Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. And if you haven’t had an epiphany lately get ready for one because we’ll have a look at the meaning of
das Wesen
Okay… maybe epiphany was a bit too much. But we’ll definitely learn som ecool stuff.
So, if you’e read fairy tales or fantasy novels in German, you probably know that a Wesen is a creature or being.
- Superman kämpft gegen ein Wesen aus Energie.
- Superman fights a creature made from pure energy.
- Pflanzen sind auch Lebewesen.
- Plants are living beings too.
- Der Stadtwald war voller Zauberwesen.
- The municipal forest was rife with magical beings.
(this is from a young adult novel I’m working on, by the way)
German also has die Kreatur but this word has a high Frankenstein-factor,
it’s often used if people want to express that a being is miserable or ugly. Wesen has a high unicorn-factor, it sounds fine, ethereal, a bit more divine.
Now, Wesen has a second meaning and it kind of fits with that ethereal-ness because Wesen is also used in a non-physical sense the core character of something or someone. How something is.. like… at the core. It’s hard to describe it so let’s just look at examples.
- Maria ist voll auf dem Eso-Trip. Sie liest gerade ein Buch über das Wesen des Wassers. “Das Wesen der Steine” hat sie auch schon gekauft.
- Maria is going all esoteric. Right now, she’s reading a book about the “nature/essence of water”. She also bought “The nature/soul of stones”
- Licht und Wärmestrahlung sind wesensgleich.
- Light and heat radiation are of the same nature.
- Thomas ist in letzter Zeit so depressiv. Das entspricht eigentlich gar nicht seinem Wesen.
- Thomas has been so depressed recently. That’s so not his character/nature, usually.
So we have these two uses and they both revolve around being in some way. Now we could go to the related words because there are some really good ones but instead we’ll go somewhere else. To an opera.
Boooooooooooh.
Nah, don’t worry. We won’t go to an opera. We’ll just make a little detour into the past and take a look at to be itself. Because Wesen has a LOT to do with that.
So… have you ever thought about what a crazy mess the verb to be is? Because it is. I mean… come on
- be, am, is, was, were
Do these look like words that have anything to do with one another? In German it’s not much better
- sein, bin, ist, sind, war
So what’s up with that. Why are these forms so random.
The solution to this this mystery is that to be and sein are actually smoothies.
I mean blends. Blends of 3 distinct verbs or roots.
The first one is the Indo European es which simply meant to be. It’s obviously the root for is and ist. But that’s not all. The es-root is also where am and are come from which were eom and eart in Old English. And it’s also the origin of sein and sind. They just lost the initial e.
The second verb or root in the blend goes back to the Indo-Europen bheue. This meant to grow, to come into being and it’s the origin of be, bin and bist. And it’s also the origin of some Romance past forms with f… like French fusse or Spanish fuera or fui.
Last but not least we have the Germanic verb wesan which meant to dwell, to remain, to live at a place. This dwelling-thing was really the core of it for a long time and especially in German it’s still alive in the noun das Anwesen. which today is a big mansion with a park but once it was just a piece of land with a hut.
But slowly people started using the verb also in the broader sense of being. And then and for some reason eventually wesen fell out of use as a verb itself and ended up as what it is today…. the past tense of to be… was, were, war- and of course the German version for been…. gewesen.
So… *es, *bheue and wesan… these are the three ingredients for to be. And because it’s kind of confusing here’s a little overview for German and English mixed them:
(I have a typo here…. it should be “wart” and not “ward”)
The two languages (and I guess others as well) really tried around for a while and then each made the blend they liked best. There’s no real logic why it’s sein in German and be in English. It’s just how it ended up. Kind of crazy, isn’t it.
Anyway, now it’s time to get back to our Word of the Day das Wesen.
We’ve learned that it means creature or being and with all the background we have that makes perfect sense now because wesen actually is a part of to be. We’ve also learned that another part of to be is the Indo-European root es. What we haven’t said yet is that this es-root is also the root for the Latin form version of to be… esse.
And that connection totally shows in the related words.
