You should have added the word "hardly" :D I heard that a garman company wrote a letter to english investors to tell them, that they work hardly on their project. :P
"eventually" had caused me some problems for a while. We either didn't have this word at school, or I was simply not listening that day. However, it's not used *that* often and when you come across it, it will most likely stand at the beginning of a sentence or the end of a dialog. "Will we be able to do it?" "We will manage eventually." So it's not that easy to deduce its meaning out of context, especially since the german "eventuell" would make sense when "eventually" is used - even if the meaning is quite the opposite. In the end, I got quite confused for some time why people would proudly proclaim a "maybe" until I eventually found my mistake. My favorite false friend is "Mist/mist". The first time I encountered the english version of this word was in the sentence "The air was full of mist." which of course promted a rather unpleasend mental imagine. So I quickly came to the conclusion, that is must have another meaning. Also, England is well known for its bad, foggy weather - something a frustrated german would describe as "Mistwetter", so there could even be a connection there as to why english has two words to describe small droplets of water floating in the air.
Great list. It is nice to see that you didn't stick to the usual suspect list (Gift, Bodybag, Smoking, and anything with the word "Fahrt" in it). On a side note, the textbook from which I teach on a daily basis is called "Deutsch Aktuell" meaning "Current German" (or a variant thereof) and was published in 1998.
my favorite is when I had pen friends, they were teenagers (as was I), just learning english, they would ask "did you become my other letter" because of "bekommen". Another notable false friend.
***** Well, the Hamburger is named after the City where it was invented which is the northern german city of Hamburg. In the german language we call those people who live in Hamburg Hamburger, just like the dish.
@@appleslover The pronounciation is different, while me use the german pronounciation for the people, we tend to use the english pronounciation for the dish as a means to differentiate. Also I can assure you that the joke gets old rather quickly as one can see from other dishes named after the place they wheer invented, like the Wiener, Krakauer or Berliner
I think the good old "become" / "bekommen" should have been in the list... maybe even in first place because thats more or less the only false friend i commonly hear from colleagues and friends.
"must" and "müssen" are two common false friend too. I should be used to it now, but i struggle with it almost every time. "who" / "wo" and "where" / "wer" are not confusing to me anymore, but they still exist xD
FireFly Dani But _müssen_ is "must" in german. Maybe you meant _nicht müssen_ not being "must not" in a prohibitive sense but rather "not having to do something" in the sense of not being required to do so. Example: _Ich muß Sonntags nicht Arbeiten_ (I am not required to work on Sundays) vs _Ich darf Sonntags nicht Arbeiten_ (I am not allowed to work on Sundays).
Schöne Liste der nicht so typischen false friends. Für mich ist ja einer der krassesten, aber komischerweise eher selten erwähnten Fälle die Kombi "must not" und "muss nicht". Denn da entsteht ja nicht nur Verwirrung sondern es ändert sich gehörig der Sinn einer Aussage. So gibts ja zwischen "You mustn't eat that!" und "Du musst das nicht essen." einen eventuell fatalen Unterschied. ;)
"must not" ist halt einfach die Verneinung von "must". Anders im deutschen "muss nicht" ist eher auf der weichen Seite, dass etwas nicht erzwungen ist. Da finde ich die englische Version eigentlich sogar besser nachvollziebar.
6 лет назад+4
Als Informatiker/Mathematiker find ich die deutsche _logischer_ ;-)
My favorite between Danish and German, was a German asking what was up with the Ferry to Germany not being at Rødby yet, and a Dane telling him - completely calm as if that happens every day - "Færgen er forsinket" - which means the Ferry is running late (verspätet) .. NOT that the Ferry has sunk (versunken).
Your first example made me laugh! 😄 It reminded me of having used the term „pregnant“ several times in English class at school, talking about literature. My English teacher very nicely corrected me finally, telling me „pregnant“ means „schwanger“. God, I felt so ashamed and stupid. 🙈 Will never forget this! 😂
Reminds me of a similar false friend mix-up between English and Spanish: an English speaker might say they are "embarrassed" as "embarazada" in Spanish, but the latter means "pregnant"! How embarrassing... Furthermore, "pregunta" in Spanish simply means "question" in English! But it does sound a little funny.
Where germans suffer a lot is the word "become". In german there is the word "bekommen" wich could be translated with "get". English: "I will get ice cream" German: "Ich werde Eiscreme bekommen". But the word "become" is for way to similar with the word "bekommen" to an german person and so.... well... let's just say that "I become ice creame." (Ich werde Eiscreme werden) is a sentence you hear very often from someone whos englisch isn't the best. Sorry for any mistakes, I'm just a german with my little school english and the stuff form the internet.
+SausageGaming Oh ja DER Klassiker - und unser Lieblingswortspiel im Englischunterricht. Es gibt aber noch lustigere Varianten als Eiscreme. Passend zum Thema pregnant: "I become a baby" ^^. Auch nicht schlecht ist "Gift" - Im einen Land ein Grund zur Freude, im anderen einer den Notarzt zu rufen ^^. Ansonsten fällt mir noch "fast" ein.
+SausageGaming Oh ja DER Klassiker - und unser Lieblingswortspiel im Englischunterricht. Es gibt aber noch lustigere Varianten als Eiscreme. Passend zum Thema pregnant: "I become a baby" ^^. Auch nicht schlecht ist "Gift" - Im einen Land ein Grund zur Freude, im anderen einer den Notarzt zu rufen ^^. Ansonsten fällt mir noch "fast" ein.
+SausageGaming In 1945, just after the war, my Grandfather rushed with my pregnant (not prägnant :D ) great-grandmother in a wheelbarrow to the hospital at night. But two British soldiers found them and it was illegal by that time to be outside at night, so my great-grandmother screamed: "I BECOME A BABY!!!!"
This, oh my god it confused me for like a month, until it occurred to me that I should probably check a dictionary, also in German itself, verbs like hören and gehören, or gefallen have caused me a lot of headache. Also English is also me second language, you don't ever need to apologize, firstly your English is perfect and secondly because ESL learners learn English academically they usually use better grammar than many native speakers, so people who aren't a native speaker usually sound nicer especially if they're communicating via text.
rewboss bitte mehr davon. Ich finde das Video einfach klasse :) Du kennst dich damit ja bekanntlich gut aus und kannst das auch noch anschaulich vermitteln..... Da in deinem Channel vermutlich viele Leute mit unterschiedlich ausgeprägten Kenntnissen in Deutsch und Englisch unterwegs sind, ist das für sehr viele ziemlich lehrreich und unterhaltsam :)
For quite a long time I thought teenager is German word, because "Tee" and "Nager" are German words and it never made sense to me why anybody would gnaw tea instead of just drink it 😆
See! The German businessman would be "muy emberazado"! Also, notice the first word of my reply: "see" is pronounced the same as "sí", but is spelt differently, and those two words mean very different things. I think this may count as a false friend. To add to the confusion, the English "sea" sounds the same as both... but has nothing to do with either! See (in English): To look, among other things. Sea (in English): A kind of body of water, as well as a collective term for all of the world's bodies of salt water. Sí (in Spanish): "Yes".
