Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And today we’ll take a look at the meaning… nothing. Originally, I wanted to do a review this week, but then not. Then I wanted to do a quick word but then not. And so I’ve decided to give a you little sneak peek instead. A sneak peek into the upcoming book we are writing at the moment at German is Easy. It’s just a first draft, and it’s probably full of mistakes, so my apologies for that. You know… all those young interns from college… these kids just don’t know how to write and spell anymore. But I hope you like it anyway’s. I’ve absolutely no clu… uhm I don’t want to give away what part this is from or why it is in the book. All I’ll say is that it is something about a new tense. So… enjoy :)
The dawn of the Perfect
If you learn Latin or a Romance language for that matter, you’ll find that they have all kinds of crazy forms of the verbs to express different tenses or aspects. French for instance has 2 different past forms plus a sort of present perfect plus the same set in super past. Like… the past perfetc. The Germanic languages had kept it simple. For a long long time they had made due with just two tenses. Past and not past.
- I drank ale.
- I drink ale.
The first one meant that it’s in the past. The other just says it’s not in the past. It could be about the present (I drink ale now), it could be a general statement about a habit (I usually drink ale) or it could be about the future (I drink ale tomorrow). German still does it that way a lot. There is a future tense now.
- Morgen werde ich ein Bier trinken.
- Tomorrow I’ll drink an ale.
but people use the present a lot and in this case it would sound more natural
- Morgen trinke ich ein Bier.
This seemingly simple use is not a sign of German deteriorating. It has always been like that.
But anyway, each Germanic verb had these two basic forms, one for the past and one for the “not past”. But there was a third form.
You see, most things are the way they are because they were “made” that way. A rock surface is smooth because water has been washing over it for centuries, a trout is dead because the bear punched it out of the water and a cloud is shaped like a penis because of uhm blowing wind (oh man, we’ll have to change that to a pony shape or something).
So, most characteristics are the result of activities. With that in mind it makes total sense that a word for a characteristic that is the result of an activity would be derived from the word for the activity itself. Wow, that sounded complicated. My point is that the third form of the verb was basically an adjective that described how something is as a result of that certain verb being done. Hmmm… still sounds complicated. Maybe an example will help.
- My cat is trained.
The word trained talks about how the cat is and I could replace it with another adjective like awesome or fluffy. This trained-ness of my cat is the result of someone training it. It’s the result of an activity, expressed by a form of the word for that activity. Such a form exists in many languages. Even Finnish, which has about as much to do with the Germanic or the Romance languages as my pasta sauce with haute cuisine, even Finnish has such a form, that expresses how something is as a result of a certain activity. In English this form is called past participle, in German it’s called Partizip 2 or I like to call it ge-form. No matter what language you learn, this is a form you want to out for right in the beginning because it is just so useful.
So, Germanic verbs had these 3 main forms, one for the past, one for the not past and one was an adjective describing how something is as a result of the verb.
Now let’s take a look at this sentence
- Beowulf has a filled cup.
This sentence tells us two things. It tells us that Beowulf has a cup, and it tells us how the cup is. It is filled. And this “how” just so happens to be the result of an activity: to fill.
The sentence has a perfect modern day structure but back a thousand years ago it might have also looked like this:
- Beowulf has a cup filled.
Having the adjective after the noun was not uncommon at all. Why would people do that? Well, why not. It’s kind of handy when you want to include information about what the cup is filled with.
- Beowulf has a cup filled with ale.
And this is till part of today’s English..
- He had his books spread all over the floor.
This is exactly the same. But it was done for simple adjectives, too, and in fact also for that you can see remnants in much later stages of English. The title of a Game of Thrones episode for example was “The bear and the maiden fair”. There you go. The “fair” is after the maiden even though it is an adjective describing. And just like this “fair” feels like an adjective to us, the “filled” felt like an adjective to people a thousand years ago. It would even get an adjective endings because English had ’em back then.
All right. So we have this sentence
- Beowulf has a cup filled.
And that tells us what Beowulf has (a cup) and how the cup is (filled with ale). If we now imagine that Beowulf himself was the one who filled it, then the sentence also contains information about what Beowulf did at some point in the past. So it talks about his present (what he has) and it talks about his past (what he did, he filled a cup with ale). And that line slowly began to blur more than 1000 years ago. People slowly started to think of filling as the main action of the sentence, an action that took place in the past but the result of which is in the present. This new perspective hit the zeitgeist. Until that point people could only say “Beowulf filled the cup” which contained no info whatsoever about the current state of the. People really dug their new “in between times”-time. In the beginning they would only use it for activities that could be “done to something”; because remember, it started out as statement about what you have as in what you call yours.
- The bard has a poem written.
- The smith has a sword smitten.
- The princess has a little kitte… oh wait, that doesn’t fit in here
But soon it started to widen.
- The wolf has the hunter bitten,
the hunter has an arrow shot.
The wolf doesn’t “have” the hunter, and the hunter doesn’t exactly have that arrow anymore. But that didn’t faze anyone as the whole having-thing was fading and the focus had shifted on the verbs, the result of the shooting and the result of the biting. The being shot and being bitten.
But the broadening didn’t stop there. Ever more did to have lose it’s significance and its real owning-notion until it was a completely devoid of all meaning. People started using the structure even without any object they could “have”. Someone might have just blurted out
- I have burped.
one night. Some were probably confused. Like “Wait, what have you that is burped? What can you burp anyway”. But most people intuitively understood that the “having” wasn’t about actual”having”. It was just a grammar vessel, there because that just so happened to be the structure.
And thus the present perfect tense was born.
Now you might be asking “Wait a minute, in the example with the cup… the ‘Beowulf has a cup filled’ that looks like a German sentence but not like an English one.”
That’s true. English did move the position of the past participle once again. Probably because it likes its verbs clustered up at one spot. And although in
- Beowulf has filled a cup.
the “filled” doesn’t feel the slightest bit like an adjective, there are examples that look just like that and that do have an adjective there.