German has played around with wesen quite a bit before largely dumping the verb. Adding prefixes, making nouns, shifting meanings here and there. Very little of that survived but there are three leftovers in particular that are really super common. The first one is anwesend. German once had anwesen as a normal verb and it meant to be there but only anwesend and the noun die Anwesenheit survived. Literally those mean being there and the being there and best translation are present and presence. And do you know where these come from? From esse… the Latin version of to be. Tadah. Esse combined with pre is literally being that is right in front of someone. So present and anwesend are essentially the same thing, just expressed with different roots. Examples
- Der Chef ist beim Meeting anwesend.
- The boss is present at the meeting.
- Ich habe den Brief gestern in Anwesenheit eines Anwalts geöffnet.
- I opened the letter yesterday in presence of a lawyer.
- In vielen Bachelorstudiengängen gibt es für die Kurse Anwesendheitspflicht.
- For many bachelor courses there’s compulsory attendance for the lectures.
Now, just to make sure… presence in sense of having a nice presence is NOT Anwesenheit. That would be Präsenz. Anwesenheit is really the being there.
- Der Schauspieler hat eine beeindruckende Präsenz.
- The actor has an impressive presence.
The opposite of anwesend is, surprise surprise, abwesend… or Abwesenheit if you need a noun. Literally these are (the) being off/away and the translation is of course… absent or absence. And these are totally Latin. Ab (away) + esse (to be)
- Ihr könnt so was nicht in meiner Abwesenheit entscheiden.
- You cannot decide this in my absence.
- Abwesend stochert Thomas in seinem Kartoffelbrei.
- Absent-minded Thomas pokes around in his mashed potatoes.
Last but not least there is wesentlich and wesentlich means… drumroll…. essential. Do you have an idea where that co… what am I asking, of course you do :D. Essential obviously comes from Latin esse, too.
- Training ist ein wesentlicher Teil des Sprachenlernens.
- Exercise is an essential part of learning a language.
- The cases play a non-negligible part in why German comes across so difficult.
- Die Fälle haben einen nicht unwesentlichen Anteil daran, dass Deutsch so schwierig wirkt.
- Wir müssen uns auf das Wesentliche konzentrieren.
- We have to focus on what’s essential.
Now, we should probably mention that wesentlich is NOT a good translation for essentially in most cases…. sometimes im Wesentlichen works but most of the time im Prinzip or im Grunde are the better match.
- He’s essentially fired.
- Er ist im Prinzip/quasi gefeuert.
All right. There are some other wesen-words and I’ll list them in the vocabulary but they’re all left overs of German’s playing around with the verb and are kind of hard to explain. Add they’re not that important so I think we can call it a day here. This was our look at the German Word das Wesen. It means being, creature and something like core character but the real takeaway is that it comes from a verb wesan. Both German and English had it as to dwell but in both languages it gradually became the past tense of the “to be”-smoothie. And maybe that’ll help you remember just what is been in German. Because many people struggle with that.
It’s gewesen. Kind of like was, only with a ge :)
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions or you have a wesen-word you can’t really make sense of, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
** vocab **
gewesen – been
das Wesen – the creature/being, the core character/nature
das Lebewesen – the living being
wesentlich – essential
im wesentlichen – for the most part/(essentially)
im Prinzip, im Grunde – essentially
abwesend – absent /absent minded
die Abwesenheit – the absence
anwesend – present (as an adjective, there)
die Anwesenheit – the presence (in the factual sense of being there)
sein Unwesen treiben – do mischief (probably based on the idea of living = behaving combined with the negative-un)
das Bankenwesen – the banking sector/industry/branch (the suffix -wesen is often used to refer to the entirety of a sector… quite formal though)
wesensgleich – of the same nature
Aww, I thought you were going to write about the TV show Grimm, which uses the word “Wesen” quite frequently.
Never seen it :)… do they use “Wesen” in English???
On the show, the “Grimm” has an inherited position to hunt down “Wesen”, who are magical creatures that look like humans most of the time. Apparently, the Grimm and many of the Wesen are of German decent, because all the terminology is in German. Lots of mispronounced German to hurt your ears. :) I now know they use Wesen correctly, though.
Haha… that’s funny. I gotta watch that show :). I just searched a clip though and what they’re pronouncing is
– wessen (which means “whose”)
I think a native German would be really confused at first.