In 21 years of working jobs in which I had to use English on a daily basis I have never witnessed a single instance where one of my colleagues used the word 'actually' the right way. I only once tried to correct a colleague and he didn't believe me...
Gymnasium (German for grammar School) - gymnasium (English for sports hall) Billion - billion or Trillion - trillion etc. German: Million -> Milliarde -> Billion -> Billiarde -> Trillion -> Trilliarde -> Quatrillion etc. English: million -> billion -> trillion -> quadrillion -> quintillion etc. So an English trillion is a German Billion, an English quintillion is a German Trillion.
I was so happy when I eventually (höhö) looked up the correct translation for eventually. It is especially fooling, because when you read it in a Story, you don't immediatly notice that can't be right. Only after reading it several times, and wondering if it really makes sense in the context, I looked it up :D
there is another false friend for pregnant: when you use a surface finishing in Germany, you name that spray Imprägnierspray. So... once I translated it wrong and said impragnation spray to it which led to a big laughter.
I'm an American lady in my 40s dealing with Niedersachsen. My German is getting better, but I found this somehow helpful and a bit soothing at the same time: plenty of English but at least a little something. Here is Saxon Heaven "Moin" is commonly used.
I remember when I started out in Esperanto, I'd see the word "eventuala" and think it meant "eventual". It never made sense in context, so I eventually looked it up and it meant "may or may not happen". So, German "eventuell" was no big problem (same with "aktuala"/"aktuell").
I think "hitlist" is a false friend too. In English it means a list of people to be killed, but in German a "Hitliste" a list of popular songs. Also, the German sentence "Ich esse einen Amerikaner" might sound like "I'm eating an American", but it actually means "I'm eating a black and white cookie". No wonder the German language sounds so aggressive.
Could you consider one day putting together a word list video like this for geographic features, such as cliff, headland, bluff, ridge etc and waterways like stream, creek, river and so on. This is something that seems particularly complicated to learn using only a German-English dictionary.
That would be a very specialist area; also, such terms are used differently in American English and British English, making it even more complicated. It would be a bit beyond the scope of this channel, I'm afraid.
When you have two languages that use a lot of similar sounds and have a similar combination of consonants and vowels, you're bound to get a lot of words that sound the same but mean completely different things.
When the languages have the same origin (Proto-Germanic) and influences (Latin), you get words having the same origin but developed different meaning over time. All the examples in the video seem to be in this category, instead of being accidently the same combination of sounds.
The words I encountered are Allee and alley. Anyone who has seen an alley in an American city knows that is not a desirable place to live. But, in Germany, Allee is the equivalent of boulevard, usually a nice place to live. Oddly enough, I had a German/English dictionary that equated Allee mit alley.
As a German, a very common one is to irritate und irritieren. I'm working as a tour guide and during an english tour I did a German asked me about something and said in English: This must be really irritating. I just smiled and said: yeah mostly confusing but sometimes irritating too. So remember: to irritate - ärgern, reizen irritieren - to confuse ;-)
+Killerkarpfen1990: "irritieren" actually can have both meanings in German, to irritate or to confuse (if you have red spots on your skin, a german medic might call that "Hautirritation")
Sensible to mean sensitive was widely used in English until fairly recently and had a vogue in the Romantic period. That use is preserved, for example, in the title of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
what about "Gift"? which means Poison in German? My German teacher married an Englishman and when the Englishman presented the German woman's mother with a "Gift" she was quite shocked
"eventually" vs. "eventuell" is my favorite false friend, I hear it alot in German dubbed TV-series. I found that especially in the dubbing of old Star Trek series when they said stuff like "Ich werde dich eventuell erwischen!" ("I will catch you eventually" became "I will catch you probably!") - so many facepalm-moments ;-) another _great_ example is "myst" vs. "der Mist": Lustige Synchronisation in Star Trek - The Next Generation
"realise/realisieren" was also a false friend, except that it is not anymore. The old meaning of "realisieren" in German was "to make something become real". Nowadays there are Germans which use the word in the english meaning like "becoming aware of something".
It is a common thing across related langauges. In Dutch "zee" means sea and "meer" as a noun means lake or pond, but in German "Meer" is another word for sea beside "die See" while "der See" means lake. In Czech "čerstvy" means fresh, but in Polish "czerstwy" pronounced similarly is an adjective used to describe old, dried-out bread. There are may such word pairs in Polish and Ukrainian too. Some years ago when I was not so familiar with Google translator on my phone I went to a small shop in Olomouc in Czechia to buy eggs. Not knowing the Czech word for eggs I used German, English and Russian words, but the woman behind the counter did not understand. Finally I said "jajka" in Polish and bingo! She answered "ahh, vaićka!" I don't know how she had figured it out as these two word are not very similar. In touristy areas close to the border Polish is more or less understood but I did not expect it to be in Olomouc.
I actually know why that is! Basically it used to be that "See" was important while "Meer" was less so. In previous centuries up here in ye olde german North, the ocean was just called "Die See" and lakes where Meer or Mar depending on region. Because "die See" was far more important than the lakes. Meanwhile, down south, "das Meer" (ocean) was something far away that didn't matter to the people, while "die Seen" (lakes) did. And the differences in German across the country started to disappear and here we are (And by the way: I looked it up and low German still has the original distinction "de See" for the ocean and "dat meer" for the a lake.)
I would try these out in German class. I would usually get laughs from my fellow students but but by the second year the instructor found them less humorless.
From what I could tell: "Must not" = _Darf_ _nicht_ _Muss_ _nicht_ = "Does not have to" These are very different phrases! "Must not" implies something is not allowed, while "does not have to" implies something is merely optional!
A colleague of mine kept saying to the english customer, that she will BECOME 5€. After the third time I couldn't stand it any longer and corrected it, telling the customer, she will GET 5€.
Spanish and English share the same problem with the word "sensible". In Spanish there is a word that is written the same: sensible; however it is the equivalent of the English word "sensitive". Now, if you want to translate the English word "sensible" to Spanish, the correct translation would be "sensato".
