Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll have a look at the meaning of
spüren
Experts like me often classify German as a TOO-FAT language – a term I completely made up and that’s short for “There are Other Options For A Thing”.
If you’ve been learning for a while you’ve probably felt the pain. This constant “There’s more than one possible translation” and “The translation depends on the context.”
Spüren is a perfect example, because it is one of those “other possible translations”, in this case for the English to feel. The main translation is of course fühlen, and of course fühlen and spüren are NOT synonymous.
Today, we’ll look what those differences are and what type of feeling spüren is exactly. And of course we’ll explore its family tree a bit because there are quite a few nice, useful and confusing words to be found.
And in fact, we’ll actually start with a related word because that’ll set us on the right… ahem… Spur for spüren ;).
Spur – The origin of “spüren”
It all started with the disgustingly ancient Indo-European root *sp(h)er(ə), which apparently was about the foot and its movements.
Now, the main purpose feet (besides receiving massages) is making steps.
And back in the day, before concrete sidewalks making steps also meant leaving a trace and track.
And that’s exactly the meaning the word die Spur took on very early on.
First, it was used by hunters for literal animal foot prints, but it soon broadened to all kinds of traces.
- Das Eichhörnchen berichtet der Waldversammlung, wo es die Einhornspuren gefunden hat.
- The squirrel tells the forest meeting, where it found the unicorn (foot) prints.
(should I say hoof-prints here?)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Emanuel hat schon wieder ein Einhornbeispiel gemacht. Von Originalität keine Spur.
- Emanuel gave a unicorn example yet again. No trace of originality.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Schatz, ich rufe jetzt bei der Polizei an.”
“Was, wieso?”
“Deine Bauchmuskeln. Die sind einfach spurlos verschwunden.”
“Haha, sehr komisch. “ - “Honey, I’m gonna call the police now.”
“What? Why?”
“Your abs. They’ve just disappeared without a trace.”
“Haha, very funny.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Dieses Müsli hat viele Ballaststoffe und Spurenelemente.
- This muesli has lots of dietary fiber and trace minerals/elements.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, imagine you’re following the footprints of a wolf in the snow. You basically follow a line, right. So makes perfect sense Spur can also mean track, mainly in context of traffic.
- Die Tonspur ist total verrauscht.
- The audio track is super noisy.
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- Wegen Einorndung auf der Fahrbahn ist die linke Spur in Richtung Berlin blockiert.
- The left lane toward Berlin is blocked due to unicorn manure on the road.”
(I know from the comments that this is not idiomatic English, but decided to keep it, because it’s closer to the phrasing in German)
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- Marias Bruder lebt ein Leben auf der Überholspur.
- Maria’s brother is living a life on the fast lane. (lit.: “over take lane“)
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So… Spur is all about tracking and tracing. And that’s also the idea of the verb spüren started out with. It quite literally meant to find traces and track them.
In fact, this is still super visible in the word Spürhund.
A Spürhund is not a very emotional dog with a lot feelings. A Spürhund is a dog that sniffs out stuff.
- Die Tiere im Wald entscheiden bei der Versammlung, ihren Drogenspürhund auf Einhörner umzutrainieren.
- At the gathering, the animals in the forest decide to retrain their drug detection dog to unicorns.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, if you want to find traces and track stuff, you need to be quite attentive, observing and perceptive. And slowly the word spüren shifted toward a more general and “internal” idea of “sensing, perceiving” and became what it is today.
But the original notion of tracking is still in there and it’s actually the main difference to fühlen.
“spüren” vs “fühlen” – The difference
Spüren is kind of targeted and looking for information. Not in a sense of searching the web of course, but you’re getting “raw sensory data”.
Fühlen has more of an emotional component and it sounds more “whole”.
To make it really abstract let me put it this way: fühlen is a cloud, a nebula, spüren is a sensor, a looking glass.
Let’s look at them back to back.
- Ich fühle mich gut.
- Ich spüre mich gut.
Here, the difference between the two is super clear.
The version with fühlen talks about how you feel as a person at the moment (you feel good). The version with spüren is basically the equivalent of “I can see myself in the reflection” or “I can hear myself snore.” for the sense of touch. Like… you can perceive your body well when you touch it.
But the difference isn’t always that big.
- Ich spüre, dass etwas nicht stimmt.
