Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "klarkommen" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "klarkommen" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
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The translations vs the notes on this one is a little confusing:
The “Komm mal klar.” phrase is “to get yourself together” but the translation of the verb by itself is “to be crazy/high”…?
Oh, yeah, I actually put the translation of “nicht klarkommen” as definition and then the normal “klarkommen” as note. I changed that now.
Cool!
Now that is cleared up – I’m thinking about “+ auf” in the second translation and “+ mit” in the first translation.
It’s probably easiest to ask this with an example:
Ich bin mit der Situation klargekommen. – I managed the situation.
Ich bin auf der Situation klargekommen. – I got a grip / kept it together with the situation.
Does the “auf” just emphasize that we mean the person managed the situation after some effort / perhaps the “keeping it together” was a little tenuous…whereas “mit” is more neutral?
The second one goes with Accusative actually.
The phrasing is more common in the negative. It’s not about handling it, it’s about how it makes you feel.
– Ich bin auf die Situation nicht klargekommen.
– The situation freaked me out/I couldn’t get a grip of the situation.
Think of someone going like “Holy shit, what is going on, I can’t, I just can’t, dude. This is crazy….”
The two meanings have little to do with each other in terms of tone. The first one is pretty standard while the second one is highly colloquial.