- He has such great a family.
I don’t know if this has something to do with the present perfect. In either case, English moved the past participle, the form that tells us the resulting characteristic, to where it is today. German just left it where it was… at the end.
And until that point, the present perfect and the German spoken past were exactly the same thing. But then they slowly drifted apart and evolved into different directions. In fact, the German spoken past reached the current state only half a century ago. The southern regions were not nearly as open as the north,let alone the English. They were skeptical and for some verbs they felt like the “haben” just didn’t make any sense whatsoever. And that is the reason why learners today have to deal with the stupid “haben” and “sein” stuff in the spoken past. But that is another story. Let’s get back to our actual topic…
And that’s it! That was our little sneak peek into the book and I really hope it was interesting even though it was all about English. Don’t worry, the book is of course about German. It’s just that the development of the English Present Perfect tense and the German Spoken Past are one and the same thing and so I used English to not further complicate matters.
So, if you have any questions about this or if you happened to have some real examples from Old or Middle English just leave me a comment. Next week, we’ll definitely do a real word again.
I hope you liked it and bis dann.
Oh by the way… I probably should have done this right at the beginning of the post but I wanted to say
Danke!
to the people who have donated You have no idea how much that matters to me because my friends keep telling me how naive they think this is and how I should squeeze money out of it with payed subscriptions or ads or whatever. Your donations prove them wrong and I’ll make sure to rub it in their face :). But seriously, danke danke danke. It’s so motivating, you have no idea. And to the guy who said he should have given more but can’t: it doesn’t matter how much. What matters is that people do it at all! So again:
DANKE AN ALLE! Ihr seid die besten!!!!
I’m really looking forward to the book. I never tire of reading your work. :-)
Freut mich :)
Cool.
Eine Bemerkung: ich glaube, den perfektiven Gebrauch von sein gabs ursprünglich im Urgermanischen. Das sieht man immer noch in altmodischen Phrasen wie “the Lord is come” und “I am become death”.
Das ist doch auch einfach ein Adjektiv. Perfektiv wird es dadurch, dass es von einem Verb abgeleitet ist. Das sein selber ist meiner Ansicht nach eher ein Kopula-Verb, zumindest im alten Gebrauch. Wie ist das denn in so einem Fall in Russisch? Soweit ich weiß lasst ihr das einfache Kopula-sein ja oft weg. Sagt man
– Auto repariert
oder
– Auto ist repariert
Im Urgermanischen muss es ein Adjektiv gewesen sein, im Englischen ist es ja kaum zu erkennen, so unadjektivisch klingt es. “Der gekommene Herr” – “the come Lord”…
Immerhin, der Punkt war: es hat nicht bloß mit “haben” angefangen, sondern auch mit “sein”.
Im Russischen gibts kein Perfekt, aber was Partizipien betrifft, sind sie mehr oder weniger wie Adjektive. Man nutzt also “sein” nur wenn man die Tätigkeit betonen will.
Repariertes Auto = pochinennyj avtomobil
Auto ist repariert = avtomobil pochinen
Auto wurde repariert = avtomobil byl pochinen, byl = war
Im Russischen geht das ja auch anders. Jedes Verb ist entweder perfektiv oder imperfektiv. Zum Beispiel heißt ‘lesen’:
chitat’ (читать) – imperfektiv
und
prochitat’ (прочитать) – perfektiv
Also im Präsens heißt das:
– Ja chitaju knigu. (Я читаю книгу)
– Ich lese das Buch.
und
– Ja prochitaju knigu. (Я прочитаю книгу)
– Ich werde das Buch gelesen haben.
Der Präteritum ist auch anders, das ist ein Adjektiv, sozusagen (Je nach der Person ändert sich das Verb nicht, sondern je nach seinem Geschlecht/Numerus)
– Ja chital knigu. (Я читал книгу)
– I was reading the book.
und
– Ja prochital knigu (Я прочитал книгу).
– I finished the book.
Ah interessant. Eine Frage… wie sehr “Zukunft” klingt
– Ja prochitaju knigu.
Ist es nicht vielleicht mehr wie Deutsch
– Ich lese das Buch komplett.
?
Danke übrigens, dass du dir die Zeit genommen hast, auch Kyrilisch zu schreiben. Ich lerne gerade das Alphabet und das ist eine gute Übung :)
Ach so, kleine Korrektur:
das Präteritum
Das könnte ich nicht beantworten, weil ich erst in den letzten Monaten angefangen habe, Russisch zu lernen! Und ja, hätte das Geschlecht nachsuchen sollen. Normalerweise, wenn ich mir nicht sicher über das Geschlecht bin (was als Situation selten vorkommt ;)))))… Hey! Das ist mein voller Ernst!), gebe ich das Wort mit dem geratenen Geschlecht ein, um zu sehen, ob Google einige Ergebnisse dazu vorschlägt (du brauchst noch nicht die Eingabetaste drücken!). Seeeehhhrr hilfreich, dadurch kann man ziemlich schnell und klar sehen, ob irgendeine Konstruktion gängig ist oder nicht.
Ich würde aber sagen, das den Deutschen Satz, den du unterm Russischen geschrieben hast, gleich klingen würde, weil das auch eine Art Zukunft ist. Das muss eigentlich die Zukunft ausdrücken, sonst hat das gar keinen Sinn. Wenn du es nicht komplett gelesen hast, liest du es immer noch. Es kann kein echtes ‘Dazwischen’ geben.
Was Kyrillisch anbetrifft, sag ich mal viel Glück dabei. Es macht sehr viel Spaß, eine neue Schrift zu lernen, ist auch ziemlich schwer. Ich kann seit einem Jahr oder so Kyrillisch lesen/schrieben (kursiv auch) und die russische Aussprache nachmachen, konnte inzwischen aber gar kein Russisch!! Es ist mein Ziel, am Ende dieser Ferien ganz einfaches Russisch sprechen zu können.
