yes… yes, I know it’s die Leiter, but that comes from the Indo-European root *klei, which is also where climate and climax are from and which was about leaning. So it’s got nothing to do with leiten.
And no, I also haven’t told them that leiten is related to leid. I already talked about that in the article on leiden. Could you shut up now, Bob, and let me finish? And stop nagging, we’ll go to the park so you can graze as soon as I’m done.
Gee, so annoying.
Anyway guys. I think that’s it for today. This was our look at the meaning of leiten and its family. And the main takeaway is that leiten DOESN’T have this leadership vibe that the English to lead has. Now, there are a lot more cool leiten-words out there, and I’ll add some of them to the vocabulary, so if you have a question about any of them or if you come across one that I forgot… let me know in the comments. Same goes for other questions of course, and if you want to check how much you remember, as usual, you can take the little quiz I have prepared for you.
I hope you liked it, have a great week and see you next time.
further reading:
Thinking about Prefix Verbs – A General Overview
Word of the Day – “leiden”
** vocab **
leiten = guide, leade, conduct (core idea is “showing way”, not about leading from the front)
der Leiter = the director, the manager (“die Leiterin” for women, sounds a bit bureaucratic)
die Leitung = cable, conduit
das Leitungswasser = the tap water
aus der Leitung = from the tap
der Halbleiter = the semi conductor
die Leitplanke = the guarding rail
das Leitmotiv = the leitmotif (music)
der Leitfaden = the guideline (informal)
überleiten = to transition (only in texts, if for things and people you’d say “übergehen”)
die Überleitung = transition (only in texts, if for things and people you’d say “übergehen”)
einleiten = to introduce (rare!)
die Einleitung = the introduction (only for texts, not getting to know someone)
anleiten = give step by step instructions (not very commonly used, “zeigen” and “vormachen” are more common)
die Anleitung = the manual
die Bedienungsanleitung = the user manual
ableiten (aus, von) = to deduce, to derive, derivate (math); “lead away” (for electricity or substances)
die Ableitung = the derivative (math)
der Blitzableiter = the lightning rod
umleiten = redirect (traffic, travelling entities)
die Umleitung = redirection, re-routing, route diversion (traffic)
weiterleiten = to forward, to pass on (only for emails and information)
freies Geleit = safe conduct
begleiten = to accompany
die Begleitung = the company (person/thing accompanying someone/something)
die Begleiterscheinung = the side effect, accompanying effect
die Leiter = the ladder
Particularly amusing quiz. I feel like this is a prefix verb whose various forms pops up in a particularly wide range of situations.
Just one further thought about the quiz. I selected “redirect” for ableiten. I realise now umleiten might have been better but I think ableiten could also be tranlated thus. I’d forgotten momentarily i actually knew umleiten already…
Yup, “ableiten” would make sense as redirect though the notions of separation or downward wouldn’t be a strong as they are in the meaning it has.
Several months late, but I noticed that in the quiz above, ableiten is translated as “deduct”, which means something rather different than “deduce”… Also, “derivate” isn’t a verb in mathematics. The verb “integrate” can be used for “finding an integral” but there’s no equivalent for “finding the derivative”.
very nice article. danke
Emanuel,
eine frage Bitte,
Ist es als Deutschlerner besser, das Uvuler (r) zu vergessen, als es falsch aufzutragen oder gar den vorderen Zungenspitze-Triller aufzutragen? oder vergessen zu versuchen, das gewürfelte (r) ganz zu verwenden? Ich gehe davon aus, dass ich als Lernender verstanden und sowieso nie mit einem Muttersprachler verwechselt werde?
Viele Grüße,
jsmh
Wenn du im Süden bist, dann mach das Zungen-R.
Im Norden kannst du es mit “a” austauschen”, wenn es im Wort oder am Ende ist (“Noaden”, “Mutta”,…)
Aber du kannst es NICHT weglassen, wenn es am Silbenanfang oder nach einem Vokal kommt (reiten, drei).
Wenn du es hier weglässt, dann versteht man dich nicht!
Nimm dann lieber die Zunge :)
“the Leitfaden” is so informal that I can use English article for it! :D Yay!
(Apparently, this C1 level word has a masculine Article… FMI for the time when I need to pass my exam.) :D
Ops, thanks for the fix :).
