Uninflected words used in colloquial spoken German From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
German modal particles (German: Modalpartikel or Abtönungspartikel) are uninflected words that are used mainly in the spontaneous spoken language in colloquial registers in German. Their dual function is to reflect the mood or the attitude of the speaker or the narrator and to highlight the sentence's focus.
Often, a modal particle has an effect that is vague and depends on the overall context. Speakers sometimes combine several particles, as in doch mal, ja nun or ja doch nun mal. It is a feature typical of the spoken language.
Most German words can be translated into English without any problems but modal particles are a challenge to translate because English has no real equivalent to them.
Halt, eben and einmal (in this context always in full) and nun einmal (shortened: nun mal) imply that the often-unpleasant fact expressed in a sentence cannot be changed and must be accepted. Halt and nun mal are more colloquial than eben. In English, they could be rendered by "as a matter of fact" or "happen to":
Einmal, shortened to mal (literally "once", roughly "for once")[a] primarily indicates that the speaker dispenses with temporal precision, it can indicate a certain immediacy to the action or even imply a command. On the other hand, it can give a kind of casualness to a sentence and so makes it sound less blunt:
Ja ("you know"/"everyone knows"/"I already told you") indicates that the speaker thinks that the fact should already be known to the listener and intends the statement to be more of a reminder or conclusion:
Doch can have several meanings. (See also Yes and no § Three-form systems.) It can be used affirmatively or to convey emphasis, urgency or impatience. It can also be a reply to a real, imagined, or pre-emptively-answered disagreement, hesitation, or wrong assumption on the part of the listener or other people. In other situations, it can have different effects.
Conversely, doch can also express doubt and in writing, the affirmative and the doubtful meanings may be ambiguous and depend on context. In speech, the different meanings of doch can be told apart by different types of emphasis:
In that way, doch can be similar to stressed schon ("indeed"), but stressed schon implies an actual qualification of the statement, which is often made explicit by a phrase with aber ("but"):
That should not be confused with the adverbial meaning of the unstressed schon, "already". However, at least in writing, schon "already" must be either made unmistakable by the context, such as by additional adverbs, or replaced by its equivalent, bereits:
In other contexts, doch indicates that the action described in the sentence is unlikely to occur:
Gar is used to intensify a statement, the completeness or a total lack of something:
At the beginning of a sentence, especially in literary contexts, gar sometimes has a different meaning and is often interchangeable with sogar or ganz:
Rein often precedes gar to point out the total lack of something:
Total, besides its use as an adjective and adverb, can also act as a modal particle indicating irony. It is best translated as "well", "really" or "let me think...":
Aber, when not as a conjunction, is very similar to doch and conveys a meaning of disagreement to a previously stated or implied assertion. Alternatively aber can be used to show surprise:
Sowieso, ohnehin or eh, meaning "anyway(s)", implies an emphasized assertion. Especially in Southern German, eh is colloquially most common. All these can be enforced by a preceding doch:
Vielleicht, as a modal particle, is used for emphasis and should not be confused with the adverb vielleicht, meaning "perhaps":
But:
Fei, which is no longer recognised as the adverb fein "finely", is a particle peculiar to Upper German dialects. It denotes that the speaker states that something important might be a surprise for the listener. Giving an adequate translation even into Standard German is difficult, and the best substitute would probably be to use an understatement with strong affirmative meaning. In English, translations to "I should think" or "just to mention" seem possible depending on context:
Wohl is often used instead of epistemic adverbs, such as vermutlich or wahrscheinlich or to emphasise a strong disagreement. A literal translation with "probably" or at least with "seemingly" is possible:
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