The “e” needs to be loooooong and the “s” voiced. A bit like “vaaaayzun”
Someone cares: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/31/grimm_on_nbc_german_language_gets_butchered_every_week_by_this_tv_series.html
If you had not posted this word I would never have known that it was mispronounced, I think I just thought they were using “wessen” as a noun. There’s enough other bad pronunciation for me to assume they were just making stuff up.
Ich habe eine Frage um “quasi”. In ein paar Wörterbücher, die ich gelesen habe, wird “quasi” als nur “quasi” übergesetzt. Aber auf Englisch, “quasi” ist mehr wie “kind of, but not really” statt “essentially”. Und in etwa Podcasts, die ich habe gehört, wie die Leute nutzen “quasi”, scheint mehr wie man auf English zu oft nutzt “like.” Also, wie benutzt man eigentlich “quasi”?
Hello, I am not a Deutsch-expert, but I’ve read that one of the synonyms for “quasi” is “sozusagen” (so to speak), as it is “im Prinzip”(basically). z.B -Ich bin quasi fertig- I think this already helps a lot to understand ‘das Wesen dieser Wort’, as it is a common expression in several languages… so to speak. Hope that helps. Emanuel please correct me, if I’m wrong. Grüße. :-)
Yeah, “sozusagen” catches the vibe well. It’s actually a bit more narrow than “quasi” because “quasi” is not limited to paraphrasing things.
Grüße zurück :)
Gut beobachtet. “kind of but not really” ist nicht so eine gute Übersetzung, meiner Meinung nach. Ich verwende “quasi” ziemlich oft und ich glaube es ist ein bisschen so ein Füllwort. Es macht nicht wirklich einen Unterschied in den Fakten. Manchmal ist “sozusagen” eine gute Übersetzung, aber oft einfach nur “so” oder “so …basically”.
Ich verwende das Wort oft, wenn ich irgendwie etwas zusammenfasse oder paraphrasiere.
– “Wir brauchen 1 kg Butter.”
“Dann muss ich quasi 4 Stück kaufen”
“Genau.”
– “We need 1 kg of butter.”
“So that means I have to basically buy 4 pieces.”
“Exactly”
– Ready-made heißt quasi, dass der Künstler nichts macht, ausser das Objekt als Kunst zu deklarieren.
– So ready-made basically that the artist does nothing but declare something art.
Great post. I wanted to say that I’ve been reading this blog since ages and it’s sau-cool! I do wanted to ask something. You wrote that the Indo-Europen *bheue is the origin of some Romance past forms with f… How? how does “b” change into “f”? this is strange :)
p.s. You should have mentioned Heidegger. He is doing wonders (or atrocities, that depends) with the Wesen…
“p” to “f” is actually not uncommon a change. It’s called “lenition”. A plosive gets first softened, then a fricative is added, then the initial burst disappears and bam…. you’re left with the fricative alone. Example:
– “p” to “b” to “bfff ” to “fff”
When you observe your mouth you’ll see that you have to move very little to get from one to the other.
Changes like this occurred all the time and back and forth. The f-forms already had an “f” in Latin and they kept it. So the change happened even before Latin.
Another example for such a p-f-pair is Latin “pater” and the Germanic Vater/father/… the root itself is super old and one strand (Latin) went for “p”, the other one for “f”.
And there are more recent examples, too. Take English “plum” vs German “Pflaume”.
German has opened up there. A friction was added. Another pair is English “pale” and German “fahl”.
Here’s nerdy Wikipedia article if you want to know more about Lenition (whcih is just one of the ways sounds can change)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenition
Oh and by the way…. the word “future”… guess where this comes from ;)
Oh and as for Heidegger… I know nothing about him except that he apparently wrote really really difficult German on purpose :D
well, I would guess that “future” is just another (future?) form of *bheue, no? :)
Yap :)… from “growing, becoming” to “future”is not even that crazy a stretch.
Es war informativ und interessant zu lesen. Danke für die Erklärung, die endlich mir geholfen hat, das Wort ‘anwesend’ zu lernen.
Ich habe eine Frage: In overvew von dem Verb ‘sein’ gibt es eine der Wortformen ‘ward’, warum es nicht ‘wart’ ist?
Danke sehr dafür, dass du uns auf das Wesentliche der Deutschsprache konzentrierst.
Oh… das ist ein böser Fehler meinerseits. Ich wusste nicht, wie man das schreibt !!!! Verrückt, oder :).
