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It has two main meanings: to hit or to meet. Context tells you which one.
·Ich habe den Kellner am Kopf getroffen.
·I hit the waiter in the head.
·Ich treffe dich am Brunnen.
·I meet you at the fountain.
"Sich treffen (mit)" is used for planned meetups and avoids the hitting meaning. Plain "treffen" can be a chance meeting or mean hit. For meeting friends and stuff like that, the reflexive version is more common in daily life.
·Maria trifft sich heute mit ihrem Freund.
·Maria is meeting her boyfriend today.
·Ich habe meinen Professor in der Cafeteria getroffen.
·I ran into my professor in the cafeteria.
Use "kennenlernen" for meeting someone for the first time or getting to know them. "Treffen" would sound odd in that situation.
·Schön, dich kennenzulernen.
·Nice to meet you.
Because "treffen" needs a direct object in German. The reflexive "uns" fills that role and is required even though it doesn't translate.
·Wann können wir uns treffen?
·When can we meet?
If you just say "Wir treffen um 6." people would ask "WHOM do you meet at 6."
No. For expectations, demands or specifications use verbs like "erfüllen". "Treffen" would sound very odd there.
·Die Facebookaktie konnte die Erwartungen nicht erfüllen.
·The Facebook share could not meet the expectations.
Useful relatives: "das Treffen" for a meeting, "der Treffer" for a hit/goal, "der Volltreffer" for a bullseye, "der Treffpunkt" for meeting point, and verbs like "betreffen", "antreffen", "eintreffen", "zutreffen", "übertreffen". Learn a couple and the rest will make sense by context.
This is sooooo helpful. Danke!
Is there any difference between “treffen” (as to hit) and “schlagen”. I saw some guys discuss it on a forum and they claimed these are different, but I didn’t understand how.
“schlagen” is “to punch”.
“treffen” is “to hit” in the sense of “not miss”. There’s also “to hit” in the sense of “punch” but that’s “schlagen”. Hope that helps.
Is “den” necessary in “Der Tod seines Hamsters hat den kleinen Timmy sehr getroffen”? In English we usually wouldn’t use “the” in this sentence, and it would sound strange if we did, so it isn’t as if there is an understood “the.” Is there a rule or clue to follow to know when German wants an article in this type of sentence?
Cultural Norms Question: When would one say “Schön, Sie kennenzulernen” using the formal Sie rather than the personal “dich” in “Schön, dich kennenzulernen”? Would one always use “Sie” in a business setting, or what about meeting one´s host at a BnB? I get the impression that one would use “dich” in meeting friends of friends or cousins, something clearly social?
“den kleinen Timmy”
In this case, it is indeed necessary, if you want to have the adjective there. Otherwise, you’d need to change the name to “Klein-Timmy” or “klein Timmy” where the “klein” is kind of part of the name now.
– Der kleine Timmy ist sehr traurig.
– “Klein Timmy” ist… (this is like English, I guess)
– Kleine Timmy ist sehr… NOPE!!
When would one say “Schön, Sie kennenzulernen” using the formal Sie rather than the personal “dich” in “Schön, dich kennenzulernen”?
This is a bit too complex for a comment as it depends on the region, your age, the other persons age, the context, the vibe and the goal of the interaction.
I pretty much never say it. Maybe 1/10 times, the rest is “du”.
But I am from Berlin. I imagine it’s different in Bavaria.
If there is a friendly component, you should go with “du”.
Many people who talk to Cari and Januzs for instance (from the Easy German youtube channel), they use “sie” and it sounds super duper off, because there is no formal component in this conversation, even if they don’t know each other personally.
I did use “Sie” for a while with the landlord who bought my apartment and kicked me out, even though we were the same age, the same peer group and went to the same clubs and I know more about his private life than I should. But we tried to keep this rather formal context up by staying with the “Sie”, even though it felt awkward for both of us.
danke schön, das war sehr hilfreich
Freut mich!
Danke
This helped me a lot! Vielen Dank <3
Glad to hear that :)!
Hallo
Deine Artikel sind so hilfreich. Ich weiss, dass du gesagt hast, dass du ueberlegst, einen Artikel ueber alle Praefixe zu schreiben, aber koenntest du uns einen kleinen Einblick in “betreffen” vs “treffen” geben?
Zuerst trifft es die Schwaechsten in der Gesellschaft.
Koennte man “betreffen” hier verwenden?
Vielen Dank
Ja, könnte man, aber die Bedeutung ist ein bisschen anders.
“betreffen” – concern, pertain to, affect
“treffen” – to hit
So if you were to use “betreffen” in the example, you’d have something like
– First, it’ll concern the weakest of society.
A much weaker statement overall.
Hilarious! And very useful! Vielen Dank!
Gerne :)
Another comment: what happened to all the prefix versions? eintreffen as in
“Der Zug trifft in zehn Minuten am Zielort ein”
or zutreffen as in
“Die Wettervorhersage traf mal wieder nicht zu”?
and who knows how many other prefix versions there are?
