German questions

[azhong]

Q: How can I express the emphasis on the "ever" in "whenever", "whoever", "whatever", etc in German?
Wenn mein Bruder redet, redet er über Geld, Geld und noch mehr Geld.
(Whenever my brother talks, he talks about money, money and more money.

Q: I am unsure about the usage of "entlang" (along). It seems to be flexible in its position and the case of the noun following it. What if my sentences below? Are these expressions all grammatical?
Manchmal fahre ich Fahrrad entlang das Flussufer/ entlang dem Flussufer/ entlang des Flussufers.
(Sometimes I go biking along the bank.
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um entlang das Flussufer / entlang dem Flussufer / entlang des Flussufers zu joggen.
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um das Flussufer entlang / dem Flussufer entlang / des Flussufers entlang zu joggen.
(I put up my sport shoes to jog along the riverbank.

More: show

entlang +Akk./Dat./Gen.: prep. along
das Flussufer: riverbank
– das Ufer: bank, shore; pl. -
– der Fluss: river pl. Flüsse
die Sportschuhe: sport shoes

Thank you.

[cedh]

Q: How can I express the emphasis on the "ever" in "whenever", "whoever", "whatever", etc in German?
Wenn mein Bruder redet, redet er über Geld, Geld und noch mehr Geld.
(Whenever my brother talks, he talks about money, money and more money.)

You could use immer for this kind of emphasis. In this sentence, it could appear in three different positions. The first and second options are both very natural, with slightly different connotations:

(1). Immer wenn mein Bruder redet, redet er über Geld, Geld und noch mehr Geld.
(Whenever my brother talks, he talks about money, money and more money.)

(2) Wenn mein Bruder redet, redet er immer über Geld, Geld und noch mehr Geld.
(When my brother talks, he always talks about money, money and more money.)

The third option is literary style and sounds somewhat old-fashioned, you might still encounter it in journalistic texts occasionally, but probably not very often in colloquial speech anymore. Also note that this variant requires wann instead of wenn:

(3) Wann immer mein Bruder redet, redet er über Geld, Geld und noch mehr Geld.
(Whenever my brother talks, he talks about money, money and more money.)

Q: I am unsure about the usage of "entlang" (along). It seems to be flexible in its position and the case of the noun following it. What if my sentences below? Are these expressions all grammatical?
Manchmal fahre ich Fahrrad entlang das Flussufer/ entlang dem Flussufer/ entlang des Flussufers.
(Sometimes I go biking along the bank.)
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um entlang das Flussufer / entlang dem Flussufer / entlang des Flussufers zu joggen.
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um das Flussufer entlang / dem Flussufer entlang / des Flussufers entlang zu joggen.
(I put up my sport shoes to jog along the riverbank.)

Typically, entlang takes the accusative when used as a postposition, and the genitive when used as a preposition. Of course, the genitive is currently in the process of being replaced by the dative in most positions, and as such, prepositional entlang can usually also take the dative. In my own usage, both the genitive and the dative feel natural, but I'd prefer the genitive in writing and the dative in speech:

Manchmal fahre ich Fahrrad entlang das Flussufer / entlang dem Flussufer / entlang des Flussufers.
(Sometimes I go biking along the bank.)

Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um entlang das Flussufer / entlang dem Flussufer / entlang des Flussufers zu joggen.
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um das Flussufer entlang / dem Flussufer entlang / des Flussufers entlang zu joggen.
(I put up my sport shoes to jog along the riverbank.)


By the way: The most natural option for these two specific example sentences (for me) would be to use am instead of the bare article:
Manchmal fahre ich Fahrrad am Flussufer entlang.
Ich zog meine Sportschuhe an, um am Flussufer entlang zu joggen.

[Creyeditor]

I think the most natural option for me would be the following for the last two sentences.

Manchmal fahr ich am Fluss Fahrrad.

Ich zog meine Turnschuhe an, um am Fluss zu joggen.

