Meanings
1. the amount
2. quite a lot ("eine Menge" - quite common in colloquial German)
3. the set, the aggregate (in math)
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Relatives (beta)
Discussion
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We haven't talked about this word in an article in detail. Just leave your questions in the discussion section here, and I'll answer all them :)
Questions and Comments
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I’m listening to some Swiss pop music, and this is bothering me, because I don’t know what to make of it. Alone in the mass?
Ich schenke ein und dir kein Lächeln mehr
Ertränk’ gekonnt mein Tränenmeer
Alleine in der Menge geht’s mir gut
Nice question.
The singer means “a big crowd of people”.
It’s basically a “Menschenmenge”, but “in der Menge” is a pretty much fixed phrase that people understand as “crowd”.
Hope that helps :)
Oh! Thank you! We sometimes say “the masses” in English to mean the faceless crowd, but it’s often for dramatic effect!
While we’re on these lyrics, I translate the first line as “I give one and you no longer smile”. I was confused by “Ich schenke ein”…
So much to dig into with Steiner & Madlaina. And this isn’t even the “Swiss” song I’ve heard (“Herz Vorus id Wand”)
Ha, classic trip up there.
“einschenken” is a prefix verb meaning to pour a drink.
The person is pouring themselves a drink and they don’t give the other a smile anymore. A play on words with schenken/einschenken.
Hallo Emanuel –
Are lauter and eine Menge interchangeable? I tried to create a couple of sentences to test this:
Der Haufen ist lauter Blätter
Der Haufen ist eine Menge Blätter
Also are there rules around how one uses an/von with Menge?
Thank you
Are “lauter” and “Menge” interchangeable? I’d say not really, the tone is a little different.
“lauter” has a vibe of “all over the place” while “Menge” is just about the amount.
Your examples are both not very idiomatic, unfortunately, because the pile is an object and if you want to talk about its makeup, you’d say “Der Haufen ist aus lauter/einer Menge Blättern”
“Menge von” vs “Menge an”… that’s a really tough one to answer. They’re not interchangeable but there are no rules, really. It’s just what’s idiomatic in a given context.
I think “Menge an” is more common, but pure “Menge” without either one is the most idiomatic in many contexts.