Ich habe erst gedacht “t” aber dann dachte ich “Nee, das kann nicht sein. Das fühlt sich nicht wie ‘t’ an und mit ‘t’ sieht es aus wie ‘warten'” und hab’s mit “d” geschrieben. Das muss ich ändern. Danke.
Es gibt aber wirklich “ward”… in alten Texten und Gedichten hat man “er ward” gesagt.
Ach so… “overview” ist übrigens “Übersicht”, in diesem Kontext hier.
Danke für das Wort ‘Übersicht’! Ich war mir nicht sicher, welches Wort statt ‘overvew’ ich verwenden muss.
Duden sagt, dass ‘ward’ veraltetes Form von werden in Präteritum ist.Vielleicht gibt es deshalb dieses Verbform in alten Texten. Oder ist es auch das alte Verbform von sein?
Danke dafür, dass du immer Zeit, um zu antworten, findest.
Oh, so langsam wird’s peinlich für mich :). Ja, klar… “werden”. War mir bisher nicht so klar.
– Er ward nicht mehr gesehen.
Ich habe das immer als ein “war” verstanden, als als ein “wurde”. Wieder was gelernt :).
Was “overview” angeht… das Bild oder die Grafik ist normalerweise eine “Übersicht” – das was Du dir holst, wenn du die Grafik anguckst, oder wenn du in den Kühlschrank schaust, um zu gucken, was drin ist, ist ein “Überblick”… aber ich will sowieso bald mal über Sicht und Blick schreiben :)
Super! Ich freue mich darauf. :) Es ist sehr nützlich, die Übersicht über Sicht und Blick zu haben.
Great work. I really appreciate these blog posts, they’re the best German source I’ve been able to find, and I paid for two fuckin’ German courses here in Berlin. My German could be better, but I’m practising Maths more than German, catching up, the price of a shitty education.
I’ll be sure to send you a few bucks, I’m not rich, that’s for sure, but that’s the good thing about crowd funding, right? Enough people sending a few bucks.
Exactly. One doesn’t sound like much but the more people pitch in the more the one becomes. Just like Spok said… the one of the many is the rent of the fe… wait, that was not how it goes :).
Just out of curiosity… which schools did you go to? And when?
Personally, I really think language school are mainly good for one thing… make you work. I have a friend who mainly did a course because he knew he needed some sort of force, some instance that was like “Learn this, do that, here’s you homework”. That is what self study plus tutor or tandem can’t give you. Oh okay and maybe you’re lucky and get a really good teacher. But if you get a mediocre teacher in a average sized class… I think you’re better off on your own.
Oh, if you’re still in Berlin… GET A LIBRARY CARD. It’s 10 bucks YEAR and you can get books from all over the city (ot university libraries). The one at Frankfuter Tor has a whole section called “Easy German” and lots of text books, too.
Und die Bibliothekare sind immer so sympathisch.
Ist das Ironie? :) Ich hab’ mit den Angestellten da gemischte Erfahrungen. Manche sind echt super nett und hilfsbereit, bei anderen fühle ich mich schuldig, wenn ich nach einem Internetticket frage
Danke. Especially for the explanation of the patchwork/blended/smoothie verb “to be”.
Nun, ein paar Fragen über das Beispiel – “Training ist ein wesentlicher Teil des Sprachenlernens.” – “Training”, nicht “Übung”? Wie spricht man “Training” aus? (Wie auf Englisch??) Wie unterscheiden sich “Training” und “Übung”? (I hope that example wasn’t one of your little jokes and I missed it.)
If you know nothing else of Heidegger you could refer to Monty Python – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9SqQNgDrgg (No idea how/why Hegel became Freidrich, but at least spelling and pronunciation match.)
Man spricht “Training” “Trehning” aus. Das Wort wird, so weit ich weiß, als deutsch betrachtet. Bei manchen aus dem Englischen kommenden Wörtern werden die Laute von einigen Leuten so ausgesprochen, damit sie den englischen Lauten so gut wie möglich ähneln. Solche Wörter wären zum Beispiel “Thriller”, “Homepage”, “Productplacement”, “Jetlag” usw.
