Hello everyone,
and welcome back to your favorite German learning website on the whole world.
And today, we actually have the start of the epic special “Grammar in May” – or Grammay for short.
Throughout May we’ll look take a little deep dive on some grammar terms and see what they actually mean.
And today, we’ll start with what’s to me the most important word type of them all
The Verb
We’ll explore what verbs are, if we need them (spoiler: yes and no), and how German feels about them. And just so you know… I’m having wine and it’ll get philosophical.
So are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s go!
***
Verb is one of the most “mainstream” grammar terms. Most people are familiar with it and they can give loads of examples for verbs right away. That’s not the case for a term like conjunction for example.
The origin of the word is the preposterously ancient Indo-European root *were, which was about the idea of speaking. In Ancient Greek, this became rhētōr (speaker), which is where rhetoric comes from. In the Germanic languages, we see it as *wurda-, which is the ancestor of word and das Wort. And in Latin, the root became verbum.
Now, the original sense of that was simply “word“, and this sense is actually still alive. If Maria verbally abused Thomas, that was mean with verbs, but with words.
But for the word verb itself, the focus slowly shifted more and more on one specific group of words… the verb.
No wonder, considering that verbs might just be the most important word type ever.
What is a Verb
The quick, intuitive answer to that question is to say that verbs are words that represent an activity (or the lack thereof), but that’s actually kind of misleading. I mean, Yoga is an activity after all, but it’s not a verb.
To really understand the essence of verbs, it helps to think terms of a physics.
Yeah, I know… half of you are like “Booooring.” but bear with me for a second.
So… in the universe, we essentially have mass and energy. They’re very different in nature, but they interact (energy moves mass, mass stores energy) and you can’t have one without the other because as we know since Einstein, one can be converted into the other.
And I think we can see the same in language. And it’s not a crazy parallel at all. I mean, language evolved in this universe, as a way for the universe to talk about itself, so it’s just natural that it has the same “fundamentals”.
So yeah… the nouns and pronouns in a language are the mass. They’re the “objects” or “units”, if you will.
And verbs are … the energy.
And just like in the real universe, they can be converted into each other.
- The unicorn is cleaning the fridge.
- The cleaning is making the unicorn angry.
And here you can see why the quick definition of “verb is activity” is kind of misleading. Yes, the act of cleaning generally is an activity, but what matters is what it represents in our sentence. Is it mass, or is it energy.
In the first example, we have the entities (the masses) “unicorn” and “fridge” and cleaning is the energy that’s in the sentence.
In the second sentence, cleaning is converted into a thing, mass, and the energy is making.
And if you find that hard to grasp, then that’s actually normal because energy IS hard to grasp. Like… can you tell what energy is in the real world? Not really. We can really only understand the effects of the energy at work. A cup is falling or our laptop screen is shining… yeah, that’s the effects of energy doing its things.
And it’s no different in language. In the first sentence, the observable effect of the energy at work is that the fridge gets cleaner. So the verb (the energy) is to clean.
And in the second sentence, on the other the effect is that the unicorn gets angrier. So even though the cleaning is an generally an activity, it is NOT the energy working in that sentence. Or in other words, it’s NOT the verb.
Now, of course you don’t really have to think that way to learn a new language. But it is helpful to understand the difference between word type “verb” in a dictionary and the role “verb” in a sentence.
And this metaphor of mass and energy can also help answer one important question we can ask about any word type… do we need it.
Are Verbs Really Necessary
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I am lost. About a week (or was it 2 weeks?) ago, I left a comment about the difference between “waiting” and “awaiting”, but I can’t find it? I can’t remember where I posted it. Did it ever go thru?
I don’t know where it was, but I did answer and I also changed the form prompt of the comment field.
So German does not use the gerundive tense?
What do you mean with “Gerundive tense”?
“Improve your style: be boring ”
Emanuel, many thanks you for your funny artickles and jokes, they make me always laughing and give me good mood
Freut mich sehr :)
Back when I didn’t know what a verb was, and we were doing Mad Libs, my sister would always say that the verb is the “doing” word.