[azhong]

I saw this sentence in Duden:
Wir gingen entlang schöner Wälder.
(we walked along beautiful forests.M.PL.GEN)

So I think it should be okay to make a sentence like,

(We jogged along the river.)
Wir joggten entlang des Flusses.
Wir joggten den Fluss entlang.

Are they natural? Thank you.

[Linguoboy]

I saw this sentence in Duden:
Wir gingen entlang schöner Wälder.
(we walked along beautiful forests.M.PL.GEN)

So I think it should be okay to make a sentence like,

(We jogged along the river.)
Wir joggten entlang des Flusses.
Wir joggten den Fluss entlang.

Are they natural? Thank you.

IANANS (I Am Not A Native Speaker) but the sentence "Wir joggten entlang des Flusses" doesn't sound very natural to me because joggen is a colloquial verb and the use of the genitive case with prepositions sound literary to me; in effect, you're mixing two different speech registers here.

If you search both "entlang des Flusses" and "den Fluss entlang" in a dictionary app with usage examples, such as Linguee, you should notice a contrast between the kinds of sentence where one appears and the kinds of sentences with the other.

[azhong]

masculine, feminine or neuter.

Q: Does the plural form of Blatt have any relationship to its gender or to the double "t" at the end of it?
das Blatt: leaf; Blätter
I am wondering if it's a sub-formula out of this one:
der Sack: sack, bag; pl. Säcke
der Baum: tree; Bäume
der Sohn：son; Söhne

Also, the three words seem to have a similar formula in their plural form
die Hand; Hände
die Wand: wall; Wände
die Stadt pl. Städte,
and the formula is different from another one I think is more common: placing no umlaut but just adding -en, or adding -n if "e" is already there:
die Frau: woman pl.: die Frauen
die Richtung pl.: die Richtungen
die Wolke; pl. Wolken
die Familie pl.: die Familien
Q: Does the umlaut in the three "exceptions" have any relationship to their similar word endings, -d and -dt?

Or just ignore the two questions if you think what's helpful to me is to memorize the plural forms one by one. Thank you.

[Estav]

masculine, feminine or neuter.

Q: Does the plural form of Blatt have any relationship to its gender or to the double "t" at the end of it?
das Blatt: leaf; Blätter
I am wondering if it's a sub-formula out of this one:
der Sack: sack, bag; pl. Säcke
der Baum: tree; Bäume
der Sohn：son; Söhne

It does have to do with its gender: the plural ending -er, which always triggers umlaut if possible, does not occur on feminine nouns. It's unpredictable though whether a masculine or neuter noun forms its plural with -er or some other way.

[azhong]

"Morgen gehe ich wieder zu diesem kleinen Teich zurück. / *1) Morgen möchte ich wieder zu diesem kleinen Teich dorthin zurück."
( "I'm going back to that little pond again tomorrow." (from <The Trumpet Of The Swan> by E. B. White))

*1) Both are possible, but the first version is closer to the original.

So does the gehen in zurückgehen here doesn't imply "to walk"? Or does it still imply that meaning (and you happen to know the story plot)?

To avoid pitfalls, a good rule of thumb is to use gehen for movement only if you'd say walk in English. gehen can sometimes be used for movement that is not walking, but in much fewer circumstances than English go,

[Travis B.]

About gehen and walk, the thing is that in English one generally does not use walk unless one wants to emphasize the act of walking; normally in English one uses go. So would you use fahren in German just because one would not use walk for something in English, even though one would be physically walking to do so? That seems kind of odd.

Take the following:

Ich gehe in den Laden.

Would you use that instead of

Ich fahre zum Laden.

if one one were physically walking to the store, even if in English one would say:

I am going to the store.

rather than:

I am walking to the store.

which feels kind of unnatural to me as a native English-speaker?

[Linguoboy]

Q: Does the plural form of Blatt have any relationship to its gender or to the double "t" at the end of it?
das Blatt: leaf; Blätter

It has nothing to do with the final consonant; it does have something to do with the gender. This probably more explanation than you want, Azhong, but I think it will be interesting to others. If you don't care about the historical details, you can just skip to the link at the end.