Wenn du Russisch lernst (kann eine andere Sprache sein, weiß nicht), wäre es sehr brauchbar (meiner Meinung nach ist es Pflicht) über das IPA nachzulesen und vieles davon in der Praxis zu verwenden. Dadurch kann ich jetzt verschiedene Aussprache unglaublich gut nachmachen und meiner Meinung nach habe ich kein wirkliches Talent dafür.
Bisher ist für mich die Aussprache das Schwierigste, was es im Russischen gibt. Je nach der Betonung verändern sich fast alle Vokalen, und die Konsonantengruppen sind ein großes Durcheinander. Dann gibts den Unterschied zwischen palatalisierte und unpalatalisierte Konsonanten, was ich am Anfang ziemlich schwer fand. Wirst du schon schaffen ;)
Ja, das stimmt… Perfektivität ist wohl immer entweder in der Vergangenheit oder der Zukunft, da der Moment des Fertigmachens ein sehr kurzer ist.
– Ich lese jetzt genau in diesem Moment fertig :)
Was IPA angeht, bin ich irgendwie kein so großer Fan. Ich hatte da mal im Studium und da hat es mir noch irgendwie Spaß gemacht, aber wenn ich mir jetzt die Tabellen angucke, dann denke ich immer “Is mir zu kompliziert”… versteh mich nicht falsch. Ich glaube IPA ist super sinnvoll. Aber nicht für mich. Ich werd’ da mal nach dem Gehör gehen :). Aber bis ich wirklich spreche wird es seeeeeeehr lange dauern, denn aktuell ist das Russischbuch wirklich nur Klolektüre. Da bin ich dann zwar sehr konzentriert bei der Sache aber von echtem Lernen kann ich glaube ich (noch) nicht sprechen. Aber langsam nährt sich das Eichhörnchen.
Eine Korrektur:
Deine Verwendung von inziwschen ist nicht korrekt. Es kann entweder “by now” oder “in the meantime” heißen… mit Fokus auf zwei parallel laufende Aktionen. In diesem Kontext passt “da” oder “zu der Zeit” am besten.
aaaaaalter ich hatte den ganzen text fast verloren… das wäre ziemlich blöd gewesen. Ihr habt keine Ahnung wie froh ich bin, alles wieder gefunden zu haben hahaha
Doch, hab’ ich (Ahnung). Ich hab’ schon des öfteren seitenlange Mails an einen “You have been logged out automatically”-Fehler verloren. So unglaublich frustrierend. Mittlerweile mache ich die ganze Zeit Copy und Paste, wenn ich was längeres schreibe :)
Wieso lernst du Russisch, wenn ich fragen darf? :D
Ein paar Korrekturen:
> das den Deutschen Satz
dass der deutsche Satz
> Was Kyrillisch anbetrifft
was … betrifft oder anbelangt.
anbetreffen ist zwar laut Duden möglich, aber es scheint ziemlich ungebräuchlich zu sein. Lies mal was einige Muttersprachler dazu sagen: http://www.konjugation.de/posts/list/1332_wasbetrifft_anbetrifft.page
Ach, ich wollte schon immer eine Slavische Sprache lernen. Dann hätte ich Ost und West abgedeckt :)
Und die Schrift… naja, wenn schon denn schon. Ich habe letztes Jahr probeweise Japanische Zeichen gelernt um zu gucken ob ich es kann, und es ging. Und Kyrillisch geht auch.
Was “anbetreffen” anbelangt… es ist einfach nur fanciererer als “betreffen” :). Und spezifischer. Bürokratendeutsch halt.
Ja cool dann viel Glück und natürlich viel Spaß!
Hmm, ich meinte, dass ich bis zu dieser Zeit kein Russisch konnte. Ich hätte ‘in the meantime’ auch auf Englisch geschrieben. Aber das geht auch nicht.
Und Grateful Reader, ja du darfst fragen, warum ich Russisch lerne. ;)
Es ist ziemlich kompliziert. Meine Ex-Freundin ist russisch (und ich bin mit der immer noch befreundet), und bei ihrer Familie wurde immer russisch gesprochen. Um höflich zu sein, lernte ich das Alphabet und etwa zehn Phrasen die brauchbar waren. Ich habe auch gleichzeitig eine Menge über die Aussprache gelesen. Aber danach habe ich kein Stück mehr gelernt. Vor einigen Monaten habe ich mich entscheiden, nach meinen Examen anzufangen, die Sprache wirklich ernst zu nehmen, einfach als eine Herausforderung. Ich wollte sehen, ob ich es schaffen konnte. Das ist meine 4. Sprache, wenn Spanisch zählt ist es meine 5. (kann in der Wirklichkeit gar kein gutes Spanisch).
Ich habe echt viele russische Freunde/Bekannte, mit denen ich üben kann, und hier in der Gegend wohnt eine ganze Menge Russen. Auf meinem morgendlichen Spaziergang höre ich viele Leute Russisch reden, auch meine Nachbarn sind Russisch. Von daher dachte ich, es wäre eine gute Idee, Russisch zu lernen. Was die Sprache selbst anbelangt (hehehe), finde ich es eigentlich ziemlich entmutigend. Die Grammatik scheint mir, ganz schwierig zu sein, und, soweit ich weiß, sind die meisten Vokabeln einzigartig.
eine kleine Korrektur:
– in Wirklichkeit… diese Phrase hat keinen Artikel. Mit Artikel klingt es so, als könntest du wirklich zwischen zwei Welten hin- und herspringen
Und dann bin ich mir nicht sicher, ob einzigartig das richtige Wort ist. Was meinst du damit? Dass es keine Ableitungen gibt wie “leiten- ableiten – Ableitung”? Also fr jede Sache ein einzigartiges, unabhängiges Wort? Das wäre in der Tat dann eine sehr anstrengende Sprache, aber ich glaube so was gibt es auf der Welt nicht, da Sprache ja immer schon gewachsen ist. Ein Silbensamen wird ein großer Bedeutungsbaum
Haha wie peinlich, ich habe das zu einem meiner Freunde gesagt und er hat einfach gelacht.