Möchten diese Leute gehobener klingen, sprechen sie diese Wörter mit einem pseudo-englischen Akzent aus. Training hängt aber mit denen nicht zusammen, da es schon längst ins Deutsche gekommen ist, und auch nicht wirklich als englisches Wort betrachtet wird. (Wie schon mal erwähnt, das ist nur so weit ich weiß.)
Aber man kann ja alle Wörter einfach mit der deutschen Aussprache aussprechen, um solche Situationen zu vermeiden. Sich um so was zu kümmern ist für mich halt Schwachsinn. Englisch ist zwar meine Muttersprache, aber wenn ich Deutsch rede, tue ich so, als könnte ich so gut wie kein Englisch, wenn ich solche Wörter ausspreche!
In Bezug auf den Gebrauch von Training und Üben, habe ich keine Ahnung. Also, wenn du “Üben” statt “Übung” meinst. Üben bezieht sich eher auf das Konzept des Verbs, so wie “Schlafen”, “Essen”, und “Leben”. Wörter, die auf “-ung” enden, beziehen sich im Gegensatz dazu meistens auf eine einzelne Ausführung des Verbs. Versuche zu erraten, warum ich Ausführung geschrieben habe. ;)
Ich würde sagen, sie sind in den meisten Fällen austauschbar. Da könnte ich mich aber irren.
Ich glaube, die meisten machen so ein Mittelding. “Productplacement” zum Beispiel…. ich glaube nur wenige, die in der Szene arbeiten, würden es mit dem Deutschen Kratze-r hinten im Rachen aussprechen. Da würde man schon das Ami-r imitieren, aber bei den meisten wäre das dann trotzdem Deutsch eingefärbt. Wenn man wirklich Amerikanisch klingen will, muss man ja die Zunge anders positionieren und auch “l” und “t” anders aussprechen… nur ein bisschen, aber anders. Das lässt sich dann aber nur noch schlecht in einen Deutschen Satz integrieren, da die Zunge von KOnfiguration A zu B und dann wieder A zurückwechselt und das können nur Leute wirklich gut, die zweisprachlich aufgewachsen sind. Daher klingen Versuche wirklich echt Englisch zu klingen, bei solchen Wörtern eher peinlich.
Mir geht es immer bei Filmtiteln so… Gardians of the Galaxy oder so… die sind ja nicht übersetzt, und gehören auch nicht zum Standarddeutsch. Da bin ich dann in einem Zwiespalt… mache ich einen fetten Deutschen Akzent (klingt scheiße) oder versuche ich, für den Titel die Konfiguration der Zunge zu wechseln (klingt auch scheiße und möchte-gerne-cool)… ich mache dann meistens das zweite :D
Hahaha, Mann stell die nur vor, in was für einem Zweispalt ich mich dabei befinde!! “Möchte gerne cool” trifft es gut. Das Mittelding mache ich mir auch zunutze. Definitiv cool zu wissen dass es bei echten Deutschen auch so ist.
Also ich spreche es so aus, wie Daniel in seinem Kommentar schreibt… Treeeehning. Aber es gibt bestimmt auch Leute, die da das Englische “r” nehmen.
In Bezug auf die Bedeutung… “Training” klingt körperlich und nach Sport. “Üben” klingt mehr so nach vielen Wiederholungen.
Ich würde zum Beispiel eine Unterhaltung auf Deutsch nicht wirklich als “Übung” bezeichnen… eher würde ich sagen “Praxis” oder “praktische Übung”. “Übung” allein klingt für mich ein bisschen langweilig… kann aber sein, dass das wegen der Schule ist.
Ich habe in dem Beispiel “Training” verwendet, weil ich wollte, dass es aktiv und sportiv und wenig repetetiv klingt. Ausserdem geht es ja auch wirklich darum, Muskeln im Mund zu trainieren. Die müssen lernen, neue Bewegungen super schnell zu machen, und für sowas passt “trainieren” besser als “üben”.
Ich hoffe, das hilft ein bisschen :)
Ich höre “Training/Trainer/trainieren” ziemlich oft von Deutschen – ich habe bisher überhaupt keinen Versuch gemerkt, die englische Aussprache zu imitieren. Würde mit Daniel zustimmen.
Danke. (Not continuing auf Deutsch, as it would take about a week, but thanks for the reading practice.)
