Hello everyone,
And welcome back to a new episode of “Book Snippet”.
In this series, I give you short sample chapters from my upcoming book about prefix verbs.
Which may be the last sample chapter before I’m actually done. I mean, it’s not going to be next week or anything – it kind of depends on Helen a bit too, for the cartoons.
But yeah, the writing is close to finished.
And this time, I have something a short chapter I am REALLY excited about:
Why do The Versions exist
By versions I mean the versions of prefix verbs with r- or her- or hin- or d-. Like raufmachen, herauskommen, hinaufgehen or draufstehen.
In the book, I give a short overview over these versions, including a look at WHY these versions are even a thing.
And that’s the reason I’m so excited about sharing this because it actually contains an insight about the versions that I have not shared on here before, simply because I realized it only as I was writing.
Even if you’ve read my lesson on the r-versions here already… I’m almost sure this will be a new for you and connects the versions back to this concept of head-final that I recently shared in another sample chapter.
So if you’re ready to get one of these little “aha”-moments, let’s jump right in.
Oh, if you haven’t read the chapter about head-final, you can find it here:
But you can also understand today’s chapter without that.
It’s just going to be a bit less of an aha moment.
Anyway.. viel Spaß!
Oh and keep in mind, that this is for a book. No time pressure or anything and I will go off on a tangent ;)
***
Why do the versions exist at all
As we were looking at the different types of versions for pages and pages just now, I’m sure one deeply philosophical question kept surfacing in your mind: Why? Why is this stuff a thing?
“Why is this stuff a thing?”
Socrates
And I want to mention one really important insight about languages in general right away: you almost never really “need” a language feature. You can always find a language that doesn’t have a certain feature and works just fine.
Learners often think that any feature that their own language has the new language must have too. And any feature that the new language has that their own language lacks is weird and pointless.
Many of you will now feel like “Well, I don’t think that way.”
And it’s true that most people do NOT think like that in such a direct way. It’s usually more subtle and often subconscious, but it manifests in your mindset when you encounter things that are “different”. It’s skepticism and a bit of victim mentality. “Oh, this is so complicated. Oh why is it not like my mother tongue. Oh, this is so pointless, other languages don’t even have it.”
I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t complain. It’s fine, it’s healthy to blow off some steam.
But think of it as hiking up a mountain on a new trail and then all the time comparing it to the trail you’re used to. “Oh, this section sucks. It’s so much easier on the normal trail. Why doesn’t it go that way?”
You can do that, but that’s not the best experience, right?
The mountain stands for communication, and there are countless ways up it.
And it’s going to be a much better experience if you walk a new trail with curiosity and an open mind, to see how other people go up that mountain. And when you get to a challenging section, you can of course complain that it’s challenging. You can even say that your normal trail doesn’t have such a steep section for example.
What matters is your mindset. Every trail leads up the mountain and if you walk a new one- be it because you want to or because you have to – you might as well be curious what new challenges it may bring.
So, when you find yourself wondering “Oh man, why is that even a thing?”, just remind yourself that many ways lead up the mountain and try to ask from a place of curiosity, not resistance.
But enough with the preaching, let’s get back to the versions and the question where they come from.
Take a look at this phrase:
- Come into the kitchen!
This is a sentence basically tells someone where to go and the part we have is a verb (come), a location (the kitchen) and ALSO an indication of direction in (“inward”).
Now let’s say that we ourselves are in the kitchen and we tell our friend to also enter.
We could say this:
- Come in here!
We have the same elements as before – a verb (come), a sense of direction (in), and a location (here).
In German, this sentence would look like this:
- Komm rein.
We have only two words, but we actually have the same elements – the verb, a sense of direction and a location. The thing is just that the location and the direction are fused together in rein.
If we take herein instead of rein it becomes a bit more obvious. Remember – her literally means here as a destination.
- Komm herein!
- Come in here!
You can see now that we have the same elements: komm + her+ ein.
Just the order is a little different to English because as we’ve learned German uses the head-final paradigm for its verbal phrases.
Here is the action of “coming in here” again, but phrased as a pure infinitive. That way you can really see the order of elements and how German is basically English, but reversed.
- to come in here (verb – direction – location)
- hereinkommen (location – direction – verb)
Now, in English you can often skip generic locations like here and there , so you can (and would) just say “Come in!” if you’re inside, and leave out the here.