Und ich meinte, dass die slavischen Wörter sind meistens gar nicht ähnlich wie die Romanischen und die Germanischen. Ich bin mit Italienisch und Englich aufgewachsen, und deswegen fand ich die deutschen und spanischen Vokabeln sehr einfach. Beim Russischen wird das nicht so sein. Aber danach werde ich hoffentlich andere slavische Sprachen leichter finden.
Ja bestimmt. “Kennste eine kennste alle” wie man in Berlin sagen würde :)
Daniel, alles klar. Viel Erfolg beim weiteren Russischlernen :)
“Ja prochitaju” ist eben das Futur. Perfektive Verben haben ja definitionsgemäß keine Gegenwartsform.
Und ich verstehe nicht, was du meinst, wenn du sagst, das russische Präteritum sei ein Adjektiv. Sieht nicht danach aus.
Also:
Vergangenheit:
Verb: ja chital knigu (entweder: “I was reading the book” oder “I HAVE read the book”, je nach Kontext kann das entweder den Lesevorgang audrücken oder die bloße Tatsache, dass man das Buch in der Vergangenheit gelesen hat)
ja prochital knigu (I finished the book)
Aktives Partizip: chitavshij knigu (the one reading the book (in the past); der [damals] das Buch Lesende; oder, wie oben, drückt die Tatsache aus, dass der Mensch das Buch irgendwann gelesen hat).
prochitavshij knigu (the one having read the book)
Aktives Adverbialpartizip: chitav knigu (reading the book (in the past); das Buch [damals] lesend) [kommt selten vor]
prochitav knigu (having read the book; das Buch “gelesen habend”)
Passives Partizip: chitannaja kniga (the book that one was reading, das [damals] “gelesen werdende” Buch). [kommt selten vor]
prochitannaja kniga (the “finished” book, das “ausgelesene” Buch)
Gegenwart:
[keine perfektive Form]
Verb: ja chitaju knigu (I am reading the book)
Aktives Partizip: chitajushchij knigu (the one reading the book; der das Buch Lesende)
Aktives Adverbialpartizip: chitaja knigu (reading the book; das Buch lesend)
Passives Partizip: chitajemaja kniga (the book being read; das “gelesen werdende” Buch)
Zukunft
Verb: Ja budu chitat’ knigu (I will read the book)
Ja prochitayu knigu (I will finish the book, I will have read the book)
Wie würde man dann sagen
– Ich lese das Buch vollständig/komplett. /Ich lese das Buch durch.
oder anderes Beispiel… gibt es einen Unterschied zwischen
– Ich esse auf. und
– Ich werde alles gegessen haben.
?
prochitavshij knigu (the one having read the book)
– oder “the one having finished the book”
Also quasi der Fertig-gelesen-Haber” … praktisch :)
“Wie würde man dann sagen
– Ich lese das Buch vollständig/komplett. /Ich lese das Buch durch.”
Wortwörtlich – und unter Verwendung der Zukunftsform – Ja prochitaju knigu polnostju [vollständig] / Ja prochitaju knigu.
Am gebräuchlisten: ja prochitaju vsju knigu, “all das Buch” sozusagen.
Auch: ja prochtu vsju knigu, wo “prochtu” is die Zukunftsform von “prochest'”, das auch “durchlesen” bedeutet und aus derselben “Wurzel” stammt.
Übrigens, “durch” entspricht “pro” in vielen Fällen.
“oder anderes Beispiel… gibt es einen Unterschied zwischen
– Ich esse auf. und
– Ich werde alles gegessen haben.
?”
Ja vsjo s’jem (Я все съем)
Ich glaube, es gibt keinen Unterschied. Wir haben kein Futur II an sich.
Ok dann
– Ich esse auf.
vs
– Ich werde alles essen.
Gibt es einen Unterschied?
Verb: Ja budu chitat’ knigu (I will read the book)
Correction: I will be reading the book
How do we donate?? I can’t find a link!
It’s on the Word of the Day page and on the about page :)
When is the next grammar piece?
Next year, I can’t do a book and heavy grammar stuff on the blog at once. I hope that’s understandable (I believe you have asked that before) :)
Wonderful, thank you.
And I believe it’s sneak “peek”, no?
Best regards,
Amanda
Ops, danke :) … ps. I removed your full name and phone number (I believe that’s what it is) from the bottom of the comment. I guess it was some automatic submission. Let me know if you want it back in :)
I love the idea of a book! When do you plan on having it published? I am certainly going to purchase it.
I wanted to be done before Christmas for sell out reasons but I think I’m not going to make it. Proof reading always takes twice as long as expected. So hopefully January. Fingers crossed
wird das Buch auch als ein e-Buch verfügbar sein? Ist Vor-bestellung möglich? Wie ist mein Deutsch in diesen drei Sätzen?
*Vorbestellung
E-book, ja definitiv. Vorbestellung, ja wahrscheinlich, aber ich will es erst fast fertig haben, damit man nach dem Vorbestellen nicht ewig warten muss, bis es kommt. Und dein Deutsch war bis auf den Bindestrich perfekt. Ach so, ne, man sagt e-Book. Aber e-Buch wird natürlich auch verstanden.
Freu mich schon auf den Kickstarter. :D
Dear German-is-easy,
As much as I enjoy your blogs, I would like to suggest that you get a native English speaker to do some editing/proofreading for you. Your spelling and punctuation errors seem to be multiplying. Please consider this constructive criticism, I would miss your blogs, as I find them insightful and fascinating from a teacher’s and a linguist’s point of view. Good luck with your book!
