Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we will have a look at the meaning of
weiter
And weiter is actually a really inspiring fellow because it wasn’t even really a word at first. Instead, it started out as the more form of weit. But one day, weiter looked in the mirror and said to itself “Is that it? Is that who I am… just a form?! NO!”
And it started working out and eating healthy and reading books about self development. And it picked up yoga and journaling and meditation and visualization. And every morning, it would say this one affirmation in front of the mirror… “I am more than just a form.”
And today, well, today it’s a really prefix. Not the most common one, but the one that drives things forward.
So are you ready to jump in and get inspired?
Then let’s go.
The word weit is obviously the German brother of the English wide.
And there is some common ground for instance in context of clothing and a few related words like erweitern, which is about expanding or making broader.
- Ich trage gerne weite Hosen.
- I like wearing wide pants.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- McMaki – McDonalds erweitert sein Angebot um Sushi
- McMaki – McDonalds expands its product line with sushi.
But for the most part, the two have focused on different dimensions. Wide very much focuses on width, the measure from side to side, but German mostly uses its version of broad for that: breit.
- Der Tisch ist 2 Meter breit.
- The table is 2 meters wide.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Weit on the other hand focused on a different dimension, or measure: the distance.
And it works in a factual as well as in a figurative sense.
- Wie weit ist es noch?
- How far is it still?
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- Ich bin heute mit meiner Arbeit nicht sehr weit gekommen.
- I didn’t get very far with my work today.
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- Ich werfe so weit ich kann.
- I throw as far as I can.
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- Von Berlin nach London ist es ein weiter Weg.
- From Berlin to London it is a long way.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Oh and just to make sure… the weiter in the last example is just weit with an adjective ending. It’s not really weiter, the word.
But yeah, the core idea of weit is far and the core meaning of weiter – being the more-form of weit – is further or farther.
And it didn’t forget its humble beginnings, and is still used in that sense.
- Die Beispiele für weit stehen weiter oben.
- The examples for weit are further up on the page…. (is that correct English? Help please :))
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- Berlin ist weiter weg von London als von Hamburg.
- Berlin is farther away from London than it is from Hamburg.
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But as we said in the beginning, it also evolved to be a beautiful separable prefix.
The core idea is the same, and for some verbs it’s pretty obvious. Like weiterkommen for instance, which is about making progress.
- Ich bin nicht weitergekommen.
- I didn’t make progress.
I have not come further (lit.) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But the bigger part of verbs with weiter have a little… ahem… twist on the idea.. muahahahahahahahahahah *evil laughter fades.
weiter – continue
Honestly… I don’t even know why I did my evil laughter just now. The twist isn’t really all that crary and it’s probably been around since way before German was even invented.
Imagine some fur clad hunters thousands of years ago. They’ve been walking for days now, because they’ve heard that somewhere, far beyond the mountains, there are new hunting grounds rife with deer and berries….
“When deer?”
“No idea.”
“We walk far.”
“Ay.”
“We see no deer.”
“Nay.”
“What we do?”
“We continue.”
“Uh… What?”
“Con-tin-ue!”
“What?”
“We walk farfar, God damnit. Expand your vocabulary already, you freaking ape.”
Yeah, that time traveller had a hard time back then.
Anyway, I think you’ll all agree that the idea of continuation, going on really isn’t all that far from the idea of going further.
And that makes weiter a really really handy prefix because you can slap in front of pretty much any verb to express the idea of “continue verbing” or “keep on verbing”.
- Ich will weiterschlafen.
- I want to sleep on/keep on sleeping.
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- Das Leben geht weiter.
- Life goes on.
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- Lass mich weiterarbeiten!
- Let me continue working!
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- Ich lese weiter.
- I read further.
- I continue/keep on/go on reading.
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And of course it’s also what we need to tell someone directly to continue. And there’s a slight difference between German and English there because in English you can just sayGo on!
- Go on! /Continue!
… without having to add the actual verb.
In German, you should include that, even if it’s clear what you mean. So if someone is telling you something and you interrupt them to tell them to give you a beer and then you want them to go on, you’d say
- Erzähl weiter!
