[Course Forum] Advanced German Vocabulary by Carlykal

Community-Created Courses German
61

Good evening @amanda-norrsken and thanks for the feedback.

an DEN Rand drängen
Fixed. Well spotted! This was a typo in the original course.

einleuchten
I’ve updated the translation as follows:
‘to make sense; become evident, apparent’

I didn’t like the original translation ‘to be clear’ because of its obvious ambiguity, so that one’s gone. And I’ve stuck with the ‘evident/apparent’ translation (in addition to your valid suggestion) because I have found several examples where einleuchten could be understood as such, e.g.:
‘Daher sollte es uns einleuchten, daß die Mitgliedstaaten der Union mit verbesserter Energie-Effizienz imstande wären…’

die Sache erledigen
I’ve updated the translation as follows:
to take care of something, settle the matter

Again, I’ve added your valid suggestion but kept mine as a second alternative as I found several (admittedly more technical) examples where the latter fits better, e.g.:
Sollte dies zu einer Einigung der Beteiligten führen, kann der Notar diese Vereinbarung unmittelbar beurkunden und damit die Sache erledigen.

Now, how does that look? :wink:

Have a great weekend.

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62

Looks good, Simon!

I just wanted to pass on the uses of these words and phrases in everyday German in case you hadn’t come across them. I know that I was woefully unfamiliar with everyday German after three years of studying it at university :frowning:

I remember asking for some stamps at the Post Office, not knowing how to say “10 Briefmarken je eine Mark” and cobbled some horrible sentence together which must have sounded like a mad professor’s rantings! Something like, “May I have ten stamps each of which should respectively cost one Mark?” I got such a funny look and then they guy behind the counter said, “je eine Mark”…

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63

lol that’s great.

64

@amanda-norrsken that’s about what my German sounds like right now :smile:

Rest assured, your everyday German phrases are invaluable. The course would be that much poorer without them! So please don’t stop :slight_smile:

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65

For level 4 wouldn’t it make more sense to have the words the other way around? So that you need to type out the full term as opposed to the abbreviation. Because at present it doesn’t take any thought to figure out the abbreviations of those words (the only ‘difficult’ one is vgl.)

Just a suggestion :slight_smile:

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66

You changed the level 58 translation to a correct phrase, but I think the original German phrase should have been: sich einer Sache entledigen - and for that phrase the English translations are correct. Maybe you want to add that phrase as well.

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67

Hi Simon,
as a native speaker of German I am not quite sure why you changed the meaning of narkotisieren. I would only use that word for the action you take when you put someone under who is going to get an operation. It is a rather technical term. The meaning of “to drug” to me seems to broad a translation. You can also drug someone with pills or other stuff, but then you don’t get a Narkose (the noun to narkotisieren).

68

Hi @Foorgol,

Thanks for the input.

The reason I removed “sich einer Sache erledigen” is that erledigen is not a reflexive verb - it’s just being used with a reflexive pronoun as the indirect object, like lots of other German verbs. So it seemed to me that including the “sich” just makes the phrase too specific and detracts from the core sense of “to take care of something.”

However, if this particular phrasing (with the reflexive pronoun) is very common or idiomatic (please provide examples/references), let me know and I’ll add it back in.

69

Hi again @Foorgol

First, I just wanted to say thanks for dropping by. Having another native speaker is invaluable to me in helping to make this course better. Quite often I’m struggling to understand exactly how to define a term in English. So your input is very welcome!

Regarding narkotisieren: this was originally defined as “anaesthetise.” I considered this to be not quite correct. The correct english translation is to narcotise (not a very common verb!), which means to affect with a narcotic drug. This could be an anaesthetic or it could be something else, e.g. a narcotic drug given as a painkiller. So that’s why I suggested the translation:

to drug (medical)

I’m happy to consider a better translation but I hope you see the (admittedly subtle) distinction I was trying to make. :slight_smile:

And by the way, you’re right that it’s a very technical word. If I had created the course myself, I would have chosen betäuben as the German term, which would have allowed the translation to anaesthetise. I prefer not to change the German term unless it’s completely wrong, however, because I think it would be too confusing / annoying for anyone who has already learned the word. Changing the English term is (I believe) the lesser of two evils, even if it means keeping a very obscure German term.

70

Hi @Rawrren,

You’ve just reminded me that I didn’t like level 4 either :slight_smile:

Even better might be (IMO) to have the German term - including abbreviation - followed by the English translation. Because I remember having to look those up anyway, which was really annoying. And what’s the point knowing the German term if you don’t know what it means?

Any objections, anyone?

71

Wow I didn’t even click that they were lacking a translation haha - sounds good to me :slight_smile:

72

sich einer Sache erledigen is wrong and you were right to remove it, but sich einer Sache entledigen is reflexive and means roughly to get rid of sth. Therfore I think that the original entry had a typo (erledigen vs. entledigen).

