Hello everyone,
and welcome to the second part of our look at
werden
Last time we were cut short quite abruptly right in the middle of the explanation, so if you haven’t rea… er I mean listened to it yet you can find part 1 here:
What we’ve learned so far is that werden originally meant to turn before it .. ahem… turned into a word that expresses self development; just like to become. And it is not a weird change of meaning because it happened with the English to turn, too.
- Die Milch wird sauer.
- The milk turns sour.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Die Blätter werden gelb und rot.
- The leaves are turning yellow and red.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Then, we started talking about the second usage of werden – a helper verb for the future tense.
And that’s where we’ll pick up today. And first we’ll explore how and why werden became the German counterpart of will.
Why “werden” and “will” express future
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“And it is clearly also passive because the street itself doesn’t squeeze out water”. Why I can’t stop laughing??????
Did you visualize a street squeezing really hard to get some drops out :)?
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is a weird  randomly repeated throughout the article (and possibly other articles too). I think it’s related to formatting like adding a different color or putting the text in bold.
For instance, here’s an exame paragraph:
Now, in a normal sentence the do-er will have the grammatical role of a subject and the done to-er will be in the role of the direct object.
I read a book.
I mean, it’s not related to ümlauts or ß.
Yeah, I saw that too :/. It’s something with spacing there.
Update: I believe it’s fixed.
Yes it is. Everything is back to normal. well done.
Love your AI pronunciation tool. However in this lesson the AI seems confused as to whether it is grading German or English.
It always takes the first version of the examples, and back in the day before I added this feature, I wasn’t always using German first. I think I fixed them all in this one now :)
Apologies if someone already mentioned this, but I found this interesting: Regarding the infamous “im Bett wird geschlafen”, in Italian we have a similar confusing construction, the so called “si impersonale” (we also have another equally confusing construction which is the “si passivante”), in which instead of using the passive, like in German, we use the reflexive to generalize a sentence (la notte si dorme = nachts wird geschlafen = at night one sleeps). Notably, in Latin the passive conjugation is used for both the passive, the reflexive and the impersonal passive/reflexive. I am no linguist but it is interesting to speculate that from it stemmed both the unpersönliches Passiv and the “si impersonale”
PS: very interesting and clear article! thank you!
Hah, I remember that from back when I was learning Italian. This form feels EXACTLY like the impersonal passive in German, even though their structures are different. I think they even have a similar bossy or slightly authoritarian vibe (correct me if I’m wrong).
How common is this “si”-passive?
As a non-expert (Italian is my mother tongue but I just studied the grammar in school, not professionally), I would consider its use in everyday spoken communication rare, but not because the construction per se is unusual or formal but rather because we rarely speak in general, broad statements when we talk to each other ( I presume this is the case for German too). when appropriate, the “si impersonale” is a completely normal way of speaking. z.b. “in quel ristorante si mangia bene” (in diesem Restaurant isst man gut), oder “si può fare” = (das)kann man machen). to me the “si impersonale” conveys universality/inevitability/rule, it can be bossy/authoritarian but not necessarily. es,see above: one eats well in that restaurant. It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact; or “lunedì si lavora” = on Mondays one works, it’s just how it is.
Ah, great examples!!
I think the si impersonale then covers “man”-phrasings and the impersonal passive.
Germans actually use “man” a lot and a subset of the population also uses imporsonal “es” phrasings a lot in spoken.
Maybe that’s a good topic for an article, but at least for the use of “man” I already have something :)
This passive sentence from the Goethe Institute’s B2 example test is driving me crazy: “In der heutigen Gesellschaft wird leider nur noch konsumiert.“ I know a reasonable translation is, “In today‘s society there is, unfortunately, nothing but consumption,“ or “Unfortunately, in today’s society we only consume,“ but I would really like a translation that uses the past participle “consumed“ as the counterpart of “konsumiert.“ Maybe it’s not possible, but I was encouraged by the ability to translate “Im Bett wird geschlafen“ as “The bed is slept in.” Any suggestions would be appreciated.