First of, let me apologize. I don’t know how bad it is, but I do know how irritating an error laden piece of writing is and how much it takes away from the experience. Truth be told… I don’t even do proof reading myself and I do a lot of editing on the go so I’m sure there are some really weird sentences in my articles. The reason why I don’t do proof reading is because I have no time. I have a real life job to go to. Also, I don’t have any money to pay someone to do the editing for me and I do not want to trade it for German lesson, again because I don’t have time for it. So the choice would be either 1 post every two weeks or one post per week with errors. Again, I do know how much it can take away from the experience, But I always though “Better a post, than not a post” and so I write and just hope for the best, so to speak. This one especially pretty much written just that day.
As far a punctuation goes, I don’t know too much about how that works in English. So if you see a systematic mistake that I’m making it would be really helpful if you told me so I can try and pay attention in the future.
Ich lese gerade ein komisches Büchlein aus dem Jahre 1908, “Allerhand Sprachdummheiten”, und da behandelt der Autor das Thema der Unterschiede zwischen Perfekt und Präteritum. Was auch immer er da sagt, gilt es, glaube ich, heutzutage zum Großteil nicht. Oder ich sollte vielleicht sagen, galt es auch damals nicht, da er ausgerechnet den Schwund jener früheren Unterschiede im Alltagsgebrauch bereut.
Ja, sowie ich das bei Belle Lettres verstanden habe, war wohl damals gerade die Phase, wo das Perfekt all seine “Special Powers” am Verlieren war, weil die Leute im Süden es einfach für alles benutzt haben.
Time to move to a new blog
from Russia
This is unrelated, and maybe basic, but can you clarify why the pronoun es sometimes is used with plural sind rather that singular ist, I have seen:
Von Berlin bis zur Ostsee sind es weniger als zwei Stunden Zugfahrt.
Then German es not really equivalent to English it?
Thank you very much
Then es not really the English it?
Thank you much!
Es is a “dummy” subject in this case. From canoo: “When it is used with the verb sein and a predicative nominative, es can refer to singular and plural nouns of all three genders. The verb agrees with the predicative, not with es”.
Think of it as an exception, if you will.
Well, it is equivalent but the grammar is different. Here’s a different example:
– Es sind diese 3 Dinge, die mich verwirren.
– It is those 3 things that confuse me.
English used “is”, German “sind”. The reason is probably that in German you can just flip around word order more and say
– Diese 3 Dinge sind es, die mich verwirren.
Just like here
– Ich bin Emanuel
– Emanuel bin ich.
In this order, the “sind” makes perfect sense and I guess German just doesn’t give the “es” as much grammatical weight as English does. Sure, it is singular but it’s an empty dummy just as Grateful Reader said and German looks for the “filling” to conjugate. Otherwise you would have two different versions
– Es ist diese 3 Dinge,…
– Diese 3 Dinge sind es…
And that cannot be the case because the “ist” is basically a “=”
– Es = 3 Dinge
– 3 Dinge = es
If you want to flip around the order in English, you wouldn’t use the dummy-it anymore.
– Those are the 3 things, that bother me.
– Those three things are, what bothers me.
I’m looking forward to reading your book. When?
I hope January :)
Hey there.. looking forward eagerly to your book..
I hope to one of your first readers and hope to get an early bird discount too. If you have pre-book option, let me know and I hope you are planning international shipping ? An e-book definitely will be cost-effective and would save logistics costs.
Regards,
Hunny
Glad to hear that. I’ll definitely be doing something special for the release and for the people who have been around for a while and are commenting regularly.
I want to offer both, hard cover and e-book, but I haven’t looked into the specifics of all of that just yet, because that would be a welcome excuse to not write and spend my time on that instead :).
ABOUT ES AND ABOUT YOUR NEW BOOK Thank you and Grateful Reader for your explanation above on “es” when used with plural sind (Es sind diese 3 Dinge, die mich verbirren.). For all practical purposes I will treat it as an exception, as Grateful Reader suggests. I could have stopped there, but I have been thinking about this business of a “dummy” subject and your word order as probable cause for the exception, and couldn’t resist sharing some thoughts, sorry for the long post! Basically, I didn’t understand the explanation :) – I like it (Ich mag es). It/Es is the direct object (it is liked by me), and, as a pronoun, we assume both the speaker and recipient know in context what “it” stands for (your new book idea, for example). Clear enough. – It rains (Es regnet). It/Es is the subject, but is it really a “dummy” subject? Isn’t it rather an abstraction for the cause, the force, the power, etc., yes, even God, that performs the action/allows-the-reality of raining, and which by convention has been designated as a singular entity (some cultures may say “they rain/ sie regnen”)? That is what I thought until now, not just a purely grammatical requirement where the pronoun is reference-empty (sounds like similar to a mute letter, such as “e” in live that needs to be written anyway). In my native Spanish “llueve” (it rains) has no personal pronoun. This is not because of Spanish little general use of personal pronouns: distinct verb endings provide all needed information making the pronoun redundant; there has to be an additional reason, eg: add emphasis; but because “llueve” is impersonal. Llueve, then, is a complete sentence; no performer, dummy or not, only reality.The language chooses to be silent (impersonal) about the subject of the verb, for good reason in my opinion. “There are good people out there” clearly refers to two “there(s), the first is not about location. What is the subject, if any, and what is the predicative nominative? “In this order, the “sind” makes perfect sense ….” You say this about ” Diese 3 Dinge sind es, die mich verwirren”. I can see that, but not referred to “es”. “Diese 3 Dinge sind, die mich verwirren” or “diese 3 Dinge sind was mich verwirren” (both wrong, I suppose) would make more sense from the outside. And I don’t understand the mathematical argument with ist/= , unless you mean that = means equal(s) only , and sind does not mean “equal” as well: Sie sind schöne Städte, Sie = schöne Städte. But = has really no number, is just a sign for identity. So, – Es ist diese 3 Dinge,…- Diese 3 Dinge sind es… could theoretically co-exist. Emmanuel, thank you for your blog, if you can make me see the light, fine, if not, I will continue with my mystical explanation + exception view. One more question: other that with the verb “sein”, can es be used in plural with other verbs… Read more »
“It/Es is the subject, but is it really a “dummy” subject? Isn’t it rather an abstraction for the cause, the force, the power, etc., yes, even God, that performs the action/allows-the-reality of raining, and which by convention has been designated as a singular entity (some cultures may say “they rain/ sie regnen”)?”