Believe it or not, that’s actually one of ther German grammar terms for it… “Tu-Wort”.
Hello Emmanuel, what happened to the menu? I was trying to continue with my “grammar course”…but now I cannot find a way to get there. Also, the word of the day.. In general. I don´t understand how to get to the whole content now.
I did some code changes yesterday and sometimes the browser doesn’t load the full page but loads half of it from its memory. Could you do a full refresh (ctrl+f5 on windows, no idea on mac).
In any case, here’s the direct link:
https://yourdailygerman.com/learn-german-online-course/
If you don’t get it to work, the issue will most likely fix itself tomorrow or so.
Sorry for the mess, I just have to do changes sometimes.
Danke für den Artikel! My observation: When teaching what a verb is (in the native language – I always start there because a lot of students have no idea what a verb is), I have started saying “if you had to change this sentence into the past tense, which word would you change?” That’s the verb. After all, it’s not the word itself that holds the attribute of being a verb or a noun, it’s how it is used in a sentence. Grammar relates to function, not the word itself – I find that this is the hardest thing for those who don’t have a grammar background, to understand. This is why the German cases are so confusing for many learners – they’re not used to thinking about the function of words. But that’s another topic altogether. :)
Wow, your approach is actually THE BEST way to find it, I think (At least in languages that don’t mark past with a separate particle :) ).
I’ve actually already written about cases, so if you’re curious and want to compare your thoughts to mine, here’s the link:
https://yourdailygerman.com/function-of-cases/
Years ago, when I was studying Chomsky’s Linguistic theory (about deep structure and surface structure), it was put to me that one way of thinking about it is: imagine that the syntactic items are like the separate train-trucks of the whole train (the sentence). The semantic items are the meaning-vocabulary items which are loaded into the trucks. Together, both deliver the intended / intentional meaning.
As important as the verb is in German, they also tend to leave it off sometimes at the end, presumably so they can get back to drinking their beer that much more quickly.
“Ich muss nach Hause.”
“Ich kann Deutsch.”
“Ich hatte zu viele Biere; ich muss mal.”
When I read the comment, I was like “What?! We don’t leave out the v… ohhhh.”
You’re totally right, of course :D. I don’t even think of these as a “skipped verb” but that’s how they evolved, for sure.
And German really loves its Nominalisierung, yo.
Hmmmm… you mean stuff like “beim Essen”?
Emanuel. ich kann die Artikeln nicht lesen. Ich habe mich registriert und angemelded, aber etwas funktioniert nicht. Kannst du mir helfe? ich entschuldige mich
Thank you Emmanuel! Your hard work for us German language lerners is really appreciated. I am amazed at how many of the grammar terms and their meanings I have forgotten. Your “mass/energy” analogy was also useful; Of course, nouns and verbs I recall, but many of the other terms I find myself having to google to jog my memory……Your best advice for me, came at the end of today’s article: “keep it simple.” I seem to always trip myself up when trying to make a really long sentence! Best wishes for a wonderful Grammay, and keep up the great work!
That is SUCH a common theme with learners. They feel like they have to make these monster constructions to sounds proper German, but that’s totally not the case :). Simple, easy, use a period whenever you can. LIke… think minimalistic.
Wow, you are entering a really complex and fraught theme. Linguists will tell you that languages come in absolutely all shapes, sizes and colors.
Just an example from my little knowledge of Chinese: in Chinese the nature of a word is far less strict than in european languages. For instance, most verbs can be employed as a noun (and so without any modification, since there is no conjugation in Chinese), most prepositions are verbs, adjectives can be used as verbs, etc.
Another example, Arabic has verbs, but it doesn’t have a verb “to be”: if you say “I German” then “am” is understood. Similarly it doesn’t have a verb “to have”, but uses a specific sentence form to indicate possession.
The question is, though, is it difficult for a native speaker of Chinese to understand this distinction between verbs and nouns that we find in many European languages. And is it difficult for a speaker of Arabic to understand the concept of the verb “to be”.