Guten Tag, Andreas! Kannst du mir erklären warum in der Luther Bibel, "Mitternacht" bedeutet "north", "Abend" ist "west", u.s.w.? Wird ein Leser verwirrt, diese Worte zu lesen, wenn sie in einem Satz, wirklich die Tagzeiten sind?
Als ich mit 17 das erste Mal in England (4 Wochen mit dem deutsch-englischen (oder so ähnlich) Jugendaustausch) war, war ich schon etwas erstaunt, das es da Präservative in Dosen gab mit Gemüse - und /oder Fleisch-Beilage.
That was very interesting I speak English and German more or less equally well, but I have never really noticed these particular examples. The words i often misread or that confuse me are war/war, die/die, can't think of any more examples, but there are many words that behave like this.
Nice video! Imagine what Bablefish would do with these words in both languages! I love the sound of the German language. I also like German food (not that I ever get any here in the Boston area) Thanks, I enjoyed your video, even though, eventually, it ended :>)
Atl essa Nothing counts as German food in my area (Boston) because we have no German restaurants anymore. We used to have a lovely restaurant called "The Wursthaus" where we could get imported German beer as well as German dishes, like Sauerbraten, Schnitzel, Knockwurst, Bratwurst, German styled Pot Roast with buttered egg noodles and some amazing pastries. When I grew up in New York City, there were several German specialty restaurants as well. They are all gone now. I have fond memories of these places and wonderful meals as a child - and later, when I reached "drinking age" the beer as well. Also, in New York, they used to have "street" frankfurter vendors with carts who would come around and sell food. I always got a "hot dog" and sauerkraut on a steamed bun - just wonderful. When I came to Boston, no such vendors, of course, but even in restaurants when I'd ask for a "hot dog" and sauerkraut they would look at me as if I was insane and ask, "What is sauerkraut"?
***** Lol, it reminds me of my holidays in the USA...used to an immense variety of dark and light breads, as well as coldcuts, I really had a hard time...but the steaks and salad bars were fantastic!
AnnaLee33 Boston is very big on steaks and grilled food. Try and find pot roast in a restaurant, or pork loin, or meatloaf... ain't gonna happen. It's grilled chicken, grilled steak or steak tips, fajitas, tacos, and of course, fish.
And then there are the ones that are a matter of scale. "Allee" means boulevard, not alley. "Limousine" is any sedan, even a two-door, even a Beetle or Trabant.
Cant believe you didnt put "become" in there as well. Many Germans make the mistake to translate it to "bekommen". Sentences like "I become the steak" (by a German in a restaurant) would be quite weird.
Interestingly, though Germany and France share a history of let's say "misunderstanding" they actually agree on the meaning of most of the words cited in this video. It means that as an Englishman if you learn false friends in German you can assume similar meaning changes in French. Learning French from German, who would have guessed!
I am not sure whether "schlußendlich" would be a better translation than "schließlich". You can't say something like "I am very serious, eventually I am german." for "Ich bin sehr ernst, schließlich bin ich deutsch." Nevertheless is this a very good video, keep up with the good work :)
Turns out, "eventually" doesn't have a good German translation. But of course, individual words can have more than one translation into another language: just because in your sentence "schließlich" cannot be translated as "eventually" doesn't mean it never, ever can be translated thus.
Argument and argument. "Oh, you mean you *quarreled* with your girlfriend!", said my friend Horst after a long explanation of my latest relationship problem. I'll avoid "Problem and problem" here. Who would have thought that the English language has two definitions of the word argument. It is almost impossible to explain this to native English speakers who have never learned German. In the mind of the native English speaker it seems to them that though they are the same word (argument) that they are not the same word (argument) but let's not have an argument about it. However, I hope that you accept my argument.
Never say "die" (I would start German lessons with this sentence and if something is "fatal" to a German, it is merely embarrassing , while to an English speaking person, if it's"fatal" (s)he will be dead. Yes, one could get on and on.
it's interesting that Czech language, despite not belonging to the same language family as German, adopts the German meaning of many of these words. Hmm, I wonder why - historically speaking :o)
Actually currently is still better than 'as we speak'. Strongly followed by "it's like this" and "it's like that". Some idioms sound like kindergarten language, trying to describe something with minimum vocabulary.
oh ja, solche Bedeutungsunterschiede machen einem das Schulleben schwer :) ich hatte besonders mit "actually" und "eventually" zu kaempfen, aber irgendwann gewoehnt man sich daran :D
This video desperatley needs "to become" / "werden" and "to get" / "bekommen". It leads to severe translation errors "i become a baby" or "i become some money." or the other way round: "ich bekomme ein arzt".
Interesting. In my second language (Spanish), words that look like English (and visa versa) usually are. I guess that's because Spanish is a Romance Language, as is French, which heavily influenced the evolution of English after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. :)
English and German are both Germanic languages, but most of the examples in this video are all Latin-based terms. It's just that the meanings of those words took different evolutionary paths in the different languages. Yes, English and German do have lots of true friends -- many, many true friends, in fact. But some are false friends. But Spanish and English also have lots of false friends. The most famous, because it causes the most humiliating misunderstandings, is "embarazada", which is Spanish for "pregnant".
rewboss Re: Germanic. Yes, it's interesting to see the influence of the 2 on English. Words like "cow" and "pig" come from the German, while "beef" and "pork" come from the French. Similarly, as a person who speaks Spanish, I can read French, Portuguese or Catalan and kind of follow it -- EXCEPT for those words that are uniquely Spanish from the hundreds of years of Arab occupation.
"Actually" Whenever I point that one out to another German, sooner or later I will be given this reference: merriam-webster com -> "actual" yields 3 meanings, the last one being: "3: existing or occurring at the time
Right. Here's where it gets really confusing. You see, false friends aren't usually random, especially in languages as closely related as English and German. "Aktuell" and "actual(ly)" are in fact related. And there is some overlap. The thing is, although "existing at the current time" is, yes, one of the definitions of "actual", it never actually _feels_ like it. One thing is for certain: it is not possible to translate "aktuell" as "actual" every single time. Not even most of the time. In the example sentence you provide, I would never say that somebody was "caught in the current commission of a crime". The sense is actually more along the lines of "caught during the commission of a crime". But when I read it, it feels to me the same way that "tatsächlich" does. It's hard to describe, but there it is. Another example I found was "the ship's actual position". To me, that doesn't convey the sense that it's the position _now_: it feels as if it's talking more about the ship's real position, as opposed to its imagined position. I could, however, say "the ship's current position", and to me that sounds perfectly fine, but now it conveys more emphatically the idea that it's where the ship is at this moment in time.
Ich vermisste den Klassiker bekommen/become. Muss noch heute über die Antwort des Oxforder McDonald's Kassierers schmulzen, der auf die Aussage "I become a Hamburger." grinsend antwortete: "Uhm, that may hurt."
we spanish speakers have the same problem with "actually" as germans, wich means "realmente" in spanish but is often confused with "actual" wich really means "up to date" or "aktuell". I'm studing german and I find quite interesting that there are similarities betwen spanish and german (not a lot but more than I expected), in fact the pronunctiation of "aktuell" is very close to "actual".
Throughout my three years of spanish lessons in school, I found that the pronunciation is quite similar in many cases when comparing spanish and german. :0
Das Phänomen nennt sich Lautverschiebung und ist noch lustiger wenn du bei dieser Wortgruppe z.B. die Niederländischen Begriffe dazu nimmst: Who - wer- wie, where - wo - waar, how - wie - hoe (was sich wie das englische who ausspricht)
Witzig in dem Zusammenhang finde ich Plage und Pest. Offenbar einmal Synonyme für zwei leicht abweichende Begriffe, haben sie sich über die Zeit spezialisiert, wobei die jeweils eine Bedeutung in einer Sprache verloren ging, so dass sie sich heute überkreuzen. Deutsch Plage = Englisch Pest. Englisch Plague = Deutsch Pest.
Karsten Meyer Huh? In welchem Deutsch? Duden.de nennt diese Bedeutung jedenfalls noch nicht; das muss ein relativ junger Re-Import aus dem Englischen sein. So wie "meint" für "bedeutet"...
Loved the video! Can you please do one on the difference between expressing "apparently" and "obviously" in German. The translations I've taken from offensichtlich and offenbar never seem to be understood the same and Germans never seem to be able to explain what is right
"Offensichtlich" and "offenbar" are synonyms that refer to a fact that can easily be noticed or understood, might even has been proofen to be true. "Obviously" would be a good translation. Somebody correct me if i'm wrong, because i'm not quite sure about this, but i think some fitting translations for "apparently" would be "scheinbar", "anscheinend" or "augenscheinlich". All three of these mean that whatever you're refering to seems to be one way, but there is still some amount of doubt about it. To be honest, most Germans probably don't know the difference anyway.
joschiseins Thanks for your responses! So are the following correct? 1. Heute ist Samstag. Offenbar soll morgen Sonntag sein. 2. Herr Müller, Sie sind ein Mann, oder? Ja offensichtlich!! 3. Scheinbar wurde das Fahrrad meines Nachbars geklaut. Seine Frau hat das mir erzählt. 4. Anscheinend soll es morgen regnen.
"Scheinbar" is a word even Germans regularly get wrong. It describes something that appears so at first glance, but is in fact not as it seems: "Er war scheinbar kleiner als sie" means he appeared shorter than her, but only because he was standing further away. It often implies deceit: "Er war scheinbar beschäftigt" means that he was only pretending to be busy.
rewboss When you are going to the secretary of Prof. Dr. Dr. Furtwengler-Schmitt and she says, that he is in a meeting, you can say: "Er war scheinbar beschäftigt". But that does not mean, he was just pretending to be busy...It is more like: He seemed to be busy. You are not a 100% sure but is quite possible. Thanks for you videos
marcmech1 Some Germans (differing with region and age, I'd say) do not differentiate between "scheinbar" and "anscheinend", and to them, your example would be OK. But if you differentiate and you'd like to tell you rather believe his secretary, than you'd say: "Er war anscheinend beschäftigt." If you are not at all in doubt about that or you just won't comment on this issue, you'd just say: "Er war beschäftigt."
Gift and Gift
yes! Poison!
I'd definitely prefer to receive a gift from an English speaker than Gift from a German!
You should have added the word "hardly" :D
I heard that a garman company wrote a letter to english investors to tell them, that they work hardly on their project. :P
A good one!
Yes, us Germans are hardly working people!
@@HesseJamezrofl
"eventually" had caused me some problems for a while. We either didn't have this word at school, or I was simply not listening that day. However, it's not used *that* often and when you come across it, it will most likely stand at the beginning of a sentence or the end of a dialog.
"Will we be able to do it?" "We will manage eventually."
So it's not that easy to deduce its meaning out of context, especially since the german "eventuell" would make sense when "eventually" is used - even if the meaning is quite the opposite. In the end, I got quite confused for some time why people would proudly proclaim a "maybe" until I eventually found my mistake.
My favorite false friend is "Mist/mist". The first time I encountered the english version of this word was in the sentence "The air was full of mist." which of course promted a rather unpleasend mental imagine. So I quickly came to the conclusion, that is must have another meaning.
Also, England is well known for its bad, foggy weather - something a frustrated german would describe as "Mistwetter", so there could even be a connection there as to why english has two words to describe small droplets of water floating in the air.
Great list. It is nice to see that you didn't stick to the usual suspect list (Gift, Bodybag, Smoking, and anything with the word "Fahrt" in it).
On a side note, the textbook from which I teach on a daily basis is called "Deutsch Aktuell" meaning "Current German" (or a variant thereof) and was published in 1998.
Thanks for sharing!
my favorite is when I had pen friends, they were teenagers (as was I), just learning english, they would ask "did you become my other letter" because of "bekommen". Another notable false friend.
I think "become" was one of the very first false friends I was warned about when I started English 😂 not without reason, it seems.
"may I become a hamburger" is a short and pregnant way to order a north-german slave
Darf ich ein Hamburger bekommen XD
*****
Well, the Hamburger is named after the City where it was invented which is the northern german city of Hamburg. In the german language we call those people who live in Hamburg Hamburger, just like the dish.
Do Germans find it funny when they call people from Hamburg, well, Hamburger?
@@appleslover The pronounciation is different, while me use the german pronounciation for the people, we tend to use the english pronounciation for the dish as a means to differentiate. Also I can assure you that the joke gets old rather quickly as one can see from other dishes named after the place they wheer invented, like the Wiener, Krakauer or Berliner
@@TheCassiusTain I just remembered JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" 😂
Also Hi 4 years later, how were these 4 years for you? If you don't mind me asking.
I think the good old "become" / "bekommen" should have been in the list... maybe even in first place because thats more or less the only false friend i commonly hear from colleagues and friends.
"must" and "müssen" are two common false friend too. I should be used to it now, but i struggle with it almost every time. "who" / "wo" and "where" / "wer" are not confusing to me anymore, but they still exist xD
FireFly Dani
But _müssen_ is "must" in german. Maybe you meant _nicht müssen_ not being "must not" in a prohibitive sense but rather "not having to do something" in the sense of not being required to do so.
