Hello everyone,
I hope you are doing great.
I am a little tired today and all I did so far was doing groceries and go for a walk. Which gave me some Covid memory flashbacks. So many walks. OMG.
Seriously though, spring is slowly coming here, and I have to say that Berlin is really a nice place to be in spring. Many people say it’s dirty and but man… this city is LUSH.
There are trees and bushes and high grass and just “in between green” everywhere. And right now everything is blooming. Cherry-trees and lilac and chestnut, which is Kastanie in German. Those are one of my Lieblingsbäume, by the way.
But yeah, so all I did today was buy things, eat things and go for a walk enjoying the budding green by the way… or is it along the way?
Hey, speaking of by the way… do you know how to say that in German?
No? Well, the German word for it is
übrigens
And that’s what we’ll look at today :).
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Ich habe gehört, dass das Wort “apropos” in ähnlichen Kontexten verwendet werden kann. In welchen Situationen kann “übrigens” mit apropos gewechselt werden?
You can use it at the beginning of a sentence as a stand-alone. Like by the way
– Apropos/Übrigens… hast du Thomas angerufen?
It sounds more business-y and focused.
It does not work mid sentence.
Danke, alles klar.
great article actually really useful
I am a German student in Rochester, MN. Will be in Berlin later this month. I am so happy I found this website!
Really happy you enjoy it!! Welcome :)!
Emanuel, The new dark scheme has a problem with really dark highlighting. For example, in the sentence “Mir bleibt nichts anderes übrig als zu warten.”
I guess you mean the dark blue in that sentence. That’s an issue I won’t be able to fix. The colors for these highlights are set with the html of the article. I’d have to go through all articles and change it manually and I don’t have time for that.
It gets on my nerves as well but yeah… I really don’t know what to do about it.
Can I just write here? The intro of this lesson is epic. Danke für das! :)
Danke dir für das liebe Feedback :)
All this kind of reminds me of moreover :D
Works at time, but “übrigens” doesn’t have as much of a notion of “addition” as does “moreover”
Oh no! Thomas and Marie split up?? I was rooting for those two..
They got back together since… it’s very complicated with them :)
Wonderful work you are doing. I lived in Germany while stationed in the Army and learned a lot by being immersed in the culture. Please keep this up!
Will do. Thanks for the nice feedback!
Oh my God, каштани! (kashtány) ^_^
Kyiv is called “місто каштанів” = the city of chestnut trees, which totally doesn’t sound as epic in English somehow… We use this name pretty often if we want to talk about it in a gentle homey manner.
I love it when learning German makes me feel like home :) Thanks!
I love Kastanien… I think they’re my favorite tree, though Platanen are a close second.
That was so interesting. Thanks for that very thorough explanation and I hope ill never forget the meaning og uebrigens now! Also let me take a stab at translating tomis…’ last sentence. (And i would also be grateful if you would correct this)
ich lerne noch Deutsch, deswegen waere ich sehr dankbar wenn Sie mir helfen koennten einigen meinen fehler zu korrigieren.
Not bad :)… there’s only one mistake in the sentence:
– …, einige meiner Fehler zu …
The over all case here is Accusative. “Einige” is like a pronoun and since it’s in plural, “einige” ends in “e”
– Ich korrigiere di[e] Fehler
– Ich korrigiere einig[e] Fehler
The “meiner Fehler” is Genitive of “meine Fehler” and it basically means “of my mistakes”.
Hoffe das hilft :9
Vielen Dank! I liebe Ihr blog!
Das ist ein sehr interessant post das du gemacht hatte. Ich benutze “by the way” viel zu viel wenn ich Englisch sprechen, so es war ein große Hilfe das im Deutsch ein direkt parallel dazu gibt. So wie im beide Englisch und Deutsche Slang, “solid” und “stabil” hat der gleiche Definition (so viel ich weis).
P.S. Ich lerne Deutsch noch, so einige Fehlen das du könnte korrigieren würde sehr wilkommen.
“Stabil” als Slang? Das kenne ich in Deutsch nicht. Aber ich weiß nicht, was die Kids auf dem Schulhof so sagen.
– “Ich hab’ gestern 10 Bier getrunken”
“Stabil”
… kann ich mir vorstellen, dass das geht :)
Hier mal ein paar Korrekturen:
– Das ist ein sehr interessant Post, das du gemacht hatte.
Richtig ist:
– Das ist ein sehr interessanter (adjective endings… at least put an “e”) Post, den (it’s “der Post”article keeps gender) du gemacht hast (du hast)
– … wenn ich Englisch sprechen
“n” weg… ich spreche Englisch.
– … Hilfe, das im Deutsch ein direkt ..
richtig ist:
– … Hilfe, dass (double s) es (subject von “es gibt”) in Deutsch (not “im”) ein direktes (adjective endings… at least put an “e”… “e” is MUCH better than nothing)
– Ich lernen Deutsch noch…
This complete sentence was pretty wrong. I get the gist but I have no idea what sentence you were trying to say in English :)
Ich will dich fragen warum haben getrenned ist to split? Ich weiss, dass trennen ist to meet!
Danke schön!
Oh da hast du was verwechselt, glaube ich… treffen is to meet. Trennen is to split/seperate… and the past is of course “haben getrennt”:)
Auch. Ich habe jetzt verstanden! Danke sehr!
I’m willing to bet ‘nichts’ and ‘alles’ are part of this genitive ‘s’ family… In fact I’ve been thinking about them for the whole week, and whether or not this ‘s’ is related to the genitive. It seems so! You’ve come just at the right time with the answer! :D
Wow, what a theory… I would never have thought of that myself and I have to say that I was a bit skeptical but turns out nichts is indeed what they call a “frozen Genitive”… nicht alone is a composite of 3 words… ni (negative) ie (some, any) and an old Version of Wesen (being, thing)…. so nicht used to be “not a(ny) thing” and it was a noun. People used it to put emphasis on their normal negation which was done with a prefix … en- … I totally did not know that by the way… the prefix then disappeared and the former emphasis evolved and now carries all the negative info. But it was a noun and of a noun one can build the Genitive which used to be “nihtes” … “of not a thing”, literally… that was so handy apparently that they used it so much that it became a word of its own right … nichts… so your theory is correct. The s is a Genitive-s here. Here is my source by the way… the upper left box:
https://www.dwds.de/?qu=nichts&view=1
As for alles… this is not a Genitive. It is the indefinite pronoun “all” with a regular nominative neuter adjective ending attached… “das alles”. What is confusing a bit is the fact that “all” alone is rare and can only be used in certain configurations… but there are all kinds of endings for it (alle, allem, allen, aller, alles)… the Genitive would be “allen” for neuter and masculine and “aller” for female and plural:
– Ich bin allen Diskutierens müde.
– I’ve had enough of discussions.
– Noch ist nicht aller Tage Abend. (German Idiom)
– It is not yet every day’s evening. (lit.)
– There is no definite result yet, things might still change (meaning)
So… you won half the bet :D … thanks for this by the way, that stuff about nichts was really really interesting for me, I have never spent a thought on it before