Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time, we’ll take a quick look at the meaning of
verschwinden
And to give you a real life example – imagine you’re finally having the first date with your crush, you’re having really good conversations and it is going really well and then you suddenly let go a really noisy fart.
The urge you feel in that moment, the thing you want to do… that’s verschwinden.
“Erase my date’s short term memory?”
Uh… no… the other thing.
“Turn back time and prevent myself from eating that onion-bean-salad?”
NO… I mean to disappear. That’s what I want to do.
“But Emanuel, that’s the least productive option. Because if you disappear, the date will be over and you’ll be all alone in your bed.”
Hmmmmmmm… good point.
Maybe that’s why I was single for so long #singletear
But hey, let’s not waste time with dating tips and jump into our topic instead…
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What are you talking about?!
Geschwindigkeit is totally a badass word for speed
You think? Isn’t there too much “winding” of the tongue in it?
Oh, how about “Beschleunigung”, by the way? I’m not sure if I like it or not :)
yep,
I first heard this word (Teilchen-Beschleuniger) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99hVAu1k6G8
and I also read Geschwindigkeit for the first time when a lovely person sent me his biking progress screenshots from an app with display language set to German. He also sent me some really beautiful pictures. I live in a really polluted city and haven’t really experienced tourism much, so it was astonished to see that such places exist outside of windows xp wallpapers.
I was like A2 and A1 level back then, respectively, so I think both words were aggressive sounding (as usual for german words), which suited their meanings well, but now that i speak a bit more german, they sound softer. I think that’s what you don’t like about them(?)
Also I used to think that Geschwindigkeit referred to ‘dizziness’ (you’re going to so fast it makes you dizzy) and not ‘disappearing’ (rookie mistake that only non-reads of YDG will make, schwinden/schwindeln).
Thank you for replying, and btw is (civil) engineering the thing you studied but don’t care about? Because it looks like Ermüdungsrisswachstumsgeschwindigkeit
is a word that you already knew and didn’t just look up.
Anyway, I can really relate to the abstract way you write/think and I get carried away or digress a lot, given the length of my message, which I think you also do, given the length of your articles.
Um, the main thing i wanted to say but forgot is that the source you learn the word from probably has effect on whether you like the word itself or not, since words are probably connected to their semantic meaning/the emotion that was triggered at time of learning, in our brains in some neurological way. I wonder how much of our ‘personality’ or thought pattern is just comprised of/dependent upon this fact, since (most of) our thoughts and speech are made of words.
Sorry if I wasted your time, I will be more concise with queries the next time.
I’d argue that for the vast majority of words, there are no feelings attached when we learn them. (Except boredom in language class).
Also, I think the feeling we have toward what the word stands for has a much bigger influence than the word itself, at least in our mother tongue.
I feel pretty indifferent about like 90% of words that I know, and only for a few ones I have something positive or negative going on.
Also also, words are to an extend just a musical expression, and there’s always a chance you like one just because of the combination of sound and rhythm.
Ha, no, I am an audio communication engineer by degree and I did look up Ermüdungsriss[…]keit :).
That video you linked to… if that’s your level of German now, then well done!!!
Dankeschön<3, Ich kann schon fast alles im Easy German podcast verstehen(dank der DW-online-kurse und damit den Steuerzahlern, und natürlich dir auch für einen kostenlosen account), und ich hoffe, dass die Internetzugriff in die Berliner U-Bahn jetzt nicht mehr so nervig ist denn als die Zeit wann du der erste Gast des Podcasts warst.
(i really wanted to use ‘..denn als..’ in a sentence)
I really hope to be there some day, stay cool/hip/sympathisch, Emanuel :)
Hey man(u), amazing stuff as always, many thanks and much respect!
Out of interest, as another example, might one say:
Zuviel Kaffee verursacht Gedächtnisschwund?
Oder…?
Haha. Seriously though, I just wanted to say that with Maria’s example, maybe ‘fib’ would work better than ‘lied a bit’?
My dictionary also gives ‘flunkern’ for ‘fib’, so maybe you intended not to say that, but I think it’s apt in the above context.
Word!
Hahaha… nice little call back :).
Yep, “flunkern” also works in the above context. It’s even more harmless sounding than “schwindeln”. Like… nobody would ever be mad at someone for “flunkern”. It’s not used very much either, though.
Weird “F”hrasing Frage??/
And if you feel dizzy you use the same weird phrasing you’d use to say you’re cold or hot….
Hmm, usually in English when hot and cold are used in a sentence “paired” together, hot always precedes cold.
ex. This room is usually too hot or too cold.
A thermostat regulates hot and cold
Would you like your roast beef sandwich served hot or cold?
An unstable person is often emotionally excessively hot or cold.
Ist sowas beim Deutsch auch der Fall? Wie beim “Kopf oder Zahl” Heads or tails.
???
Gibt es eine tyoische Reihenfolge?
Ich bin sehr neugierig was Du darüber zu sagen hast.
MfG,
Abgaz
24.5.19
Interessant!! Das wusste ich nicht über Englisch.
In Deutsch gibt es das nicht, oder zumindest nicht so stark. “Kopf oder Zahl”… ja, das ist fix.
Aber bei “warm oder kalt” geht auch “kalt oder warm”.