Example: _Ich muß Sonntags nicht Arbeiten_ (I am not required to work on Sundays) vs _Ich darf Sonntags nicht Arbeiten_ (I am not allowed to work on Sundays).
agun17
And on top of that there's the slight difference between 'must' and "have to" which, unfortunately, doesn't exist in German at all.
"Waiter! Can i become a chicken?"
Pyriold I want to become a Schnitzel!
Schöne Liste der nicht so typischen false friends. Für mich ist ja einer der krassesten, aber komischerweise eher selten erwähnten Fälle die Kombi "must not" und "muss nicht". Denn da entsteht ja nicht nur Verwirrung sondern es ändert sich gehörig der Sinn einer Aussage. So gibts ja zwischen "You mustn't eat that!" und "Du musst das nicht essen." einen eventuell fatalen Unterschied. ;)
"must not" ist halt einfach die Verneinung von "must". Anders im deutschen "muss nicht" ist eher auf der weichen Seite, dass etwas nicht erzwungen ist. Da finde ich die englische Version eigentlich sogar besser nachvollziebar.
Als Informatiker/Mathematiker find ich die deutsche _logischer_ ;-)
@ Kommt drauf an, ob das "not" die verneinung des "must" ist oder die verneinung des "eat".
My favorite between Danish and German, was a German asking what was up with the Ferry to Germany not being at Rødby yet, and a Dane telling him - completely calm as if that happens every day - "Færgen er forsinket" - which means the Ferry is running late (verspätet) .. NOT that the Ferry has sunk (versunken).
The title totally applies to friendships as well.
It is, in fact, an old proverb about the nature of friendship, yes.
Your first example made me laugh! 😄
It reminded me of having used the term „pregnant“ several times in English class at school, talking about literature. My English teacher very nicely corrected me finally, telling me „pregnant“ means „schwanger“. God, I felt so ashamed and stupid. 🙈
Will never forget this! 😂
Reminds me of a similar false friend mix-up between English and Spanish: an English speaker might say they are "embarrassed" as "embarazada" in Spanish, but the latter means "pregnant"! How embarrassing...
Furthermore, "pregunta" in Spanish simply means "question" in English! But it does sound a little funny.
I think a lot of the false friends are the result of semantic changes. A good example for that is in my opinion the pair pathetic / pathetisch.
Where germans suffer a lot is the word "become". In german there is the word "bekommen" wich could be translated with "get".
English: "I will get ice cream" German: "Ich werde Eiscreme bekommen".
But the word "become" is for way to similar with the word "bekommen" to an german person and so.... well... let's just say that "I become ice creame." (Ich werde Eiscreme werden) is a sentence you hear very often from someone whos englisch isn't the best.
Sorry for any mistakes, I'm just a german with my little school english and the stuff form the internet.
+SausageGaming
Oh ja DER Klassiker - und unser Lieblingswortspiel im Englischunterricht. Es gibt aber noch lustigere Varianten als Eiscreme. Passend zum Thema pregnant: "I become a baby" ^^.
Auch nicht schlecht ist "Gift" - Im einen Land ein Grund zur Freude, im anderen einer den Notarzt zu rufen ^^. Ansonsten fällt mir noch "fast" ein.
+SausageGaming
Oh ja DER Klassiker - und unser Lieblingswortspiel im Englischunterricht. Es gibt aber noch lustigere Varianten als Eiscreme. Passend zum Thema pregnant: "I become a baby" ^^.
Auch nicht schlecht ist "Gift" - Im einen Land ein Grund zur Freude, im anderen einer den Notarzt zu rufen ^^. Ansonsten fällt mir noch "fast" ein.
+SausageGaming In 1945, just after the war, my Grandfather rushed with my pregnant (not prägnant :D ) great-grandmother in a wheelbarrow to the hospital at night. But two British soldiers found them and it was illegal by that time to be outside at night, so my great-grandmother screamed: "I BECOME A BABY!!!!"
This, oh my god it confused me for like a month, until it occurred to me that I should probably check a dictionary, also in German itself, verbs like hören and gehören, or gefallen have caused me a lot of headache.
Also English is also me second language, you don't ever need to apologize, firstly your English is perfect and secondly because ESL learners learn English academically they usually use better grammar than many native speakers, so people who aren't a native speaker usually sound nicer especially if they're communicating via text.
rewboss bitte mehr davon. Ich finde das Video einfach klasse :) Du kennst dich damit ja bekanntlich gut aus und kannst das auch noch anschaulich vermitteln..... Da in deinem Channel vermutlich viele Leute mit unterschiedlich ausgeprägten Kenntnissen in Deutsch und Englisch unterwegs sind, ist das für sehr viele ziemlich lehrreich und unterhaltsam :)
Stimmt. Sowas von.
For quite a long time I thought teenager is German word, because "Tee" and "Nager" are German words and it never made sense to me why anybody would gnaw tea instead of just drink it 😆
Because 15 year olds are weird obviously
Would a German businessman who complimented an American Colleague by saying "you are very pregnant" be "muy emberazado"?
+SephieRothe False cognates are the best.
+SephieRothe Nice!
See! The German businessman would be "muy emberazado"! Also, notice the first word of my reply: "see" is pronounced the same as "sí", but is spelt differently, and those two words mean very different things. I think this may count as a false friend. To add to the confusion, the English "sea" sounds the same as both... but has nothing to do with either!
See (in English): To look, among other things.
Sea (in English): A kind of body of water, as well as a collective term for all of the world's bodies of salt water.
Sí (in Spanish): "Yes".
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions np that's homo-sample text, false friend gotta be shared etymology unlike false cognate
I've been learning English for more than 10 years now (I'm 26 now) and I'm still learning so much from you! Thank you very much
In 21 years of working jobs in which I had to use English on a daily basis I have never witnessed a single instance where one of my colleagues used the word 'actually' the right way. I only once tried to correct a colleague and he didn't believe me...
Gymnasium (German for grammar School) - gymnasium (English for sports hall)
Billion - billion or Trillion - trillion etc.
German: Million -> Milliarde -> Billion -> Billiarde -> Trillion -> Trilliarde -> Quatrillion etc.
English: million -> billion -> trillion -> quadrillion -> quintillion etc.
So an English trillion is a German Billion, an English quintillion is a German Trillion.
"I become a hamburger, please." - "Oh, I hope not, Sir..." oO
I know another version of it which I prefer:
„Mr waiter, when do I become a steak (as ordered)?“
„I hope never, Sir!“
I often become headaches while false friends are so heavy :(
I was so happy when I eventually (höhö) looked up the correct translation for eventually. It is especially fooling, because when you read it in a Story, you don't immediatly notice that can't be right. Only after reading it several times, and wondering if it really makes sense in the context, I looked it up :D
That is also the reason why many people in Germany ate corn after WW II. They asked the allies for "Korn" which is another word for "Weizen" (wheat).