PS: Perhaps, “Unfortunately, in today’s society everything is consumed.” But that then sacrifices a better translation of “nur noch” (which itself I find hard to translate). Or, “Unfortunately, in today’s society there is nothing but what can be consumed.” Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, though.
Interesting example!
I don’t think there’s a way to include the past participle without it sounding completely artificial.
This is this weird “subject-less” passive that German has.
– Hier wird gekocht.
– Here, we cook.
– Es wurde viel getrunken.
– People drank a lot.
I think your version with “everything is consumed” changes the meaning too much. Same for the second version, though less. You’re introducing new statements about reality.
The German sentence is about what people in our society do. Your options are about what happens with “everything” and “what is there” respectively.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, Emanuel! Your examples help a lot.
Glad to hear that. ANd always happy to clear up things here, no matter what article.
I read this article for the 3rd time probably in two years. It is interesting how knowledge does come to one when they are ready to take it in. I think that is one of the great things about YDG – there is so much here (at least for an A2 like me). The passive voice just kind of clicked, and I came back here. A few weeks ago, I read someone’s comment saying that the word of the day wasn’t actually a WORD A DAY. I wanted to slap him. You were more polite. There is so much. I wonder if the person below in comments got your passive pun with “The article on passive will be written…”. :)
Yeah, there’s enough content for 2,5 years reading daily :).
Hallo Emanuel!
Super-mega toller Artikel! Leider, je mehr ich darüber nachdenke, je verwirrter werde ich. Auch über den Gebrauch im Schwedisch :), worin man drei verschiedene passive hat.
Sieh mal diese zwei passive Sätze an:
a) The portrait was painted (by Tizian).
b) The portrait was being painted (by Tizian).
Im ersten Satz wurde das Bild fertiggemahlt, aber im zweiten weiss man nicht, ob es jemals fertig wurde (würde ich glauben, English ist doch nicht meine Muttersprache). Wie würde man es auf Deutsch schreiben?
a) Das Porträt war von Tizian gemahlt.
b) das Porträt wurde von Tizian gemahlt.
Ist das richtig? Oder wie unterscheidet man zwischen den beiden Fällen?
“If passive is built using to be, then you will have to use a work around to express the German version”: Not in Spanish!:
I found this page which explains it really well, in case you are (or anyone is) interested.
Oh, that’s really interesting :).
I wonder if English speakers have trouble with these two versions or if it is intuitive to them.
Native English speaker here! I’m learning Spanish, and would say I’m at a pretty advanced level. The passive voice with “ser” and the reflexive passive both came pretty intuitively to me, but I only understood the reason why one might use “estar” after reading this comment. Thanks!
You probably know what I am about to say better than I, but your discussion of the history of “werden” awoke a fascination I have with the evolution of English and the preservation of otherwise obsolete words in old expressions and phrases. The word “wend” hangs by a thread in contemporary English, mostly by the preservation of the expression “wend our (their, his, one’s etc) way” as through a crowd, a narrative, a countryside and so forth. Unfortunately, many people unconsciously take “wend” back to an earlier meaning and say “wind our way” thus threatening the survival of the word “wend” It had origins in Old English “wendan’. See also Old High German “wenten” and Old English “windan” to twist. Bizarrely, the past tense of “wend” was “went” which managed to displace the historical past tense of “go” (gan) which was “eode” which also did not evolve from a common stem of “go”. That left poor “wend” with a narrow range of meaning and barely enough energy to survive.
Great insights and additions, thank you for sharing these :)!
What about the worden form? Are there any analogies in English? As far as I’m concerned, that form is used in the past tense as an infinitive verb?I’m a bit confused…would you be so kind as to elaborate on this)
“worden” is the ge-form of “werden”. “ge-” used to be a normal prefix, but it slowly became grammar.