I think this post might be interesting for you, too:
https://yourdailygerman.com/advent-calendar-order-of-adjectives/
Oh yeah, the order of vowel sounds is pretty firmly fixed in the Anglophone subconscious. Tic-tac-toe, fee-fie-fo-fum, e-i-e-i-o… saying “cold or hot” isn’t wrong or anything, but it sounds marked.
Oh, so THAT’S the reason? The “toning down”… that makes it a whole lot easier to learn, actually.
“nice and warm” or “old and new” would be other examples then?
Hmm… I think “old and new” might fit into that phenomenon, although to some extent it just feels like, well “old” was there before “new,” so it comes first, right? To me, “nice and ___” is a pretty fixed expression, regardless of what goes in the blank.
Adjective-order preferences probably trump sound preferences, too. So “tall and thin” sounds right/normal, not “thin and tall.” “Short or tall” sounds more neutral to me than “tall or short,” but that might be more about the sound of the ending of the word than anything.
Are there really any rules? WHO KNOWS
Offf… I really liked this idea of going “down” in sound. Thanks for crushing my dreams!! :)
Hallo!
This lesson has been so entertaining, I really liked the sentences I don’t think I will forget that unicorns are maybe Schwindel – gasp –
After reading this my mind put pieces together and figured out this anime name “das verschwinden der haruhi suzumiya”
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great website!
could you please offer a feed reader, sodass wir deine Webseite abbonieren können und keinen Beitrag verpassen? Danke!
I don’t know how this works, actually, but you can sign up for the newsletter. I post once a week and send out an email then :)
HEAR ME OUT
Maybe German blacksmiths back in the day figured out when they hit metal it makes the sound “schwinnnnnnn” (it was German metal so of course it makes a sound with sch) and then it slowly quiets down or ‘dwindles’, so they started using the verb schwinden to convey that idea!
Hahahaha… convincing :)!
Gibt es Einhörner in Bulgarien? Gute Photos
Ich habe noch keine gesehen, nur Strassenhunde… und ich hoffe, das bleibt so :D.
Danke für das Kompliment!!
Hi, this is my first artical of the week. Why it is telling me that I reached the limit I can read for free already? I was able to read your atricals before but now I can’t get to read into the main part. Do I have to re-subscribe?
It’s actually two article within 7 days. So from Friday till Friday for example.
As for your subscription… can you send me an email with the user name you’re using? Then I can check in my system.
info@german-is-easy.com
Vielen Dank aus Spanien!
Gerne :)
A couple of remarks on the English versions.
Although probabilities are low and high, not small and big/large, “vanishingly small” is a standard expression in other areas of maths. Oxford English Dictionary gives “an event of vanishingly small probability” as an example, apparently confirming my feeling that the expression would prevail even in statistical use.
From maths to magic. While many wizards do carry staffs the implement used for casting spells is generally a much smaller “wand” (with the “a” sounding like a short “o” as in “wash”). “Der Stab” seems to cover both in German, with “wand” possibly distinguished as “der Zauberstab”.
Special thanks for the instagram link in your email alert.
Ups, of course “wand”. Danke für die Korrektur. But to my excuse… my main mage is Gandalf and not Harry Potter and Gandalf actually does have a staff :)
I’m not sure I’d generalize about what implement wizards use for their spells, but at any rate, wizards in Harry-Potter-World use wands for sure. (I’m partial to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books myself, and there, staffs/staves are definitely standard.)
But are these staffs long like Gandalf’s or does Pratchett also call a Potter-esque one “staff”?
No, a wand figures importantly in one book. If it’s hand-held, it’s way too small to be called a “staff.” Even something in-between – like a cane or walking stick – is too small for “staff” to me.
Dass geschwind mit schwinden nichts zu tun, macht mich schwindelig! Wer konnte es denken , es hat lieber
mit gesud ? Wannsinig. Deutsche Sprache ,schwere Sprache .
Vielen Dank lieber Emmanuel , ebenso für deiner Assistentin .
Ahmad
Danke dir :)!
Ein paar Korrekturen:
– Wer hätte (das) gedacht (ist idiomatisch für “Who would have thought”), dass es mit gesund (“lieber” macht keinen Sinn hier) zu tun hat (du hast das Verb vergessen :)
Hello,
Here are today’s typos so you can make them verschwinden:
“yup, the’re all connected” (they’re all connected)
“straight forward” (straightforward)
“a resources” (either a resource or resources (better IMO))
“like a verbs with a ver-prefix” (like verbs)
In quiz question 7 (which word does not exists – extra s in exist)
I have a question about the coffee example, although not directly related to today’s topic:
Is there any difference between “zuviel” and “zu viel”?
No more questions for today, I’m studying for a mock exam on Saturday, wish me luck; I hope I don’t suffer from Gedächtnisschwund!
Bis bald!
Wow, you were uber quick this time :D!! Unglaulich. Vielen Dank!!
As for your question:
the difference is basically that “zuviel” is wrong and “zu viel” is correct.
The problem is that we had a spelling reform in 1996 and ANOTHER ONE in 2006. In the olden days, it was spelled “zuviel” and that’s how I spent most of my school time writing. Then, with the reform, and rereform I basically stopped caring about getting the new rules right.
If one makes it into my system by accident, no problem, but I don’t want to make an effort.
I know it’s not very professional, but believe me… these reforms were frustrating. There even were newspapers who refused to “comply” and just stuck with the old rules.
TL;DR:
“zu viel” is correct, “zuviel” is wrong. Emanuel is too lazy to learn German spelling :)
Viel Glück bei deiner Prüfung!!!