German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
I know how to use bestimmt inside a longer sentence, but I’ve heard it many times also as a short reply to a statement. z.B
A: “…” [casual statement]
B: “Bestimmt.”
At first, it seemed to me that it has the same meaning of stimmt or das stimmt (to agree) but I was not sure. Looking on the web I found that bestimmt have a slightly different usage, but I didn’t get it.
Bestimmt as a single-word reply can be used for yes/no questions and indicates that the speaker believes the answer to be yes, but isn’t certain. It can also be used to support a statement that was toned down with a particle such as wohl. Only in this case there is an overlap with Stimmt, which indicates agreement and therefore doesn’t make sense with a (non-rhetorical) question.
A. Wird es morgen regnen?
B. Bestimmt.
A. Dann ist es wohl besser, wenn ich einen Schirm einpacke.
B. Stimmt./Bestimmt.
A. Es regnet viel zu oft hier.
B. Stimmt.
A. Hängt das mit dem Klimawandel zusammen?
B. Bestimmt.
