Hot answers tagged word-choice
24
Ich weiß nicht, ob es noch aktuell ist, da wegen der Mobilfunkverbreitung private Festnetztelefone immer seltener angerufen werden, aber früher habe ich das so gehandhabt:
bei + Nachname
also zum Beispiel
bei Schmidt
Eventuell kann man auch noch den eigenen Namen erwähnen, wenn es sehr formell sein muss:
Bei Schmidt – Sie sprechen mit Thomas ...
23
A major effort from feminist linguistics is achieving equality of men and women in spoken or written language. All terms that discriminate men and women should be avoided.
Fräulein (the diminutive of Frau) was especially criticized as it did not only discriminate in sex but also has a strong sexist association by the meaning of Fräulein being an unmarried ...
20
Fräulein is a diminutive ('Verniedlichungsform') of Frau.
Diminution is considered an intimate act, used a lot with nicknames couples give each other (Häschen, Mäuschen, Bienchen, Bärchen) or for "lovely little beings" like children and pets. So using Fräulein has a touch of intimacy not convenient to many women.
Addressing an unkown woman as Fräulein can ...
19
When it is really very important to make the distinction, I might use:
meine Freundin
vs.
eine Freundin von mir
In the restaurant situation, you might consider switching to
ein Glas Wein für die Dame hier
or much more frequently
Könnten wir noch ein Glas Wein haben?
and sort out the details when the wine is brought to the table.
18
Neid ist envy und Eifersucht ist jealousy. (Diese Wörter werden in der englischen Laiensprache meistens auswechselbar angewendet. Die beschreiben aber tatsächlich - genau wie im Deutschen - underschiedene Emotionen.)
Laut Wikipedia heißt es, "dass ein eifersüchtiger Mensch Angst hat, zu verlieren, was (oder wen) er besitzt und wirklich oder vermeintlich ...
18
Eifersucht has a strongly relational connotation, while Neid has a very material and status connotation.
So, the nuance is, that if you are jealous that your parents like your little brother more than you, then you are eifersüchtig, but if you are jealous that they give him the bigger piece of the cake then you are neidisch or, less common, neidig.
This is ...
18
In a restaurant you'll only find WC or Toilette on doors and signs. In an apartment/residence, you will ask for Bad, WC or Toilette. You will never ask a waiter in a restaurant about das Bad.
The word Klo is only used in very casual situations. Scheißhaus is very vulgar. Casual and funny is die Keramik-Abteilung, but you should never use this term in a ...
16
Wörter ist tatsächlich nur der Plural von Wort. Du schreibst also zum Beispiel einzelne (!) Wörter oder hebst sie kursiv hervor. Wörter werden gewöhnlich durch Zwischenräume (Leerzeichen, Satzzeichen usw.) begrenzt.
Worte hingegen sagt oder schreibt jemand - merk dir meine Worte. Dabei bezieht man sich nicht auf die einzelnen Wörter, sondern auf einen Satz, ...
16
Beware of hypercorrection and generalization :)
Your friend is right in the sense that it is often a good idea to do this, because we have a tendency in German to replace any verb we're too lazy to think of with "machen" or "tun"...
But there are several phrases that just contain "machen" - "Fotos machen" is one of them, also "Urlaub machen", "Kopien ...
16
spenden
is mostly used in the sense of
to donate
So, you would say something like:
Last year I donated 200€ to charity.
Which is
Letztes Jahr habe ich 200€ für wohltätige Zwecke gespendet.
Whereas
spendieren
means something like
to spend on / to pop for / to treat sb. to sth.
So, to answer your last question: I would not ...
14
Richtig ist die erste Variante
Wichtig ist, dass man es nur mit bestimmtem Artikel verwenden darf, oder ganz ohne Artikel.
(Das Deutsche ist eine schöne Sprache; Deutsch ist die Sprache der Dichter & Poeten).
Nun ist es so, dass sich hinter dem Wort "vom" eigentlich "von dem" versteckt, und "dem" wiederum ist das gebeugte "der", bestimmter Artikel im 3. ...
14
There's only a very slight difference, if any. Using the verb "sein" may be a little bit colloquial, since it has a very broad meaning. "Liegen", however, bears reference of a static, spatial meaning, often used in a geographic context:
"Paris liegt in Frankreich"
sounds better than
"Paris ist in Frankreich".
But you can use "liegen" in this ...
14
The correct formal version of nochmal is nochmals. The Duden lists "nochmal/noch mal" as colloquial, but it seems to be getting more and more common even in formal contexts, and I think few people would blink at seeing it in a business e-mail these days.
That said, "noch einmal" doesn't actually imply "one last time", so if you want to be formal, you can ...
14
Sitt has been introduced by the Duden Verlag after some kind of contest about finding the drinking equivalent of satt.
You should not expect anyone to know what the word means. Most people use it either for fun, and I've absolutely never heard anyone it use it for real.
Duden, by the way, does not list it. I'm not sure if it ever did. As noted by Em1, ...