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73

Sorry, @Foorgol. That serves me right for skimming your post too quickly! :flushed:

And now it makes sense! I will add sich einer Sache entledigen to my next update. Thank you so much :slight_smile:

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74

Great to see that you are getting more input on this forum, @simonthomaswarner!

And especially that we have a native speaker of German :smiley: Not just impostors like me LOL

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75

As luck (?) has it I actually work in the field of anaesthesia and checked with a colleague (who writes publications about that stuff) that the scientific usage for narkotisieren is indeed anesthetize.

Checking pubmed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed I get loads (about 64,000) of examples like this:

Metabolism and distribution of pharmacological homoarginine in plasma and main organs of the anesthetized rat versus 312 examples that use narcotized

And you are right: a native speaker who is not exactly working in the field would always use “betäuben”, but I get your point of not wanting to change too many German terms.

Anyway: You are doing a great job, I think I might drop by every now and then :slight_smile:

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76

@Foorgol, I cannot argue with that! I will define anaesthetise first, with narcotise as a secondary translation.

And please do hang around. :slight_smile:

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77

UPDATE 10

Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in to…
Advanced German Vocabulary: Course Update 10

In this week’s mind-numbing episode:

  • corrections to several smelling pistakes (that’s a joke, btw)
  • changes suggested by @Foorgol and @Rawrren
  • and many more things that I can’t be bothered to mention

And now that I’ve made the world a better place (grammatically, at least), it’s time for a spot of lunch.

Though I think I’ll lay off the coffee for a while. :crazy_face:

CHANGES TO ENGLISH

Level 44

narkotisieren: ‘to drug (medical), dope’ becomes ‘to anaesthetise, narcotise (med.)’

Level 59

der Kater: ‘hangover’ becomes 'hangover, tomcat’
das ist müßig: ‘The point is moot.’ becomes 'that’s pointless / futile’
die Kreuzigung: ‘crucifixtion’ becomes ‘crucifixion’ [SPELLING]

Level 60

die Vorstellung: ‘screening (of a film)’ becomes 'imagination, notion, showing (e.g. film, theatre)'
hauen: ‘to carve’ becomes 'to chop, hew, carve (stone)'
sich entfalten: ‘to unfold’ becomes 'to develop, unfold, unfurl’
die Zeile: ‘line’ becomes 'line (of a poem, document), row’
ergreifend: ‘moving’ becomes 'moving, poignant, gripping’
etwas in Frage stellen: ‘to put something in question’ becomes ‘to call something into question’

Level 62

prellen: ‘to cheat, con’ becomes 'to cheat, con; to bruise’
unser tägliches Brot: ‘our bread and butter’ becomes 'our daily bread’
der Ausblick: ‘a look ahead’ becomes ‘outlook, view, prospect’

CHANGES TO GERMAN

Level 60

das Nachschlagwerk becomes das Nachschlagewerk [SPELLING]
die Schattenseiten becomes die Schattenseite

CHANGES TO ENGLISH AND GERMAN

Level 4

u. U.: ‘unter Umständen’ becomes u.U. (unter Umständen): 'in some circumstances’
d. h.: ‘das heißt’ becomes d.h. (das heißt): 'that is to say (i.e.)'
i. A.: ‘im Auftrag’ becomes i.A. (im Auftrag): 'commissioned by’
vgl.: ‘vergleich’ becomes vgl. (vergleich): 'compare (cf.)'
z. T.: ‘zum Teil’ becomes z.T. (zum Teil): 'in part’
sog.: ‘sogenannt’ becomes sog. (sogenannt): 'so-called’
bzw.: ‘beziehungsweise’ becomes bzw. (beziehungsweise): ‘respectively (resp.); or rather; more specifically’

NEW ENTRIES ADDED

Level 58

sich einer Sache entledigen: ‘to rid oneself of something, to dispose of a matter’

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78

Hello German learners and speakers!

On level 65, I’ve discovered the phrase “eine Erkundigung ziehen,” which is translated as “to make an enquiry.”

Can anyone (@amanda-norrsken, @Foorgol) please confirm or deny whether this is correct, as I can’t find any evidence for it?

If not, could you please suggest a better German phrase? (I supposed just “sich erkundigen” would do…)

Thank you all!

79

I have never heard of this phrase, but it might be something very bureaucratic, I suppose? That might only appear in a particular type of written document, perhaps?

Have you used Google Advanced Search to see if this exactly this phrase comes up anywhere?

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80

There is the expression: “Erkundigungen einziehen”

see: 1.
http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/einziehen
Bedeutungen, Beispiele und Wendungen
10. einholen, einfordern; sich geben lassen
…… Erkundigungen [über jemanden, etwas] einziehen

see: 2.

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