The language ancestral to German (and English), Proto-Germanic, has a class of nouns which are known as the "z-declension". These nouns were all neuter and had a distinctive form of stem alternation: In the nominative/accusative singular, they ended in *-az. But when other endings were added (e.g. genitive singular *-iz, nominative/accusative plural *-ō), this stem became *-iz-. For instance, taking the noun *kalbaz "calf", the genitive is *kalbiziz and the nominative/accusative plural is *kalbizō.

In the transition from Proto-Germanic to Proto-West-Germanic (also an ancestor of both German and English), final syllables were lost or altered and this *z became *ʀ. The Proto-West-Germanic forms corresponding to those above are *kalb [final syllable dropped], *kalbiʀi [final *-z dropped], and *kalbiʀu [final vowel shifted].

At this point, the ancestors of English and German begin to diverge. Old English has the forms ċealf, ċealfes, ċealfru, which give rise to Middle English calf, calves, calvere. Then a process of analogical levelling sets in whereby less-frequent plural endings like -ere get replaced by the default ending -(e)s. This results in the modern alternation: calf, calves.

Things go a different direction in Old High German, where i-umlaut is more widespread than in Old English. i-umlaut is a phenomenon by which vowels change based on the vowels which come after them. One of the most common effects is /a/ > /e/ before /i/. This leads to an alternation in the Old High German paradigm: The corresponding forms are now: kalb, kalbes, but nom/acc plural kelbir.

However, that's not the only divergence. Old High German nouns also show the effects of analogy, but in the opposite direction: Whereas English has mostly analogical levelling (whereby distinctive endings get replaced with a single default ending), German has more analogical extension (whereby distinctive endings get added to words where they weren't found before). You see, one of the most common pattern for neuter nouns in Old High German is something called the a-stem declension. The name comes from the fact that in Proto-Germanic, these nouns ended in *-ą in the nominative/accusative singular. (E.g. *wurdą "word", *bladą "leaf".) The nominative/accusative plural was *-ō.

In Proto-West-Germanic, the *-ą was lost and the plural *-ō was shortened to *-u. This *-u was a short vowel and it was easily lost, especially after consonant clusters like the /rd/ in word. As a result, in Old English we see the forms word and word, with no difference between singular and plural. Similarly, in Old High German, the single form wort is both singular and plural. PWG *blad does slightly better; in Old English, it retains the distinct plural blædu. This should have turned to blade in Middle English, but then analogical levelling strikes and it gets an additonal s-ending, leading to alternation blade ~ blades.

Things go a different direction in Old High German. Here the pattern exemplified by kalb ~ kelbir gets extended to monosyllabic neuter nouns originally belonging to the a-stem declension. OHG blat gets the analogical plural bletir even though there was no ancestral form **bladiʀu. In the Middle High German period, this pattern is extended to wort as well and we get wörter[*]. About a dozen masculine nouns get caught up in this analogical extension as well, resulting in der Gott ~ die Götter, der Wald ~ die Wälder, etc. But the vast majority are monosyllabic neuter nouns.

I am wondering if it's a sub-formula out of this one:
der Sack: sack, bag; pl. Säcke
der Baum: tree; Bäume
der Sohn：son; Söhne

Yup, this is a common pattern for monosyllabic masculine nouns. There are about 30 feminines in this class--you found three of them!--as well as one neuter (Floß "raft").

die Frau: woman pl.: die Frauen
die Richtung pl.: die Richtungen
die Wolke; pl. Wolken
die Familie pl.: die Familien

This is the default pattern for feminine nouns. Over 90% of them simply add -n or -en.

Q: Does the umlaut in the three "exceptions" have any relationship to their similar word endings, -d and -dt?