Maybe it’s largely an age thing. In dict.cc, among lots of “Training” and an occasional “Ausbildung”, I found “Luftschutzübung – air raid precaution training”!! – probably more what would usually be called “drill”. In English I think of training as being quite structured and usually supervised (despite footwear and exercise machines called ‘trainers’) and also being directed to a specific goal – like running a marathon or doing a particular job… or winning football matches (which is rather less specific). I do see how it works in your example, especially with the German usage being mostly to do with sport and developing strength, but will continue to feel uncomfortable about a German sentence beginning with an English word.
It saddens me to see any language adopting English/American expressions rather than developing its own. (Hopelessly inconsistent, as I have little objection to foreign words in English. But English is already a super-sized linguistic smoothie.) One of the lovely things about German is the consistency of pronunciation/spelling. Adoption of words direct from less consistent languages, or languages with completely different spelling conventions, seems to complicate it unnecessarily. Perhaps “Training” will become “Trainieren” and/or “Trainierung”. That would be less startling. ……although “das Training” has clearly been around in German for some time – I’ve just found it in a 1980 dictionary……. but my tiny one from 1960 or thereabout has, for English “training” – die “Ausbildung” or das “Trainieren”, and for “trainer” – der “Erzieher” or der “Trainierer”. Viel besser!
You would love it in a start up meeting here. Denglish galore. German is generally rather open to new words especially when they allow for a distinction between nuances. To me “Ausbildung”, “Erziehung” und “Training” are completely different things. A more recent example is “fresh” and “frisch”. A TV show can be fresh but not “frisch” while calling my salad fresh is funny … at least to me. Bam. Two different words with two similar but distinct meanings. German is a sucker for that (just think of all the many verbs :)). Another example is “creepy”. German has lots of words but they don’t have the same vibe. They have their place, “creepy” has its own. I will never use creepy instead of one of the others but having “creepy” allows me to express something I would otherwise be unable to express with the same precision. A counter example is “downloaden”… German does have a nice verb for that (runterladen) and “downloaden” just won’t really fit into the grammar system and so despite being English and “cool”, “runterladen” is gonna cut it, I think. “Downloaden” has nothing to add. So don’t worry.. the imports won’t take away from the charme of German… they’ll enrich the language :).
As for “Training”… that has been around for over 100 years in print and it really is a German word, just think of “Autogenes Training”… that term was coined in the 30s. The word still has an English spelling paradigm but who knows… maybe in 50 years from now it’ll be trehning.
Are “Trainieren” and “Trainierer” still used in particular contexts? Duden online doesn’t recognise “Trainierer”, so I suppose it isn’t….. if it ever really was. (But there is a band called “die Trainierer”!?) I hadn’t come across “Autogenes Training” until now. “Autogenic” in English, apparently.
The spattering of English words in German must confuse native English speakers, too, and lead some to say some crazy stuff. I wonder if English borrowings are more used in Berlin than elsewhere, or more in the old West than in the old East. .. Perhaps there are borrowings from Russian in use in former DDR, and some even in general use.
Learning German at school, long ago (without internet!), and far away from German-speaking countries (in Australia) would have been skewed towards older usage. Even a native speaking teacher would have been rather out of touch (my teachers would have left Europe 25 to 30 years before and returned rarely, if ever), the emphasis was very much on written work, not conversation, and books always at least some years behind the times. There may also have been deliberate avoidance of obvious borrowings from English. It might be easier to wipe the memory entirely and start again than to try to rebuild on the remnants.
Many thanks for all the insights you provide.
“das Trainieren” definitely exists. It’s simply the “nounified” verb and you can do it with ANY verb in German… just add “das” and make it a capital letter
– das Lesen, das Schlafen, das Baden
These nouns are focused on the activity as a process. In English this is often done by -ing
– Das Lesen ist am einfachsten.
– (the) reading is the easiert part.
As for borrowings from Russian… interesting point, and I have to say… I don’t think there are any. There probably are some words from Slavic languages where I’m simply not aware of their Slavic origin but it’s not like East Germany German is full of Russian words. I would say the media and pop culture is to blame and there English is very prevalent (movies, super stars)… and then there’s the internet which exposes lots of people to lots of languages.. .but especially English.
Hi. I was wondering if you have updated the “Word of the Day” page recently?
