Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new episode of our series German Prepositions Exposed – the series in which German prepositions will be exposed and CANCELLED!!
“Who are we?”
“German learners!!
“What do we not want?”
“Prepositions!!!”
Hmmm, okay, the slogan needs work.
But seriously, of course we can’t cancel prepositions. I mean, they’re But we can definitely explain them and expose their secrets.
And today, we will have a look at the meaning of
nach
And of course, we won’t just look at nach by itself. We’ll also explore nach as a prefix, learn lots of useful verbs and see how all the various uses of nach actually go back to one core idea.
So are you ready to jump in?
Awesome.
***
I think many of you know that nach can mean to in the context of a destination…
- Ich fahre nach Berlin.
- I am going to Berlin.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And you’ve probably also heard nach as past in the context of time
- Es ist zehn nach 3.
- It is 10 past 3.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
… or after, in the more broad sense of sequence.
- After 7 comes 8.
- Nach 7 kommt 8.
And if you’ve been really lucky, you might have even seen them in the same sentence…
- Erst nach Berlin und nach Berlin nach Oslo.
- First to Berlin and after Berlin to Oslo.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Isn’t German cute?
But all these uses actually go back to one single idea, captured by one of the English relatives of nach…. near.
The origin of “nach”
Today, the German word for near is nah, but a few centuries back, nach and nah were essentially one and the same word, just with different pronunciations and they both meant near.
Well, actually, they meant nigh, because originally, near was the more form of nigh. And while we’re at it… the most-form was another well known word: the word next. Makes a lot of sense, once you think about it. The next week is the week that is “nearest“. So just like good-better-best, a few hundred years ago, people used the triplet nigh-near-next.
But then at some point nigh was like: “Bros, you know what, I’ll retire.”
And next was like: “I wanna work on my side hustle full time.” and took on the meaning it has today.
And so people were like “Near, bro, you have to be the new baseline” and from then onward it was near-nearer-nearest.
Anyway, so back then, the German nach still expresses the idea of near. And in fact, we can still find some leftovers of that today, like for instance the German word for next, which is nächste.
Or the word for neighbor, which literally was something like “near-be-er”, and which in German is … Nachbar.
- Mein Nachbar ist sehr nett.
- My neighbor is very friendly. (neighbor come from “nigh bower”)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, German has always had a soft spot for having more words with more specific meanings. And so on a boring winter day some Germans in a pub in Schwarzwald had a few beers. And with those beers came ideas…
“Hey folks, we got these two variants nah and nach… how about we make them mean different things?”
“Hooray, specificity… but oh. Oh no, we shouldn’t. That would make it harder to learn.”
“True.”
” * ”
” * “
And then a laughter louder than the ocean echoed through the forest.
But what were the distinct meanings?
Well, that’s where we once again run into one of the things German is most OCD about… speaking about location. Because nah(e) was (and still is) used to talk about a fixed location while nach is talking about a destination
- “Wo ist das Rathaus? ”
“Nahe der Kirche.” - “Where’s the town hall”
“Near the church.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Wohin gehst du?”
“Nach dem Markt.” - “Where are you going?”
“Near the market.”
And I think you can already see the connection… going near a place really isn’t far from going to a place and soon nach was used in the sense of to that we know today.
- Ich fahre nach Berlin.
- I am going to Berlin.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
“nach” – When to use it for locations
Now, this is actually one of the most common mistakes of beginners – use nach for all locations.
- Ich gehe nach die Kurs, dann gehe ich nach die Bibliothek und dann gehe ich nach die Kino.
And a few centuries back, that would actually have been correct. But like always, one day German was like “This isn’t even my final form, guahhh.” and started also using zu and in for destinations. Those two are the main words for everyday locations and if you had to pick one, I’d say zu is the best.
Nach itself was only left with three areas:
- spatial terms
- “geopoliticals”
- home
The first one, spatial terms, are words like left ,right, bottom, top and so on. If you want to use those as a destination, you have to combine them with nach.