Thank you very much for being very - concise - in delivering us this - gift.
Gut and pregnant presentation!
If Germans want a "Brief" reply, the expect a written letter and they need an "Angel" for fishing.
And then we take our hook, line and sinker - and the rod these are attached to - and go angling.
there is another false friend for pregnant: when you use a surface finishing in Germany, you name that spray Imprägnierspray. So... once I translated it wrong and said impragnation spray to it which led to a big laughter.
Absolutely great stuff. I enjoyed it to the full and will for shure recommend it to others. Keep up with it, please :-)
I'm an American lady in my 40s dealing with Niedersachsen. My German is getting better, but I found this somehow helpful and a bit soothing at the same time: plenty of English but at least a little something. Here is Saxon Heaven "Moin" is commonly used.
I look forward to your talks. I find them both entertaining and edifying!
Yeahhh 400ster like :D gutes Video
Und der letzte Satz war grossartig!!! Echt geniales "Denglish" like our Minister "WesterWave" xD
Thumbs up!
I remember when I started out in Esperanto, I'd see the word "eventuala" and think it meant "eventual". It never made sense in context, so I eventually looked it up and it meant "may or may not happen". So, German "eventuell" was no big problem (same with "aktuala"/"aktuell").
in the words of Benjamin Franklin "an open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is even worse"
I think "hitlist" is a false friend too. In English it means a list of people to be killed, but in German a "Hitliste" a list of popular songs.
Also, the German sentence "Ich esse einen Amerikaner" might sound like "I'm eating an American", but it actually means "I'm eating a black and white cookie".
No wonder the German language sounds so aggressive.
I'm transported back to English class in school, where one classmate professed that she enjoyed "cooking films".
As a German those last few sentences made way more sense to me than they should have.
Could you consider one day putting together a word list video like this for geographic features, such as cliff, headland, bluff, ridge etc and waterways like stream, creek, river and so on. This is something that seems particularly complicated to learn using only a German-English dictionary.
That would be a very specialist area; also, such terms are used differently in American English and British English, making it even more complicated. It would be a bit beyond the scope of this channel, I'm afraid.
Fair enough Andrew, thanks for responding.
Same American lady again. The false friend favorite of mine is "Gift". Naturally I was shocked when I learned this means "Poison" in German.
When you have two languages that use a lot of similar sounds and have a similar combination of consonants and vowels, you're bound to get a lot of words that sound the same but mean completely different things.
When the languages have the same origin (Proto-Germanic) and influences (Latin), you get words having the same origin but developed different meaning over time. All the examples in the video seem to be in this category, instead of being accidently the same combination of sounds.
The words I encountered are Allee and alley. Anyone who has seen an alley in an American city knows that is not a desirable place to live. But, in Germany, Allee is the equivalent of boulevard, usually a nice place to live.
Oddly enough, I had a German/English dictionary that equated Allee mit alley.
As a German, a very common one is to irritate und irritieren. I'm working as a tour guide and during an english tour I did a German asked me about something and said in English: This must be really irritating. I just smiled and said: yeah mostly confusing but sometimes irritating too.
So remember:
to irritate - ärgern, reizen
irritieren - to confuse
;-)
+Killerkarpfen1990: "irritieren" actually can have both meanings in German, to irritate or to confuse (if you have red spots on your skin, a german medic might call that "Hautirritation")
Sensible to mean sensitive was widely used in English until fairly recently and had a vogue in the Romantic period. That use is preserved, for example, in the title of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
what about "Gift"? which means Poison in German? My German teacher married an Englishman and when the Englishman presented the German woman's mother with a "Gift" she was quite shocked
Except in "Mitgift", which is the money the bride brings into the marriage - of course, not in use anymore.
tell her it comes from the English word give which comes from the German word geben!
"eventually" vs. "eventuell" is my favorite false friend, I hear it alot in German dubbed TV-series. I found that especially in the dubbing of old Star Trek series when they said stuff like "Ich werde dich eventuell erwischen!" ("I will catch you eventually" became "I will catch you probably!") - so many facepalm-moments ;-) another _great_ example is "myst" vs. "der Mist":
Lustige Synchronisation in Star Trek - The Next Generation
"realise/realisieren" was also a false friend, except that it is not anymore. The old meaning of "realisieren" in German was "to make something become real". Nowadays there are Germans which use the word in the english meaning like "becoming aware of something".
Great list, actually all of these words have caused some confusion in conversations before...until it dawned on me...
It is a common thing across related langauges.
In Dutch "zee" means sea and "meer" as a noun means lake or pond, but in German "Meer" is another word for sea beside "die See" while "der See" means lake.
In Czech "čerstvy" means fresh, but in Polish "czerstwy" pronounced similarly is an adjective used to describe old, dried-out bread.
There are may such word pairs in Polish and Ukrainian too.
Some years ago when I was not so familiar with Google translator on my phone I went to a small shop in Olomouc in Czechia to buy eggs. Not knowing the Czech word for eggs I used German, English and Russian words, but the woman behind the counter did not understand. Finally I said "jajka" in Polish and bingo! She answered "ahh, vaićka!" I don't know how she had figured it out as these two word are not very similar. In touristy areas close to the border Polish is more or less understood but I did not expect it to be in Olomouc.
I actually know why that is!
Basically it used to be that "See" was important while "Meer" was less so.
In previous centuries up here in ye olde german North, the ocean was just called "Die See" and lakes where Meer or Mar depending on region. Because "die See" was far more important than the lakes.
Meanwhile, down south, "das Meer" (ocean) was something far away that didn't matter to the people, while "die Seen" (lakes) did.
And the differences in German across the country started to disappear and here we are
(And by the way: I looked it up and low German still has the original distinction "de See" for the ocean and "dat meer" for the a lake.)
I would try these out in German class. I would usually get laughs from my fellow students but but by the second year the instructor found them less humorless.
Also one of the good old favourites: "Must not" and "muss nicht". This a word-by-word-translation, but the meaning is contrary.
From what I could tell:
"Must not" = _Darf_ _nicht_
_Muss_ _nicht_ = "Does not have to"
These are very different phrases! "Must not" implies something is not allowed, while "does not have to" implies something is merely optional!
rewboss
Another one: self concious vs. selbstbewusst.
A colleague of mine kept saying to the english customer, that she will BECOME 5€.
After the third time I couldn't stand it any longer and corrected it, telling the customer, she will GET 5€.