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And if you want them to continue doing the dishes while telling the story, you’d then say
- Und wasch weiter ab!
And at that point, my girlfriend told me to keep dreaming and so she said:
- Träum weiter.
I mean… hypothetically… she would say that if she was in that situation. And if I had a girldfriend, to begin with.
For now, I’ll keep searching for my Dishney princess…. I… I mean Disney. Oh boy, I feel like I’m digging my own hole here.
For the record, I’m actually the one doing 70% of the dishes at home. And I look very sexy doing it.
Anyway, back to learning German and the word weiter.
The idea of continuation is pretty clear I think and there’s not much to explain there. What we do need to talk about though is this:
- Ich will weiter schlafen.
This might look like a spelling mistake to many of you. But it’s actually not.
weiter verben or weiterverben
The thing is that weiter, thanks to all its self development work, no doubt, has become quite free. So it CAN be a prefix, if it wants to, but it can also stay separate, if it so chooses. Well… technically if the speaker so chooses, but whatever.
- Ich will weiterschlafen.
- Ich will weiter schlafen.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
As you can hear in the audio, the first sentence will have a strong emphasis on weiter… because it is a separable prefix and we need to stress them just as much as they stress us. The second sentence on the other hand has a stronger emphasis on schlafen.
But the meaning of the two is pretty much the same.
- I want to continue sleeping.
And this is not a random glitch, it’s actually pretty handy. Because there are a lot of verb phrases where adding weiter as a prefix wouldn’t work.
Like here for example…
- Ich will weiter zuhören.
- Ich will weiterzuhören… is wrong.
- I want to continue listening.
Now you might be like “Bro, German has NO problem with double prefixes.” and you’re right of course. Weiter just doesn’t like combining with other prefixes. But take the following example…
- Ich will weiter Klavier spielen.
- I want to continue playing the piano.
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So yeah, weiter can be used as a stand alone word to the same effect as the prefix – expressing the idea of continuation. And sometimes, both options are equally valid and idiomatic.
- Ich will weiter mein Buch lesen
- Ich will mein Buch weiterlesen.
These two mean the same… I want to continue reading my book… and they’re both idiomatic.
Now, just to make sure… not every weiter you see in a sentence is about continuing.
Depending on the verb it can just have its original role as farther.
- Ich will weiter springen.
This can actually mean two things … it can mean that I want to continue jumping and it can mean that I want to increase the distance I jump. And we’d need context to decide which it is.
In cases like this one, though, people would probably write the continuing-weiter as a prefix, just to make it clear.
- Ich will weiterspringen.
Now, quick little test… which of the two is a correct sentence, one, two or both?
- Ich kann weiter springen als Thomas.
- Ich kann weiterspringen als Thomas.
The answer is only number one is correct. Because here, the idea is CLEARLY about distance, so using it as a prefix does not fit.
Isn’t German fun, sometimes?
Well, this is not one of those times.
But anyway, we’ve already come quite far already, but there’s still a little further for us to go, because the prefix weiter does have a couple of “side notions” that we also need to mention.
So are you ready to weiterlesen a little bit?
Cool.
The other meaning of “weiter”
Take a look at this example:
- Ich gebe das Buch weiter.
Based on what we’ve learned so far, this should mean that I continue giving the book.
Which makes perfect sense, if we’re living in slow motion land…
“I will give the book to you, now.”
“I’m ready, go ahead.”
“I am currently giving it.”
“I’m starting to get. Go on giving.”
“Continuing, making good progress.”
“You’re doing great. Keep going.”
“Phew… can I take a break?”
“No breaks, you’re almost there. Come on, final sprint now.”
In the real world however, giving a book is a fairly quick thing and the same goes for many other transfer verbs like schicken (to send) or even sagen (to say).
And for those, weiter is not about continuation but about the idea of passing on. Which is at its core just a different angle on further.
- Ich gebe den Wein weiter.
- I pass on the wine.
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- Ich sage dir ein Geheimnis aber du darfst es nicht weitererzählen.
