Hello everyone,
Advent Season is fast approaching and I am preparing the German Advent Calendar harder than preppers in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
But it’s not December yet, and so today we’ll have a normal episode.
And this time, the focus is actually on an English word. Because today, we’ll talk about
How to say “to prefer” in German
I got this idea in the Easy German discord recently, where someone asked about the difference between bevorzugen and vorziehen, and I was like “Wait a second, there’s something else there.”
Because neither of them are actually what’s used in daily life.
So, today we’ll find out all about it and if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.
…
…
…
“Uhm, we’re ready.”
Okay great! So we’ll jump in now, okay?
“Okay, go.”
I will, just making sure you guys are ready.
“We are ready, Emanuel. And we’d prefer you not waste our time with this stupid intr…”
Okay okay, here we go.
***
Let’s start with the translation for to prefer that most of you probably had in their mind first – bevorzugen.
‘bevorzugen’ as ‘to prefer’
Bevorzugen is kind of the default translation for to prefer. That’s what you’ll see in dictionaries and what you’ll get from Google translate and also from ChatGPT.
Oh gee, thanks mom!!!
Not even self-conscious yet and already annoying as hell.
Anyway, so yeah. bevorzugen is kind of the default.
The verb looks a bit complicated and it feels clunky, but the structure is pretty much the same as in English – So whatever you prefer is the direct object.
- Ich bevorzuge Bier.
- I prefer beer.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Here’s one in past tense, as well
- Früher hat Maria Wein bevorzugt.
- Back in the day, Maria preferred wine.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And if you want to include the less preferred item, you’d do that by using gegenüber.
- Ich bevorzuge Bier gegenüber Wein.
- I prefer beer over whine.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
So prefer A over B in English, and in German it’s A bevorzugen… uh… I already forgot. It was something really long.
It won’t be in The Test™ though, so don’t worry about it.
Now, bevorzugen looks kind of weird and clunky, but I’m sure most of you have assumed correctly that it’s just one of German’s one shittilion prefix verbs.
But question is what is the prefix. Is it be + vorzugen or bevor + zugen? Because both, be- and bevor- are legitimate prefixes.
In this case, we’re dealing with a be-verb though, so it’s be + vorzugen. vorzugen is essentially just the noun der Vorzug with a verb ending. der Vorzug can be an advantage or a preference and is itself based off of another prefix verb –vorziehen. Which is actually our second possible translation for to prefer.
‘vorziehen’ as ‘to prefer’
Taken literally, vorziehen means to pull forward or to pull ahead. And it can be used in a more literal sense of moving something forward.
- Kannst du die Couch ein bisschen vorziehen?
- Can you pull the couch forward a little bit?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Wir haben das Meeting eine Stunde vorgezogen.
- We moved the meeting forward an hour.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But vorziehen also carries the idea of preference.
And if you can’t really see why, then just think of a company Christmas party. The part that’s fun is when the buffet opens and everyone gets drunk and starts to tell stories about each other.
So if we could, we would “pull that forward” to before the boring investor and team lead speeches.
In fact, the English to prefer isn’t all that different because the prefix pre is about forward and fer belongs to the same family as to bear – so to prefer literally meant “to carry forward“. Which really isn’t too different from “pulling forward“.
But anyway, while vorziehen is the OG that bevorzugen is based on, it’s actually LESS common and sounds very formal.
- Ich ziehe Bier vor.
(I prefer beer)
This is quite stiff and no one would really ever actually say that. The only reason people would use this structure in writing is because you can easily add the less preferred item in Dative.
- Ich ziehe das Bier dem Wein vor.
- I prefer the beer over the wine.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But in practice, the only instance where vorziehen is maybe preferable over bevorzugen is in the context of actions.
- Ich ziehe es vor, zu schweigen.
- I prefer to remain silent.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
I guess there’s also a small difference here in that bevorzugen would sound like a general preference while vorziehen can also talk about one particular context.
But if you’re now like “Oh wow, the nuances are so helpful.” then let me tell you… they’re really NOT. You don’t need to worry about the difference between vorziehen and bevorzugen. At least not, until you have mastered what comes next.
The Best Way to say “prefer” – “lieber”
Earlier, I called bevorzugen the kind of “default” translation for to prefer. But I really only meant that in the sense that this is the translation you’ll most likely get from dictionaries or ChatGPT.