You’re the MEISTER at explaining these!! Please give us a post on them!
Emanuel, it’s not idiomatic to say
This is different to English.
an acceptable alternative (and there are many) is:
This is different from English.
Thanks for the excellent blog and the ever-increasing efforts to make past content more accessible!
Articles like this one, on treffen, are not what one can find in any other source!
While I agree that “different to” sounds quite odd to me (I’m in Western Canada), I have heard it occasionally. It seems to me that when I have heard it, the voice has a British accent, but I don’t know if it is common in Britain, or perhaps regional dialect.
In the sentence “Wir treffen gleich auf den Tod.” . What are the meaning of “treffen auf” und “gleich”. I’m confuse….
And thanks for brilhant article
“gleich” is about time here and means “shortly, in a bit”.
“treffen auf” is another option of phrasing and is a bit like “run into” and “to confront”.
Two sports teams “treffen auf” one another, for example.
You’re a piece of work buddy! Keep up the fantastic work (y)
Your article was really useful.Thank you so much
Freut mich :)! Danke dir!
ein Urteil treffen
massnahmen treffen
eine Vereinbarung treffen
Can you maybe break up these phrases as well? Are they common? That will be so grateful. I guess like Entscheidung, in German we also hit a judgement? And then fo rmeet agreement, maybe that‘s also ok. But for take measurement? This is just getting so wired.
The first two sound a bit off to me. That’s not to say that they have never been used but for Urteil the idiomatic combo is “fällen” and for “Maßnahmen” it’s “ergreifen”.
Not sure for Vereinbarungen, but treffen doesn’t sound very smooth.
Think of “Entscheidung treffen” as a fixed phrase.
Thanks!! Is there notification when my post get replied? Maybe somewhere in my email inbox but I missed them?
There’s only a mail function by now, but I can actually look if there’s a way so you can see it on site. Nice idea, I never thought of that.
Just to make sure… you do know about the email-notifier you can chose for comments, right?
1) Minor typo (I think!) — “viscous” instead of “vicious” — unless you really meant “sticky villains”?
2) “The death of his hamster has hit little Tommy really hard” is a perfectly good idiomatic translation of “Der Tod seines Hamsters hat den kleinen Timmy sehr getroffen.”
But should have added, you do need the ” … (really) hard” in English — just “The death of his hamster has hit little Tommy” doesn’t work.
Fantastische Erläuterung! :)
Danke :)
Thanks for such a clear explanation to what could be a muddy grammatical post..but then again you always seem to do that for us. also, the quiz is a great touch to make sure the lesson stuck!
One tiny point…
Die Facebookaktie konnte die Erwartungen nicht erfüllen. I would probably have used the word “stock” here instead of “share”. It could lead to confusion. I have heard American English speakers refer to posts on Facebook as a “share” IE “did you see my share?” or “did you see what I shared?”. Using stock here makes it very clear that you mean Facebook’s financial report did not live up to expectations.
Thanks for all the hard work Emmanuel!
Good point, that. I did indeed assume “The Facebook share” referred to a social post, and that is because, if talking about the financial instrument, we would never use the singular, other than to say, rather improbably, “I bought one share of Facebook”. In this sentence it would *have* to be: “Facebook shares could not meet…etc.”. Also note – no definite article. This would also apply if you used the word “stock” – “Facebook stock could not…”
I just love this blog, thank you so much for your delightful and enlightening posts.
Just for completion… would you also say “I bought one Facebook stock?” or would that need to be “share” (I know that I can buy Facebook stock without the article, but what about specifically one)?
Danke :)
I think that has to be one share. Stock comes in units of shares, so “one stock” would be like saying you bought one cake when you actually bought one piece of cake.
Prima! Du hast ein richtiges Talent dafür, die deutsche Sprache zu erklären. Ich bin so froh, dass ich deinen Blog gefunden habe. Ich lerne alleine und fühle mich sehr überfordert, wenn ich denke über alles, was ich nicht weiß. Dein Blog hilft mir, um viel Grammatik zu verstehen, die mich früher verrückt hat sein lassen(Wortstellung?). Vielen Dank dafür!! :)
I feel the same way,
Wow,…. verrückt hat sein lassen. Die Wortstellung ist perfekt, auch wenn die Formulierung ein bisschen überkompliziert ist.
Danke für das schöne Kompliment!!
Du hast in diesem Artikel https://yourdailygerman.com/muhe-geben-german/ einen Satz geschrieben ” Ich hab’ mal ein paar Beispiel angeguckt und deine Interpretation trifft’s ziemlich gut”
Was bedeutet ”trifft es gut” in diesem Zusammenhang?
It’s something like “is pretty spot on”. You “hit the target” and the target is whatever “it” refers to.
Macht das Sinn? (sorry, dass ich auf Englisch geschrieben habe, ich hab’s erst am Ende gesehen, dass du Deutsch geschrieben hast)
Schon gut.Auf jeden Fall vielenk Dank für deine Erklärung:)
That was the best explanation ever. Thanks
Freut mich zu hören :)