13
'Fräulein' was mainly used for unmarried women, and therefore for very young women when in doubt. Not being married was often considered a failure, and even a female professor, 50 years old, could have been called 'Fräulein'.
"This is Fräulein Meier" is nearly equivalent of telling somebody "This is Mr. Müller. He isn't married yet." Independent from his ...
13
Erst is used to describe a temporal order, i.e. to denote that something happens first, and something else afterwards.
A second usage pattern of erst is indeed close to only, in cases where it is used to show that so far, something has happened not very often, but this is intended to be changed.
Your examples:
He only went there to see the museum. - Er ...
13
In a very formal situation we may not wish to refer to the precise location but may rather ask
"Wo kann ich mir bitte die Hände waschen?"
assuming that this is also the place your needs are going to be relieved. Still in a formal context asking for "Toilette" like in
"Entschuldigen Sie bitte, wo sind hier die Toiletten?"
is perfectly fine.
In a ...
13
In my feeling, vorhin might be a bit longer ago than eben. If something happened in the immediate past (a few seconds ago), then you can say eben but not vorhin to express this. Moreover, eben sounds a bit more colloquial than vorhin to me. A less colloquial word is gerade, which can also express the immediate past.
Another thing is that eben has a lot more ...
13
Short answer: No.
Technical answer: If you really want to, you can use it.
Long answer:
The word is the winner of a contest held by the publishing house "Duden Verlag" and the soft drink manufacturer Lipton in 1999. The aforementioned (German) Wikipedia page tells us that it was included in "the Duden" (a popular orthographic dictionary of the German ...
13
Eine Möglichkeit ist
Hab mir's anders überlegt.
oder
Wissen Sie was, [optional hab mir's anders überlegt] ...
auch
Jetzt, wo ich drüber nachdenke, ...
Eine sehr kurze Variante:
Obwohl, [kleine Pause] ach ...
12
Keiner der beiden Begriffe ist falsch. Sie bedeuten im Wesentlichen dasselbe, auch wenn sie nicht beliebig austauschbar sind.
grammatikalisch: ausschließlich die Grammatik betreffend
grammatisch: zusätzlich der Grammatik gemäß
Näheres hier.
12
First of all, don't rely on Google Translate. Its translations are not the only ones possible, nor always correct.
In your case, the verb to be (in the meaning of "at a place") can be translated with the German verb sein, which is the same verb, and liegen, which literally means "lie" and has the same meaning here. Both translations are equally correct.
12
Let me go through each of them to explain some differences:
Prüfung: The most generic term of all three. A "Klausur" is a kind of "Prüfung", as well as an "Examen".
Examen: This term is in modern times used only with final exams within some educations, especially when the test is conducted by a state authority. Then it is called "Staatsexamen"; examples ...
12
Another possibility for a "neutral" expression would be "Situation" - which has a rather deliberately vague feel to it in German, not unlike "issue" in English :)
Leider konnten wir die von Ihnen beschriebene Save-as-XML-Situation
nicht reproduzieren.
Still, splattne's suggestion sounds best to me, esp. in an IT-related context. (+1 for splattne, ...
12
Laut Duden wird gegebenenfalls mit ggf. abgekürzt. Auch listet der Duden ggf aber nicht ggfs.
12
The meaning of a composite noun (these may not all be listed in dictionaries) may become obvious when we split it. This should be done from right to left as the last noun defines the topic:
Verhalten = behaviour, manner, characteristics, performance,...
Nutzer = user
Nutzung = utilisation, type of use,...
From this we can put the parts ...
12
Wenn man sich die häufigen Bedeutungen der jeweiligen substantivierten Adjektive näher betrachtet, kann man den Unterschied beider durchaus auch synonym zu verwendenden Begriffe erahnen:
finster
1. [sehr] dunkel, ohne Licht
2. dunkel, düster erscheinend und dadurch unheimlich
3. anrüchig, zwielichtig
4. verdüstert, unfreundlich, feindselig ...
11
I think
die Rechtschreibprüfung
is the most common (and IMHO the best) expression for spell checker.
Rechtschreibprüfprogramm sounds outdated. It's like saying "spell checking program." All modern spell checkers are integrated into some other software components (word processors, web browsers, online services etc.).
11
Als Faustregel gilt:
Je aggressiver der Inhalt, desto höflicher sollte die Form sein.
"Mit freundlichen Grüßen" ist eine distanzierte Standardformel, die ich nur in Beschwerdebriefen und Amtsverkehr verwende.
(Ansonsten gibt es von mir "Mit herzlichen Grüßen", "Schöne Grüße" oder sogar "Liebe Grüße".)
In einem Beschwerdebrief "verbleibe ich in Hoffnung ...
11
There's almost no difference, both verbs can be replaced by each other without a significant difference in meaning in most cases. So usually it isn't a mistake to use prüfen instead of überprüfen and vice versa.
To narrow down the slight difference: I would prefer überprüfen to prüfen if it's about verifying or double-checking a certain fact. However, if ...
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