.
Well… I hate to break it to you, ChatGPT, but that’s WRONG!!! You’re WRONG! You did answer the question WRONG! bevorzugen is NOT the best way to say to prefer in German.
Because the real best way to express this in daily life is with lieber.
Technically, lieber is the “more-form” of of lieb, so it can mean more lovely, nicer.
- Mein alter Chef war schon lieb, aber der neue ist noch lieber.
- My old boss was nice and friendly, but the new one is even nicer, more lovely.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
But lieber is also the “official” more-form of gern so it also expresses the idea that you “like something more“. Which is pretty much what to prefer expresses. Though the closest translation is probably rather, which expresses roughly the same and which has the exact same structure.
- Ich trinke lieber Bier.
- I prefer drinking beer. / I’d rather drink beer.
(German doesn’t need a “würde” here… see the comments about “would rather”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich mag lieber Bier.
- I prefer beer. / I like beer better.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
It’s also SUPER easy to add the less preferred choice. Just like with rather, all we’re doing is a normal comparison, so in German all we need is als.
- Ich esse lieber spät als früh.
- I’d rather eat late than eat early.
(I prefer eating late over eating early. )
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And for completion, let’s also do a question and a negation.
- Wo willst du lieber hin – Berlin oder Oslo?
- Where would you rather go/ Where would you prefer to go – Berlin or Oslo?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich sage lieber nicht, was Maria gemacht hat.
- I prefer to not say what Maria did. /I’d rather not say what Maria did.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, could we use bevorzugen in any of these?
Well, technically yes. But it does sound a bit formal and especially in the last two examples it sounds REALLY clunky.
- Wohin bevorzugst du es zu reisen – Berlin or Oslo?
Like, legit no native speaker talks like that.
Using lieber is just much more idiomatic!
And the phrasings we had so far weren’t even all of it yet.
There’s a second construction with lieber which might be even more useful:
jemandem (Dative) lieber sein
Literally, it means “being more dear to someone” (hence the Dative) and the actual meaning is pretty much the exact counterpart of to prefer.
- Bier ist mir lieber.
- I prefer beer.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Was ist dir lieber – früh essen oder spät?”
“Oh, spät essen ist mir lieber. - “What do you prefer – eating early or eating late?
“Oh, I prefer eating late.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Mir wäre es lieber, wenn wir das Meeting morgen vorziehen könnten.
- I would prefer if we could move the meeting forward tomorrow.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Thomas meinte, morgen ist ihm lieber.
- Thomas said, he‘d prefer tomorrow.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
I know these constructions where English I, you, he, she change roles and become Dative mir, dir, ihm, ihr and so on are a bit hard to get used to. But honestly… I don’t think I’ve used bevorzugen even once this year. It’s not that I’d say it’s rare. It’s just so clunky sounding, and most daily life preferences really are expressed with lieber. So yeah, it’s definitely worth investing the time to get used to it. Your German will sound much better.
Cool.
Now, we’re almost done for the day, but earlier when I gave the examples for lieber, some of you were starting to wonder, so let’s clear that stuff up real quick.
Word order with “lieber”
Yeah… I totally nailed it, I know :).
Let’s take the first example again:
- Ich trinke lieber Bier.
The question that came up for some of you was about whether lieber can also be at the end and if so, what would be the difference in meaning.
The answer to the first question is yes, you may find both versions in daily life.
- Ich trinke lieber Bier.
- Ich trinke Bier lieber.
The difference in meaning here is that the second version ALWAYS talks about the general reality, while the first one CAN be about one particular instance.
So when you’re at the bar and the barkeeper is like “We got soy milk on offer”, you could use the first version to express that you prefer beer. The second version would not work in that scenario because it sounds like you’re talking about what you USUALLY prefer, which doesn’t say anything about the particular instance.
That said, having lieber AFTER the preferred item tends to be used when you’re actually doing a comparison.
- Ich spiele lieber Fußball. …. sounds amazing
- Ich spiele Fußball lieber. …. sounds meh
- Ich spiele lieber Fußball als Tennis.
- Ich spiele Fußball lieber als Tennis.
So I’d say stick with putting lieber BEFORE the preference – that’s the safer bet and is always idiomatic.
And I think that’s it for today.
