Summary

German and the expression of the actual intention

Through this lesson and many others, I’ve come to realize one thing — English to German translation rarely works in a literal sense because German sentences are all about the essence of the meaning. One of today’s example is perfect:

I’m sorry in German is es tut mir Leid, which means “it does me suffering”, which describes the essence of “I’m sorry” much more closely. Similarly, are you sorry is “tut es mir Leid?” or “Does it do (cause) you suffering?”. It will be important to keep this distinction in mind.

Other interesting expressions

It doesn’t matter

The idea is expressed as It makes nothing in German. Examples:

  • it doesn’t matter -> it makes nothing -> es macht nichts
  • I am sorry -> It does me suffering -> es tut mir Leid
  • My shoulder hurts -> my shoulder does aching -> meine Shulter tut weh

It smells of/like something

This idea is expressed as it smells to something, and the to is used in a directional sense (nach), probably meaning that the smell can be traced to that direction. Examples:

  • it smells of soup -> (expressed as) it smells to soup -> es riecht nach Suppe

It hurts

This idea is expressed as it does aching. Examples:

  • My knee hurts -> (expressed as) My knee does aching -> Mein Knie tut weh

    note: tut (the he/she/it form of the verb tun) is used here because in German, parts of the body are treated as third person singular nouns, so you’re basically saying “it hurts”.

He/She/It use the same verb form

This one’s rule based and strict in it’s usage, which means that it applies everywhere. The following rules determine which verb ending will be used:

Regular verbs

For these verbs, we drop their normal ending and replace it with a -t. Examples:

  • He comes tomorrow -> er (kommen -> kommt) morgen
  • she is staying here -> sie (bleiben -> bleibt) hier
  • it belongs to the dog -> es (gehören -> gehört) zu das Hund
  • he doesn’t understand it -> er (verstehen -> versteht) ist nicht

Irregular verbs

Firstly, more on verb irregularity here

For many of these verbs, the vowel in the stem changes, but the ending still replaces the normal ending with the -t. Examples:

  • He speaks to me -> er (sprechen -> spricht) zu mir
  • She is driving to Copenhagen tomorrow -> Sie (fahren -> fährt; notice the umlaut) morgen nach Kopenhagen

These verbs drop their vowel sounds (the stress that the umlaut brings) and drop their endings entirely. Examples:

  • He cannot do it -> er (können -> kann) es nicht tun
  • she must say no to him -> sie (müssen -> muss) zu ihn nein sagen

Another way to mean “to do”

So far, we’ve learned that machen is the verb that expresses to make/to do. This is the most commonly used verb for this expression, but there is one more — tun. I asked Gemini why there were 2 ways to express the same thing and the answer it gave me sounds pretty logical, combined with the usage of the verb(s) that I’ve seen. In brief, machen is used with concrete doings/makings, whereas tun is used for abstract doings/makings. Let’s look at a couple examples:

  • I am doing homework
    • You know what you’re doing (a specific thing) -> use machen
    • ich mache Hausaufgaben
  • I am doing nothing
    • You are not doing anything specific -> use tut
    • ich tut nichts
  • (confusing example) I am doing something
    • You are doing something vague, but it is still concrete
    • ich mache etwas