Just because something isn’t verbalized doesn’t mean the information isn’t there. It can be implicit.
Putting “verb” behind a word in a dictionary is really just a tag of what it is usually used for. But the concept of “verb”, the role that a verb has in a sentence is a different story.
I’d be curios if there’s a language that doesn’t have that.
Then you should read Borges :) I remember he wrote a whole short story in which he imagines languages without any verb, languages made only of verbs, etc.!
That does sound interesting :). You don’t happen to remember the name of the book/story?
That would be “Tlön, Uqbar, Tertius Orbis”: well, that’s the story where there’s a language without nouns, at least. (I think it’s usually included in the collection “Fictions”. (“Fiktionen”?)
Thanks!! Without having read it, my suspicion is that he’s doing stuff like “That which grows in that which is comprised of that which we’re talking about” … which is tree (grows in forest, we’re talking about it.) :D
pmccann is right, it’s from a book called Fictions. Here’s a link to the most relevant two paragraphs in English and Spanish.
And here in German. Start on the second to last line, “Die Völker dieses Planeten sind”.
There’s also a full version in English, for anyone who’s really curious. 16 pages. There are parts I never really understood, but I think it’s interesting how he plays with the idea of what’s imagined and what’s real.
Sweeeeeeet, thank you so much for these quick links :D.
I gave it a glance and I am not convinced, I have to say.
I can read Spanish only to the extend it is similar to French and Italian, so I can’t really judge the original, but “the onstreaming” or worse yet “the constant flow” is too close to using nouns. Yes, it’s forms of verbs, but using a “the” galvanizes them into entities. They “feel” more like mass than energy.
Also piling adjectives together like in the other paragraph equates nouns.
As far as I can tell, at least the translator is still very much trapped in our categories.
My attempt would be more like
– rising and pale shining happen behind flowing…
Yes, technically these gerunds can also be seen as nouns, but I am describing the scene by relating ongoing actions (energy).
I’ll actually touch in this when I talk about noun and whether we need them or not :).
(spoiler… I think that’s the hardest thing to get rid of, by far).
I think part of the problem is that it’s not so easy to translate. “Lunecer” sounds like “amanecer” (to dawn, to wake up). Which can also be a noun (el amanecer, the dawn), but when the verb is conjugated, there’s no mixing them up.
Amaneció. (it dawned, the sun rose, the day broke)
Or the same idea with the night:
Anocheció. (es wurde dunkel, der Abend dämmerte)
Whereas “moon” just sounds like a noun to me. Well, except to my inner 10 year old.
The -ing forms definitely feel verb-y no matter what grammatical hat they’re wearing. The act of rising.
You could even throw an adverb into your example to play with that:
Rising and gently shining happened in the darkening behind flowing.
(creative writing hat off, back to work :))
Hebrew is the same as Arabic re: “to have” – if you want to say “I have a dog,” you say “there is a dog for/to me.” (It does have a “to be”-verb, though the “there is” word in that sentence is different, like the Spanish hay.)
Thanks a lot for all this precious knowledge! Also I would like to thank everyone behind the creation and managing of this community, and a very special thanks to everyone that contributes and donates for memberships of people that maybe have it a little more difficult. Thanks to them today I got my subscription, and I promise taking the best out of it!
Is the universe expanding at a constant rate?
The universe of a language definitely does. New words appear, old words go away, and the overall vocabulary and grammatical history grows :)
“the true passion of German are its verbs” should have “is” instead of “are”
Oh really?! That’s completely reverse to German then. There’s we must use the plural form.
‘Verbs are the true passion of German’ – plural agreement with ‘verbs’;
‘the passion (of German) is’ – passion is singular so ‘is’ feels more natural in that order…. formal grammaticists might have other ideas though :)
Yeah, number most naturally agrees with the subject, and the subject is whatever comes first.
I’m wondering… have you gotten used to the German way? Where plural always wins, no matter what structure?