Sure, we could go on a bit and explore some nouns like die Präferenz (a preference in a situation, formal), or die Vorliebe (a general preference) or some other relatives like vorzugsweise (preferably) or vorzüglich (exquisite).
But frankly… I’d prefer to do that in the comments.
Or in German… mir wäre es lieber, das in den Kommentaren zu machen :)
Seriously, it’s enough for one day.
Now, usually there’s a little quiz here to check on the most important points. But for this one, I’ll do it in the Advent Calendar.
So no quiz today, but of course, if you have any questions or suggestions, or if you want to try out some examples, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time!
***
Emanuel from the future here – Here’s the link to the exercise:
https://yourdailygerman.com/how-to-use-lieber-exercise/
Viel Spaß
Thanks Emanuel. I found one example perhaps you can help on understanding. Isn’t it like lieber is mainly used as adjective vs bevorzuge. Ex: How would I say I prefer 12pm. there is no usual verb like trinken or essen but preference as a verb itself. Thus, lieber might not work but rather bevorzuge is the right word here? Let me know your thoughts.
Not really. You’d use the “mir is lieber” phrasing.
– Um 12 ist mir lieber.
Thanks Emanuel for the great post! Regarding bevorzugen, could it be used to express a slightly different meaning of “giving the priority to” ? For instance, imagine I want to express that “I want to eat healthy: I prefer chocolate, but I give the priority to fruits”. Could it be translated into “Ich will es, gesund zu essen: Ich esse lieber Schokolade, aber ich bevorzuge Obst.” Would this German sentence have the correct nuance ?
PS: great idea on kickstarter, I have given you my pledge!
I get the thinking but no, your sentence would confuse every native speaker because in this exact phrasing the two options literally mean the same.
There’s “den Vorzug geben”, which would fit, but you’d need to explain why, and also, it sounds a bit stilted.
“Obst ist mir wichtiger” is probably how I’d say. Or completely rephrase everything.
Thanks for the support of the card game, by the way!!
Thankyou very much, Emanuel. You will remain in my mind, surrounded by love and gratefulness
Dear Emmanuel, thank you for your efforts really.
We thank you
Good weeks
Best wishes
Danke dir :)
I never heard “bevorzugen” used in Germany when I lived there, so this lesson was easy since I automatically thought “lieber” right off the bat. A thing to consider is in a bar they “draw” a beer from the tap. So the “ziehen” does occur with beer.
One translation into English in the text that I thought might not be quite right is this…”Thomas meinte, morgen ist ihm lieber. Thomas said, he‘d prefer tomorrow.” I speak USA English, not UK English so keep this in mind, sometimes I am not sure if you are using UK Englisch oder USA English. I would have used “Thomas means, he’d prefer tomorrow.” It may be, since I learned German as a teen in West Germany in the late 1960s, that I did not quite get the nuances right on the word “meinte”. I would use the word “means” when Thomas has given a long spiel on the merits of tomorrow verus another day, and to sum it up I then say “Thomas means..” Since Thomas did not literally say the words he “prefers tomorrow”. Does that make sense to you? Also “We got soy milk on offer” is not ever said in the USA, we would say “We can offer you soy milk” though American bartenders have never used the word “offer” in regards to a drink when I used to go to bars. They would say “I’ve got soy milk” or “We have soy milk”. Do the UK use “offer” in bars? Cultural differences are interesting.
Great observation, but my translation is actually accurate.
“meinen” is indeed used in the sense of “to say” in contexts like this.
– Maria meinte sie ist müde.
This means that she SAID she is tired. Maybe it makes sense if you think of it as “voicing ones opinion”. But it definitely does NOT mean just “she meant”. So that’s kind of a false friend use, one that I never really noticed till now.
As for “soy milk on offer”… what I was trying to express is that the soy milk is on sale, like soy milk happy hour or something. So not just that they have it in general.
How would you phrase that?
I’m trying to go with US English but it’s definitely possible that it’s more of a mix.
For soy milk or any drink being a lower price in a bar it is usually say “Today soy milk is half off.” or “We have a BOGO on Soy milk today.” BOGO means “Buy one and get one free.”
Thanks for the explanation on “meinen”, I will have to take a closer look at it to get a firmer idea in my head as to it’s usage.