Uhm… it’s been a while… shame on me :D
This seems relevant… http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/they-dont-think-it-be-like-it-is-but-it-do
Erklär mal :).. ich hab’s echt versucht, aber ich versteh den Zusammenhang nicht. Wegen “to be” oder was?
Ja genau. Das mit *es/*bheue/*wesan hat mich einfach ans Meme erinnert. Keine Ahnung, ob das Zitat echt ist. Eigentlich wäre in dem Fall folgendes (grammatisch) richtig: “People don’t think it is like it is, but it is.” (Was auch nicht gerade als erleuchtend gilt…) Ist irgendwie interessant, wie in manchen englischen Dialekten (z.B. beim sogenannten “Ebonics”) die verschiedenen “to be”-Formen so unterschiedlich verwendet werden.
Es gibt auch bspw. das Lied aus den 40er Jahren mit dem Titel “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby”…
When I read the quote of the meme I was like “That could be straight out of the Wire” :).
There was something that baffled me though. I looked around a bit and I got the impression that some English native speakers really claim to not understand the meaning. I find that hard to believe. To me it is super obvious right away, no interpretation needed. But I’m wondering if that’s because of the somewhat distant view you have as someone who speaks it as a second language. Maybe the brain of a native speaker is wired in a way that really does make it hard to understand… so what I’m wondering is… do you think it’s likely that a native speaker of English is not able to comprehend the sentence or would you subscribe to my theory that they pretend not to understand it so as to underline just how “wrong” it is and how much gooder their English is.
Oh Mist, jetzt hab’ ich alles auf Englisch geschrieben. Sorry! Dein Text war übrigens PERFEKT! Kein einziger Minifehler. Predigts du eigentlich jetzt regelmäßig af Deutsch und wenn ja, wie läufts .. sorry für die vielen Fragen :)
I’d suggest that some really don’t understand, but to others the meaning is perfectly clear, just as some people will see a “hidden” picture immediately and others struggle even when told what to look for. What’s really mad for me is that I hear it in my head in a very West Country (i.e. south-west of England – Dorset, Devon..) accent, although that clearly isn’t right for someone from Alabama. Cannot get it into a Deep South sound.
Yeah, the knowyourmeme.com article expressed that same idea, that the quote wouldn’t be understandable to native speakers – I don’t get that at all. To me, the meaning is completely clear, and the humor is just in the sort of poetic weirdness of using three different verb forms where one would have worked, plus the classic situation of an athlete’s quote not saying much of anything at all. I would be really surprised if many native speakers had any problem deciphering it, so there’s probably at least something to your theory about people playing up the difficulty of understanding non-standard English.
Man, having produced a comment in perfect German kind of makes me not want to post in German anymore. Quit while I’m ahead, sort of thing… :) Thanks for your feedback!
I do preach pretty regularly in German, about once every month or two. It still takes a lot of time to prepare – in English, a day or two is enough for me to prep a sermon, while a German one takes more like a solid week of working on not much else. I tend to write out a pretty detailed manuscript, since I have less confidence to improvise based on notes like I could in my native language, but it’s definitely a goal of mine to get to where I’m comfortable speaking more freely. I actually taught a seminary class (a 6-hour all-day seminar) last month, which forced me to speak from notes (no way was I scripting out all that material), and that was definitely a confidence-booster.
I think my sermons have gone over well from a language standpoint… though mostly as a preacher you don’t really get much substantive feedback on any given sermon anyway. So I suppose that at least means I haven’t made any disastrous mistakes so far. :D For my first few sermons, I was meeting weekly with a tutor, and I’d usually bring the text of a story/illustration from the sermon that I was working on (typically something I was planning to open with) to try to polish it up, which was a great way to learn different expressions and tropes. I miss that.
Ich lese übrigens grade ein Buch mit Friesichen Schwänken im Friesichen Dialekt (braucht ein bisschen Konzetration aber es geht, gerade auch, wenn man ENglisch kann) und da wird ab und an “wesen” in der Gegenwart verwendet.
Kann man “anwesend” im Sinne von “mindful/present” benutzen? Ich meine zB, “ich bemühe mich, jeden Tag immer mehr anwesend zu sein”, “Der Buddhist übt das Anwesendsein (ist das ein Wort? lol)”, oder ännliches?
Da sagt man normalerweise “geistig anwesend” aber das gibt es nicht wirklich in verschiedenen Intensitäten. Entweder du bist da oder nicht :).
