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
There are many times where you want to take a look inside some premises like a bar. Almost every day I face the following difficulty.
How do you say (when somebody comes to speak to you and ask you for example if you need a table) in German: I only want to take a look and I will decide later. Or totally casually just say: Hey I 'll take a look first.
Are the 2 (following) sentences that I use correct? Die klingen, glaube ich, schief.
- Ich werfe nur einen Blick.
- Ich schaue mir rum.
Correct phrases for the situation you describe are:
Ich schaue mich nur um.
Ich schaue mich erst einmal um.
The phrase:
Ich werfe nur einen Blick hinein.
is also correct German but implies that you're standing outside and peeking in, while the former are a better match for the situation you describe where you are inside already but trying to decide whether you'll stay.
The verbiage would be most likely verbal, gucken, schauen, nachsehen. Einen Blick werfen for a denominal construction is common indeed and matches your starting point with to take best, maybe einen Eindruck gewinnen "get an impression" works as well in ightly elevated speech, but the prepositions are decisive. You do not just turn an eye but need to say rein, heinein, in das Lokal, auf die Statue or something of that sort. In this view, the verbal phrases match your request much better: Ich möchte nur mal eben gucken.
"* Ich schaue mir rum" is unacceptable. Either it's accusative mich, or substandard Berliner mir where schauen would be rather uncommon. As the separable verbs are sich umschauen or sich umgucken, it would never be rum. Without the self-reflexive there is rumkucken, not "* (he)rum gucken", as far as I can tell.
