Who can resist one of the best aspects of German?

Twice this week I have been thinking about adverbs – German adverbs. Now before you start wondering what sort of dictionary-obsessive is writing this post, I must admit that the logic of German grammar was one of the aspects which first attracted me to the language aged fourteen. There is a pleasing structure to German, which allows you to use words and clauses like building blocks, shifting them around until you have a sentence which will hold up to the mustering of your teacher (then) or German colleague (now). Mostly I am too busy simply using the language at work and play to think about German grammar in a formal way – or indeed to invest any time in expanding my understanding of it. But then,  as happened this last week, a word or phrase pops up which sends me back to my old school books and reminds me of my love of the way the language functions.

The first instance was flicking through my nine-year-old daughter’s school diary and noticing the fundamental difference between how she writes now and how she wrote six months ago. Yes, the big change is her use of adverbs. Her sentences elegantly start with ‘Zuerst’, ‘Danach’, ‘Später’ and ‘Anschließend’, framing her stories with clues to the reader as to when each event took place and in which order and how they might have been at the time. She climbed out of the big tub of cold water in the garden quickly but read her book slowly because it was so boring. Each adverb she uses provides a new logic and dimension to her tale.

A few days later we were in Hessen visiting my parents-in-law. Despite this being one of many visits, I noticed a particular turn of phrase my husband’s father likes to use for the first time – perhaps because I had just been thinking about them. What struck me was his frequent use of the adverb ‘freilich’ – his most common phrase when he agrees with something you’ve just said, or thinks his answer to your question is an obvious one. In this instance, the adverb is less about providing a logic but instead about placing a particular emphasis on his agreement. He is doing more than just saying ‘yes’; he is saying ‘yes, of course, how can you even think otherwise’ – in English I suppose something like ‘naturally’ ‘but, of course’, ’why, yes!’ would come closest.

Aside from obvious temporal adverbs, such as ‘gestern’, ‘heute’, ‘sofort’ or ‘manchmal’, adverbs can be harder to spot in German than in English. They have no telling ‘ly’ at the end and are often are words you would otherwise recognize as adjectives – think ‘hübsch’, freiwillig’, ‘zufällig’ or ‘eventuell’. The clue for these is in the lack of an ending – ‘e’ or ‘er’ or ‘es’ or ‘em’ or ‘en’ – as they would have if an adjective attached to a specific noun or pronoun. My two personal favourites? ‘Etwa’ for ‘approximately’ – such a little word for something that needs so many letters in English. And the ubiquitous ‘doch’ – I challenge even the most talented translator to come up with a satisfactory English equivalent.

Learning German grammar back in student days

This ongoing exposure to a foreign language you love is tied up in the many pleasures of expat life. Every now and then, when you take the time to notice it, you hear something that makes you smile and wonder why they said it like that and more importantly remember it as an expression in your own ongoing mission to sound less expat and more native.

Chloë