I’m certainly used to reading/hearing it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a mistake I still make regularly in writing/speech.
You gave these examples of English sentences without verbs:
but you ignored the hyphen, I’ll is a contraction of I will. So in each of these examples, the verb is will.
Hmm, okay but it’s just a helper, a modification of the actual verb. If I put all of those into past tense, the “will” is gone.
Just to make sure though… I’m not saying those aren’t verbs. But they’re clearly nouns used in the capacity of verbs. And it’s two different things just because we have this dichotomy in our head. Not all languages have that.
Book a room! … etc – are these not imperative forms of ‘to book’, ‘to salt’ etc – so then they are the verbs, albeit verbed nouns (verbed being a verbed version of verb….)
Yes, I chose imperative because it’s the most bland type of sentence.
I wasn’t saying that they aren’t verbs.
But imagine I come to you and say “Chair…. “. Would you think chair-noun or chair-verb? My whole point is to illustrate that us speakers of Romance or Germanic language tend to think of “verb” as a staple. languages have verbs and nouns and they’re different things. But this world view falls apart pretty quickly once we look closer. It’s just convention, nothing more.
It’s a useful convention but it’s good to know that it’s not THE ONE truth :).
Your energy – matter metaphor applied to speech parts is cool and has impressive explanatory power. However, some of the arguments employed are quite bold IMO, like:
=There are some languages that do NOT have “verb” as a distinct word type, because it’s simply impossible to decide whether a word is a noun or a verb=
While it is true that some languages allegedly lack Noun/Verb distinction when analyzed through the looking glass of Europocentric grammar, most languages do have them. Furthermore, from the assessment that some language`s user cannot easily tell verbs and nouns apart doesn’t necessarily follow that the language lacks the category of „verb” (as understood by English, German, Russian grammarians etc.). It can equally mean that it lacks the “European” category of noun.
= But there are languages out there where ALL nouns are also verbs=
In fact, languages that do lack N/V distinction are usually described as having either no nouns, or verb-behaving nouns. Some Amerindian, Polynesian languages, classical Arabic sometimes fall into this category. I am no specialist in any of those, but AFIK the debate is far from over on whether they lack the distinction altogether or they simply mark it differently (syntax, intonation etc.). The only verb-lacking language I know of is Kelen, which is a constructed one. Moreover, there are cases where languages initially lacking N/V distinction acquired it in time. Israeli Sign Language for example took three generations to develop this distinction using markers as mouthing, manner of moving (quick-sharp movement for the noun and smooth-slower movement for the verbal counterpart) etc.
While the examples you provided clearly show that an English verb and noun can be identical as solitary written words, it doesn’t mean that they are identical in a sentence. It also doesn’t mean that words like “book” or “voice” are more matter that energy, to use your terms. It only appears so because English tried its hardest to get rid of inflection. Historically those words derive from energy-words (Middle English ”voicen” and „booken”). Speakers treat them as energy words when using them in 3nd person (books, voices), past tense (booked, voiced) or gerundial forms (booking, voicing). I think in gerunds the energy content is still very high, even though they are technically nouns/ matter.
The “bench” example kinda supports your case, in that “bench” is truly a noun, but only because the expression probably underwent an elision of the verb: Bench press 100 pounds! Even in that case the speakers treat it as verbs: He benchES 100 pounds. Sure, people do follow norms that can be traced back to Classical Latin, but they say things like „He benches 100 without breaking a sweat” not because Cicero is breathing down their neck, but because they feel „bench” is a verb in this context and not treating it accordingly would be ungrammatical.
Then again, you could argue that would only be ungrammatical because Cicero loving cucks have been saying so for the last 600 years.
The energy-words voicen and booken do come from matter-words, of course, but that doesn’t mean they stayed that way. Germans took the corporation-word “google” and not only made it into an energy-word, they also went the distance and, if I understand correctly, came up with a bunch of participles “gegooglt”, “gegooglet” etc. That is energy-business, not matter-business.