In combination with a normal verb, people felt like one “ge-” is enough, so it never got added to “werden” and that’s why we say
A story on DW today included the sentence, “Dem Konsularbeamten wird vorgeworfen seinen Ehemann getötet zu haben.” Why is the dative case used here? Isn’t “Konsularbeamten” the subject of the sentence? I thought it might have something to do with the passive, so ask the question here. Thanks!!
Nice question!
It is indeed a passive, but the Konsularbeamte is the indirect object in the sentence.
Let’s take a simpler example with “vorwerfen”:
The direct object is “es” and that’s what becomes the subject in passive voice.
As you can see, “dir” is Dative in both instances because the role hasn’t changed.
In your example, the subject is “seinen Ehemann getötet zu haben”. You could rephrase it with a placeholder “es”
Does that help?
Will there be a full article on using the passive? (I couldn’t find it if there is already one). This is the one that I thought was easy, until I got to all the tenses and moods.
An article on the passive will be written eventually :).
Seriously, I don’t know why I am not touching this topic. I think I am still too “triggered” by the whole Zustandspassiv vs Vorgangspassiv stuff and how much emphasis it gets in normal teaching material.
Part of me wants to scream “FORGET ABOUT ZUSTANDSPASSIV” and just call it “adjectives” but that’s quite an extreme stance and I don’t think it does reality justice.
So yeah… I am waiting patiently for the day where I feel like “Yeah, I think I have a leveled angle now.”
I do think this distinction gets talked about too much and it confuses more than it helps. So I’ll definitely deal with the “real” passive first, the werden passive.
I can see you wrote this a long time ago and it does not have much to do with language development, but I thought you might be interested in history too. It is generally accepted by modern historians that this idea about conflict between science and religion was “fake news” introduced in the 1800s for ideological reasons.
Here is a Wikipedia article that sums up the topic, if you would like to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis
I continue to appreciate this site and all your insights on German language. I finding that the more progress I make in learning German, the more I get out of your articles. Thanks for making this.
“He watches the streets turn wet” – by itself, sounds really wrong to me, it’s missing the end of the sentence. If however you said “He watches the streets turn wet with the blood of his unicorn enemies” that would work. “He watches the streets become wet” by itself works however.
(Apologies if this has already been pointed out…) On the idea that the English “will” as intending has largely died out in favour of expressing the future, except in rare examples – I disagree! In fact, the very example you use is a good case (I would argue) of will as intent:
Now, of course, that can be used a means of portraying the future. But think of colloquial English at a bar (or pub), when someone asks “What’ll you have” and you reply “I’ll have a beer please” (both contractions are from “will”) – if a bartender replies with “oh, you will, will you?” they purposely “mishear” your “will” as a sort-of prediction (an expression of the future) and throw it back at you as though you’re presumptuous. That’s the humour of that remark (and you hear it a fair amount, especially if children express a desire for something).
So I think the willing component of “to will” is still very much latent there and it comes up in various scenarios. Its usefulness as a pun-word betrays that it still has this double-meaning.
I’d be interested to hear how many native English speakers “hear” that wanting part in that sentence. I can see it, of course, but I am not a native speaker and my German brains is prone to hearing “want” there :)
Yes absolutely, I hear it clear as day.
I don’t. For me, “I will” means I’m going to and it’s definite. If there’s any doubt then I need to add other words e.g. “I think i will” or “maybe I’ll” to soften it.
I think it’s not so much uncertainty as it is “the will” that they hear. Like a mix of “I want” and “I’m going to”.
I don’t think its there. Particularly if used in the non-contracted form .. “I will do it” would very often imply “(even though I don’t want to)”.
It depends on the context and even the intonation of the sentence, but the word “will” can most definitely express volition. Imagine the following conversation:
– I’m going to eat the last cookie.
> Oh no you won’t!