- I’ll tell you a secret but you mustn’t tell anyone. (“tell it on” – lit.)
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And if you’ve got a good short term memory, you might remember had an example with weitererzählen already in the continuation-section.
And yes, sometimes both meanings, continuing and passing on, make sense with the verb.
- Ich will die Geschichte weitererzählen.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
This can mean two things…
- I want to continue telling the story.
- I want to tell the story to others.
… and we need the help of our friend and hero, Captain Context. Captain Context, help! We have an ambiguous sentence, please rescue us, we’re learners in distress.
Captain Context? Hello? Come one, man, we need you.
Hmmm,… Captain Context is such a no show sometimes.
But anyway, here’s another quick test…
- I want to continue saying the truth.
Which of the following is the proper translation
- Ich will weiter die Wahrheit sagen.
- Ich will die Wahrheit weitersagen.
Is it version one, or version two or both?
The right answer is…. it’s version one. Because telling the truth is one chunk and the weiter has to come before it.
And what does version two express?
Exactly… the idea of passing on (telling) the truth to others.
Cool. So now I think we have a pretty good idea of what weiter can mean and how to use it.
But before we wrap this up, let’s take a really swift look at some common phrasings with weiter, because there are actually quite a few cool useful ones that are worth adding to your vocabulary.
common phrases with “weiter”
And first up, we have und so weiter or the extended version und so weiter und so fort and that’s of course the German counterpart of and so on and so forth.
The abbreviation is usw. and you’ll definitely see that in texts a lot.
Next up, we have Weiter so which is the perfect phrase to cheer someone on.
- Weiter so!
- Good job. Go on like that!
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- Ein “Weiter so” kann es nicht geben.
- We can’t continue like that.
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And then are a couple that are based on the adjective weiter and that are fairly common in formal speech and texts.
- Alles weitere erfahren Sie morgen.
- You will learn everything else/the rest tomorrow.
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- Bis auf Weiteres bleibt diese Bar geschlossen.
- This bar will remain closed until further notice.
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And I think that’s enough for today :). Hooray.
This was our look at the meaning and use of weiter and I really hope it brought your German a little bit … weiter.
Quiz for this one is coming sooner than a vaacine, so check back in a couple of weeks or so.
And as usual, if you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
Just amazing! I admire you storytelling style!
Danke :)!
Hi Emanuel –
I was watching a movie and heard this line(at least I think I did )
Wann ist es denn so weit?
From context I believe it means “when is your baby due?” If so, I guess you can stretch your mind to think of “weit” in this case as in “how far” to the date?
Just trying to get a mental image – sorry if this was nonsense on my part
Thanks!!
“so weit sein” is a pretty common phrase and means something like “to be ready, to be time”.
It’s essentially “THIS far”, with the “this” being implied by context. In this case, “this” refers to the moment the baby comes.
The subject “es” is a dummy-es here, that doesn’t really mean anything other than “life in general”.
Hope that helps :)
Wie üblich lässt mich die Vielfalt, die Deutsch anbietet, meinen Kopf drehen – können Sie einige Tipps zu ihrer Verwendung geben:
vorantreiben
vorangehen
vorankommen
weiterkommen
Ich habe das Gefühl, dass sie sich in der Bedeutung überschneiden.
danke für jeden Einblick!!
“vorankommen” und “weiterkommen” überschneiden sich im Sinne von “making progress”. Die anderen nicht.
Das Basisverb ist hier der Schlüssel (kommen vs gehen vs treiben).
Sag mir mal konkret, warum du denkst, dass sie sich überschneiden, dann kläre ich das auf.
This might be a dumb question but anyway
the proper translation for “I want to continue telling the story” is
Ich will weiter die Geschichte erzählen
and the proper translation for “I want to tell the story to others” (to pass on the story) is
Ich will die Geschichte weitererzählen
Or is this pattern only for “ًWahrheit” ?
Nice question :)!!
– Ich will weiter die Geschichte erzählen.
This ONLY means “continue”
– Ich will die Geschichte weitererzählen.