It seems to me that what you tried to do is show that verbs (or at least some of them) can be analyzed as pertaining to the noun category. This works under the assumption that all matter-energy words have an inherent category, which is of course what most grammars do. Another way to look at it, though, is that words do not have a category to begin with. The utterance “book” is neither X, nor Y, it is simply a bunch of sounds. Once we employ it in a sentence, we can use existent typologies to classify it or even develop new ones.
Wow, quite some food for thought :). Thank you!
So my main points are first of that there is a distinction between “verb” as a word type in a dictionary and “verb” as a role in the sentence.
I would argue that you can easily remove the “word type” from a language and that there are languages, that don’t have a distinction between nouns and verbs in that sense.
I am also saying, that it is technically possible to remove all words that have the roll of a verb in a sentence and it would still be understandable, but there might well be an implied verb-role there.
I don’t think that this is all that bold or controversial, actually.
I want people to realize that these fixed categories that we learn in school are not as fixed or clear as many people think. Something that’s listed as “noun” can be used as a verb, something that’s listed as verb can be used as an adjective and so on.
Someone once told me in the comments that “cringe” is not an adjective, but a verb. (I had “this is cringe” in the article)
That’s exactly the kind of restrictive thinking that I’d like people to move away from, because it gets in the way of language learning.
If I use “cringe” in the role of an adjective and one other person understands it, then it has filled the role in that moment.
Anyway…. I didn’t want to say that there are languages without the role of a verb. Just that having this word type in the dictionary is not like a law of nature.
Oh by the way… the “bench” example was a bit of a manipulative move on my part :).
I do think that it’s just a shortened “bench press”, but “bench” itself feels very noun-ish, more so than “book” or “chair” and so the initial effect in my context is like “Wow, that’s such a noun used as verb.”
I am basically hoping that people just have this effect and then move on, and don’t realize the missing “press” :)
Hallo Leute. Vielen Dank an die Leute, die mir ermöglicht haben, Mitglied von Daily German zu werden. Vielen Dank an die Sponsoren. Ich hoffe es, dass ich meine Deutschkentnisse verbessern werde. Tschüss
Hey everyone,
Emanuel has given me an account to practice German and he mentioned that this is thanks to other users. I am grateful to Emanuel and to all of you for giving me the opportunity to learn German
Hello,
Only one typo :)
“it sounds really weird and no one talks like” (it sounds really weird and no one talks like that)
Wow, you’re pretty much not typoing anymore!
Lots of verbs get “invented” in English, like “to google” and “to text”, etc…
How would you say this in German:
I’ll google it and text you afterwards… or maybe I’ll just email you.
Bis bald!
Ich googele es und texte dir danach. Oder vielleicht emaile/maile ich dir.
I’m not sure about texten. I dict.cc’d it, and it’s there as “to text” but it’s not clear that it means send an SMS.
Me personally, I don’t use “texten” but I do say “whatsappen”. Or I’d say “schick dir ne Whattsapp”, “schreib dir bei Messenger” or “schick dir ne SMS”.
Oh … quite a few people say “s[i]msen”, but I never did that, I think.
Oh^2: yup… “googeln” is pretty much standard!
Wow, you know what’s really funny… my typo count seems to be reversely correlated with how fast I write. This article, I wrote in one go, I typed really fast and I gave it no review. Others, I spend days on and they’re then rife with errors.
I think half of the mistakes are really editing errors that are the result of me refactoring a sentence like 10 times.
Oh and let’s not forget… your correcting me definitely improves my writing slowly, as well. Danke :)
I think it’s a neat analogy and it makes sense.
A little off topic, but I love documentaries about space. It’s my favorite thing to fall asleep to. Endlessly fascinating, so it drives all the other thoughts out of my head, but still somehow soothing. If anyone is interested, Terra X has some good ones and they usually have subtitles. Just plug “faszination universum” into Youtube.
I’ll go off topic as well and recommend two documentaries:
“Dream Epire – Chinas Immobilienblase” (by Hessischer Rundfunk)
It’s about China’s crazy building boom but from a completely human perspective. Really insightful, interesting, eye opening and a bit sad. Best documentary I have seen this year.
