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 "offen-halten" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "offen-halten" 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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I saw this headline ” Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock hält sich Kanzlerkandidatur offen”
this is rather offenhalten than offen halten right?
I’m intrigued by the grammar. I put it into deepL and it suggests:
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock keeps her candidacy for chancellor open
This seems like a fairly rare case of the german being more concise than the english. Its also interesting that there is no Possesivpronomen or Artikel.
So i’m wondering a little about the range of this verb and how you’d construct other different sentences.
Like does this work- “Ich halte mir Urlaub im September offen” i.e. “I’m keeping the option of holiday in september open.”
I’m not sure deepL got the meaning right, but that might just be my not understanding the English sentence.
The German sentence means that she is not yet saying “I won’t run”. So she keeps that door open. The focus is NOT about keeping it open in the sense of being vague about it. It’s about not renouncing it yet.
As for “offenhalten” vs “offen halten”… I have no idea :D. I’d lean toward “offenhalten”, but we’d have to consult Duden or an editor for that one.
Your example with vacation works fine, just keep in mind that the focus is on not closing that door yet, and not on being vague about it.
cool thanks. yeah, i see what you mean about deepL
being a bit off / ambiguious.
As i understand it this would be a better sounding traslation :
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock keeps the possibility of running for chancellor open
Yup, that’s pretty much it! Does the DeepL version also express that?
hmmm, i’m tending to think the deepL version is kind of ambigous. Maybe it could sound a bit like she is already a candidate.