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Hello everyone,
And welcome back to your favorite German learning place on the web with the best community of learners ever!
Seriously… I see so many of you in the comments regularly, and that’s really great and I’m really happy about it.
I’m thinking about adding maybe a community board or something but I’m not sure yet.
Anyway, do you know YouTube Shorts? And TikTok? Yes?
Well, great news.
It’s coming to YourDailyGerman in my new series
Prefix Verb Shorts
Amazing! A new frontier. Getting short form brain-rot while learning German.
And if you’re wondering if its AI — of course it is.
👉 fast, accurate, Emanuel-free.
From your LLLM — Large Language Love Model 😅.
Okay, I’m kidding of course. Of course I’m not doing TikTok. It’ll stay the written radio show podcast Ted talk blog that it is.
Prefix Verb Short is basically part of the Prefix Verbs Explained learning branch or series, but with a focus on inseparable prefix verbs. There are loads of useful ones obviously, and we’ll go over them one at a time, see how to use them, what to look out for and we’ll talk about why they actually mean what they mean. So it’s a great way to slowly build an intuition for the inseparable prefixes themselves.
So, that’s the new series and if you’re ready, let’s jump in with a look at the meaning of
betreffen
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treffen itself has two meanings. One is to hit in the sense of hitting a target, and the other one it to meet in the standard sense of meeting friends. The difference is just speed and intent.
- Maria trifft Thomas.
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Hi Emanuel! In manchen Fällen können “gilten” und “betroffen” Synonyme sein?
Die meinst “gelten für” und “betreffen”?
– Diese Regeln gelten für alle über 30.
– Diese Regeln betreffen alle über 30.
The first one is more precise. “gelten” is about rules or regulations of some kind being “valid”. “betreffen” is about affecting, so it’s a bit more vague. You might be affected by a law even though it’s technically only affecting landlords for example. Does that help?
Apologies, I did mean gelten! Thank you for your explanation – it is helpful.
Hallo Leute
i am really thankful for the sponsorship and the people who paid extra so that people like myself who does not have resources to pay can learn .
Really grateful and Thankful for your help. I will use this opportunity to learn and use this resources at its fullest. again really thankful.
Hello Emanuel,
I would like to know if the be- prefix is only added to ‘wissen’ in the adjective ‘bewusst’. Is it just a shortcoming of the dictionary I am using? It seems strange, as ‘wissen’ is very common and seems to have a very rich family.
Thank you for a great article, as always!
Interesting question, never thought about it. But I did some research now, and “bewissen” did exist for a long time in a sense of “checking, guaranteeing, making sure you know”. But it slowly faded. “beweisen” probably took some of the work.
It did survive only as a “result”. “bewusst” in the sense of “having knowledge” and that then became what it is today.
Does that help?
Hello Emanuel, thank you for your reply! Quite interesting, I am happy to learn this.
Great article as always
and I wanted to say thanks to this Community(which of course includes Emanuel) for sponsoring my Sub so my lack of means don’t stop me from learning.
Vielen Dank an alle!
Willkommen!
Das hat mich sehr betroffen gemacht – That really affected me.
This works (for me) as meaning generally negatively impacted.
No, it means “made me sad/emotionally negatively touched”.
It does not work for something just having a general negative impact on you.
Also possible:
“Das hat mich schon hart getroffen!” i.e.”Das war echt ein harter Schlag.™= That was a tough blow!
Hallo,
Found just one typo:
“The is basically what topic the letter “affects”” (This is basically what topic the letter “affects”)
Was totally unaware of the “emotional” meaning, thanks :)
Bis bald!
Amazing article as usual. Thanks.
I think that in American English to hit on someone means to meet – might even be stronger than that according to my daughter. I wonder why Americans have linked these words (meet/hit) but the English haven’t.
The “hit on someone” I know is about trying to flirt with them or “making a move”. It’s basically showing that you’re interested and you’re probing to see if the other person is as well.
I think we use for the American slang “jemanden anfrotzeln”, however this might be purely regional usage from the South, where I went briefly to boarding school.
My brain must be on stir fry!
To hit on a girl meaning to flirt aggressively we say simply “anmachen”.
My apologies.
Good
Ich wusste, dass die Einhörner mega “sus” waren… :)
Betreff: Einhorn-Junkies im Hauseingang.
Als Betreffszeile eines Geschaeftsbriefs?
Geschäftskommentar :)!
Hmm, bin nicht sicher, was das heisst.
Das war ein Beispiel im Artikel.
Wuerdest du uns/mir mal bitte die Quelle zitieren?
Es ist ein Beispiel aus meinem Artikel hier! Bissell hat einen Callback darauf gemacht, als Witz.
The “Betr.” line in business letters is equivalent to the “Re:” in English, meaning also “Regarding”
Oh wow, I didn’t know that :D. I always thought of “re:” as “reply” or “Kontra- Re” so the reaction to something. Can I use “Re: ” in English also when I write the first letter about an issue?
Yes.
Betr. Die Angelegenheit Haverkamp = Re: The Haverkamp Matter
Re is Latin, ablative of Res, ‘thing’, so ‘in the matter of’ or ‘regarding.’
Found a thread on Reddit now that confirms this.
Back in the day when newsgroups roamed the Earth a lot of software would automatically prefix the subject line with “Re: “, leading to gargantuan sequences “Re: Re: Re:…” (and so on) that ended up burying the original subject line somewhere off to the right of the terminal window. Of course the *discerning* newsgroup user would have been using a threaded newsreader (ooh, fancy!), like “trn”, allowing the original subject to be relatively easily divined.
In any case, the “Re:” always carried the connotations of both “regarding” and “replying to”.
I believe “Re:” or “Refs:” means “with reference to” – but I guess that’s the same thing really.
Or “Regarding”, one of the two.