I doubt it, given that there are also examples like die Kuh ~ die Kühe and die Nuss ~ die Nüsse. There are also monosyllabic feminine nouns ending in /d/ or /t/ which have regular -en plurals like die Art ~ die Arten and die Brut ~ die Bruten.

Or just ignore the two questions if you think what's helpful to me is to memorize the plural forms one by one.

There are some patterns you can learn. This article has a helpful summary of them: https://germanwithlaura.com/plurals/.

[*] Wort is unusual in German in having two distinct plurals, one from the analogical extension of the umlaut + -er pattern and one from the extension of the masculine ending -e.

[azhong]

"the "z-declension"... all neuter...: *-az.NOM/ACC, ...But when other endings were added (e.g. genitive singular *-iz, nominative/accusative plural *-ō), this stem became *-iz-. For instance, ... *kalbaz "calf"... *kalbaziz.GEN, *kalbizō.PL"

Q: is *kalbaziz a typo? According to your narration, the stem should became *-iz- now and thus, plus the *-iz- ending, it should be *kalbiziz?

To summarize roughly, you've introduced the history of one of the rules to pluralize a German noun:
mostly neuter + monosyllabic: -er with an umlaut.

It comes from
kalb -> kelbir (a stem change in z-declension)
blat -> bletir (an analogical extension to a-syem declension)
and as the result,
das Blatt; Blätter

Q: Does the masculine ending -e with an umlaut
(e.g. der Sack ; Säcke)
have any relationship in the linguistic history with the neuter ending -er with an umlaut
(e.g. das Blatt; Blätter)?

[Linguoboy]

"the "z-declension"... all neuter...: *-az.NOM/ACC, ...But when other endings were added (e.g. genitive singular *-iz, nominative/accusative plural *-ō), this stem became *-iz-. For instance, ... *kalbaz "calf"... *kalbaziz.GEN, *kalbizō.PL"

Q: is *kalbaziz a typo? According to your narration, the stem should became *-iz- now and thus, plus the *-iz- ending, it should be *kalbiziz?

Good catch. Yes, that should be *kalbiziz.

To summarize roughly, you've introduced the history of one of the rules to pluralize a German noun:
mostly neuter + monosyllabic: -er with an umlaut.

It comes from
kalb -> kelbir (a stem change in z-declension)
blat -> bletir (an analogical extension to a-syem declension)
das Blatt; Blätter

Correct. The -er ending has also been extended to other declensions as well, e.g. der Feld, die Felder (u-stem), der Mann, die Männer (consonant stem), das Gespenst, die Gespenster (ja-stem).

[Linguoboy]

Q: Does the masculine ending -e with an umlaut
(e.g. der Sack ; Säcke)
have any relationship in the linguistic history with the neuter ending -er with an umlaut
(e.g. das Blatt; Blätter)?

Not really. Keep in mind that i-umlaut could be caused by an *i in an unstressed syllable due to any reason. The historical z-stems weren't the only nouns to contain one. There were also the so-called "i-stems" like OHG gast, pl. gesti which goes back to the Proto-Germanic alternation *gastiz, *gastīz. The final -*z is lost in Proto-West-Germanic and then in the transition to Old High German, *-i is lost in the nominative/accusative and plural/oblique *-ī is shortened to -i, which causes i-umlaut. In Middle High German, this -i is reduced to a shwa (spelled -e), but the vowel affection remains. (Modern German der Gast, die Gäste).

Again, since this leads to a very salient plural ending (particular since final shwas were dropped in most Upper German varieties--viz. Luxemburgish de Gaascht, déi Gäscht), the pattern was extended to nouns from other classes. Sack, for instance, isn't even a native German word at all but an early borrowing of Latin saccus. Nacht belongs to the consonantal declension and originally has the same nom/acc form for both singular and plural, i.e. OHG naht. (Already from the first attestations, the OHG consonant declension was on the way out and its members were being reassigned to other declensions.) It's one of the roughly 30 feminine nouns which end up adopting this pattern. Another is die Brust, die Brüste, historically also a consonant stem but which ends up being treated as an i-stem in OHG.

