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German words | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 10 06 September 2009 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had (and have) similar trouble with English phrasal verbs. :)
What makes German compound verbs a lot more complicated is that the prefixes have been productive over centuries and still are, just like the English ones. (Un-Break My Heart ~) This means that though there is this 'feel' for what a prefix does to a verb, there are a lot of old compound verbs that use meaning of the main verb that doesn't exist in modern German, or even a verb that doesn't exist any more, the verbs wandered through dialects and sociolects, assumed new meanings and brought them back to the standard speech - it's quite entertaining for somebody who likes puzzles. Gunhild Simon's blog, because I just found it. It's probably more interesting for high intermediate learners? (I tried to write something about the different prefixes but it's very difficult because to a native speaker they do seem logical. I wouldn't ever have had the idea to render 'entfremden' as 'make a stranger be a non-stranger' because ent- carries loss and as 'loss of a stranger' doesn't make much sense, it has to be 'loss of somebody because that person turns into a stranger' ... but if that's the logic of ent- speaking or the fact that I cannot separate the word and the meaning I do not know.) Edited by Bao on 06 September 2009 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5495 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 10 of 10 08 September 2009 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
This is actually very useful. So "ent" acts as a negative against positive roots, but as a reinforcer for negative roots. Unfortunately this is probably quite logical for most of the world, but being English, despite our famous ignorance of grammar, the only thing the grammar pedants are always trying to indoctrinate us with is "you can't have a double negative, becauase it makes a positive". (or like "doch" which contradicts negative statements, but reinforces positive ones.) Now don't feel you have to explain the whole language at once, but if you have any ather feel free to share them with us. How about explaining - veränderen, verlaufen, verkaufen - (and any other variants of "ver"). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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