Aelxa
I mean, the idea of soy milk in a bar is what stood out as weird (obviously the intention) rather than the phrasing. If i went into a bar in the uk and they were like “we got an offer on Duff beer today, two pints for the price of one” this wouldn’t sound weird to me.
half off sounds very US english to me. I’ve not seen Buy-One-Get-One-Free as an acronym before but maybe it does get used in the uk these days too….. I’d associate both of these phrases with retail rather than bars though somehow…
How would you say it if there was a special deal on pints, like one pint for 5 pounds instead of 7. Is there a generic way to express that there’s a discount without using specific numbers?
Duff beer is on offer at the moment i guess. But your example i think someone might say ” its 2 quid off a pint of Duff at the moment. “
In the US, “there’s a special on xyz” would work well for this.
I’d agree with vvvv-vx that things like “sale” or “BOGO” sound a bit more like retail than a bar special to me. Though “half off” or “half-price pints” or something wouldn’t strike me as odd.
Ahhhh, a special on XYZ, I think that’s the one that I was looking for!!
In the USA we would say, We are having a special on Soy milk today. Having a “sale” on something means you always have, but today it is offered at a lower price. Having a “Special” on soy milk means that you usually don’t carry it, but today you are trying it out. Great website, BTW!
Oh, that’s interesting to know!! Danke :)
Just to clarify the point on
This is the correct translation only in this particular context, correct?
In the dictionary on this site, this meaning is never mentioned at all, only the “to mean, to think”.
Also in other online dictionaries (such as Duden), only the last meaning is “Sagen”.
So, how widespread is this use?
Very widespread in daily life.
People use it all the time when they tell someone about what someone else said.
You can find plenty of example for the phrase “meinte zu mir” here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22meinte+zu+mir%22&rlz=1C1CHBF_deDE926DE926&oq=%22meinte+zu+mir%22&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhge0gEINDk1MGoxajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Saying that something is “on offer today” or “The dresses at the back are now on offer”, meaning “on sale”, might still be used in Australia, but it does feel pretty old-fashioned to me. I think expressions like that have more or less ceased to mean “on sale”, and now simply mean “available”. (eg “The café around the corner now has freshly squeezed orange juice on offer”. I’d take that to mean that it’s newly *available*, not that it was being sold at a lower price than normal. You might still hear it in contexts such as real estate: “Today we have five outstanding houses on offer”. Again, it just means they’re available for purchase.)
As for “meinen” (the verb…): it’s definitely a false friend for many of us English-speaking learners of German — it’s always reassuring to have these wonderful near synonyms on which to anchor our understanding :-/ I’m hoping the mental note that “meinen” is always subjective really sticks: that should stop most of my major offences against that poor, long-suffering German word. Seems we just need to keep the notion of “meaning” personal.
“Meinst du das wirklich?” <=> “Is that what you really mean?”
“Nein. Was ich wirklich meine, ist, dass ich zu müde bin, um an den Strand zu gehen”. (No, what I’m_really_saying/I_mean is that I’m too tired to go to the beach.)
In short, because I’m babbling on and on (again): meinen as “meaning” is OK if it’s *someone’s* meaning/intent/opinion that’s being discussed, but not if it’s “the meaning” of something. (Does that have even the merest whiff of truth about it?)
Reading your comment made me think about the German version, which is “im Angebot”.
And this one is actually ambivalent – so it can mean “on offer” in the sense you described but it can also mean that something is discounted. It’s HEAVILY context dependent, but I don’t think I ever got confused between the two.
That said, something that is marketed as “Angebot” with a red price label in the supermarket is not necessarily cheap.
I have observed pasta prices and they fluctuate them so much that you don’t actually know what the base price is.
week 1: 1,29
week 2: 1,49 offer
week 4: 1,99
week 6: 1,49
week 8: 0,89 offer
And so on. And little by little they move up the average without anyone really noticing.
Maybe that double meaning of “Angebot” makes it legal while for “discount” you have to prove that it really is a discount. Consumer protection is a great thing.
As for “meaning”… you’re 100% correct. In German, the emphasis is on ME… MEEEEE-ning, MEIN-ung
Maybe that helps drive it home further.
Ooh, MEIN-ung, I like that a lot. No more excuses for mixing that one up, never again, nosirrrreee!