German is less lax when it comes to talking about location. It likes to be more explicit even if it’s just here or there. So Germans basically ALWAYS said “come up here”, “go down there“, “move over here” and so on, just in the reverse order of course. And over time, these phrases just fused together and became The Versions.
- etwas hinaufwerfen – throwing something up (to) there
- etwas heraufwerfen – throwing something up (to) here
- etwas raufwerfen – throwing something up here/there
The same goes for the d-versions, just that the location is steady now and not a destination.
- draufstehen – to stand on there
And now we know why the The Versions often express the most literal, spatial idea – it’s basically their purpose.
The r-version rauskommen is essentially the phrase “come out here“, but with the head-final word order German uses for verbs (“here out come”), fused into one word, and shortened.
- come out here
- “here out come” (using German order)
- “her(e)outcome” (spelled as one word)
- “routcome” (shortened)
- “rauskommen” (German words)
So there you have it – that’s why the versions are a thing. They’re basically a phrase that was fused into one word.
And if it didn’t click – well, don’t worry. It’s not something you need to use the Versions properly and most Germans have no clue about any of this, including most likely your German teachers.
Now enough with the grammar – it’s time to get our hands dirty and build some actual prefix verbs.
Well, okay – first we’ll have a look of our building material.
Which is what we’ll do in the second part of the book.
***
And that’s it :).
If you feel a bit overwhelmed, remember that it’s from a book and a lot of the things I’m just quickly referencing here like head-final are discussed in more detail earlier. And it’s actually a “nerdy” chapter, which I encourage people to skip unless they really want to read it. The bulk of the book is NOT going to be this dense.
But yeah, if you have any thoughts or questions about this snippet, please let me know. It really does help to get your input.
When will the book be done?
Well, I still can’t tell, honestly. The writing part is more or less finished (last minute changes apply, of course), but quite a bit depends on the illustrator and how fast she wraps up the cartoons.
So I can’t give a timeline just yet, but for those of you who have been following me for a while and who keep hearing me say “iM wOrKiNg oN a BoOk….” without ever releasing anything… I literally have a 230 page doc ready :).
So yeah… it’s coming! Dun dunnn dunnnnnn!
Anyway… I really hope you enjoyed this. Let me know all your thoughts in the comments, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.
Further reading:
The title of your email post reads: “Why do verb-versions exits(rauf, herauf, hinauf…).
That’s a cut-and-paste, so I assume “exits” is a typo for “exists.” Please say you’re having someone with a beady eye proof-read your manuscript.
Yeah, I it was a typo in the newsletter. I’m not having anyone proof-read the newsletter.
I come with another excerpt from the article about Preterite & Perfect:
The author is I perceive using impossible grammar to present something in a light-hearted way. What would be the meaning conveyed? Would it be by way of saying, the minister president was removed from office?
Wie waere doch der Unterschied zwischen “Der Ministerpraesident ist gegangen.” vs. “Der Ministerpraesident wurde gegangen”.?
I have to nevertheless ask what might sound like a stupid question. If “gehen” is intransitive I would have to know what “Der Ministerpräsident wurde gegangen” means. I did surmise the meaning correctly I believe. However, many’s the time I’ve asked Emanel a question presuming his response, and it’s been contrary to my expectation.
Okay tell you what… how about you describe what your hunch is here and then I’ll tell you if you’re on the money (and if not I’ll clear it up, of course). Come on, I dare you basically.
It means he was forced from office, shown the door, or someone else was voted in?
Oh, never mind, I just saw you gave your theory already. I read the comments from newest to oldest usually :)
Quick ask first:
Could you maybe post these on some more related lessons? Like about the past tense or passive voice in this case? I’d prefer to have the comment sections largely “on-topic”. Thanks :)
All right, now on to the question:
Yeah, you got it pretty much. The phrasing is wrong, but it’s quite a common joke to use passive voice on a verb that only “you yourself” can do to imply that someone made you do it.
– Er wurde gegangen.
This is either a euphemism for “He was fired” or it describes a scenario where he was pushed and pressured into resigning.
I will in future find the an appropriate slot for the question. Since you referred me to that article 3 to 4 months ago, I’ve made it my homework to analyze it in detail. It’s giving me a nice feeling.