- Ich fühle, dass etwas nicht stimmt.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Those two are REALLY similar and they both mean
- I sense/feel that there’s something wrong.
The difference is tone. The spüren-version is the more common one and it sounds more like you’re having an abstract itch somewhere, an inkling. Like… I could imagine someone squinting their eyes a little for that sentence, like their trying to track down the cause.
The version with fühlen sounds softer, and at least to me, a bit esoteric. Like… you sense it, but not through one particular channel. It’s a holistic experience.
Hmm… not sure if that actually makes any sense. Let’s just look at some more examples …
- Nach dem Workout habe ich alle Muskeln in meinem Körper gespürt.
- After the workout I felt all the muscles in my body.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich spüre deinen Herzschlag.
- I feel your heart beat.
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- Ich habe gespürt, dass du das sagen willst.
- I sensed that you want to ask something.
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So, to give you a rule of thumb:
Spüren is usually the right choice for tactile perception as well as all sorts of inklings. Think of a hunter tracking new information.
But of course German isn’t very consistent about it and the word for the antenna of a snail for instance is called Fühler. Even though Spürer would make more sense, based on what we’ve learned.
But Spürer just isn’t a thing.
There are quite a few related words though, so let’s take a look at those next.
The related words to “spüren”
Lucky for us, the related words stay pretty close to the core sense of spüren. The adjective spürbar for example means perceivable, noticably, though it can also be used as significantly.
- Heute ist es spürbar wärmer als gestern.
- Today, it’s noticeably warmer than yesterday.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Then, there’s the noun das Gespür which is sense, feeling in the sense of having a talent for something.
- Ich habe kein Gespür für Timing.
- I have no sense for timing.
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And last but not least, we have a couple of prefix verbs: verspüren and aufspüren. Verspüren is pretty much a synonym for spüren and it’s the more idiomatic choice in contexts of cravings or yearnings.
- Ich verspüre Appetit nach Pizza.
- I feel an appetite for pizza.
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- Ich habe gestern seit langem mal das Verlangen verspürt, Sport zu machen.
- Yesterday, I felt the yearning/desire/urge to do sports for the first time in a long while.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And aufspüren means something like to find after tracking down, so it’s pretty much the original spüren. It’s kind of rare though and I actually couldn’t aufspüren an example for it ;).
And that’s it for today. This was our look at t… oh hold on, there’s a call. Joana from Peru, welcome to the show.
“Hey Emanuel, I have a question if we still have time.”
Sure, sure, go ahead!
“Oh awesome.. so when you mentioned die Spur, I immediately thought of the English to spur and I was trying to make a connection but I couldn’t think of anything. So are they actually related?”
Great observation! And I’m glad you’re bringing that up because the connection is actually kind of funny. Do you remember the original idea Spur came from?
“Uhmm…. it something with foot, right.”
Exactly!! Now, there’s also the noun the spur.
“Like… spur of the moment?”
Yes, but that’s the abstract meaning. There’s actual a real world object called spur: that little metal thing riders sometimes have on their boots. So basically, on their feet. Hold on… here’s a pic…
“Oh, those…”
The idea of these things is… you twitch your feet thereby pushing the spur into the horse’s side to make it run.
“Ohhhhhhh… the horse quite literally feels a spur. Or spürs a spur in German.”
Haha, yeah. And then, over time, the verb to spur just shifted toward the general idea of sudden “inspuration”. Oh while we’re at it… German actually also has a verb that’s based on the horse-spurs: anspornen. Which is a mix between cheering and motivating.
- Der Motivationstrainer soll das Team anspornen.
- The boss wants to motivate the team with his speech.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
It’s a bit rare but I thought I’d mention it.
“Cool, thank you so much!! That was really interesting.”
Well, thank you for bringing that up.
And to all of you out there, thanks for tuning in. This was our little look at the verb spüren which evolved from tracing footprints to a general sense of tactile and intuitive perception.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions about this, especially about the difference between spüren and fühlen, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
further reading:
** vocab **
die Spur – the trace, the track (recording, trains, foot prints), lane (car traffic)
die Überholspur – the fast lane
spüren – sense, feel (tactile, intuition)
das Gespür – the sense (in sense of being good at finding/spotting)
spürbar – noticeable (ly)
verspüren – feel (context of urges and appetites)
anspornen – motivate
die Sporen – the spurs
wpDiscuz