It starts slow… but just let it suck you in. It#s really about people, not about buildings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPfTn4KzdTs
And the other one is on ARD, “liebe viele”. It is about polyamorous relationships but it is absolutely not what one would expect…. it’s like watching an arthouse movie, really. Highly highly recommend it!!
https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dox-der-dokumentarfilm-im-br/liebe-viele/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvL2I3ZmY1ZThiLWFlN2MtNDgwNi05ZTI5LWJlMWEyZTQwN2E2Yg/
I thought of it because I was just watching a documentary called Der Tod der Sterne and it kind of blows my mind that stars die and explode into dust that can turn into new stars or black holes. The circle of life.
I’m glad you mentioned the one about love because I’ve been staring it at thinking it looked interesting but somehow I never clicked on it. I’ll definitely check it out, and the other one too. It’s always fascinating to get an up close and personal look at life in other places.
It’s hard to pick favorites, but I really liked the one about the Romanian hospitals. Korruption tötet. I thought it was going to be similar to the Station nightclub fire, and it turned out to be more of an inside look at how journalists uncover corruption in the healthcare system. Courage, determination, and sticking up for what’s right.
Thanks for the recommendations, I’m excited to have some new stuff to watch :)
Relevant comic from Calvin and Hobbes
It’s kind of a blessing that German tenses are so straightforward, what with the verbs being so specific. I also noticed it seems pretty common to make up new verbs on the spot (going by what I can’t find in a dictionary). Two that I read today: “reinhageln” and “weginformieren” (irrationale Ängste lassen sich nicht weginformieren).
English on the other hand, good luck with the tenses, plus it has a thing for letting words slip into different roles without even changing costume:
Clean the fridge. (verb)
I gave it a good clean. (noun)
It’s nice and clean now. (adjective)
The fridge flew clean through the wall (after Maria threw it at me) (adverb)
I don’t know enough about other languages to say if that’s unusual, but I imagine it’s kind of strange if you’re not used to it.
Speaking of tenses, I would say “the verb absolutely dominates.” To me, “is dominating” is for when something happens during a limited time period. Like a product dominating the market or an athlete dominating their field, it’s happening right now, but it wasn’t always that way and it will likely end at some point. If something is always true, I would just say “it dominates”.
Sorry to nitpick, I just really liked that whole sentence and couldn’t help it.
That C&H cartoon was the first thing that popped into my head too :)
I too read loads of Calvin and Hobbes, but wow… how can you immediately think of one of the hundreds of strips :). That’s such an amazing achievement for a cartoon, to stick with its reader for years. Calvin and Hobbes is genius!
“Am Anfang war das Verb ” sagt Gott in Bible .
Sicher ist das Verb , die Tat das Zentrum eines Satz .
Man sagt immer dass das konjugiertes / finites Verb kommt an das Zeiten Stelle eines Satz und non finites Verb am Satzsende .
Dann ,Wie könnte Man ein solches Satz( unten gegeben) analysieren ?
Umstritten ist die Entscheidung der Behörde im Bezug Coronavirus …….
Warum Umstritten steht am erste Stelle ?
Im Voraus , vielen Dank
Hi Ahmad, diese Regeln sind ein bisschen ungenau. Das Verb kann im Prinzip an jeder Position stehen, die Frage ist nur, wieviel Spannung das erzeugt.
Offiziell ist das “falsch” aber immer mehr Leute reden so, und je normaler es wird, desto weniger Spannung gibt es.
Und was schon lange offiziell okay ist, ist, das Verb an den Anfang zu machen.
Das erzeugt viel Spannung, und man braucht einen “Grund” für diese Spannung.
In deinem Beispiel kann es sein, der Fakt, dass die Entscheidung umstritten ist, schon vorher etabliert wurde. Dadurch, dass umstritten vorne ist, hat man dann eine Verbindung.
Hilft das?
Hertzlichen Dank,
Schöne Grüsse aus Paris .