As for the general fakeness of “Angebote/Specials”: it’s also worth keeping an eye on the sneaky trick of subtly downsizing the packaging and contents, or even just downsizing the *portion* included in the same-sized packet. I’ve actually seen that with pasta recently, where the bog-standard 500g size became a “maybe you won’t notice the difference?” 400g packet for the same price, and maybe with an introductory price reduction um die Anderung abzufedern. Hey, what a saving! I’ve also seen it with parmesan cheese, where 100g was shaved off the block –but, remarkably enough, the “aspect ratio” was maintained– in an evident attempt to stave off (or soften) an increase in the sticker price.
I’ll avoid ranting about the all-too-frequent shitshow that is pricing on Amazon, even apart from the obvious nonsense that occurs on “Prime Day” or “Black Friday”. But if I had my grumpy pants on today I’d say that hearing the words “Black Friday” even once more this year would be *way* too often.
Ahhhh, the good old shrinkflation.
Yes, I have seen these new 400 gr pasta packages in Bulgaria already and I think in Germany it’s just a matter of time.
As for Amazon, it’s not only the Black Friday and Prime stuff…their entire search engine is apparently made such that customers overpay on average by 20% and the cheapest item is on average on page number 17.
I don’t know if you know Cory Doctorow, but he has written a piece about a recent study about this. VERY interesting.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
I’ve had the hunch that Amazon wasn’t the cheapest anymore for a few years now. Even the local electronics chain that has stores has the same or cheaper deals than Amazon for the same item often.
Yep, there are some super-shady tricks within Amazon’s empire, which should be an absolute shock to, well, nobody. It’s definitely one of the guilty (dis)pleasures of the internet now, which is far removed from the source of wonder that it was in the late 1990s, when as a fledgling mathematician I discovered that not only was there a new source of pretty much *any* book you could name, but they were available at about half the price I would have had to pay at a local retailer (assuming the book in question was *in stock*). And then came the golden age of cheap CDs, and the rest is, well, shitstory.
I just read the Doctorow piece, which was more shocking in the depth of the deceptions deployed than the fact that they existed at all. Talk to anyone who’s been sucked into that orbit (by near-necessity, given the paucity of real competitors) and they’ll tell you tales of woe about the very real struggle to even survive, let alone thrive.
Anyway, moving back to the subject of the article above, I had a rather strong feeling that the dreaded Duolingo used to teach “bevorzugen” as a translation of “prefer” (in much the same way that they oversell “besichtigen” and undersell “besuchen”), and was ready to sink the knife in once again. But closer examination revealed a bit of a subtle difference. All the examples I came across were actually using a slightly altered notion of “prefer”: something covered by the sense it has in English where something “has priority”, or “is favoured”. A “preferred supplier”, say. Here are a couple of example sentences: Mitglieder werden bevorzugt. (Members are preferred/favoured.) Sie werden deshalb bevorzugt. (That’s why you are preferred/favoured.) While these simple examples are of course *literally* passive, would it fair to say that this sort of passive deployment is bevorzugen‘s niche in the language, or at least one place in which it might make sense over lieber? I must confess to rather liking the visual image of something being “moved/pulled to the front” that “bevorzugen” gives, so I might be grasping at straws a little here!
Wow, that’s a great observation!!
Yes, in passive voice for “to be preferred”, “bevorzugen” is the way to go, because you just can’t really make these with “lieber”. I mean, you can, but it soften sounds shitty.
That’s okay.
Also, “bevorzugen” has its place in a bunch of formal contexts, which I can’t think of right now, of course.
So it’s not completely useless.
By the way… “besuchen” is a classic word that non native speakers overuse.
Here’s my count for using “besuchen” for the year:
0
I do use “Besuch”, but the verb… nope.
Oh, wow, that last observation regarding “besuchen” is going straight into the long-term memory. I’m guessing we should just piggyback on existing verbs then. So maybe “go for a visit” is more commonly “einen Besuch machen”, and “zu Besuch kommen” looks after “come for a visit”? But, more generally, think in terms of “ein(en) Besuch”: cool…
Along such lines, I do remember that “Besuch” covers all possibilities: singular, plural, male, female. So being told that you can’t see someone because “Er hat Besuch” is pretty opaque: it’s none of your business who/what/how many!
I’ll have to amend this and say that I only use “Besuch” in “Besuch haben” or “zu Besuch kommen” (rarely). And yes, the generic-ness of “Besuch haben” is part of the appeal.
