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.
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "moglichkeit" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "moglichkeit" 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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Hello I love your article about “möglich”. I wonder if “die Möglichkeit” has a glottal stop between g and l. I mean does the release of /k/ coincides with /l/ or there’s a pause in between. I apologize for incorrect terminologies usage because I’m not knowledgeable about this, I am willing to elaborate upon it if anything is still unclear.
By the way, how do you type umlaut? Is it alt shortcut?
Vielen Dank.
I’m not an expert in phonology, but I don’t think there’s a glottal stop.
German plosive sounds (g, k, p, t…) are usually rather “aspirated”. So the release with is an audible air noise. This air noise is also there in “Möglichkeit” sometimes and to someone whose language has clean plosives (like Finnish or Italian) that might sound like an extra pause.
But when you speak, do not try to put a glottal pause there, is what I’d say.
I have a German keyboard, and they have regular keys for the umlauts :).
Thank you, plesse be assured that I’m not looking for someone with linguistic training. I just saw a clip where the speakers made a slight pause between g and l, it’s kind of like /gʰʔl/. I have a hunch that this sounds wrong but there’s no official phonetic transcription to be found.
Do you know if any word with “a pause”, as in inaudible pause or nasal release, exists in German so I can keep my eyes peeled for them?
No, a pause is usually an audible pause. Like er|innern. Some Germans bind the syllables, others pause and it’s always distinct.
I also tried “gut aufgehoben” in my mind, because it has this aspiration at the “t” and binding that aspiration over to “a” sounds and feels weird to me, so the pause is realized there.
So i came across “nach Möglichkeit” which I understand as “at every possible opportunity” (?)
So if I say “Ich bin jeden Sommer nach möglichkeit am See” it would mean “In summer I’m at the lake whenever possible”
I suppose there is a subtle difference in english between “whenever possible” and “where possible”. Whenever possible sounds enthusiastic and passionate. Where possible sounds more like “nice if it fits but ok if if it doesn’t”
No, it means “if possible”.
– Versuch mal nach Möglichkeit heute pünktlich zu sein.
Your example would fit if you have for example a house there, or a vacation spot and you try to go there every year if you can make it.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. If you wanted to express someones enthusiasm for taking up every possible opportunity for something whats are the most idiomatic ways of expressing this ?
“so oft wie’s geht”
“so oft wie möglich”
“wann immer möglich”
thanks!