- Ich gehe nach [oben/ unten/ links /rechts /hinten / vorne].
- I am going up /down/ to the left /to the right/to the rear/forward.
The second field, “geopoliticals” are things like countries, cities, city districts, states, continents and islands
- Ich fliege nach Berlin/ Frankreich/ Asien/ Manhatten/Hawai.
But there are some really random exceptions here, because… you know… fun. Specifically, nach does not work if the geopolitical “thing” has an article other than the generic “das”.
- Ich fahre nach die Schweiz/die Bronx/den Iran/die USA… WRONG
- Ich fahre in die Schweiz/die Bronx/den Iran/die USA… correct
Most countries are das, though, so you can just pick up the exceptions over time. I wouldn’t spend time making a list of those.
But I don’t like lists to begin with.
Anyway, last but not least, we have nach Hause, which is means home as a destination in German, and you should pretty much learn that as a fixed phrase.
- Ich gehe nach Hause.
- I’m going home.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, I know you all want to know when to use zu and in in the context of location, but we’ll do a separate mini series on the location stuff at some point. And you can also find something about it in my article on zu ( I’ll post the link below).
Rule of thumb: if the location is not one of the three I mentioned here, nach sounds pretty damn bad, so rather go with zu.
Today, I want to focus on nach, though, and as we found in the beginning, it is also used in sense of time.
To clear up the connection there, let’s go back to the bunch of drunken Germans again…
“nach” as “after”
A few hours and beers after their great idea to make nah and nach two distinct words and use nach only for destinations, they decided to call it a night and go home.
One of them, a fellow of the name Gunthar, went to his old horse. Or tottered, we should say, because he was quite shitfaced.
His horse, however, wasn’t up for the … ride. “Ugh.. I hate drunk riders”, it neighed, and started trotting homeward, Gunthar trailing a few meters behind it.
His buddies watched the scenery from the tavern. “What’s he doing?”, one of them asked. And using the newfound destination-nach , another one replied:
“Er geht nach sein Pferd.”
At this point you might be wondering where I am headed to with this story :).
Well, we’ve learned that nach came to be used as a word for a destination.
And now think about what happens if that destination is actually moving away from you, as you’re trying to reach it.
Well, then walking to it basically turns into a walking behind it. Or in other words, it turns into the idea of following.
- I run to my horse. (horse is still)
- I run after my horse. (horse is running away)
The idea of toward and the idea of following, coming after are actually REALLY close, even though the bare translations to and after
And there’s actually a lot you can do with this core idea.
One of the important uses is nach and the context of time, as a translation for past and after.
- Es ist 10 nach 3.
- It is 10 past 3.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Nach der Arbeit gehe ich nach Hause.
- After work I go home.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Nach einer Weile bin ich eingeschlafen.
- After a while I fell asleep.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
We should note here, that nach is not the only translation for after. There are also danach, nachdem and nachher.
- Nachdem ich meine Pflicht getan habe, esse ich einen wohlverdienten Jogurt.
- After I have do my duty, I’ll eat a well deserved yogurt.
- Before and after.
- Davor und danach /vorher und nachher.
This is once again an example for German being painfully specific, because the difference between the words are different grammatical functions. Nach itself connects things, nachdem connects actions, and danach and nachher are standalone time statements.
But we’ve talked about this in detail in our mini series on time, so I’ll leave the link below and you can check it out later.
Now, the time-nach is the most prominent instance of the following-nach, but we can also find the core notion of following at the core of many of the common combinations of nach and verbs.
Some of them are about accordance or resemblance, which are the instances where nach is a translation or like.
- Es läuft alles nach Plan.
- All goes according to plan.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Es schmeckt/riecht nach Gurke.
- It tastes/smells like cucumber.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Es sieht nach Regen aus.
- It looks like ( it’s going to) rain.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Other verbs are about obedience and yearning...
- Ich richte mich nach dir.
- I’ll follow you/You decide.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Thomas sehnt sich nach Maria.
- Thomas aches for Maria.
