Hello everyone,
a welcome to a new episode of Prefix Verbs Explained, the longest and “gee-how-many-more-are-there”-est series ever; this time with a look at the meaning of
zugeben
And this one is gonna be super uber mega short because zugeben is essentially a German learner’s wet dream come true. Why? Because it only has one …. oh…, hold on, I see we have a call here, hello German is Easy, you’re on the air.
“Hi Emanuel, so zugeben is Magic Mike Channing Tatum naked on a unicorn??? Because I’m a German learner and that’s my wet dream.”
Oh… uh… no, it’s not.
“Taylor Swift?”
NO! It’s so cool because it has only one meaning.
“Well, thanks a lot for getting me all excited for nothing (hangs up).”
Well… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that zugeben is not Magic Mike Channing Tatum and not Taylor Swift.
It does have something to do with guilty pleasures, though.
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actually it has one more meaning – in cards, it means to follow suit!
I don’t know what that means, to be honest.
I have never heard that in context with cards, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Grüß dich
Ich frage mich, ob ich vielleicht Haarspalterei betreibe, aber ich sehe oft, dass geben ohne die Präfixe verwendet wird:
Ich gebe Olivenöl ins Wasser, wenn ich Pasta koche.
Ändert das Weglassen der Bedeutung? Wenn sie nicht verwendet werden, würde ihre Auslassung impliziert werden?
Die Bedeutung ist gleich aber es gibt einen Unterschied in der Struktur zwischen meinem Beispiel und deinem.
Beispiel 2 hat ein festgelegtes Ziel (das Wasser).
Beispiel 1 hat KEIN explizites Ziel. Du brauchst aber eins denn Deutsch will seinen Verben gerne eine “directionality” geben.
“dazu/hinzu” is basically a stand-in for the food that has already been established.
In Beispiel 2 würde “dazu” komisch klingen, denn dann hätten wir ZWEI “indications of direction”… ins Wasser + “dazu”.
Hilft das?
This is a very great explanation about the prefix verb.
Danke :)
Vielen Dank
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reason or the other cant shoulder the cost
of being on here.
I am very grateful and immensely appreciate your
kind gesture.
Viel dank.
Thanks. I am just starting to read these articles and they are just so easy to understand. I also want to thanks to the peoplpe who donated for members that can’t really afford this! (like me) :) makes me really happy!
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How does “zugeben” compare to “(ein)gestehen”? Is it just more everyday/normal?
Also, just out of curiosity, who of the native Anglophones here would find “trunks” a normal term to translate “die Boxershorts”? I’d always say “boxer shorts” or just “boxers” for the underwear; to my American ear, “trunks” always sounds like non-Speedo men’s swim apparel.
Good question!!
For one thing, “eingestehen” is more high brow sounding, so you’d not use it in context of taking a beer out of the fridge of a friend. And it’s the word of choice when you talk about admitting something to yourself.
– Thomas wollte sich nicht eingestehen, dass er eifersüchtig war.
– Thomas didn’t want to admit to himself that he was jealous.
“zugeben” doesn’t really take a target to begin with (“ich gebe dir etwas zu” sounds odd to my ears) and in context of admitting to yourself, it’s just out of place… probably because stuff you admit to yourself always has some sort of gravity to it.
Oh and I almost forgot “gestehen”… I think that lines up pretty well with”to confess”, same tone, same register, same contexts.
Oh and (ein)gestehen both have a noun with the same idea, while “zugeben” doesn’t.
– das Geständnis (the confession)
– das (Schuld)Eingeständnis (the admission (of guilt))
Agreed. In my American English, I would say “boxers.”
“A pair of trunks” makes me think of swimming trunks. I also think I would almost always say the full “swimming trunks” and not shorten it to just “trunks.”
I’ll go for boxers then. Danke :)
Thanks a lot for your kindness, Herr Emanuel! I’m an asian student who is desperately learning German. I haven’t been provided any methods like this before, that’s why German is so hard to me. Then I found this page, 2 posts per week is not enough for me because I have to get B2 before this June. The problem is I can’t afford the fee eventhough I really really wanted to pay. But I just can’t. I needed help and sent an email to Herr Emanuel. You know what? He gave me a one-year subscription. That is amazing. He told me that some people had paid extra for the people like me, that made me so thankful. Thank you all for giving me this chance. See you someday in Germany :D
Viele Leser haben was dazugegeben :).
Viel Erfolg auf dem Weg zu B2!!
Vielen Dank nochmal für die ausführliche Erklärung! Als Deutschlerner bin ich aber ständig von der ungeheuren Menge von Synonymen überrascht… Und zwar, gibt es in dem Fall irgendwelchen Unterschied zwischen “hinzugeben” und “hinzufügen”?
Gute Frage, ja den gibt es.
“hinzugeben” wird eigentlich fast nur für konkretes “adding” verwendet. Eigentlich bruacht man das nur beim Kochen. “hinzufügen” ist viel allgemeiner und passt in vielen abstrakten Kontexten, wie Ideen oder Dateien oder so.
Hilft das?
Na ja, ich gebe zu, Ich hab’ getan als hätt’ ich Geld…
Das tun viele :)
I’m guessing zugeben can be used with an indirect object, z.B., “Er hats mir später zugegeben, dass er die ganze Geschichte frei erfunden hatte.”
In the second example (du musst zugeben…), but not the first and third, the “es” was left out. Are there conventions for this?
To me, using “zugeben” with an indirect object sounds a bit odd, but I’m not sure if that’s the case for all native speakers. I found 24.000 hits for the phrase “mir zugegeben” so I guess it’s not that unusual.
As for the “es”… in the first example, the two parts of the sentence are grammatically completely independent. I could have made a full stop before “gib’s zu”. So the “es” is the direct object in that part and needs to be there because “zugeben” doesn’t work without direct object.
In the second example, the two sentences are NOT independent.
– Du musst zugeben, dass ….
The “dass”-sentence is grammatically dependent and it functions as a direct object for “zugeben” here. If we were to put an “es” in there, we’d have two direct objects and that would sound weird.
The example you used in the comment is an example for that. It would sound better without the “s” at “hat”. People do do that in spoken German at times, but it’s not good style.
Hope that helps.
Immensely! What about a sentence like below? I’m sure I’ve heard something like this.
Mein Ziel ist es, mindestens 5 kg abzunehmen.
I guess it’s the difference between a “dass” clause and a “zu” clause? The latter doesn’t have a conjugated verb.
You could skip the “es” here, too. It’s both correct and it comes down to personal preference of the speaker. For me personally, both versions sounds a bit odd :)
– Mein Ziel ist, 10 Klimmzüge zu machen.
sounds too short, while this
– Mein Ziel ist es, 10 Klimmzüge zu machen.
sounds overly complicated.
have you read my article on “es” by any chance? There’s a LOT about this kind of stuff in there including cases that are “pro choice”, like this one.
And a related one I’ve been noticing:
Das Projekt ist deswegen gescheitert, weil …