Sure, but it’s a different case from the “es” under discussion. Namely, there are verbs that can only be used “impersonally”, with this “es”. It’s a different case because “es” is the only subject here, its not a placeholder for “diese Dinge” or something else, it’s self-contained. So it’s still abstract, but in a different way.
There is also a third kind of “es”, where “es” is a dummy placeholder – it’s no longer a subject.
“Es kamen Menschen zu uns und sagten…”
This is done purely for stylistic reasons, in order not to put any word into the first position, because it somehow wouldn’t sound good. There are some tentative rules as to when one uses this structure, I think something to do with the lack of an article, etc.
All right so let me try :) I’m going to start with the equation. I didn’t mean it in a strictly logical sense of “=” and as I was thinking about it I realized that the analogy falls on its face pretty quickly. So forget about that. What I mean is that it is an assignment in which both sides are equated, and the assignment as a whole has to make sense. – Ich bin Emanuel – I am Emanuel. This is standard. But German can move around boxes (constituents) pretty freely, and we can do so here. – Emanuel ___ ich. Now the big question is what form of the verb to put in there. Emanuel by itself is a third person subject simply because it is not the word “I” and not the word “you”. So that would suggest – Emanuel ist ich. With that we would have – Ich bin Emanuel. – Emanuel ist ich. In the first version “ich ” is subject and Emanuel is the predicate nominative, in the second it’s the other way around. But now since we can move around boxes we could also create – Ich ist Emanuel. – Emanuel bin ich. And that’s a grammar clash. “Ich” is a subject form and yet it’s not followed by “bin”?? That’s just impossible. So ultimately, “Emanuel” is the predicate nominative and “ich” is the subject. Having it that way around makes sense, also because the sentence is essentially establishing “Emanuel” as a first person singular entity which would render the conjugation “Emanuel ist ich” false in retrospect. The block as a whole tells you what Emanuel is… a first person entity. And so the verb has to be in accord with that. As for the … – Es sind diese 3 Dinge… if you want to assign subject and predicate nominative then “3 Dinge” is subject, just like “ich” is the subject of the first example. Think of “Es sind” as a flipped around version of this: – Diese 3 Dinge sind es… Now, where left with the question if and why we need the “es” there. In an assignment with “to be” we do need a what-box. We can’t just say – Diese 3 Dinge sind. Well, unless we’re being philosophical :). So… we need to have the sentence have this form – Diese 3 Dinge sind [ what ]. Since it requires a whole sentence to express what these 3 things are, we have two options. We can either insert a dummy, a placeholder that is then referred to using a relative sentence, or we could use a free relative sentence, which is what you suggested. – Diese 3 Dinge sind [es, die mich stören.] – Diese 3 Dinge sind, [was mich stört.] So the “es” pretty much functions like a da-word here, only that it takes the role of a predicate nominative. “es” is the perfect dummy because it contains the least info of all of the pronouns. We could… Read more »
On “Es sind….”
Yes! It makes sense now. “So the “es” pretty much functions like a da-word here….” . Of course, it helps having read your post on da words. Thank you again, fantastic.
I’d also like to chime in and say that it’s simply a grammatical requirement. If you have a declarative sentence with ‘sein’, you MUST have a referent either side of it. Same way you MUST have the ‘it’ in the sentence ‘It is important that you come tonight’. The it becomes a dummy when you move ‘that you come tonight’ from the beginning (e.g. ‘That you come tonight is important’.) to the end (as in the first example). It is not logical, it is feeling based, as is the majority of human perception. Languages are learnt as children, not as beings that interpret everything as mathematical semantics, so naturally it is largely going to be experiential and feeling based. I can’t feel a subject at the beginning? Need to put one there then, otherwise it feels stilted!
I totally agree with the feeling thing. Grammar is just an attempt to express and organize what feels right.
As for “sein” though, I think we’d have to be careful with too strict a requirement.
– Ich denke, also bin ich.
– Was war, was ist, was bleibt.
Those are grammatical and yet are lacking the “other half”. I’m not entirely sure, what you mean by referent but I have a few other examples
– Die Party war gestern.
Is “gestern” a referent? If not, then “sein” can work fine without one in a large number of contexts.
I’d tend to say it is not a referent because
– Das war Montag.
can mean two things:
– That (whatever it is) took place on Monday.
– That (whatever it is) constituated/was Monday (for me).
Only the second is a true “A ist B” situation.
Daniel,
I don’t see “it” in your “it is important that you came tonight” as a dummy just because it can be omitted by changing the order to “That you came tonight is important”. In the first sentence the “it” does what all pronouns do, it stands for something else, and there is no conflict with es being singular (something is important). You just chose to express yourself with that construction, maybe you wanted to call attention to what is important and not important, rather than to the fact of coming. It at the beginning allows you to show your cards later. The construction lets you say more economically that “there is something that is important, and that something happens to be that you came tonight” Actually, the it at the beginning seems more logic, than feeling based. In quick speech you can almost hear ” Is important…or even just the s, or even nothing at all before the word important!”, and does not feel stilted because of the missing it. This is different from Emanuel’s analogy with da words, which I understand (I think), when es is used with a plural form (es sind), a very German-like approach, as in my original example that prompted my question (Von Berlin bis zur Ostsee sind es weniger als zwei Stunden Zugfahrt), I now see “es” as a mere pointer, probably same in meaning as das, or very closely to “namely” in English, so as to give German balance to the sentence arising out of the expectations of sind, which normally calls for a predicate. In my foreign opinion, just for fun:
– Von Berlin bis zur Ostsee sind …… = the hours required from Berlin to Ostsee (plural) are (what?) “es”, the conclusion (singular) that follows in the next clause.