Another thing these nouns all have in common is that they are overwhelmingly monosyllabic. There are a few two-syllable nouns with umlaut plurals (e.g. der Irrtum, die Irrtümer; die Mutter, die Mütter and other kinship terms ending in -er), but otherwise multisyllabic nouns only take umlaut if they are compounds with an umlauting noun as the final member, e.g. der Hodensack, die Hodensäcke; die Sternennacht, die Sternennächte; die Repetierarmbrust, die Repetierarmbrüste.

[azhong]

(Earlier today I posted a question here about the linguistic history of umlaut. Then, I remembered I've not read yet the i-umlaut webpage Linguoboy linked in his previous post. After reading the page in it's Chinese version, I found my answer. Then I read another related page "ablaut". I didn't really understand everything mentioned in the two articles; my college major was electronical engineering. However, the fundamental knowledge Linguoboy had introduced helped me a lot to understand these two pages.

Linguoboy was not a moderator in that forum where I met him, and I met him because he came to me actively, to reply my questions over questions and correct my writing practices over writing practices. He provided his help so frequently to many members that I saw members announce in their signatures they wanted to thank Linguoboy (and some other helpers).

The post to introduce i-umlaut that Linguoboy has posted here is a very long passage. It's quite informative but concise as well, and easy to catch the point. To write such an article does cost a lot of time and energy. Linguoboy is a rare "freak" who'd like to provide his free help so diligently and energetically. And his reply is always helpful, maybe more helpful than the person being helped thinks. It's the feeling I have now after reading the wabpages.

I'm not flattering a moderator of this forum; I'm introducing a respectful cybal-pal I've luckily met.

Edit: Correcting grammatical errors and revising a few sentences.

[hwhatting]

"Morgen gehe ich wieder zu diesem kleinen Teich zurück. / *1) Morgen möchte ich wieder zu diesem kleinen Teich dorthin zurück."
( "I'm going back to that little pond again tomorrow." (from <The Trumpet Of The Swan> by E. B. White))

*1) Both are possible, but the first version is closer to the original.

So does the gehen in zurückgehen here doesn't imply "to walk"? Or does it still imply that meaning (and you happen to know the story plot)?

To avoid pitfalls, a good rule of thumb is to use gehen for movement only if you'd say walk in English. gehen can sometimes be used for movement that is not walking, but in much fewer circumstances than English go,

I didn't answer that yet - gehen does imply walking here; I don't know the plot, but I just assumed that the author intended walking; it just seems more natural with a small place like a pond. When I said that the construction is closer to the original, I had in mind that it also uses a verb of motion. You could also have used some other verb that is neutral to the means of mostion, like zurückkehren "to return".

[azhong]

„Eines zu kaufen Eins kaufen. Ich will ein Spielzeug kaufen.“
( “Buy one. I wanna buy a toy.”)

Q: Could you please explain how the eins forms? My previous thought:
one toy.N.ACC -> one + "es": eines.
(also, if
one man.M.NOM -> one + "er": einer
one man.M.AKK -> one + "en"": einen
one flower.F.NOM -> one +"e": eine,
etc)

Ich lerne seit kurzem.DAT*3) Deutsch.

Q: why is it kurzem but not kurze? It comes from kurz, "short(ly)", right?

Thank you.

[hwhatting]

„Eines zu kaufen Eins kaufen. Ich will ein Spielzeug kaufen.“
( “Buy one. I wanna buy a toy.”)

Q: Could you please explain how the eins forms? My previous thought:
one toy.N.ACC -> one + "es": eines.
(also, if
one man.M.NOM -> one + "er": einer
one man.M.AKK -> one + "en"": einen
one flower.F.NOM -> one +"e": eine,
etc)

The long form eines is literary and poetical, it's not something a little boy would say, you rarely will here it in spoken German at all, and even in written German the shortened form eins is more frequent.. I should maybe have marked that blue, not red.