This can mean either… continue or pass it on. You need context for that one.
Oll
Kein Hindernis
„Weiterverben” kinda reminded me of atelic verbs, maybe there is some similarity there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telicity
Hallooo. Danke Herr emanuel für das Wort “weiter” erklären, aber beim Studieren habe ich das wort “wieder” gefunden. Was ist der Unterscheid zwischen die beide???
The core idea of “weiter” is “further”. The core idea of “wieder” is “again”.
Hilft das?
Im a native German speaker and i still mix the spelling up… :-)
Thank you very much.
Hello,
this time I have a difficult question. Or maybe it is really easy and I just don’t understand it yet. Anyway. It was asked whether: “Here are the additional books.” could be translated with “Hier sind die weiteren Bücher.” And of course I said, no, because it sounds strange. But I also saw that “Hier sind weitere Bücher.” is a good translation for “Here are additional books.” so I thought it had something to do with the definite article here. But I was correctly corrected that “Die weiteren Schritte” and “die weiteren Gründe” are examples for “weitere” with a definite article. In the last case you could also translate it with “additional” again (“zusätzlich” would be better but I think “weitere” has almost the same meaning here) so I thought it might be connected to whether is is about an actual thing or an abstract concept. But it seems difficult to explain. Could you help? Thanks.
Interesting question, “Hier sind die weiteren Bücher” sounds strange to me, too.
I think the point is that “weitere-” implies an undetermined number of object. That is of course the case if we don’t have any article
– Weitere Bücher finden SIe…
(although I wouldn’t say that either)
The same goes for the article “alle”
– Alle weiteren Fragen klären wir…
We don’t know how many questions there are.
And the same is the case for the two examples, that you gave, that have teh definite article in them
– “Die weiteren Schritte besprechen wir…”
We have a set of steps , we don’t know how many there are exactly, but the number is limited and we will talk about all of them. The definite article just says “all the rest”.
In the example with the books on the other hand, I feel like the number of books is know. Maybe because of the word “hier”.
The actual vs. abstract doesn’t catch it, I think. I looked for the phrase “weiteren Bücher” and found quite some examples…
“alle weiteren Bücher der Ting-Serie”
“all die weiteren Bücher…”
“… in einem Kommentar auf die weiteren Bücher des Autors hin”
Not all of them sound super idiomatic to me, but at least “alle, all die, keine, welche” work perfectly with “weitere- ” and books.
In my Grandmother’s mostly-in-English diary, she uses the word “jusemeweiter”…she has seen a buggy go by, and thought it might “be my “jusemeweiter”…
How to interpret?
I have absolutely no clue.
Could it be “nu se mer weiter”??
That would mean “We’ll see what happens next/now.” / “We’ll take things as they come from here”
“mer” is dialect for “wir” and “se” could be a VEEEERY shortened “sehen”…
“The examples for weit are further up on the page…”
Even though its grammatically correct, I don’t think it can be used that way.
The sentence (at least for me as a native) somehow implies that the original direction of the “movement” is upward.
For example, you are driving west through a street looking for… A bäckerei, but you are suspicious you haven’t found it yet, so you slide down the window and ask a bystander: “I’m looking for the bäckerei ‘germaniseasy'”. The bystander could answer; “yeah, its about 200yards further…” Pointing in the same direction your car is(west). If its east in the same street, he would probably use something like thr other way, back or “that way” plus body language, instead of “further…”. This concept can be also seen on argumentative lines, when using further or furthermore to add more arguments in favor of the point trying to be made, or expand an argument (in the “same direction”). You would not use further or furthermore if introducing, for example, a counterargument.
Of course this is my grasp of it. I see the usage you gave further now and then, but it always sounds weird to me, even though it can totally be understood.
Hope this helps.
Nice article by the way ( as always)
Ah, so it’s the combination of “further” and “up the page” which makes it sound weird because the normal direction on a page is down…. so “further” implies down in this context and kind of collides with up, right?? How would you phrase it then? Stuff being “further up” on a page?
Thanks for the input!!