Spanish and English share the same problem with the word "sensible". In Spanish there is a word that is written the same: sensible; however it is the equivalent of the English word "sensitive". Now, if you want to translate the English word "sensible" to Spanish, the correct translation would be "sensato".
Guten Tag, Andreas! Kannst du mir erklären warum in der Luther Bibel, "Mitternacht" bedeutet "north", "Abend" ist "west", u.s.w.? Wird ein Leser verwirrt, diese Worte zu lesen, wenn sie in einem Satz, wirklich die Tagzeiten sind?
Als ich mit 17 das erste Mal in England (4 Wochen mit dem deutsch-englischen (oder so ähnlich) Jugendaustausch) war, war ich schon etwas erstaunt, das es da Präservative in Dosen gab mit Gemüse - und /oder Fleisch-Beilage.
You Sir are very funny!
That was very interesting I speak English and German more or less equally well, but I have never really noticed these particular examples. The words i often misread or that confuse me are war/war, die/die, can't think of any more examples, but there are many words that behave like this.
I ove these videos - simply great.
Nice video! Imagine what Bablefish would do with these words in both languages! I love the sound of the German language. I also like German food (not that I ever get any here in the Boston area) Thanks, I enjoyed your video, even though, eventually, it ended :>)
I'm curious, what does count as "german food" in your area?
Atl essa Nothing counts as German food in my area (Boston) because we have no German restaurants anymore. We used to have a lovely restaurant called "The Wursthaus" where we could get imported German beer as well as German dishes, like Sauerbraten, Schnitzel, Knockwurst, Bratwurst, German styled Pot Roast with buttered egg noodles and some amazing pastries.
When I grew up in New York City, there were several German specialty restaurants as well. They are all gone now. I have fond memories of these places and wonderful meals as a child - and later, when I reached "drinking age" the beer as well.
Also, in New York, they used to have "street" frankfurter vendors with carts who would come around and sell food. I always got a "hot dog" and sauerkraut on a steamed bun - just wonderful. When I came to Boston, no such vendors, of course, but even in restaurants when I'd ask for a "hot dog" and sauerkraut they would look at me as if I was insane and ask, "What is sauerkraut"?
*****
Lol, it reminds me of my holidays in the USA...used to an immense variety of dark and light breads, as well as coldcuts, I really had a hard time...but the steaks and salad bars were fantastic!
AnnaLee33
Boston is very big on steaks and grilled food. Try and find pot roast in a restaurant, or pork loin, or meatloaf... ain't gonna happen. It's grilled chicken, grilled steak or steak tips, fajitas, tacos, and of course, fish.
And then there are the ones that are a matter of scale. "Allee" means boulevard, not alley. "Limousine" is any sedan, even a two-door, even a Beetle or Trabant.
Cant believe you didnt put "become" in there as well. Many Germans make the mistake to translate it to "bekommen". Sentences like "I become the steak" (by a German in a restaurant) would be quite weird.
Interestingly, though Germany and France share a history of let's say "misunderstanding" they actually agree on the meaning of most of the words cited in this video. It means that as an Englishman if you learn false friends in German you can assume similar meaning changes in French. Learning French from German, who would have guessed!
I think that is called "assimilation", and happens in most marriages.
I see the false translation of aktuell extremely often at work. I always shake my head for a while when I see something like "this list is not actual"
another false friend: German "Chef" (= English "boss") versus English chef (Chefkoch) or chief (Häuptling)
Thank You!
2:05 I think you might have forgotten to mention "endlich". I think that would also mean basically the same.
I'm sort of busy now. I think I'll watch this video in _Der After_. I know. I know. But it still seems an appropriate place to watch this video. :)
"Der After"" mean "the anus" in German.
I am not sure whether "schlußendlich" would be a better translation than "schließlich". You can't say something like "I am very serious, eventually I am german." for "Ich bin sehr ernst, schließlich bin ich deutsch."
Nevertheless is this a very good video, keep up with the good work :)
Turns out, "eventually" doesn't have a good German translation. But of course, individual words can have more than one translation into another language: just because in your sentence "schließlich" cannot be translated as "eventually" doesn't mean it never, ever can be translated thus.
+rewboss "Letzendlich" or "Am Ende" would be a good translation.
The word gift is another one. It means a present in English, but in German it means poison.
Argument and argument. "Oh, you mean you *quarreled* with your girlfriend!", said my friend Horst after a long explanation of my latest relationship problem. I'll avoid "Problem and problem" here. Who would have thought that the English language has two definitions of the word argument. It is almost impossible to explain this to native English speakers who have never learned German. In the mind of the native English speaker it seems to them that though they are the same word (argument) that they are not the same word (argument) but let's not have an argument about it. However, I hope that you accept my argument.
Love this kind of stuff 😊
Never say "die" (I would start German lessons with this sentence and if something is "fatal" to a German, it is merely embarrassing , while to an English speaking person, if it's"fatal" (s)he will be dead. Yes, one could get on and on.
it's interesting that Czech language, despite not belonging to the same language family as German, adopts the German meaning of many of these words.
Hmm, I wonder why - historically speaking :o)
I understand "eventually" now.
You eventually understand "eventually"? xD
Actually currently is still better than 'as we speak'. Strongly followed by "it's like this" and "it's like that". Some idioms sound like kindergarten language, trying to describe something with minimum vocabulary.
A lot if similarities between the German and French words, most having the same or a similar meaning as opposed to the English words
Many of these are the same in French (« actuel » means current, « éventuellement » means « possibly »
oh ja, solche Bedeutungsunterschiede machen einem das Schulleben schwer :)
ich hatte besonders mit "actually" und "eventually" zu kaempfen, aber irgendwann gewoehnt man sich daran :D
This video desperatley needs "to become" / "werden" and "to get" / "bekommen". It leads to severe translation errors "i become a baby" or "i become some money." or the other way round: "ich bekomme ein arzt".
da hab ich scheinbar mein ganzes leben das wort "eventually" falsch benutzt ... -.-
Höhö...ja, das tun wir gern. Der Spitzenreiter dürfte aber bekomme/become sein.
Hm... eher anscheinend als scheinbar... ;)
HesseJamez Ich denke der ist so ein alter Hut, dass er ihn bewusst ausgelassen hat
One day in spanish class there was a sentence with pregunta (to ask) in it, but I translated it as meaning pregnant
Interesting. In my second language (Spanish), words that look like English (and visa versa) usually are. I guess that's because Spanish is a Romance Language, as is French, which heavily influenced the evolution of English after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. :)
English and German are both Germanic languages, but most of the examples in this video are all Latin-based terms. It's just that the meanings of those words took different evolutionary paths in the different languages.