Considering I’m so far in the article, I should have been able to cope with the quoted sentence. However, it being grammatically incorrect (albeit deliberately), I was at a loss. I’m not sufficiently advanced to have “poetic license”.
Harald addressing me in German like that, was also nice, thanks.
Oh, das kann ich auch machen!
Einen Satz wie “Er wurde gegangen” zu verstehen, ist wirklich schon fortgeschrittene Sprachkenntnis. Oder sagen wir Kenntnis und Selbstvertrauen. Wenn man zweifelt, ob man vielleicht beim Passiv was falsch verstanden hat, dann kann man das nicht wirklich verstehen als Lerner. Du hast das echt gut gepeilt muss ich sagen.
I do undertake to purchase your “life membership” option before the end of this year. If it doesn’t happen you can withhold your responses to me as a gentle yet firm reminder.
Haha, sign up or you’ll get the silent treatment :D.
I’m not going to do that of course. Ich freu mich, wenn du dabei bist, aber ich antworte so oder so.
“He was fired” I would translate as “Er wurde entlassen.”, at least in Standard German.
I really enjoyed this, as I’m currently struggling with internalizing this exact grammar point, and have honestly wondered why it works this way because most books don’t ever bother explaining why! It’s always “it’s just that way.” How you’ve broken it down makes it feel perfectly sensible and I’m going to feel a lot more confident about adding her/hin to my verbs going forward with this context beefing up my logical framework (I often feel this way about reading your articles. This one honestly reminded me I’ve been meaning to pick up a membership because your writing has made SO much click in the past, so thank you.) I didn’t struggle with this feeling “dense” at all, though I know that’s a concern that makes sense for you to keep top of mind in doing such writing.
If anything, I think I would like even more detail around when using things like the heraus/hinaus versions is natural versus the shortened “raus.” I feel like I hear the shortened version more, but I don’t have the context yet to know why or if that’s true! I also wanted more detail around the “d-versions” but reading the comments it sounds like that will naturally be in an earlier chapter? If so, awesome! Can’t wait for the full book!
I agree with lot of what you say here, especially about more detail. I enjoyed the intro but given its length (about one third of the total text) I was expecting a much longer and more thorough article : )
It’s really interesting how “little” the snippet looks here on the site. In my doc, it’s like 3 or 4 pages and they did take a lot of time. It’s not that I’m crafting every single sentence. What actually takes so long is to find out what to say in which order and how to get from A to B. I HATE the feeling of not knowing where I am in a text and why we’re talking about what we’re talking about.
But the topic of the versions in particular is really weird.
The parallel to english is strong here, but I wonder if native speakers of the two languages see it quite the same way? To you herein is an obvious concatenation of her + ein. As a native english speaker, however, when I read this I can’t help seeing the english word herein (see also therein), which is an obvious concatenation of here + in, and means the same thing.
It almost makes me wonder if this is any kind of clue to the origins of the silent “e” ending so prevalent in english.It is probably just a coincidence, as the silent “e” in modern english seems more related to the pronunciation of the preceding vowel, and not to a lost “ein/in”, but still…
The thing is that “ein-” as a prefix exists on its own and is very common. And these verbs did NOT derive from “herein”. I think “ein” is a just the stressed version of “in”.
Good point about “herein” though… I didn’t notice it and it actually kinds of bothers me now because “herein” is a fixed place while “herein” is purely directional.
so just to clarify the r- version essentially just another way you could say the same thing that is being expressed in the first two examples?
….aufwerfen (without the above prefix) meaning “to throw out for discussion, e.g. “Also jetzt wollen wir mal folgendes Thema zur Diskussion aufwerfen!”
A school buddy of mine once announced in English to a bunch of us from various countries, “I want to throw something up…..” A few of us chuckled to ourselves, as “to throw up” of course also means “kotzen” aka “sich uebergeben”:-)
Hmmm, I don’t think putting it this way is a good idea.
The r-version is the general way to say “it” when you speak.
The other two versions are option that you can use to make it sound more formal AND to be more specific about what goes where.
If you think of the r-version as “just another way”, you’ll make the other two version sound more important or relevant than they actually are in standard spoken German.
ok cool, this was what I was looking for, thanks for the answer
Definitely not too dense and I actually think you do a disservice, in inviting people to skip this. This kind of why insight makes it much easier to remember the differences between versions when speaking.
I don’t really complain about how German does things (except for the lack of spaces or dashes between nouns), except when Germans tell me that certain features are proof of how logical German is and therefore Germans are.
“except when Germans tell me that certain features are proof of how logical German is and therefore Germans are”
LOL, yeah, I can imagine that. “It mäkes pörfect sentz tu mi. So much logic. Zats why Görmans bild so gudd cars.”
I have a soft hate for when people use something from their language to make a general statement about the world.
Like for instance someone saying “depression” means “deep rest” or “emotion means energy in motion” like that language is the center of the universe.
I used English examples now, but Germans do that too in German, completely forgetting that in Chinese for instance, it’s a completely different word and the logic and hence the insight maybe doesn’t hold up anymore.
Actually, what little I’ve gleaned about Chinese, their syntax is far closer to English word order than German! In addition, Chinese has no gender articles, declensions or conjugations:-)
Furthermore, a pictographic or ideographic language like Chinese will naturally follow a separate logic from a phonographic or sound/letter based language such as German or English.
I hope the book comes soon because I only have another 10 months living here and it would be so helpful! Good luck!
I’m loving these sample chapters, I’m super excited about the book!
I have one question/comment though, regarding this part:
“The same goes for the d-versions, just that the location is steady now and not a destination. E.g. draufstehen – to stand on there”
Perhaps “drauf” and “the d-versions” are explained elsewhere in the book, but without that context, this sentence is confusing to me. I don’t really get what “the location is steady now” means. It’s just overall too little info about this, compared to the other prefixes, I feel.
Anyway, I’m off to read your other articles about “drauf” to better understand this, but I just wanted to share some feedback.
Yeah, before this section, I go over all the versions in detail and the d-version is the last one, and the fact that it’s steady while the others are directional is the core point there, so it should still be fresh. Without that, it would indeed be a narrative gap, kind of.
My kid is pretty tolerant of my German mistakes, but when I use a d version where it should be an r, he gets kind of upset.
Oh, this is soooo interesting!!!
And yes, making something that’s directed and marking it as steady does “grate” in the ears, even of the difference is just one sound.
Maybe we can think of it as a street light. There is a LOT of visual information around it but if this one dot changes color, a LOT about the context changes even if the effective pixels you change in the field of vision are just a few.
What about something like this:
– Einer (ein Crowdsurfer) ist dann auch auf mich draufgefallen.
Is that still steady, or is something else going on?
From experience, I would say the surfer is either pretty much right above me, or maybe a meter or so away, if someone decides to throw them. And then squish, right onto me, which seems like a change in location, or having a direction.
So the d-versions are steady at their core but they can also be used for things that have a directional component.
This has a directional component and both work. “drauf” sounds more result oriented.
rauf would NOT work in a steady context at all.
raufbleiben… nope.
In your example, “drauffallen” has more focus on the impact and sounds more “umph” than “rauffallen”.
One thing I just realized is that “raufverben” combines well with the adverb “slowly” but draufverben not so much. It’s not that it’s wrong, but “raufverben” has more “way” to travers.
Oh, that’s interesting, thanks!
And if anything, I’m the one who should apologize. I was excited and got carried away. It was meant well, but I think it probably didn’t come off that way, and I can totally see why. I’ve been thinking that pretty much since I hit send, but I didn’t think to tell you that before.
Oh no, it did come off as well-meant, don’t worry :).
I was actually half anticipating that people would send me corrections, so I wasn’t surprised. I was thinking about putting a little note into the article saying “Please don’t send corrections” but then I didn’t do it because for some reason it sounded like it would be the normal reader duty to send corrections, just not this one time.
By the way, I just realized I never got back to you about the correction!! I’m super sorry for that. I wasn’t ready for that yet, but I should definitely have given a quick feedback! Tut mir leid!
Brudeerrr schon ne weile her dass ich hier war
lass uns mal was zusammenspielen oder einfach reden
wäre cool
Ich habe mich schon gewundert, ob du noch hier bist.
Ich bin aber echt kein Gamer muss ich sagen.
man ich schulde dir schon so viel und ich wollte einfach ein bisschen mit dir quatschen
Nur wegen deinen artikeln hab ich sehr nette leute kennengelernt die nur deutsch können (und russisch)
hast du discord oder so was? keine ahnung
ah und der grund warum ich hier nicht mehr so aktiv bin ist dass ich so anstrengend gelernt hab jetzt kann ich deutsche grammatik nicht mehr vor mir sehen ohne mich fast zu übergeben. ja
und ich mag auch mit anderen zu reden : )
Might have mentioned a while back that when I was visiting a friend outside Balingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg, I was treated to a symphony of prefixes with the first syllables lopped off, much of which is quite common in colloquial German, not all of it Swabian:
“Wo warscht heit?” – “Do, i war scho’ ’nuff un’ ‘na’ un’ d’rum ‘inum…”
Translation. “Wo warst du denn heute?” – Du, ich bin schon kreuz und quer mal ‘rumgelaufen.
This info is great in tying together the olde English with its cousin Deutschie.
Sometimes I toss members of the ‘ither’ clan into sentences (hither, thither, whither) if just to maintain a sense of Germanic awareness.
Yeah, hither and thither are basically what her and hin are, English just couldn’t be bothered to keep them active :)
German reminds us of English prior to the end of the Elizabethan Age:
Whither goest thou? – The Lord is come unto us!! Goeth ye hither and awateth His coming, lest ye goeth unschriven to your grave!
Just don’t stress too much about hither, thither, and whither or surely you’ll get yourself into a real dither!
LOL
Nice one!
I really do advise native English speakers learning German pretty often to get some of these older forms into their mental toolkit. It’s probably not helpful for everybody, but if you’re reasonably well read and especially if you have a basic familiarity with Shakespeare and/or anything else earlier than about the 18th century, it can be really helpful to gloss German forms with the -ither and -ence words (not to mention thou for du and some other things like that).
Interessant. Danke. Als ich Kind war, hat mein Bruder immer gesagt, “Raus!”, wenn ich sein Zimmer verlassen muss. Ich denke, dass es das einzige deutsches Wort war, dass er kannte.
Ein Satz is aber nicht klar. Du schreibst, “And it’s true that most people think that way in such a direct way.” Meinst du, “don’t think that in such a direct way”?
Yup, I forgot the negation there :)
Hi – I do like the way you explain these concepts. It’s seems to be the only way to make thinks click / stick in my head.
There is one thing that threw me though on this statement: “You can see now that we have the same elements: komm + her+ ein.”
I was struggling with the “ein” as how does ein all of a sudden mean in? I asked my wife (Austrian) and she is thinking maybe the old German it would have been in – “herin”, but somehow over the ages it was softened to ein??
OH, that’s exactly the type of feedback I want, actually. This IS 100% going to trip up quite a few people. I need to either add a disclaimer that “ein” is just the prefix version of “in” or I have to switch out the examples. I think I’ll go for the disclaimer.
As for why it’s “ein”… it’s a separable prefix, so it is stressed. The preposition “in” has a short “i”, which is a bit weird to stress, so maybe “ein” just evolved to give the syllable more weight.
It’s not connected to “her” though. It’s also “ein” as a standalone prefix. Like “einlegen” for instance is about laying/putting something in somewhere.
Can also mean “pickling”.
And more. There’s always more :)
Putting something in brine :)
In die Salzlake/In die Sole ‘reintun = to put in brine.
This is wonderful! I’d struggled with hin- and her-, while kinda intuitively sensing this…Viele Danke! Hopkins
Hi – very interesting and good. BUT. You have “And it’s true that most people think that way in such a direct way. ” and I think you mean most people DON’T think that in such a direct way.
Oh ops, yeah, I indeed forgot the DON’T there. Thanks for catching that!
The missing negative is there now, but the phrase as it is sound strange to my (non native) ears:
And it’s true that most people do NOT think that way in such a direct way
It is probably the repetition of “way” that is trowing me off. I would recommend removing the first “way”.
Another phrase that doesn’t make sense is later on:
German uses the head-final paradigm we for its verbal phrases
Most probably, an edit removed a verb after “we”. “Described” maybe?
Hallo!
I found zero typos this time :)
Oh, and I sent you an email about the book!
Bis bald!