Man sagt auch “geistig abwesend” aber während man das “geistig” da weglassen kann, ist “anwesend” alleine irgendwie immer körperlich … und übrigens nur für Lebewesen. Man würde nicht sagen, der Kühlschrank ist anwesend.
Was der Buddist normalerweise übt ist “Achtsamkeit” und “im Jetzt/Moment sein”.
Anwesendsein ist definitiv ein Wort :). Kein schönes, kein häufig benutztes, aber es gibt Bücher, die es verwenden.
Aha, alles klar, danke!
Shau dir mal einige Videos von Eckhart Tolle an. Er spricht die ganze Zeit davon.
Danke Daniel, ein guter Vorschlag! Ich guck mir gerade “Freiheit von Gedanken” an :)
Ich hab’s auch grad probiert… sehr “meditativ” (seine Art zu sprechen ist extrem einschläfernd für mich … und seine Gestik auch :)
Haha. Ich wollte eigentlich sagen, obwohl seine Stimme sehr “beruhigend” ist, als keine Muttersprachlerin, finde ich ihn irgendwie sehr leicht zu verstehen. Also, gut fürs Hörverstehen.
Kein Problem! Ich hatte letztes Jahr Panik-Attacken und Angstgefühl und Eckhart was quasi mein Einstieg in die Welt von Meditation. Als ich herausgefunden habe, dass er seine Videos auf Deutsch anbietet, war ich ziemlich froh! Er spricht sehr klar, langsam, aber so wirkt es nicht. Es ist nicht forciert. Du hast absolut recht, gut fürs Hörverstehen!
Hi Emanuel,
I’ve just come across your blog and I’m really impressed with the content you post! I’m a language enthusiast myself and along with some friends we’ve created a flashcard app. It’s called VocApp and offers a number of innovative features, such as creating flashcards from a photo,
creating flashcards with your voice, creating flashcards from a text etc.
I’ve prepared a set of 25 popular German verbs for you: http://vocapp.com/25-must-know-german-verbs-flashcards-196761
Please feel free to use it on your blog! I would be honoured if the community of your readers found it useful. Also, if you have any feedback that would help me develop VocApp, I would be forever grateful! If you wanted to give it a comprehensive test, I would be happy to give you access to our paid language courses.
Wishing you the best of luck,
Camille
camille@vocapp.com
Hi thelanglord
Should say that’s innovative and creative. Nevertheless I think the picture denoting the meaning of “liegen” doesn’t fit. It rather conveys the verb “lügen”. I think there should a mistake due to the two meanings of the verb “lie”.
Hope it helps ;)
Nice catch :)!!!
You mentioned “Kreatur” in comparison to “Wesen” – what does “das Geschöpf” sound like compared to the other two terms?
Hmmm…. it’s a bit in between the two for me. Again, a bit like the sound. It has more elegance and divinity than “Kreature” but not as much as “Wesen”. The thing it shares with “Kreatur” is that the inherent notion that someone made it. And with that comes a notion that someone “owns” it. It reports to someone, it’s not free (I’m exaggerating here). A “Wesen” is just kind of there. It’s a “natural” part of the whole. And “natural” has a better feel than “made”. I know it sounds weird when you think about it from a theological stand point :). I would never call a fairy or a little wood spirit a “Geschöpf”. Those are part of nature. But you have to factor in that I’m from uber atheist East Germany (the land where 80% have no confession). To someone who reads the bible regularly “Geschöpf” probably has a better ring (not that it has a bad ring to me). Would be an interesting question actually, if a die hard catholic from Bavaria would call a fairy a Geschöpf or not :D
“Die Schauspieler hat eine beeindruckende Präsenz.”
Shouldn’t it be “Der”? Sorry, I’m just begining with German
And you can already spot mistakes :). Sehr gut!!! You’re totally right, it should be “der”. Danke!
Hey, something else. I knew you had written this but couldn’t find it in your list here: https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/german-word-of-the-day/ and got worried thinking it was gone. Glad to find it in “older posts”.
Yeah, my updating is like my dating… rare. Badum tish.
You mada a mistake, its:
war
warst
war
waren
wart* not ward
waren
Ups, danke, that’s an embarassing mistake :)