Timeline for When to pick *aus-* vs. *an-* in German verbs
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 6, 2023 at 3:26 | comment | added | Janka | dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/anbauen So they are wrong then? | |
| Feb 5, 2023 at 22:18 | comment | added | bakunin | Actually the correct translation of "anbauen" is "to plant", not "to grow". | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 8:52 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Oct 1, 2017 at 20:44 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Jun 20, 2017 at 7:52 | comment | added | IQV | According to Grimm'sche Wörterbuch "anbauen" as "to grow" seems to be the older meaning then "to build". | |
| Jun 19, 2017 at 6:28 | comment | added | Annatar | "Anbauen" as "grow" is so idiomatic for example that, as you can see, not even native speakers are entirely sure about how to derive it. "Verbieten" or "entscheiden" would be examples of "ver-" and "ent-". The prefixes kinda hint at the meaning, but it's really hard to come up with the correct meaning of the whole word on the fly when combining them with their roots. And so on. | |
| Jun 19, 2017 at 6:21 | comment | added | Annatar | +1 for the advice to treat them all as separate verbs. Yes, there are some guidelines (semantics of the prefix), but also way too many exceptions/idioms to allow these guidelines to be called actual "rules". | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 23:31 | comment | added | Rudy Velthuis | @Janka: they not only resemble prepositions, they are derived from prepositions. Often, the meaning of the preposition is somehow related to the meaning of the verb prefix, although through the times, that relation may have changed a lot and the prefix may have got a meaning of its own. But even if I hear a German word with a prefix I didn't know before, the prefix usually tells me what the meaning of the word is. For instance the prefix "zer-" often means something destructive, and the prefix "ver-" indicates change. "An-" often means adding something, and "ent-" indicates removal. Etc. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 23:22 | comment | added | Rudy Velthuis | @Janka: the verb is "anbauen". "Ich baue an" is a conjugation of the same verb, "to grow". Where do you grow? For instance on a field. So "ich baue auf meinem Acker Kartoffeln an" means "I grow potatoes on my field". | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:07 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | I never claimed that, and I never claimed the verb prefix somehow covers the information provided by the preposition. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 22:06 | comment | added | Janka | Yes, exactly. Verb prefixes resemble prepositions, but they aren't prepositions. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:56 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | Because prepositions and verb prefixes are used independently of each other, even though sometimes they may look the same and have a similar meaning. Ich baue hinter meiner Garage einen Lagerschuppen an. Additional prepositions can always be required depending on what you want to say, no matter what verb prefix was used with what meaning. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:21 | comment | added | Janka | Ich baue auf meinem Acker Kartoffeln an. If it was all covered by an, why would there be another preposition auf needed? | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:18 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | "but neither of them matches growing fruits" - I'm not so sure about that. You don't build fruits, but you "lay their foundations". Thus, you start their construction process, which could well match with the first meaning of "an" that I outlined in my comment. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:16 | comment | added | Janka | Yes, of course, an has several other meanings as well, but neither of them matches growing fruits etc. And about the meaning of these prepositions can help deducting the meaning of the verb: That's what I wrote in the very second sentence. | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:13 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | "Treat them all as separate verbs." - in one way, yes. But, as pointed out in my above comment, there are indeed various common meanings for prefixes that can also help to deduce the meaning of a verb. The tricky part is that often, "prefix + root" is either an "official" combination with a specific meaning where the meaning of the prefix may be non-obvious or deviate from the general case, or "prefix + root" is not an "official" combination, in which case the combination can still be formed ad-hoc, with the prefix using its common meaning (or one of them, if there are more than one). | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 21:10 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | "The preposition an means tight to, so attaching something is straight forward." - well, another common meaning of the an prefix in verbs is that the action is just started, not completed to its end (antesten, anbrechen, ...). And yet another one refers to the state of something being "(switched) on" (anschalten, anmachen, angehen, ...). | |
| Jun 18, 2017 at 19:30 | history | edited | Janka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 18, 2017 at 19:18 | history | edited | Janka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 4 characters in body
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| Jun 18, 2017 at 19:09 | history | answered | Janka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |