Why do “The Versions” exist (raus, heraus, hinaus)

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.