And of course let’s not forget the ones that are about searching, like fragen nach and suchen nach.
- Ich suche nach der Wahrheit.
- I’m searching for the truth.
- Ich frage das Einhorn nach seinem Namen.
- I am asking the unicorn for its name.
And just for completion, here are a few common fixed expressions.
- Dem Anschein nach haben sich Thomas und Maria getrennt.
- On the face of it/Seems like Thomas and Maria have separated.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Meiner Meinung nach ist Schach kein Sport.
- My opinion after chess is no sport. (lit.)
- In my opinion, chess is no sport.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich verstehe nach und nach immer mehr aber nach wie vor noch nicht alles.
- Little by little I start understanding more and more but still not everything.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So… that was quite a range of examples, but they all share this underlying idea of following, going after that ties all this meanings together.
And that idea of following is also at the heart of nach as a prefix.
“nach” – The Verb Prefix
For the prefix verbs with nach, we can identify three main groups. They all share the idea of following, but the each cover different aspects.
The first group, is about following in a local sense. Some of the verbs are very literal…
- Ich bin meinem Pferd nachgelaufen.
- I followed my horse.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Geh schon mal vor, ich komme gleich nach.
- Go ahead, I’ll come after you right away.
(nachkommen) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But there are also some that use the idea figuratively.
- Maria weint Thomas keine Träne nach.
- Maria sheds no tear over Thomas.
- Maria cries no tear after Thomas.(lit.)
(nachweinen)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich bin sehr nachtragend.
- I usually hold a grudge for quite long./ I am very resentful (although this is too strong, I feel like)
In these examples, there is no actual following taking place but this notion of going behind someone is pretty strong. I mean, just picture it… you forget the birthday of your partner and now he or she is carrying this after you for weeks :).
Now, the second group of nach-verbs revolves around the idea of a follow up.
Like… something has been done already and then you do it again or more of it because the first time wasn’t enough.
- Wenn meine Freundin kocht, muss ich immer nachsalzen.
- When my girlfriend is cooking I always have to add more salt.
… , I always have to after-salt. (lit.) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich habe 4 meiner coolsten “Magic The Gathering“-Karten verloren. Mein Deck ist jetzt total schwach. Ich muss die unbedingt nachkaufen.
- I lost 4 of my coolest Magic The Gathering cards. My deck is all weak now. I totally have to buy them again.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Das Feuer geht aus. Leg’ mal ein bisschen Holz nach.
- The fire’s going out. Put on a little more wood.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ganz genau weiß ich das nicht mehr. Da müsste ich noch mal nachlesen.
- I don’t remember exactly. I would have to read that up again.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And also kind of in this group is the very important verb nachgucken which means to look up or to check.
- Ich muss mal im Wörterbuch nachgucken.
- I have to check in a dictionary.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
It doesn’t mean that we’ve looked up the stuff before, but if we take it as a follow up to the search we did in our brain. And there are other verbs with this idea of deeper inquiry, like nachforschen (do more research), nachfragen (ask/ask again) and I think even nachdenken kind of fits in here (separate article about nachdenken, link below :)
Cool.
Now, so we had a local following and a notion of follow up.
The third big group is about following in the sense of following a model. The most iconic example is of course nachmachen
- Ich mach vor, du machst mich einfach nach, ok?
- I’ll show you and you just imitate me, okay?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Maria kann total gut Miley Cyrus nachmachen.
- Maria can do/imitate Miley Cyrus really well.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But you can also use verbs that are a bit more specific than machen.
- Viel Spaß beim Nachkochen.
- Have fun cooking.
- Der Papagei spricht mir alles nach.
- The parrot repeats everything I say.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So those were the three big groups, and I think with the idea of following in mind, all the meanings we saw make a lot of sense.
Now, there are a few verbs that don’t really fit into these groups and for which I have a hard time seeing a connection.
Like is nachlassen which has like 25 different translations in a dictionary but the core theme of them is some notion of losing intensity.
- Der Regen lässt nach.