Actually, what I meant with “informal” was that it is not an official guideline in a binding sense, but in a sense of orientation. So it’s not a “colloqualism”.
Emanuel, guten Abend! Kannst du mir erklären was der Unterschied ist zwischen “zuleiten” und “weiterleiten”. Auch, bei “thinking about prefix verbs” sind ihre Kaninchen sehr niedlich :-) ich bin beim Lesen geschmolzen…Du läufst mit unglaublicher Geschwindigkeit!!
“weiterleiten” ist “passing something on to someone else”, “zuleiten” ist einfach “leiten” mit einem Fokus auf das Ziel.
– Das Wasser wird dem See zugeleitet. (rare)
– Das Wasser wird in den See geleitet.
– Das Wasser wird in den See zugeleitet. (WRONG)
Hoffe, das hilft :)
Ja Emanuel, ihre Beispiele sind sehr hilfreich! Ich versuche, dir auf Deutsch zu schreiben obwohl ich mich noch sehr schwer tue, so ich möchte, wenn du einen Fehler indem sehen, was ich schreibe, mir mitzuteilen. Ich versuche, dir auf Deutsch zu schreiben, obwohl ich noch viele Schwierigkeiten habe. Wenn du einen Fehler in dem, was ich schreibe siehst, bitte, zögerst du nicht es mir sagen. :-)
Emanuel, concerning the message above, neither do I understand what I
wrote!! :/ ??? I think its better for both to write to you in English from now and on
No! Dein Deutsch ist gut genug :). Ich habe alles verstanden, und es gibt nur wenige Fehler.
Ok dann! Nur noch eine letzte Sache auf English, sorry if I send you twice an answer, but sometimes after I click the green arrow to send, the message is not appeared on the screen and only wien after I send the 2nd one, is appeard…oh yes! So, I’m not able to know if you’ve got the first one I wrote..So I drove you a little crazy with the massages today… (und jetzt in Deutsch) Ok, Entschuldigung!!! Das ist es! :-D Ich werde es schaffen….irgendwann!!!!! Und lächelt öfter, (ich habe dich heute in Caris Podcast gesehen) sehr süße guten Nacht Emanuel! :)
Don’t worry about the double messages :). But yeah, sometimes it takes a bit for new comments to show up.
Emanuel concerning the mesage above, neither I do understand what I said.. :-/ Maybe, it’s a better idea for both of us, to write to you in English instead, oder? ;-)
b
I need a little help. Here is a sentence from a book about the Oktoberfestattentat of 1980. The author is a journalist.
“Damals äußerte Gundolf Köhler sich im Anschluß gegenüber einem Bekannten positiv beeindrukt” I understand this as “At the time, Gundolf Köhler claimed to an aquaintance that he was positively impressed.” I hope that’s acceptable as a translation. My question is more about the style of the German, in particular about “im Anschluß”, which I have not translated as it is superfluous, and also the general style of the writing. It seems odd to me to leave “positiv beeindrukt” stuck out on its own at the end of the sentence. As a test, I put this sentence through two internet translators and both came back with gobbledygook. Would “Damals äußerte Gundolf Köhler sich positiv beeindrukt gegenüber einem Bekannten” sound wrong, or lack force?
Your translation is a little off, I would say. “claimed to be” to me has an undertone of it maybe not being true. The German version lacks that completely. It’s just a fancy way of saying “he said he was positively impressed”.
About your questions… “im Anschluss” refers to something that has been mentioned before, so it’s actually MORE specific than “damals”. Moving both over to English might be a bit too much, but without surrounding context it’s for me to tell if maybe I’d rather keep “im Anschluss” and kick “damals”.
“positiv beeindruckt” is the “completion” of the verb “sich äußern”. It’s kind of a fixed phrase. As it is an integral part of the phrase, its natural position is at the very end, just like prefixes or the location for a location based verb.
Your version sounds okay, and people do use that in spoken a lot. But if you for example then continue on with more details about what he said, having it at the end is better because you can nicely tie to it and don’t have it interrupted by the aquaintance.
Hope that helps
Thanks a lot Emmanuel. Very Helpful. The next sentence is:
“Später führte er dieses Gewahlt-Erlebnis dagegen als Grund an, sich von der WSG Hoffmann abgewandt zu haben”. Perhaps this change in Köhler’s attitude influenced my choice of “claimed” in the translation. Köhler is accused of planting the Munich bomb, so his reasoning is very confused.
