Advent Calendar 20 – All about Asking
“All about asking” *** *** Hello everyone, day20 of our German Learning Advent Calendar, and today, I want to talk a bit about a rather common German word. One of the absolute essential German words even, because without it, we won’t ever get any answers. I’m talking of course about fragen Now, of course you all know what it means, and you probably have used it many times already. But let’s go over the basics real quick anyway, because why not. Feel free to skip it if you want to miss out. fragen – grammar and usage The conjugation is 100% organic, free range, grass fed Irish beef… aka 100% natural, aka 100% regular. ich frage du fragst er/sie/es fragt wir fragen ihr fragt sie fragen And the same goes for the past tense, which would be ich fragte, du fragtest and so on. But fragen is definitely one where people use the spoken past in daily life and that is also super regular. ich habe gefragt… In terms of structure, the person you ask is the direct object, so in German that means it’ll be in Accusative. Ich frage mich, warum du mich fragst. I’m asking myself, why you’re … <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning/frage/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a> <a href="https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning/frage/">Dive in <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>
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So its pretty common to hear “…eine Frage an/ für jemanden” but i’ve heard a few other prepostions.
I’m particular wondering about “zu” . I’ve mainly heard it in context of questions relation to written material e.g. “Fragen zum Text”
but looking at Duden and DWDS there are also some examples with people.
“Fragen zur Person und zur Sache”
I also spotted the noun with “nach” e.g.
Hier wird die Frage nach dem »Sinn des Lebens« akut.
My feeling is “zu” is when referring to questions that are posed in relation to something and “nach” is where the question itself is explicity mentioned.
Is my feeling correct and do you have anything to add to the use of “zu” and “nach”?
Ha, interesting case. I never really noticed just how many prepositions you can use to connect with “Frage”.
“zu” always connects the topic, while “an” and “für” connect the person asked.
– Eine Frage zu einer Person.
This is a question ABOUT a person, not to a person.
“nach” is the preposition that basically connects the answer.
– die Frage nach dem Weg (the way is the answer)
– die Frage über den Weg (some information about the way is the answer)
thanks for the answer…yeah thats quiet a few. I wonder what noun has the most…
Google N-gram says that it’s “Frage nach” by large margin.
oh, I meant, in general which noun would have the most prepositions…
But also interesting that “nach” is so clearly ahead, i’d never have guessed.
Is there then any overlap between über and zu then? Ich habe eine Frage zum Weg sound weird right? Or not?
It sounds fine and I can’t feel a difference to “über den Weg”. Maybe “über” leans more toward opinion, while “zu” is more about factual details, but that might just be my idiosyncracy.