The meaning of “werden”

Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German word of the Day. Summer is over. Finally!
It is autumn. Or as I liked to call it Awesumn.
Because I love it.
Days are becoming shorter and it is getting cold and rainy. Which is great by itself already, but there’s another great aspect of autumn, captured perfectly in the poem “Autumn” by Goethe**:

Colds will be caught,
Jackets will be worn,
Sheep will be shorn.
German will be taught.

(**might not actually be by Goethe)

Fall is awesome and it is the season in which we tackle the BIG things.
No more humpdy dumpty like in summer.
Fall is the time to step up the game.
It’s simple math: fall + game = stepped up.
And for my enginneeer out there: f ( fall ) = stepped up (game).
And for my computer science people out there:
if (season==fall)
{while (game<stepped_up)
{game++;}
}

Yeah… if you’re new here on this site, you’re probably pretty confused now.
But the explanations are usually pretty good.
And today, we’ll talk about something that really could use a good explanation.
We’ll take a look at the meanings and functions of

werden

And there’s actually three of them. First of, werden is the German word for to become.
But it’s also used as a helper to build the future tense. And as if that wasn’t enough, it’s also used to build the passive voice.
In this article, we’ll of course look at the grammar a bit. But our main focus will be exploring WHY German uses werden for those three things.

Like… why does it mean to become and what happened to the German bekommen?
Why does German use werden for future?
And why do we use it for passive when so many other languages use to be?

So… are you ready to dive in? Then let’s go!

werden, bekommen and become

So, we already mentioned, that werden is the German word for to become.
And for many learners, that raises the question, what about bekommen?
So let’s talk about that first.

Obviously, become and bekommen are brothers. But the translation of bekommen is to receive. Something clearly went wrong there. I mean, the translations clearly have nothing to do with one another.
Or do they?
When we look a little closer, we’ll find that the idea of receiving and the one of becoming are actually that crazy a pair. In fact, English has a word that expresses both: to get.

• I got an e-mail…. you receive something
• I got tired…. you become tired.

What those two share is an underlying notion of reaching. The only difference is the direction. The email reaches you.. you receive it. You reach the state of tired.. then you become. But in both instances, you and something move “toward” each other until you “meet”.
Back in the old Indo-European language, this phenomenon of bidirectional verbs was quite common. And there are still some verbs like this around. We already mentioned to get, which can mean to obtain, but also to become and even to reach places (get home). But there’s also to make. You can make a salad or you can make a bus. Same sentence structure, just a different object. And boom, the meanings are completely different. When you make a salad, you “bring” the salad toward you. When you make the bus, you move toward the bus.
Now, the ancestor of to become/bekommen is the Germanic *bikweman, and that used to be bidirectional verbs, too. But then, this happened…

“Fellow English men, we have this word bikweman
and it means two things… that is confusing. Let’s pick one.”
“Yay!”
“Which one should we pick then.”
“We have to get for to receive..”
“To get kicks ASS… best word ever.”
“But we also have weorðan for the other mea…”
“Whatever. weorðan sucks anyway. Let’s use bikweman instead.”
“Okay…so from now on bikweman shall be our new word
for weorðan.”
“I have a question… can we use to get for that too? Pleeeaase???”
“Uhg… fine.”

Shortly after that, in Germany…

“Fellow Germans. We have this bikweman and it means two
things. Brits just picked one. Let’s pick one, too.”
“Jaaaa.”
“Brits picked to become. Should we do the same?”
“No way! We’ll look like weak copycats!!
“And we have werden and werden is awesome… best word ever. WE can NOT replace that.”
“So, the from now on we shall use bekommen only for to receive.”
“Hooray!“

Well… not really sure if that’s how it went down. I wasn’t there at the time because I was on vacation.
Anyway, so both languages used their version of to become for different things, and to us now they seem completely different.
And while English git rid of its version of werden, German kept it and uses it as to become to this day.
Time for examples.

• Wie kann ich in wenigen Tagen fließend werden?
• How can I become fluent in just a matter of days?
  (the answer: you can’t unless you’re a snowman)
  
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• Maria erklärt, warum sie Vegetarierin wurde.
• Maria explains why she became a vegetarian.
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• Thomas wird immer arroganter.
• Thomas becomes more and more arrogant.
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Now, English actually has a whole bunch of words for the idea of development. But they are all translated with werden.

• Maria wird müde.
• Maria is getting tired.
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• Sarah wird diesen November 24.
• Sarah becomes/turns 24 this November.
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• Man, bist du groß geworden.
• Man, you’ve grown tall.
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• Thomas is going crazy.
• Thomas wird verrückt.
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So, whenever the core is self development or changing from one state to another state… werden is probably the word you need because the concept is the very core of that verb. But where did it actually get that idea? Where does the verb actually come from?
Well, let’s find out. Because that’ll be the key to the other uses of the verb.

The origin of “werden”

Werden comes from the implausably ancient Indo-European a root that meant to turn, to wind. Looks like a rather specific activity… but man oh man… there are a LOT of words coming from that root.
Here are some examples from English…

and in German…

What does werden have to do with turning then?
Well, it is actually not that big of a distance. If you want to become something you kind of have to turn/bend your life in that direction. In fact, the verb to turn is actually often used in a sense of evolving.

• In fall the leaves turn red and yellow.

We could also use to become here. To turn is used with that exact meaning. And that is exactly what happened with werden. The only difference is that werden lost all connection to bending and turning while to turn still has it.

Cool.
So now that we know what werden means and where it comes from, let’s look at its other two function and see if those uses actually make sense.

“werden – Why its used for the future

In English, there are a couple of ways to express that something is in the future. But the main one is using the verb will. German, especially in spoken, doesn’t always bother with the future, but when it does, then it uses werden.

• Ich werde morgen ins Ballet gehen… Spaß, natürlich nicht.
• I will go to a ballet tomorrow… kidding, of course not.
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• Ich frage mich ob die Menschen in der Zukunft mal auf dem Mars leben werden.
• I ask myself whether people will be living on Mars in the future.
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Now, that’s kind of weird. German and English are really close when it comes to helper verbs usually. So why would they use different words to build the future, to begin with? The answer to that is that …oh wait… Steve, my producer, wants something… … … what?… I….. I don’t understand, what do you mean “out of time?!”… … but… but… I can’t just stop here. We just started intensive-season man! How intensive is it to just stop right when we got going… ….. oh… … … oh yeah? well tell the network executives to go hang themselves off a cliff if that is so cool… … … … fine.

So guys… as it seems we have to stop here, because the network thinks the show is “too long”. I know it sucks but so does Kanye West.
That didn’t even make sense.
So… if you have any questions about werden so far or you want to complain about the sudden stop, just leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you next time.

If you’re curious you continue with part two right away here:

• werden 2 – future and passive

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