Yeah, I’d definitely stay away from “claimed” here. I think “said” is the best match. Or “post positively”.
So admit it, Bob is a vegetarian?!
He’s water fasting at the moment, so I can’t tell :)
I am new to the community and am glad to have this chance to learn. I would like to thank all who donated extra to help others. I was not able to pay due to co- vid 19 but the generosity of others you Madea wish come true.thank you
Vielen dank!! Thank you everyone for helping me to get the membership.It helped me a lot to study Deutsch for my Abitur
Viel Erfolg!!
So, führen is about active leading, including decision making and reacting to a changing environment, etc while leiten suggests a guiding through a pre-defined pathway, process, pipe, channel. Is there a connection to the English word, light, in the sense of not dark and revealing a path, etc?
“guiding through a pre-defined pathway, process, pipe, channel”
I’d modify that and say it provides the pathway.
From how you wrote it, I get the hunch that you might take it a bit too strictly :). There are definitely situations where “leiten” is used for the standard “leading from the front”. Think of my descriptions as a trend and as an explanation why “leiten” is often not as idiomatic as “führen” as a translation of “to lead”. But those are not absolutes.
I think it might really not be bad to think of führen as to lead and leiten as to direct, at least as a quick and dirty gloss.
Fantastisch, wie immer. Das Wort “begleiten” ist mir sehr wichtig, weil ich Pianistin bin und oft andere Musikern begleiten.
I would love to type more, but my autocorrect is having a heyday over the German words… Ach, so…
Dance, Emanuel! (The autocorrected version of danke.)
I can relate. I hate auto correct so soo much :D. It drives me up the walls.
Your English is tremendous – native – level. In regard to the sentence, “When it rains heavily in Berlin, the sewage is being channeled into the Spree.” “Sewage” is OK, but sewage the noun is more a word for human waste (granted than sewers do carry everything, however). “Run off” (as a noun) might be used in the context of rainwater. Also, the word “being” should be omitted. Its presence in the sentence kind of implies that the channeling is responsible for the heavy rains (nonsensical). Hard to explain this, but the implication is there.
I do mean sewage, actually :). Our system is too small and if there’s a heavy rain, they can’t catch it all and so they channel it into the river :). Like 10 times per year maybe…
A great article, as usual. A few typo notes to the vocab list:
I’ll repost my comment ;)
Typos:
the vibe of “leading from the front” still pretty present (the vibe of “leading from the front” is still pretty present)
Führen has the same vibe of as (“of” is surplus)
doesn’t have this vibe actively (doesn’t have this vibe of actively)
there are other prefix version (there are other prefix versions)
this leadership vibe that English to lead has (this leadership vibe that the English to lead has).
let me know in the comment (let me know in the comments)
Ok, hope it works now and the comment actually shows up this time!
Bis bald!
For some reason, the first one ended up in SPAM :D. That’s really strange but sometimes it happens to comments from logged in members who comment regularly. Not the first time, unfortunately :/.
Thanks a lot for actually taking the time and writing it again!!
Hey, what’s happened to my comment?
I posted it and now it’s disappeared :(((
Hello,
Let me lead the way into correcting some typos;)
“the vibe of “leading from the front” still pretty present” (the vibe of “leading from the front” is still pretty present)
“has the same vibe of as to lead and” (“of” is surplus))
“doesn’t have this vibe actively” (doesn’t have this vibe of actively)
“other prefix version of it” (other prefix versions of it)
“there is sense of a path” (there is the sense of a path)
“leadership vibe that English to lead has” (leadership vibe that the English to lead has)
“let me know in the comment” (let me know in the comments)
Thanks, I never understood the difference between leiten and führen till now :))
Have a good week and bis bald!
After all the previous articles on nouns verbs adjectives etc, nobody has picked up on this error in translation. Mir ist überrascht.
Danke, I fixed it.
Kleine Korrektur auch: “Ich bin überrascht” ;).
ausgezeichneter Artikel.!! Es löscht alle Zweifel, die ich mit diesem Wort hatte.
Eine kleine Korrektur: “Oh well… why isn’t there a user manuel for men.” ——(manual)
Danke :)