In daily life, what you REALLY want to say is “zu X gehen”, “nach X gehen” and stuff like “vorbeikommen”, “bei X sein” and so on.
Thanks for the sponsorship to anyone who payed extra money in order for an arbeitslos kid to be able to study this blog has helped me immensely it takes away a lot of pressure in learning.
The idea of the card game app is brilliant too, as all the articles INDEED.
Ich lese lieber YourDailyGerman als alles andere im Internet
Wow, was für ein tolles Kompliment. Danke, ich habe mich sehr gefreut :)!!
always love ur articles, i may not be a member but much appreciate the energy and time u invest.
Happy to hear that :)
Now, Emanuel, as your long time reader I am concerned about your alcohol consumption… Ich trinke lieber Tea… was für ein schones beischpiel!
Congrats on the kickstarter! That’s awesome!
I’m gonna gently disagree with a couple commenters here. “Based on” is ever-so-slightly more accepted than “based off [of],” but both are correct and communicative. Apparently “based off” is newer. Learning the distinction is the kind of thing I imagine people do in, like, C2-level classes, where you learn “better” grammar than English speakers.
Same for “prefer to” versus “prefer over.” The latter is newer and less common, but no less communicative and no less “correct” in a practical sense.
Although maybe this is an American thing…
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
based off of sounds very north american to me too (and informal) . It wouldn’t sound wrong to me if i heard an american say but if i saw it in formal writing (e.g. a newspaper article or an essay) i would personally find that a bit out of place sounding i think…. just my personal reaction…
I’d personally use to but over totally sounds fine.
Now the big question is… did the “off of” in this article catch your eye brows attention or not :)?
I’m asking because it’s kind of an essay, but then again… it’s Youtube lingo.
I dunno, what you do is essay-ish but it also has a conversational aspect… so “of off” didn’t stand out as massively incongrous but it feels noticably colloquial and particularly north amercian sounding to me…
Its definitely not like using “based from” or “based of” which would sound totally wrong to me.
I would however absolutely avoid it if i wanted to write an essay in an academic setting (but I’m not from N. America so i can’t say for sure how it would be there)…..
was curious and found this https://www.grammarly.com/blog/based-on-or-based-off/
Oh, I found that too yesterday!
I LOVE the typeface they’re using. It’s sooo pleasant to look at.
But I hate the article. So much bloat. It’s a great example for “Writing for the search engine.”.
My articles have bloat too, but it’s bloat for people :D
Yeah, i found the style it was written in weird too. I think you are right.
Durch mein deutsche Studium habe ich ein neugefundene Liebe/Hass von Präpositionen auf Englisch. Erhlich gesagt. Vor einer Woche bin ich gefahren und ich habe an ein englische Satz gedacht. Ich könnte drei verschiedene Präpositionen benutzen ohne die Bedeutung des Satzes zu wechseln – vier in Süden! :)
Welches Verb war das denn :)?
I was trying to remember the exact one, I was in the car when it came to me. When it comes to me again, I will get it down for sure. However this week I was thinking about: He ran IN the street, ON the street, DOWN the street, UP the street, THROUGH the street. You can of course run OVER something, and I will need to run BY and pick up something on the way home. I think Americans would be split whether they are ON the street or IN the street when standing, but they will always be ON the sidewalk (never IN) for some reason.
Aligning prepositions with verbs is definitely something that just has to be learned by using it over and over in the new language. Some match, some don’t, and complaining about it just wastes time. Why can’t I stand IN the sidewalk if I am already “IN the way” of the cyclist? And why is the cyclist on the sidewalk anyway? She should be in the street and going up/down the road. I’m still perplexed (but not complaining) about being “auf der Post” but I think I get the historical reference :)
I’d wager that “in the street” only really works in inner cities with high buildings and maybe not in a small fishing village.
But that might well be my German perspective.
One verb that I feel like has several options is “to be disappointed”… of, in, by. I can’t tell what the difference is. Though I’m sure there’s a thread about it on English Stackexchange. English native speakers LOVE to argue about /over the English language :D
I have never lived in a real ‘city’, but I know that if some of our garbage ends up IN the street (we have wind), it will be me who cleans it up.
