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
Loading word family…
Sources for Etymology:
- Check "tatsachlich" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "tatsachlich" 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.
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
This still confuses me a bit. I’ve read the eigentlich article a few times now and I think I understand it and use correctly. There you also said that a lot of the “actually”s in English can be translated into *nothing* in German. Additionally and although one shouldn’t think of it in that way, actually can be translated into eigentlich as well.
I’m wondering where this leaves tatsächlich. Is there overlap between it and eigentlich? I think it has to in that “in Wirklichkeit” meaning. Do it have that Ta-Dah factor? Your description also makes me question where it differs with eigentlich, except for its “indeed” that it shares with “in der Tat” in a way.
you’ve actually talked about these in the comments of that article, feel free to delete this — I seem to be unable to do so
Nah, why delete, it’s an interesting question and it’s great to have that here!
“eigentlich” and “tatsächlich” do have some similarities and “tatsächlich” CAN be a translation for “actually”.
– And you really did this?!?!
– Yeah, I did, actually.
– Und du hast das wirklich gemacht?!
– Ja, tatsächlich.
This may not be the most common and there are other options, but the vibes match up very well here.
What “tatsächlich” and “eigentlich” share is that they are about truth. However, “eigentlich” is used in a sense of looking behind a first layer:
– Ich will, dass du den Abwasch machst.
– Ja, aber was willst du EIGENTLICH. (emphasized)
(What do you REALLY/ACTUALLY want)
“tatsächlich” would work, but sound a bit odd to me, because it’s used more in contexts of affirming or underlining truth.
– Ich war TATSÄCHLICH heute pünktlich auf Arbeit, stell dir vor.
– I REALLY was at work on time today, imagine that.
I hope that helps and that it doesn’t create a contradiction to what I said in the comments under the article :)
I left this for a few days and reading this once more I think I’ve understood this much better now. Also, my typo on the first comment hurts a bit. Yeah, this “eigentlich” meaning “actually” but also not made the existence of “tatsächlich” a bit weird to me at first. The first time I read about the difference between them was on a post on German SE and I went back to it again only to find out that you actually commented on that post! That’s why reading it felt so familiar. No clue how I never noticed that you also post/posted there.
here’s a link to the post https://german.stackexchange.com/a/9100/59915
Yeah, I was active there a long time ago, but I stopped because I saw no benifit for me for putting in all this time :).
So I had a look at that link and was struck by this:
Als H. einer Freundin I. erzählt, C. habe keine Lust, reagiert diese ungläubig:
Daraufhin muss C. zugeben, dass er paraphrasiert hat:
I first I didn’t understand why tatsächlich isn’t used in the second example and why the second example is any different from the first. Aren’t both examples about what he said in reality?
But then, if i’m understanding the commentator says that eigentlich is often used to contrast with a potentially misleading thing / misunderstanding.
Then you (i think its you) give these two examples:
Doesn’t the second example contrast a potentially misleading thing (i.e. if the price given did not include certain things included in the final price and might confuse people) ?
You have to distinguish between “eigentlich” the adverb and “eigentlich” the adjective.
You could swap in “tatsächlich” in the second example and the sense wouldn’t change, but it’s not very idiomatic. But generally “tatsächlich” and “eigentlich” as adjectives are somewhat synonyms.
You cannot swap in “eigentlich” in the first example, because there, we’re dealing with an adverb.
The “actually” there, as I understand it, is part “wow, omg” and part “really”.
It doesn’t have to be that way, so it could be a more neutral version:
– Maria doesn’t like Thomas.
– Yeah, but did she actually SAY that or is that just what you think?
Here, the actually has no “wow, omg” in it. The German translation would be “wirklich” or just nothing.
And the same goes for the example in question.
– Wow, hat er das wirklich gesagt?!
– DAS hat er gesagt?!?!
…
“tatsächlich” is a bit stiff, but has the same effect.
If you put “eigentlich” in there, it sounds like a casual “Oh speaking of which, did he say that actually, by the way?”
The vibe is just completely different from English.
Does that help?