In – “ich denke, also ich bin”, bin is the philosophical bin, which works pretty much like the intransitive ich denke….no expectations arise out of “sein”
In “Die Party war gestern”, only context and the speaker’s intention can tell, but there can be infinite implicit predicates in gestern (is that what you mean by referent?):
– The party was (what it took place on) yesterday (which stands for Monday)
– The party was (for somebody) yesterday (which stands for the past)
– the party was (for somebody) yesterday (which stands for out of fashion)
– the party was (for somebody) yesterday ( which stands for a long time ago)
– the party was (for Europeans) yesterday ( which stands for a point in time that is still today for people in America)
and so on…so gestern seems as an undefined referent referred to context, but still a referent! I think the interesting one is the es with plural. This joke of Emanuel that Germans like to delay the most relevant information as long as possible, may be no joke at all! It develops concentration powers :)
That wasn’t meant as a joke :)… that is the most important paradigm of word order. But I’ll do a post on that next year.
While reading your comment, a nice little addition came to mind…. this singular/plural-question is not limited to “es”
– Meine Lieblingszeit sind die Stunden direkt nach Sonnenaufgang (*I wish).
The same sentence with “ist” would be wrong. Same here.
– Mein Problem mit deinem “im Bett Essen” sind die vielen Krümel.
I am not entirely sure, but I believe it is the same in English insofar as that there would be a tendency to use “are”
– My favorite time of day are/is the hours right after dawn.
– My problem with your eating in bed are/is all those crumbs.
However, “is” doesn’t strike me as entirely wrong (while in German it is super extremely hyper wrong and no one would ever say that).
These examples suggest that there must be a clear distinction between what is the subject and what is the predicate. I was thinking about a method to tell by logic (not by feel) which is which. I tried one of my favorite tools ever… questions. With each sentence we can ask two questions (that are pertaining to the subject):
– What’s your favorite time of day?
– What are the hours after dawn?
– What’s your problem?
– What are the bred crumbs?
And that helps. The more natural questions in both cases are the first ones.You can ask the second ones too, but why would you.
The answers to those first questions will have plural subjects
– The hours after dawn.
– The bred crumbs.
The questions were asking for a subject, not a predicate. So in the “full” answer the plural entities are the subject while the tool used in the question is the predicate.
– Die Brotkrumen sind…
– Die Stunden nach Sonnenaufgang sind…
German then just chooses to flip flop them around because… you know… relevance. And I guess there’s some “Thema vs Rhema” in there, too. But deep down people do have a clear feeling for what is what (subject and predicate) and that links up with what question would be more natural.
Now, does that work for “es” too? Kind of
– Was ist es von Berlin zur Ostsee?
This is weird but certainly not as undefined as
– Was sind 3 Stunden?
The answer to the first question is “3 hours”, the answer to the second one… pfff… “es” I guess, but that doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t know if that made sense and I guess some linguists have done a much more systematic and scientific description of that but as far as I’m concerned… looking at questions helped clear it up yet again :)
ps.: I forgot to ask… how is it in English in examples like the ones in the other comment.Would both, “is” and “are”, be acceptable? Is “are” better?
Vielen Dank :)
Hello Emanuel, These issues are slippery, no doubt about it. First, I now see my own explanation about your explanation to “es” as a mere pointer to the next clause not that satisfying (also, my example that yesterday for Europeans was today for Americans, I think I got it backwards…!). In a German exercise I stumbled again with: “Es waren die letzen Aufnahmen.” So, I finally decided that I could make more sense of this whole business if es stands for das, which in turn stands for something else. I tend to think of das meaning either that or those, as in “Das ist eine gute Idee”. But I had never thought of the obvious, that this das could be the same das as in das Auto, an article. And using articles as pronouns is something German does all the time. Because of the strong identification of German es with English it, es with plural sounds to a non-German like a clash, but not so with das ( Das sind…) probably because we are told there isn’t any different word for “those” (quite true?) and we take it at face value. So in this system es stands for das (and vice versa) and das for an undefined and unquantifiable; There is/are something(s) that exist(s), it, or, “the”, being the last admissions, or Es/Das waren die letzen Aufnahmen. Dialogue:”Es waren die letzen Aufnahmen”, “Das habe ich nicht gewusst”; question “Es habe ich nicht gewusst”, wrong/odd? ” Meine Lieblingszeit sind die Stunden direkt nach Sonnenaufgang” My intuition is that language skips steps all the time: “(Ich denke) meine Lieblingszeit (ist es), (das) sind die Stunden direkt nach Sonnenaufgang”, and opted for stunden as subject, or at least to pair up with it, because of the contrast between the objectivity of stunden vs. the subjectivity of Liebling, as after all the predicating, as opposed to direct object, is not really done by the subject in a sentence with “sein”. Your question and answer method ends up working because it feels more natural, you say, and it feels more natural (to me) only grammatically because of this subjective element, same with the other example with problem. In reality, say a child (ok, most) , will not hesitate responding to what are the hours after school?…his favourite time. To me the answer to “was ist von Berlin zur Ostsee” is not 3 Stunden (in any case zwei Stunden :), but a distance, something…es…same as the answer to the second question. The answers to questions are not necessarily contained in the written words of a sentence. I think the key is the verb sein itself. I’ve heard that some languages do not have the verb to be at all (Russian, at least in the present tense), and if you think about it, why should they? Ich bin Emanuel, Emanuel bin ich…does bin contribute anything at all? Can you really talk about subjects and predicates? On the other hand, in my native Spanish we have two verbs… Read more »
As a matter of fact I am the Google Teachobot 2000 German edition :D.
But seriously, so far I can keep up quite okay. I think it’s around 8 hours a week that I need for the comment and that’s little more than an hour a day… not too insane.