In / On the street seem very interchangeable to me as a ‘place’. But again, never the sidewalk – always On. One only drives ON the street, but anything else can walk, run or just be IN the street.
For me, the preps for ‘to be disappointed’ that work are: By, In, or With. I can see that “of” would fit in some way, but it would be a formal situation. Maybe more common in England but ‘of’ klingt kommish.
That fully checks out then :).
Elsa is from the UK, so she speaks through a British English lense.
She’s familiar with real English, too, but maybe not every nuance.
(I am KIDDING!!)
I’m more familiar with American English, thanks to Youtube and so on.
hahaha…as a native speaker of Real English™… ;)
“Based on” vs. “Based off of”…”Prefer to” vs “Prefer over”…for me, all are fine. Sounds like there are regional differences though…or maybe some dusty English grammar book would disagree.
Or to put it in the format of this blog: None of these get the “NOPE” in red text or even a “mehhhhh” or “Sounds WEIRD” from me. :)
But since this is a Real German™ language blog and I’m already here…let’s ask a question about “would rather.” For me, in English, “I’d rather have tea” is softer and more conversational than “I’d prefer tea.”
You mention that German doesn’t need a würde paired with lieber. Are there other constructions that “soften” the preference so that the host doesn’t think their coffee sucks and that’s why you want tea? Maybe toss a “mal” in there or something? Or is “lieber” soft enough by itself?
I think I’d basically agree about “would rather” vs. “would prefer” – to me, “I’d prefer” is also maybe a bit more polite in a slightly distanced kind of way, if that makes sense? Like, if I’m offered coffee by a waiter or somebody, I’d be more likely to use “I’d prefer” to ask for something else, but I’d use “I’d rather” if it’s a friend offering.
I don’t think German is into softening preferences very much XD
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Hallo,
Ich lese lieber, aber ich korrigiere Typos auch gerne!
“self-conscious” is hyphenated
“is itself based off of another prefix verb” ( is itself based on another prefix verb)
“which expresses the roughly the same” (which expresses roughly the same)
“it’s definitely worth invest the time” (it’s definitely worth investing the time)
The one with the “rather” has already been covered!
Have a question:
in your example “Was ist dir lieber – früh essen oder spät?”, I’d feel tempted to say “Was ist dir lieber – früh oder spät zu essen?” – is this less idiomatic or just plain wrong?
Bis bald!
Great question!!
As I started doing the exercise that’ll come in the calendar, I realized that there are lots of pesky little questions that I didn’t really touch on in the article.
This is one of them :)
So, both versions are correct and which order one chooses comes down to personal preference.
As for the “zu”… skipping it is kind of colloquial, but having it there sounds a bit too stiff to my ears, so I decided to go with an example that DOESN’T have it.
I think it’s closer to how Germans feel about the “action-entity” to treat it as a noun.
– Eis essen ist mir lieber als Yoga machen.
Using “zu” here is probably more “correct” but it sounds shit and most people would say it the way I wrote it.
Then, we get to spelling, which is of course officially wrong. Should be “Eisessen” and “Yogamachen”. But again… no one would write that in chat, because it looks AWKWARD.
“Eisessen” in particular is a word my brain needs time to parse, it’s not automatic. I hate looking at it, to be honest. Looks just wrong :D
Congrats on the kickstarter!
I’m surprised that bevorzugen is the dictionary option for ‘to prefer’ because I’ve only ever been taught ‘lieber’.
Also, a couple of nitpicks:
In English (standard British English) we prefer things to other things, not over them and it’s I‘d rather drink beer (although I woudn’t, I‘d rather drink tea.)
Oh, you’ve had good teachers then :).
Thanks for the corrections, too.
“Prefer something to something else” is standard for AE too, although there are similar enough expressions with “over” (“I’d take beer over wine”) that it’s totally understandable and I could actually see a native speaker using it.
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Okay, I think this was just a typo in the English translation:
But I do hear “rather” from Germans fairly often when they’re translating from lieber, and when it shows up without the “would” (or “-‘d”), it really sounds wrong wrong wrong. That’s mainly because there are different phrasings with “rather” where it functions differently and has somewhat different meanings. “Would rather” is just a very fixed expression, and it really always means a comparative preference in a specific situation, even if that’s hypothetical. I think lieber is quite a bit more flexible in how you deploy it.
