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.
So basically, I did a “2020” today :).
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 blah blah blah, but maaan… 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.
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, it’s the word…
übrigens
And that’s what we’ll look at today :).
So, the German word for by the way is übrigens. And while it’s pretty clear why by the way has the meaning it has, the German übrigens sounds a bit like someone took a normal word and put it in a blender. So basically, it’s how someone who doesn’t speak German would imitate how German sounds.
But of course, übrigens is not random at all.
The meaning of “übrig”
The core piece of it is the word über which is the German version for over, above. And the other important building block is the common German ending –ig which turns a word into an adjective, just like the English –y…
- der Hunger – hung[]rig
- the hunger – hung[]ry (here, English dropped and e too)
As you can see here, the unstressed “e” of the noun got mumbled away over time, and that’s exactly what happened to the old überig. The e got “smaller and smaller” until there wasn’t anything left of it.
And that actually brings us right over to the meaning of übrig, because übrig is about something being left over.
Which makes sense, if we think of leftovers as “over, above what was needed”. Like… if you have an oversupply of Nachos with salsa, some nachos will be left over. No salsa, though. I virtually drink that stuff.
But yeah, übrig is about the idea of leftovers and it’s fairly common in daily life, particularly in the combination with the verbs haben, bleiben or lassen.
- “Ich mache jetzt den Wein auf. Willst du auch was?”
“Nein jetzt nicht, aber lass mir was übrig.” - “I’ll open the wine now. Do you want some too?”
“No, not right now, but leave some for me (leave something left over for me – literally)” - Ich habe noch ein bisschen von meinem Urlaubsgeld übrig.
- I have a little of my vacation money left.
- Vielen Menschen (Dative!) bleibt nach Abzug der Fixkosten wenig Geld zum Leben übrig.
- Many people don’t have much money left after subtracting the fixed expenses.
Lit. “To many people, not much money remains… )
There are also a couple of pretty common figurative phrasings with übrig.
übrig haben für expresses the idea of having (no) interest in something, and jemandem übrig bleiben is about (no) options remaining for someone.
- Ich habe für Fußball nichts übrig.
- “I have nothing left over for soccer (lit.)”
- I don’t care/am not interested about soccer.
- Mir (Dative!) bleibt nichts anderes übrig als zu warten.
- I can’t do anything other than wait.
Lit.: “There is nothing remaining for me but to wait. (lit.)”
- Was bleibt mir (Dative!) anderes übrig? (very common expression)
- What alternative do I have? (implying that I have none)
Lit.: “What other is left for me? “
And like most other adjectives, übrig can also be used as an acting noun with the sense of the rest
- “Okay, also die grundsätzlichen Fragen haben wir ja heute geklärt und alles Übrige besprechen wir dann beim nächsten Meeting.”
- “All right. So I think we’ve pretty much sorted out the basic issues today and we’ll talk about what’s remaining/all the rest/the details in our next meeting.”
Oh and while we’re at it, we should also mention im Übrigen. Taken literally, it’s something like “within what’s remaining” and it’s a good alternative for außerdem (besides), in a sense of giving additional information.
- Nein, ich komme nicht mit in die Oper, denn ich habe eine schlimme Vibratoallergie und im Übrigen habe ich heute keine Zeit.
- No, I will no go to the opera because I am highly allergic to vibrato and besides, I have no time today.
Now, if you’re wondering why it’s übrigen… well it’s the “nounified” version of übrig in Dative case, so -en just the normal adjective ending.
And from there, übrigens is only one “s” away.
The meaning of “übrigens”
And this “s” at the end of übrigens is not some weird random “s”. No, the s is there because übrigens is a Genitive case. Or used to be, at least, when it was invented.
You see, nowadays, the Genitive isn’t all that popular but back a few hundred years ago, Germans loved it and they used it for all kinds of things. And we inherited quite a few words from that period, one group of them being those adverbs that end with s. Like spätestens for example. It means at the latest and the original notion was of the latest… a Genitive. It doesn’t “feel” like a Genitive to native speakers anymore, but that’s where the s comes from. And it’s the same system for frühestens (no earlier than), mindestens (at least), höchstens (at most), wenigstens (at least) and schnellstens (the fastest possible).And of course übrigens, which literally once meant “of what’s left“. And I think that makes PERFECT sense as by the way.
You have a main train of thoughts, a main story, and then you have other stuff… stuff that’s left once you’re done with the main story. Stuff that’s “by the way”. You can also think of it as “in other news” if that makes more sense.
- “….blah blah blah und deshalb wird die Kernfusion nie funktionieren… übrigens, wie findest du meine neuen Schuhe?”
- “…bluh bluh bluh and that’s why cold fusion will never work… by the way, how do you like my new shoes?”
- Übrigens… Thomas und Marie haben sich gestern nach der Party getrennt.
- By the way… Thomas and Marie split up.
As you can see in these examples, übrigens can be used just like by the way. So it can kind of introduce a sentence without really being part of it.
But while by the way is pretty much always this tag-on phrase, übrigens can be a proper part of the sentence. So it can come at different positions and it can take up position one, meaning that the verb will follow.
- Thomas und Marie haben sich [übrigens] gestern [übrigens] nach der Party [übrigens] getrennt.
- [Übrigens] haben sich Maria und Thomas gestern…
- Thomas and Maria broke up yesterday, by the way.
The only place that DOESN’T work well for übrigens is the very end. For by the way, it’s natural, but übrigens would sound a bit out of place there.
Not wrong, but definitely like you forgot to say it.
Cool.
And I think that’s actually all for today. This was our little look at übrig and übrigens and they’re definitely both words you should add to your active vocabulary.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestion just leave me a comment, and of course any random, by-the-way side thought is welcome as well.
I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time.
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:
http://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