As for the discussion:
– Es habe ich nicht gewusst.
As Gratefull reader mentioned that is incorrect and it sounds really strange even though the difference between “es” and “das” is but a different degree in intensity of pointing. As far as I recall, German grammarians are not really one opinion when it comes to the question whether German has true “unbetonte Pronomen”, which is (I think) what they call the “le, la” (or similar) of the Romance languages. IN either case, the “es” is certainly and by far the least “betont” of all pronouns. It is just so bland and boring that it is not position 1 material, and not for the rear of the sentence either. When I say
– Ihn habe ich gesehen.
then the spotlight on “ihn” is pretty strong and on “es” it would be even stronger… but there’s nothing to see with “es”, if that makes sense.
As for the skipping, I think I have to disagree on that one… or better, yes, languages do skip a lot but I don’t think it is the case in the example you gave simply because the switched around version (“Die Stunden nach Sonnenaufgang sind…” )feels like the exact same sentence. Same structure, same slots filled. They’re just filled with different stuff. If you assume that there is subconscious skipping going on you’d have to make all kinds of changes to get from version 1 to version 2 which is not how it feels.
The other sentence… I’ll change “Stunden” to “Jahre” to make it feel more natural
– Meine Zeit war die vergangenen Jahre…..”
that is just wrong, no doubt about it. I can see that my question-approach is on shaky ground right there, though.
> And using articles as pronouns is something German does all the time.
The obvious counterexample to “articles are used as pronouns” is “denen”: mit den Leuten/mit denen. I.e. those are pronouns that mostly look like articles, not articles as such ;)
> probably because we are told there isn’t any different word for “those” (quite true?)
Quite untrue.
Jene. And also, in some contexts, die, diese, diejenigen (which are more properly understood as “these”, but the boundary between them is not all that clear when we’re translating).
> question “Es habe ich nicht gewusst”, wrong/odd?
In this case es is an accusative object, and as such cannot stand at the beginning and must be replaced with das. Just one of the German quirks, I guess.
> I’ve heard that some languages do not have the verb to be at all (Russian, at least in the present tense),
You’ve heard wrong. Just because it’s not used in the predicate doesn’t mean that the verb doesn’t exist.
Man, you’re being quite blunt here :)
We do not have an internet facility in my workplace. Only an intranet. Therefore I canno confirm to having daily german from this mail id. But please do send yr poats everyday. It does make a difference.
Thank you in advance
I only post once a week actually. Once a day would be way too much… so just drop by every now and then. The most recent article is right on the home-menu :)
Well, well, well, Grateful reader, you missed my point in the Russian example. You were looking at the finger pointing at the moon.:) The point was ….read again…look at the moon…not the finger.. Seriously, what you write so …bluntly… is pointless, and by the way, I may still have heard right, regardless.
You also missed, well, well, well, what “all the time ” means…in German using articles as pronouns . “Diese 3 Dinge sind es , die mich verwirren”, I thought die looked like die, and if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck , and sounds like a duck, it is probably an article/pronoun, betont or not. Your “no, these are pronouns that mostly look like articles, but are still pronouns” … is meaningless really. Articles, pronouns, all of that, it’s just a silly game; if a word is used to replace another (pro=for, noun=name), or even a whole clause, it is a functional pronoun. Take “the woman that is looking at us”, that that is a pronoun for all practical purposes. A helpful concept. But German can sometimes (all the time, above=typically, not every time) refer to words with the same words that are normally used as articles, yes, those little words der, die, das…that’s all, no need for counter examples, “the” to the issue only fluff add.
Grateful you are helpful explaining “Es kamen Menschen zu uns und sagten…” on stylistic grounds. “Es habe ich nicht gewusst”, I will take it at face value that is wrong, period, but see no great logic in the explanation.
On “quite untrue” that there is no different word for “those” as opposed to “das”, thank you. I suspected so. “Das ist eine gute Idee” and “Das sind gute Nachrichten”, are probably translated like that, those, to simplify matters. (question: is it “Jene sind gute Nachrichten” possible at all? how would you say each one was good news?) The German approach seems slightly different, every language I know have that, those, this, these in clearly defined boundaries, unlike German as you say, at least for translation. It will come. Anyway, my point was explaining why for non-Germans das sind does not clash.
Emanuel, thank you again.– “Ihn habe ich gesehen.
then the spotlight on “ihn” is pretty strong and on “es” it would be even stronger… but there’s nothing to see with “es”, if that makes sense. ”
….Not much :(
In ” Meine Zeit sind die vergangengen Jahre”, I take from your answer that in copulative sentences German would rather copulate in plural than just singular, mandatorily, when there is a choice…. :)
One interesting thing, I read that those comes from this, and then it was later used as plural of that, as opposed to that coming from das directly or from their common Germanic ancestor.
Thanks again for your time,
“Well, well, well, Grateful reader, you missed my point in the Russian example.”
My point was not to discuss your point but to correct your mistake about the Russian language.
“and by the way, I may still have heard right, regardless.”
No.
“But German can sometimes (all the time, above=typically, not every time) refer to words with the same words that are normally used as articles, yes, those little words der, die, das…that’s all, no need for counter examples, “the” to the issue only fluff add.”
Articles are articles, pronouns are pronouns and there is no reason to mix the two together when seriously discussing grammar.
But even if we’re not using strict terminology, this view is simply historically wrong because it was the definite articles that arose from demonstrative pronouns, not vice versa. So if anything, it’s “German uses as definite articles the same words that are normally used as pronouns”.
““Es habe ich nicht gewusst”, I will take it at face value that is wrong, period, but see no great logic in the explanation.”
There is no need to take it at face value, you can consult any serious German grammar, like Helbig/Buscha. Here’s an online one:
http://www.canoo.net/services/OnlineGrammar/InflectionRules/FRegeln-P/Pron-es.html?lang=en