Ich lerne seit kurzem.DAT*3) Deutsch.

Q: why is it kurzem but not kurze? It comes from kurz, "short(ly)", right?

Adjectives have three types of declination. a) free (without accompanying article or pronoun), b) with indefinite article c) with definite article or pronouns:
Singular
Male: NOM a) kurzer b) ein kurzer c) der kurze GEN: a) kurzes (colloquially often kurzen) b) eines kurzen c) des kurzen DAT: a) kurzem b) einem kurzen c) dem kurzen ACC: a) kurzen b) einen kurzen c) den kurzen
Neuter (leaving out the article forms for brevity): NOM / ACC a) b) kurzes c) kurze GEN a) kurzes/ kurzen b) c) kurzen DAT a) kurzem b) c) kurzen
Female: NOM / ACC a) b) c) kurze GEN / DAT a) kurzer b) c) kurzen
Plural (no gender distinction, no distinction between a) and b), as the indefinite article doesn't have a plural form): NOM / ACC a-b) kurze c) kurzen, GEN a-b) kurzer c) kurzen DAT a-b) c) kurzen
So seit kurzem has the free form, as the adjective is not accompanied by an article or a pronoun.

[azhong]

Oh, I see now. it combines with
"das Deutsch":

seit
kurzem.SG.N.DAT.strong declension. Deutsch.N

It didn't come to my mind that "seit kurz" and "Deutsch" can be linked together. In Grammer, the relationship is more "kurz-lernen" but not "kurz-Deutsch".

Thank you for your thorough explanation, H-W (this is much easier to remember than hwhatting.)

Edit: I think I've been inspired: the change of the adjective ending seems to be purely a "convenience" of pronunciation when it's closely followed by a noun, no matter it directly modifies the noun or not.

[hwhatting]

Oh, I see now. it combines with
"das Deutsch":

seit
kurzem.SG.N.DAT.strong declension. Deutsch.N

It didn't come to my mind that "seit kurz" and "Deutsch" can be linked together. In Grammer, the relationship is more "kurz-lernen" but not "kurz-Deutsch".

Thank you for your thorough explanation, H-W (this is much easier to remember than hwhatting.)

Edit: I think I've been inspired: the change of the adjective ending seems to be purely a "convenience" of pronunciation when it's closely followed by a noun, no matter it directly modifies the noun or not.

No, no, no, seit kurzem is not modifying or referring to Deutsch, it's a fixed phrase working as an adverbial phrase. The adjective is in the dative because it's governed by the preposition seit which requires the dative, and it uses the neuter dative form because that is the default for an adjective not modyfying a noun or referring to a noun.

[Linguoboy]

So German, like most European languages, can treat adjectives as nouns through a process called substantivisation or nominalisation. How this works varies. In English, it's rather limited and mostly only applies to adjectives referring to people in the plural (e.g. "the poor in spirit", "the sick and the dying"). In German, however, it's used very extensively for people, objects, abstracts, etc. So while der Deutsche normally refers to a German person, it can refer to other things as well, e.g.:

Und was will mam mit nem Türkischen Pass... der Deutsche ist besser.
"What do you want a Turkish passport for...the German [passport]] is better."

As you can see here, substantivised adjectives are capitalised just like ordinary substantives in German. This is true even when they are used appositively:

Ich möchte etwas Kurzes und Nettes.
"I'd like something short and sweet."

Note that here we have the neuter because there's no specific noun that is being described as kurz and nett. This is what Hans-Werner means when he says that neuter is the default.

There are exceptions to the capitalisation rule, however, and seit kurzem is one. In this expression (and similar ones like vor kurzem "a short while ago"), kurzem functions as a substantivised adjective and is declined accordingly. However, since the phrase as a whole functions as an adverb (parallel to a simple adverb like kürzlich), the convention is not to capitalise kurzem. Examples of similar phrases are seit langem "long since" and seit neuestem "since very recently"