Exactly what I meant, though please keep in mind this is my personal view on it. (because “further up the page” would totally be understood)
As for other phrasing, I would either specify exactly where, i.e (back) on top of the page. paragraph X. Section Y. Or change the phrasing completely for something like “….examples for weiter have been previously exposed/mentioned/listed …” “…examples for weiter have been listed on a previous paragraph…” “there are examples for weiter on a previous paragraph…” (although in this last example i’d rather specify the paragraph instead of just say previous). Now, I know this may sound a little too formal, and thats because it is (The last example is a little less formal). This kind of phrasing can be commonly found in more… i want to say “educated” in lack of a better word… in more educated texts, like scientific papers, maybe some textbooks, etc.
maybe better phrasing would be ” on more structured type of texts”.
And oh no, thanks to you, for this awesome site.
Hi! sorry this maybe a trivial question but this phrase “Ich bin gleich so weit, dass ich ein Pause machen kann.” is nagging my anal retentive brain. I am trying to make sense of it but can’t get past the literal “I’m so far, I can take a break”
It’s more like
– I’m about to have come far enough to take a break.
If I just say
– Ich bin gleich so weit.
the natural question would be:
– How far are you?
because “so” is the generic answer to “how”. The “dass”-part just fills that “so” with content. I could also continue
– Ich bin gleich so weit, wie du gestern warst.
Not the same meaning of course, but the same structure. Hope that helps :)
Dein Post hat mir tatsächlich bei meinem Englisch geholfen! Ich versteh besser den Unterschied zwischen “further” und “farther” Hob das noch ned bemerkt…
Wie schon vielmal gesagt, lese ich ja weiter!
Für so kleine Sachen in English könnte dieser Blog für dich interessant sein :)
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl
What about “weiter” as “another” (or literally “a further”)?
z. B. “Ich möchte eine weitere Tasse Kaffee”
Good point… this is rather rare in context of ordering drinks but a very common use is:
– Alles weitere…
which means something like “the rest” without being “resty” :)
I just love the way you pen down your contents. It’s really very helpful for the people trying to learn German. I have recommended this post to many of my friends who are interested to learn German as a secondary language.
Freut mich und danke für’s weitersagen :)
I LOVE your blog. I’ve been gobbling up duolingo for the past couple of months. Your blog augments my lessons in a nice, warm way. The humor is great and the back story really helps me grok more Deutsch.
I also fun checking my reading comprehension by reading the comments. Thanks!
Das freut mich sehr. Danke für das nette Feedback und weiter viel Erfolg beim Lernen :)
Hello Emmanuel, is there a difference when placing the reflexive pronoun as in English?
I myself did it. (It was me)
I did it myself. (alone)
I bid you answer please.
Well, this actually isn’t a reflexive pronoun but a “intensifying” one and it wouldn’t be translated using the reflexive pronoun set in German… you’d use “selbst” or “selber”. And for those… yes, you can place it in different positions
Ich habe es selbst gemacht.
Ich selbst habe es gemacht.
If you want to read more on reflexive in German, then I recommend this article:
http://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/german-reflexive-verbs/
Hello Emanuel,
Ich habe eine frage . Ich bin nicht so sicher wie ein trennebares verb in Hautsatz und in Neben Satz benutzen , ins besoderes fuer praetritum . Ich siehe in deutchen Zeitungen schriebet man trennbar oder untrennbar Zum beispiel:
Ich anerkannte ihn oder ich kannte ihn an ???
Voraus vielen dank
Ahmad, anerkennen ist eine Ausnahme. Man kann beides verwenden (ich anerkannte… ich erkannte … an), bevorzugt wird aber die trennbare Version.
Also ich persönlich finde
Ich anerkenne…
extrem komisch. Aber du hast Recht. Es wird geschrieben. Wie Grateful Reader schon gesagt hat, geht beides. Ich habe in einem Forum mal gefragt, und offenbar kommt es aus der Schweiz. Hier ist der Link:
http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/9913/warum-wird-anerkennen-teils-als-untrennbar-betrachtet