- The rain is easing up.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Der kleine Nick hat in der Schule sehr nachgelassen.
- Little Nick’s performance in school has dropped significantly.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
I could maybe fit it in with the following-idea when I imagine it as a kind of “falling back”… and then you’re behind and hence following. But I don’t know if that’s how it came about.
And another common “weird” one is nachgeben which is to cede or to give in.
- Der Klügere gibt nach.
- The wiser head gives in.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
The only way this makes sense to me is to think of it as literally giving more than the other person. Like… you give more way or something … I don’t know.
But hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m actually getting a bit tired now and my concentration lässt rapidly nach.
So I think we’ll call it a day here.
Yes, there are many more words with nach out there, but I think with what you’ve learned about the core idea of toward and following, you can make sense of them yourself. And if not, comment section is all yours :).
As usual, if you want to check how much you remember, recap a bit and add some more words, you can take the little quiz I have prepared for you.
And of course if you have any questions or suggestions, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
further reading:
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In Mexico the plural would be nachos
Omg this helped me SO much in my German lessons!! I always get hung up on the origins of words, so thank you for explaining that and everything else! And in such a fun and humourous way!! I deeply appreciate it!!
Vielen Dank für das tolle Feedback. Made me really happy :)!
Hallo, ich habe eine Frage.
Was bedeutet „schon mal“ in diesem Satz? (und, ist „dieseM“ korrekt? )
Geh schon mal vor, ich komme gleich nach. (nachkommen).
In deinem Wörterbüch, die Bedeutung von „schon mal“ ist /again/. Ändert die Wörter ihre Bedeutung? (ihre? I haven’t done the „dich dir mich mir“ lesson yet, but I‘ll soon.)
And how we say that in Poland – Thanks from the mountain
“Thanks from the mountain”?
That’s an interesting phrasing for such a flat country like Poland. Well, except the Tatras of course :).
Anyway, “schon mal” can also express the idea that someone “goes ahead” with doing something, while some other thing /person is still “waiting”.
– Ich packe schon mal die Sachen ins Auto.
– I’ll go ahead and put the stuff into the car.
The “mal” makes it sound very casual and the “schon” has a vague idea of “already”.
I changed the description in my dictionary a bit. It wasn’t really clear before :).
Let me know if that helps!
This phrase actually is kind of a form of laughing at polish people’ poor knowledge of english. “Thank you from the mountain” contains “from the mountain” – which literally translates to “z góry”. But “z góry” actually also means “in advance”. So saying “Thank you from the mountain” is a way to jokingly say the phrase “thank you in advance”, usually used ironically to indicate the speaker’s poor english (or mainly – our president’s poor english). Like, you know – he definitely has to polish his english.
And of course, I really appreciate your answer (as usual)! And I love the fact that you changed the word’s definition in your dictionary.
If I understand correctly je nach precedes a noun and je nach dem precedes a subordinate clause. I read this short dialogue and not sure what the je nach dem here is functioning as. Is the “dem” referring to a previously mentioned noun? If so, which one – the “das” in the first sentence? If it functions this way is it dative since it follows a dative preposition “nach”
Wie lange dauert das denn?
Das kann ich auf die Minute genau auch nicht sagen
Je nach dem, ja. Zwei Stunden, zweieinhalb
Many Thanks
“je nach dem” can also be used as a sort of standalone in the sense of “it depends”. The indirect question is then basically implied.
What I find weird about the example is the “ja”, but I guess it’s a transcript of spoken German, so there was probably a long pause before and after “ja”.
The “dem” does not refer to any noun here, that’s for sure.
Does that help?
Is there a difference between these two sentences?
Google translate gives me two very different translations, and I’m not sure which is correct. I get the following translations which are very different sentences.
Neither of them is correct :).
You can’t use “lange” with a preposition like that (“nach”).
Are you sure you didn’t use “NOCH lange”? Because that’ll work.
Either way, the sentences, once correct, will have no significant difference in meaning because it’s the same elements in the same roles, just in different order. That pretty much never changes the overall meaning.