I will say that I’ve heard bevorzugen in normal speech, but definitely not often.
Ahhh, I actually did feel weird writing and reading “I rather” but I never heard a rule or anything forbidding it.
But I guess my brain already picked up on the unspoken convention that the phrasing is “would rather” :).
I was actually thinking about this today, and in this case the thing is that it’s the “would” that expresses preference, not the “rather” – “rather” by itself is really just saying “instead of something else.” (That’s also why “prefer” is more common/normal in English than bevorzugen is in German, I think.)
“I rather” sounds like it’s going to be part of this phrasing:
That’s “rather” as a mild intensifier or qualifier, hinting that what you’re saying is at least a little bit contrary to what might be expected (not very idiomatic for American English, could be a little old-fashioned or stiff in BE too? Not sure).
There’s also “rather” as a conjunction:
I don’t think “rather” is a conjunction in the last example. Feels and looks like an adverb to me, but English linguistics may well classify these things differently.
As for your theory that “would” expresses the preference rather than “rather”, you can actually test that by swapping in something else.
– I would reluctantly drink coffee.
– I would then drink coffee, but only then.
There’s no notion of “preference” in these, so that’s a sign that it does come from the “rather”.
I now also looked up the origin of “rather” because your comment made me curious as to what’s actually the core of it, and apparently, the notion of “preferably” was there before all the rest. The original sense was something like “quickly, earlier, sooner”.
Yeah, “rather” is really quite a bit like eher.
I don’t know about the conjunction vs. adverb thing, but to me “rather” is functioning pretty much exactly like sondern in the Thomas example. (“But rather” is actually my go-to gloss for sondern for learners.)
Probably I was just talking nonsense about “would” rather than “rather” expressing the preference. But you absolutely can’t express preference using “rather” without the “would.” And “prefer” can be quite general in a way that “would rather” can’t:
…could mean “rather than tea,” or “instead of in the afternoon,” or just very broadly “If I have the option, I drink coffee in the morning.”
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I think “would rather” is one unit and the idea of preference comes from both words. “Rather” is like an arrow that points toward what you want, and “would” shows desire.
“Would” can wear a lot of hats. I think this one is kind of like what you would see in older versions of English where “will/would” had the idea of desire, of wanting something. That has mostly died out, but you can see traces of it here and there.
– Will you marry me?
– I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.
– Would (that) he were here! (I wish he was here, very old-timey)
You can also look at it like a conditional where part of the sentence is implied.
– I would like an espresso (if that’s possible).
– I would reluctantly drink coffee (if there was no better option).
– I would drink coffee then, but only then (if I was about to die of thirst) (the condition has to have been stated previously)
Conditions and wishes are similar in the sense that they both talk about something unreal. It doesn’t exist yet. So it makes sense that “would” is used for both. Romanian even has one form for both.
– Aş vrea sa ştiu
– I would like to know
– I wish I knew
Oh absolutely… the English future tense evolved from a “statement of intent”.
There’s actually an more obvious example for the “old” will:
– I will that into existence.
That said, I’m not sure I agree on “desire”.
– I would rather drink pee than eat poo.
I don’t think there is a notion of desire here, it’s just “preference”. And I’m also not sure if “would rather” is a fixed block here because I can take out “rather” and swap in “before I eat poo” to get the same meaning.
Well, there are synonyms for “rather,” and different formulations that mean the same thing. I would sooner do X than Y, I would just as soon do X as Y (this one can be ambiguous), I would more readily do X than Y. I would put X ahead of Y, I would pick X over Y. “Would” lets you do all of that. Not just grammatically, but meaning-wise too.
But when “rather” is used to talk about preference, it almost always comes with “would.” Check this out:
That’s non-standard, but you’ll hear that sometimes. There are a couple reasons that happens: (1) confusion over how the subjunctive works, (2) “would” is almost always followed by another verb, and (3) “rather” has a strong idea of preference here.
“I would have rathered”????
My mind is blown! Is that really honestly a thing???
Yeah, it really is. I don’t hear it that often in daily life, but enough that I know people use it. There are like 5,000 results on Reddit and most of it is people using it unironically. It’s definitely a newer thing.
“I’d have rathered you called before coming over” is something I’d use (native AE speaker)… Is it grammatically incorrect?
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Yes, that should work. There’s a Paypal button on the payment form.