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Word Reference defines "anreisen" as either "travel" or "arrive". DWDS defines it as "mit der Bahn ankommen" (arrive by train). However, I don't think that president Biden arrived by train in the following sentence said at 00:57 of https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/sendung/tagesschau_20_uhr/video-1391804.html :

Er ist extra noch mal angereist vor Ende seiner Amtszeit.

It seems to me that "anreisen" does not need to be by train. Does it mean "travel" or "arrive" in the previous sentence? When "anreisen" means "travel", what's the difference to "reisen" ?

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When DWDS restricts anreisen to rail travel, this strikes me as plain wrong. I think, it implies a lengthy trip, and to a place where something is scheduled to take place. But it is not confined to rail. A Google search for the string "mit dem Flugzeug angereist" yielded 6880 hits, many of them newspaper texts.

The meaning of "an" in anreisen is the same as in ankommen: It focuses on the endpoint of the journey, seen from the perspective of that place. So it is not as neutral as "travel to Germany". For the Biden example, it implies "travel to Germany" if the context is centred on Germany already.

As usual with German verbs, it does not presuppose that you have already arrived and therefore you can say "anreisen" when people are still under way (German has no opposition progressive/simple form). So, depending on context, "travel" and "arrive" seem possible as translations.

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    I'm not sure what the folks at DWDS were thinking with this, but it's a good idea to check a few good dictionaries instead of just one. My theory is that "mit der Bahn" is meant to be an example since the meaning of "anreisen" would be clear as "an-" + "reisen". They also have "the opposite of abreisen" under this as another clue.
    – RDBury
    Commented Oct 19 at 0:47
  • Yes, but dwds is usually one of the best, and it is well connected to all kinds of corpus stuff. So it's remarkable when they say such a thing.
    – Alazon
    Commented Oct 19 at 9:37
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DWDS is just plain wrong. anreisen does not specify the means of transportation at all, it could be by car, by rail, plane or ferry. It does imply a longer journey however, you wouldn't use it eg for a trip inside the same city.

The focus of anreisen is on reaching the destination, so it would be rather odd to apply it eg to travelling on a cruiseship, where the trip itself is more important than being transported to a destination. The destination also needs to be already in focus, ie if we talk about Biden in the US, we can't suddenly talk about how he "reist an" to Germany.

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"Reisen" just means "to travel" and has no element of direction to it.

This is different for "anreisen". It also contains "reisen", so it means travelling, but a certain kind of travelling: travelling with the element of to this place. For instance:

Meine Frau wird morgen anreisen.

means my wife will travel tomorrow to this place (implied: where I am right now), which is why it can mean "to arrive". Where the implied "here" is can be changed by specifying a place:

Er ist am Dienstag in China angereist.

He arrived on Tuesday (not where I am, but) in China.

Notice that there is not only "anreisen" but also "abreisen": to travel with the direction of away from here - to leave. See below.

German in general has this trend to derive verbs by adding prefixes of all sorts to some "base verb". In English this also the case but not as common, for instance "stehen":

stehen (to stand)
anstehen (to stand in line, to wait, also: to be imminent/planned)
verstehen (to understand)
bestehen (to be, to exist, also: to insist)
umstehen (to surround sth.)
gestehen (to confess)
zugestehen (to concede, to grant)
zustehen (to have [earned] a right to sth.)

and so on. This list is not complete, it is just an example of how verbs can be derived from some base verb. The same is true for "reisen":

anreisen (to go to here or some designated place)
abreisen (to leave)
verreisen (to travel [away from where one is normally])
nachreisen (to travel to someone else, who has travelled before)
bereisen (to travel to some place)

ans so on. This list is also not complete, and some words would be worthy of more explanation than the short translations I gave.

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  • If the wife started the travel from X to here yesterday and will arrive tomorrow, could I say "Meine Frau wird morgen anreisen" ? In English, "travel" would never be used in this context.
    – Alan Evangelista
    Commented Oct 19 at 19:57
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    @AlanEvangelista: yes, in German you could say that, because "anreisen" can also be used as a synonym for "ankommen". You could also say "meine Frau reist gerade an", because if she started the journey yesterday and will arrive tomorrow she is in the process of travelling at this moment. I am aware that "to travel" would not be used in this context in English, but there is no 1:1 word relationship between English and German, I was just trying to explain what is meant in German.
    – bakunin
    Commented Oct 19 at 20:04

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