Is it true that “nach” is almost always followed by a “dative” form. Can you give an example of when it’s not?
It’s always Dative. I don’t think there are exceptions.
Hi Emmanuel,
Then can you explain, please :
Thanks!
“er geht nach sein Pferd”
You’re right that by today’s standards it should be “seinem”, but this was a illustrative example for how they might have talked back in the day. The whole phrase is not idiomatic and not standard German today.
As for “Ich bin meinem Pferd nachgelaufen” – what do you want me to clarify?
Thank you very much! In fact, I was confused with the two examples because the first one doesn’t have a dative. It’s my fault because I’d overlooked your explanation of ‘Er geht nach sein Pferd’. It’s clear for the second.
“Nach meiner Meinung…” vs “Meiner Meinung nach…”. Could you explain when you would use one form vs. the other?
That’s an easy one… Stick with “meiner Meinung nach”. The other one sounds really strange to me.
For question 10 of the quiz, I think the meaning of ’der Nachfahre” should be ’descendent’ instead of ’ancestor’
Ops, you’re right! I always mix up those two for some reason, actually. Vielen Dank!!
I can’t believe you explain everything in too deep. This is amazing & makes everything easy to remember. I can’t possibly thank you enough.
Glad it helps, thanks for the great feedback :)
Vielen Dank fuer alle informationen.
gerne :)
A superb article! Nach had never made any sense to me, I’ve just had to try to remember the different uses, but not why, which is hard!
This article makes things so much clearer, and with your entertaining and clever pieces of whit, your work is genius!
Regarding “nachlassen”: I think having now got the gist for the meaning of nach… It feels to me like what happens after a peak performance, like heavy rain storm, it must return to normal, this is like the natural losing of performance after a peak i.e. a natural “following-loss”.
I hope that helps someone.
Thanks again!
Cool, thanks for the nice feedback :)!!
ihr sind alle dof
Und wir haben Spaß dabei :)
For “nachlassen” and “nachgeben” I want to throw in the picture of a long rope. Maybe on a ship maybe in a competition of strength. Somebody or something is pulling on one side of the rope and you pull on the other side. So the rope wants to do a movement but you are restricting it by pulling.
And now you “let” the rope do how it wants so it follows the path it normally wants. (Fits especially good if you add some of the older meanings of “nach” you explained so super duper well). And for that you have to “nachlassen”.
For “nachgeben” you give some rope “nach” the direction it wants. In this case you really have to grip again on the rope so that you actively give some rope to the tides or your competition. You “nachgeben” to the stress.
I enjoy your blog very much, I mean literally, I have fun reading it. This approach truly works and entertains. Kindly, thank you.
Glad to hear it :). Thanks for the nice feedback .. und viel Spaß!!
I just love your blog; it almost always makes me laugh, while also teaching me something!
I just wanted to make a small suggestion: you used “Nachbereitung”, or going through what has been taught – for which you said “postpare”. Well, English already has a word for that: to “revise”. Revision is probably a good way to translate what you wanted to say. :)
Yeah that actually seems like a good fit. But just to make sure… not every use of “revise” can be translated as “nacharbeiten” :)
I meant “nachbereiten”
“Nachvollziehen” wäre vielleicht ein guter Kandidat für ein WotD. Auf jeden Fall wollte ich fragen, ob “etwas nachvollziehen können” nur “be able to relate to something” bedeutet, im Sinne davon, dass man etwas Ähnliches selbst erlebt hat, oder ob es auch zu “I can imagine” passt, also wo man sich nur durch Vorstellungskraft in die Lage des Anderen versetzen kann?
– Du, mein Mitbewohner hat einen Kakadu, der mich jeden Morgen um 4:30 Uhr aufweckt, das nervt unglaublich…
– Wow, das kann ich nachvollziehen. – ODER – Wow, kann ich mir gut vorstellen.
Wusste nicht, unter welchem Post die Frage gehört… “nach,” “voll” oder “ziehen”? :)
(Nehmen wir mal an, die zweite Person war niemals in einem Haus mit einem Kakadu…)
Gute Frage… “vollziehen” alleine ist ein Nischenwort und passt fast nie, heißt aber soviel wie “do form start to finish”. Man sagt zum Beispiel “Strafvollzug” im Kontext von Freiheitsstrafen (prison penalty) und man sagt im für “4th base” in Juristendeutsch “Es kommt zum Vollzug”.
“Nachvollziehen” heißt also eigentlich “to also do from start to finish after the model”. Diese praktische Seite zeigt sich noch in der Formulierung “in Gedanken nachvollziehen” aber oft ist das gedankliche impliziert und es heißt soviel wie “den gedanklichen Weg, der zu einer Tat oder einem Resultat führt, nachgehen”… daher passt “nachvollziehen” in dem Beispiel auch nicht so gut, da es etwas zu wenig empatisch klingt und die Situation ausserdem nicht so besonders kompliziert ist. Da gibt es nicht so viel nachzuvollziehen :). “mir vorstellen” passt, wenn du es selber noch nicht kennst, “nachempfinden” passt, wenn doch. “Nachvollziehen” würde vielleicht passen für
– Wenn ich 10 Tage in Folge arbeiten muss, dann will ich zumindest einen Gehaltsbonus haben.
Hoffe, das hilft.
Vielen Dank!
Verwendet man ‘ja nach’ genau so, wie wir ‘depending on’ auf Englisch nutzen? Also: Wir sollten das Fußballspiel in einer Kneipe ansehen. Na klar! Je nach das Wetter, können wir vielleicht auf einem Patio sitzen. We should watch the football game in a bar! Ok, depending on the weather, we could watch the game on a patio.
Ja, genau. “Je nach” ist praktisch genau das… es gibt eine ganz weit verbreitete Phrase damit:
– je nach Lust und Laune
– depending on desire and whim (lit.)
– depending on what you want and feel like
Klingt sehr positiv in Deutsch :)
Can you explain why is there dem in this sentence, please? ”Sie liest nach dem Mittagessen.” Tnx
Couldn’t think of anywhere else to put this so here goes. My friends as I have been laughing and joking about this so thought it was time to test the water. Imagine a German weapon of war with a comical name. We imagined an arnie style character yeilding a hand held weapon of mass destruction. Imagine a 3 picture strip, the first one has the 2 guys standing, the potential victim says “was ist das?” Pointing to the massive weapon. The next scene has the arnie guy saying “das? Es ist ein ‘neieingeburtstagweidersehengeber'”, and the next scene is some expletive laden statement by the first guy. The question is, is the name of the weapon even understandable in German. We imagine it in English As a “neverseeanotherbirthdayagaingiver” gun. Does the German name make sense and is it even funny?
Danke.
It was funny when I read it in English:D… but the German word I did not understand. I think it is mainly the word “geber” that doesn’t work. Don’t know why but it sounds too human, too positive and too “itemy”..like… you wouldn’t give conditions. For example, grammar wouldn”t “geben” me a headache but “machen” me one in German. Then, there is also a problem with the position of “wieder”. Where you have put it, it means that you see a birthday again as in: one particular birthday. You have “wieder” right next to “sehen” and that you can think of as “re-see”. Lastly, “sehen” doesn’t work with birthdays in German.
And lastly lastly, there is a problem with verbs. The German verbs have to final in this kind of construction because they are what defines the whole phrase… however, “blahblah-habenmacher” sound really really odd. I would skip the “macher” altogether, at least if we’re following the whole thing up with “gun”.
