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German "weil" confusion ... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| eccodandini Newbie United States Joined 5501 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 16 01 March 2013 at 9:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone, I've just heard a use of "weil" that I don't understand and wonder if someone could help me out with
it. Since I don't live in a German speaking country, I watch Verbotene Liebe (don't make fun of me!) to help me hear colloquial German. I was catching up tonight on some old episodes, and I heard a strange sentence in one of them. The situation: Rebecca is in love with her brother's (Tristan) fiancee (Marlene - blond). Actually the two girls slept together, but Marlene doesn't want Tristan to know. Rebecca tells Tristan finally that she loves his fiancee, Marlene. And so when Tristan asks his sister Rebecca why she didn't tell him sooner, she says that she didn't want to admit her feelings about Marlene to anyone, with this sentence: "Ich habe es abgestritten, weil ich wollte das ja selbst nicht." You can watch it here, it starts from the beginning, she says it around the 0:45 second point in the video: Verbotene Liebe I don't understand why the "weil" in this sentence does not create an inversion. My German is not perfect but I feel quite comfortable putting the verb and auxiliary verb at the end of a sentence when "weil" comes into play. So why is the sentence not "Ich habe es abgestritten, weil ich das ja nicht selbst wollte." I thought that it was obligatory to push the verb to the end of the sentence, if "weil" is used. Any help would be much appreciated, thank you! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 16 01 March 2013 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
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The guy (Tristan?) said, "so you knew about it the whole time" and she's hesitant to admit this
I was in denial.. because... (pause) I didn't want it /didn't want it to be true She stopped the sentence with "weil" and began again. Weil..(pause)... Ich wollte das ja selbst nicht. She just didn't complete her sentence there. That's why there's no inversion Edited by Sunja on 01 March 2013 at 10:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 16 01 March 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Sunja's explanation may be valid, but there is another possibility. The big question is whether the phrase with "weil" is seen as a subordinate phrase or not. The conjunction "weil" would normally be used in a subordinate phrase, but there are other conjunctions like "und" and "aber" which don't mark subordination, but coordination - and in this category you also find "denn", which semantically is fairly close to "weil". You could have a suspicion that it is the influence from "denn" which in this case makes "weil" behave like a coordinating conjunction rather than a subordinating one. And this mechanism could make the break in the middle of the quote seem less abrupt than the solution with one half sentence and three dots.. Edited by Iversen on 01 March 2013 at 10:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aspiringplyglot Triglot Groupie United Kingdom aspiringpolyglot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4580 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Esperanto, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 4 of 16 01 March 2013 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I think this is something to get used to hearing. I believe that there is some influence from English and in day-to-
day chat, especially amongst the younger generations, the inversion doesn't same to matter too much. I've definitely heard this quite a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 16 01 March 2013 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
um, not really. I don't think there's a chance that English syntax is creeping into German. Their Satzbau is pretty solid. If the blonde in the video were speaking a bit faster (maybe more assertively) she'd say the whole sentence and throw that verb right to the end :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 16 01 March 2013 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, this usage of weil, while considered colloquial, seems to be on the rise.
I sometimes use this 'broken sentence' pattern to appear cute and/or to indicate that I know the other person expects a sensible explanation, and I can only come up with whimsical or emotional reasons. Or maybe that I didn't even realize the truth before I started talking about it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 16 01 March 2013 at 11:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not very linguistically observant myself, but I have heard, on the grammar grapevine, that it's fairly common. You can always punctuate it:
"Ich habe es abgestritten, weil: Ich wollte das ja selbst nicht." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4847 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 8 of 16 01 March 2013 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can use this construction in colloquial language, but never use it in written German (except if you write a dialogue and you have a character use it)!
4 persons have voted this message useful |
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