Yes, English and German do have lots of true friends -- many, many true friends, in fact. But some are false friends.
But Spanish and English also have lots of false friends. The most famous, because it causes the most humiliating misunderstandings, is "embarazada", which is Spanish for "pregnant".
rewboss Re: Germanic. Yes, it's interesting to see the influence of the 2 on English. Words like "cow" and "pig" come from the German, while "beef" and "pork" come from the French. Similarly, as a person who speaks Spanish, I can read French, Portuguese or Catalan and kind of follow it -- EXCEPT for those words that are uniquely Spanish from the hundreds of years of Arab occupation.
Yeah Sensibel fucked me right up.
My all time favourite: gift
English: a present
German: poison
xD
it took me quite a while to grasp 'eventually' I used to get confused every time I heard someone say it
"Actually"
Whenever I point that one out to another German, sooner or later I will be given this reference:
merriam-webster com
-> "actual"
yields 3 meanings, the last one being:
"3: existing or occurring at the time
Right.
Here's where it gets really confusing. You see, false friends aren't usually random, especially in languages as closely related as English and German. "Aktuell" and "actual(ly)" are in fact related. And there is some overlap.
The thing is, although "existing at the current time" is, yes, one of the definitions of "actual", it never actually _feels_ like it. One thing is for certain: it is not possible to translate "aktuell" as "actual" every single time. Not even most of the time.
In the example sentence you provide, I would never say that somebody was "caught in the current commission of a crime". The sense is actually more along the lines of "caught during the commission of a crime". But when I read it, it feels to me the same way that "tatsächlich" does. It's hard to describe, but there it is.
Another example I found was "the ship's actual position". To me, that doesn't convey the sense that it's the position _now_: it feels as if it's talking more about the ship's real position, as opposed to its imagined position. I could, however, say "the ship's current position", and to me that sounds perfectly fine, but now it conveys more emphatically the idea that it's where the ship is at this moment in time.
You forgot the classic word in this category: Gift
that is simply outstanding!
lovely , i like it
horribly amazing text
Amazing video.
Mach doch mal eins über "Become/Get und Bekommen" das ist einer der häuftigsten Fehler.
I'm surprised you didn't choose "to become". It means "werden" in german but is easily mistaken for "bekommen". In english: "to get"
I want to say my argument short and pregnant! :D
Gutes Video, ich glaub, den ein oder anderen Fehler hab ich auch schon ab und zu mal gemacht...
Ich vermisste den Klassiker bekommen/become. Muss noch heute über die Antwort des Oxforder McDonald's Kassierers schmulzen, der auf die Aussage "I become a Hamburger." grinsend antwortete: "Uhm, that may hurt."
we spanish speakers have the same problem with "actually" as germans, wich means "realmente" in spanish but is often confused with "actual" wich really means "up to date" or "aktuell". I'm studing german and I find quite interesting that there are similarities betwen spanish and german (not a lot but more than I expected), in fact the pronunctiation of "aktuell" is very close to "actual".
I mean "which" not "wich" I always made mistakes with that word -_-
Throughout my three years of spanish lessons in school, I found that the pronunciation is quite similar in many cases when comparing spanish and german. :0
TheYasmineFlower
Yes, as native spanish speaker studying german I aprove.
Am lustigsten ist doch eigentlich who - wer und where - wo. Was ist da wohl schiefgelaufen, in der germanistischen Sprachgeschichte?^^
Perpetuierter Übersetzungsfehler?
Das Phänomen nennt sich Lautverschiebung und ist noch lustiger wenn du bei dieser Wortgruppe z.B. die Niederländischen Begriffe dazu nimmst: Who - wer- wie, where - wo - waar, how - wie - hoe (was sich wie das englische who ausspricht)
Witzig in dem Zusammenhang finde ich Plage und Pest. Offenbar einmal Synonyme für zwei leicht abweichende Begriffe, haben sie sich über die Zeit spezialisiert, wobei die jeweils eine Bedeutung in einer Sprache verloren ging, so dass sie sich heute überkreuzen. Deutsch Plage = Englisch Pest. Englisch Plague = Deutsch Pest.
HotelPapa100 Wobei pests im Deutschen Ungeziefer meint.
Karsten Meyer Huh? In welchem Deutsch? Duden.de nennt diese Bedeutung jedenfalls noch nicht; das muss ein relativ junger Re-Import aus dem Englischen sein. So wie "meint" für "bedeutet"...
Great Video, i loved it!
My pupils - and from time to time my English hubby - mix up "while - because" as well as "become - get".
Loved the video! Can you please do one on the difference between expressing "apparently" and "obviously" in German. The translations I've taken from offensichtlich and offenbar never seem to be understood the same and Germans never seem to be able to explain what is right
"Offensichtlich" and "offenbar" are synonyms that refer to a fact that can easily be noticed or understood, might even has been proofen to be true. "Obviously" would be a good translation.
Somebody correct me if i'm wrong, because i'm not quite sure about this, but i think some fitting translations for "apparently" would be "scheinbar", "anscheinend" or "augenscheinlich".
All three of these mean that whatever you're refering to seems to be one way, but there is still some amount of doubt about it.
To be honest, most Germans probably don't know the difference anyway.
joschiseins Thanks for your responses! So are the following correct?
1. Heute ist Samstag. Offenbar soll morgen Sonntag sein.
2. Herr Müller, Sie sind ein Mann, oder? Ja offensichtlich!!
3. Scheinbar wurde das Fahrrad meines Nachbars geklaut. Seine Frau hat das mir erzählt.
4. Anscheinend soll es morgen regnen.
"Scheinbar" is a word even Germans regularly get wrong. It describes something that appears so at first glance, but is in fact not as it seems: "Er war scheinbar kleiner als sie" means he appeared shorter than her, but only because he was standing further away. It often implies deceit: "Er war scheinbar beschäftigt" means that he was only pretending to be busy.
rewboss When you are going to the secretary of Prof. Dr. Dr. Furtwengler-Schmitt and she says, that he is in a meeting, you can say: "Er war scheinbar beschäftigt". But that does not mean, he was just pretending to be busy...It is more like: He seemed to be busy. You are not a 100% sure but is quite possible.
Thanks for you videos
marcmech1
Some Germans (differing with region and age, I'd say) do not differentiate between "scheinbar" and "anscheinend", and to them, your example would be OK. But if you differentiate and you'd like to tell you rather believe his secretary, than you'd say: "Er war anscheinend beschäftigt." If you are not at all in doubt about that or you just won't comment on this issue, you'd just say: "Er war beschäftigt."
Sau gut gemacht! :D
behold-behalten, must not-musst nicht