So here’s what I would say:
– “NiewiederGeburtstaghaben”-Kanone
Oh and I skipped the article “einen” because the general expression is “Ich habe morgen Geburtstag” (no article)
I think most people would understand what a “niewiedergeburtstaghaben”-Kanone is. Is it funny? Yes, it could be… I just hope I didn’t suck it all out with the explanation :D
Aber nein. Deine erklärung war sehr gut und schnell wie immer. Vielleicht kann ich das comic machen und mal sehen ob jemand verstanden konnte. Warum bist du nicht schlafen? Es ist nun halb zwei? Bist du nicht müde? Lol
Doch, war ich. Falls du das Comic machst dann schick mal einen Link :)
Na klar. Vielleicht kannst du das Comic in einmal das Wort des Tages benutzen. Das sehe ich gern. Bis dann.
That’s because it is “das Mittagessen”… a nounified verb. Just like here.
– Nach dem Laufen gehe ich duschen.
Hope that helps :9
Hi!! You translate “ich verstehe nach und nach immer mehr aber nach wie vor noch nicht alles” as “little by little I start understanding more and more but still not everything.”
Wouldn’t that sentence translate exactly the same to English even if “nach wie vor” wasn’t present?
(“ich verstehe nach und nach immer mehr aber noch nicht alles” — “little by little I start understanding more and more but still not everything.”)
What’s the exact purpose of “nach wie vor”? Is it for some sort of emphasis? Does it add any other sort of nuances?
Thanks, and keep up the amazing blog, as usual.
Great question… so… the “noch” in this sentence actually doesn’t mean “still” but rather “yet”. “Noch” does that when it is in combination with a negative. It looks Forward and let’s us know that there’s a change coming. Still just tells us that it has been like that a while (more detailes on that are in the WotD on “noch”). The “still” is actually the “nach wie vor” (after as before). So if we take this out, then the sentence would mean:
– Little by Little I start understanding more and more but not everything yet.
We could however take out the “noch” without changing the translation.
Hope that helps :)
Thanks for the quick reply!
I sort of see what you mean; if I understood it correctly, you are saying that the “nach wie vor” is an emphasis of sorts, stressing that not only are you not yet understanding, but that you are/were expecting/hoping to understand more by now. Is that correct?
My only point of contention is that in English, you would be splitting hairs to differentiate between “still” and “yet” the way you do (and some people might not even infuse nuances such as those into the two words—many people would equate the two words). To many people, and in many circumstances, “I am not there yet” and “I am still not there” mean the exact same thing. In fact, “yet” and “still” could actually be used in ways that support the *opposite* connotations of “forwardness”:
* Mommy, are we almost there???
* No, not yet… just a few more minutes, so please stop asking! [we are almost there—looking forward to that change coming]
* Mommy, are we almost there???
* No, still not there—we only just left 10 minutes ago and we still have another 200 miles to go, so please don’t ask for a long time! [we have a long way to go, don’t even think about the change at this point]
Hmmm… not really actually… “nach wie vor” tells us that something has been a certain way before and it still is. It doesn’t imply that you’re behind schedule or something, though.
– Ich bin nach wie vor total zufrieden mit meinem Job.
– I am still totally content with my job.
Does that make sense? :)
I think so… little by little haha. :)
So, “noch nicht alles” would mean “not yet everything” or even “still not everything”—BUT with the implication that it is hoped/expected to change… whereas “nach wie vor nicht alles” means “still not everything” with the simple sense that: nothing changed, end of story…!
(…in which case, perhaps “nach wie vor NOCH nicht alles” would then combine the two meanings to mean “still not everything” in the sense that nothing has changed, it’s still the same as before, and yet also still hoping that it will…?)
Exactly :)
Woohoo!!! :D
Als ich die Worter sowie nachgucken, nachlesen, nachfragen usw. zum ersten Mal gehört habe, habe ich sie verstanden, die Bedeutung von “after” zu haben. Also, zum Beispiel könnte man sagen “What are you after?”, um das Suchen von Informationen/einer Sache auszudrücken. Wenn man nachliest, sucht man normalerweise bestimmte Informationen, genauso wie wenn man nachguckt oder sogar nachfragt.
So war mein Verständnis.
Ja, das passt perfekt…. ich hoffe, mein ganzes Gerede von “follow up” hat dich nicht verunsichert :)