– Oh yes I will!
The “will” of the last sentence clearly conveys volition (in addition to expressing an act in the future).
Great example, perfectly shows how close “intent” and “future” really are.
So for sentences like “es wird getanzt.” Dose it mean dance will be danced or the passive form of ppl will dance, where “man” is omitted? I’m really confused
Passive of “tanzen” would be something like
– The Tango was danced by Thomas and Maria.
The example in question could technically be a passive, if “es” were referring to a dance, but here, it is an impersonal phrasing that has the same meaning as saying “people dance”.
Does that help?
OMG my German teacher says that „es wird getanzt „ is also a form of passive… so this is much more like the Spanish version “dicen que…”-impersonal phrasing, but in German it just happens to take the form of werden+p2? Thanks a million Emanuel <3
Maybe, grammatically, it is called “passive”, I wouldn’t argue with the teacher, but yeah, the “feeling” is completely different.
Passive mit preposition …Sie haben nicht erzählt…. Ich suche mehr informationen …bitte Schrieben sie ein neuer post
“Passiv mit Präpositionen”… was meinst du damit? That is not a thing in grammar.
Hi, Emmanuel! Thanks for the thorough explanation.
I only didn’t really get the meaning of “Im Bett wird geschlafen” though. Does it mean something like “One sleeps in the bed” or “The bed is the place to sleep”? Because it’s impossible to conceive that the bed “is slept by someone”.
Thanks a lot!
It means something like “The bed is for sleeping.” That’s the action that is usually performed in beds.
So it’s like your second option, not the first one :)
Just as a (late) follow up to “Im Bett wird geschlafen” … in our class today we also covered this (briefly) with “Im Urlaub wird geschalfen”…. I’m guessing you can also do it with other info- eg “Sonntags wird geschalfen”.
My question is, if its not necessary for there to be a subject, how do you know the correct conjugate of werden is wird in this sentence? I’m assuming there’s really an implied es? (Es wird im Urlaub geschalfen?)
I’m not sure if I would call it an “implied” es because that makes it sound like the “es” is normally there, but skipped, which is not the case.
But yes, it can only be third person singular. Think of this:
The “act” is singular so that’s where it comes from.
By the way…
This sounds soooo authoritarian. I think people sometimes say it half jokingly, but please please do not talk that way. It’s like putting on a Prussian helmet :)
Ich werde von Werden getötet!
So a few things
Sentences like
es wird okay
du wirst bald gesund, are not future? Because I always assumed that sein at the end is omitted, as is often with verbs that are implied. You can say it’s ‘It gets’ but it gets shows it’s a fact. ‘It gets okay after a while.’ Or getting, but that would saying something is in the process of happening. But I’m guessing It’s getting okay, you’re getting soon healthy aren’t what the sentences mean.
to be for everything is complicated, but i don’t see how werden is better at expressing the state of change than being. They both give me the sense of process.
I’m not 100% sure what you’re asking.
“werden” in the two examples you gave is present tense. Nothing is omitted. It conveys the idea of “getting, becoming”.
“to be” by itself is “stationary” so it’s not a good way to express change/devellopment.
> the bed is being slept in
easy
Doesn’t that mean that the bed is being slept in AT THIS MOMENT?
Or can it be a general statement about what is usually done with a bed?
That would mean in this moment yes – but “The bed is slept in” works as a general statement!
Ah, that’s nice to know then, thank you :)
Hey, loving your posts, they are helping me explain some concepts to students that I have absorbed more than learned… anyway, I agree with you that in the strict sense, im Bett wird geschlafen can’t be said in English. A bed is slept in is okay, but doesn’t convey the same feeling as a father telling his child to stop jumping on the bed because im Bett wird geschlafen…so in English it would be, a bed is for sleeping, which means the same, but is a different grammatical construction!
That was my feeling too. It’s a quite peculiar phrasing :). Thanks for weighing in!!