Saying there in German (da vs. dort vs.

hier)
With 0 Comments Posted on Mar 13 2011 Author Christian Categories: Collocations &
Expressions, Meaning Clarification, Particles, Pronouns, The Posts, Verbs, Word
Usage Tags: da, dort, english, es gibt, german,grammar, hier, languages, learning, marathon
sprachen, sprachen, there

When learning any new languages, one of the hardest things for most people to do is to stop
translating word for word from their first language to the new language. Even if you have a large
vocabulary doing this will still render more incorrect sentences than correct ones. The same is true
from between German and English.

How can one overcome this hurdle? The answer is to learn expressions and grammatical structures.
Within the first two hours of German instruction most people learn that the phrase: Ich mchte
means I would like for ordering.

This week Id like to address one English word that causes confusion and the simple expressions to
learn and avoid many mistakes.

The word there has seven different meanings in English. We often use there, not to suggest a
place, like Over there , but rather as a subject as in There are many public swimming areas in
Zurich. If you look upthere in a German-English dictionary you will find four general translations.
The first two suggest the therefor a place. It is only the third that provides the meaning of there as
a subject in this case es.

Careful! While we translate the there with es, what we are generally wanting to say is something
like:There is a book by Carl Jung about dreams. or There are far too many people in the train. So we
want to express the idea: There is / There are In German this is translated with Es gibt

Because es functions as the subject, gibt does not need to be conjugated.

Ex.

Es gibt eine Bar gleich um die Ecke.

Theres a bar right around the corner.

Dienstags gibt es Live Musik da.*

Theres live music there on Tuesdays.

Wegen die tolle Stimmung gibt es immer viele Gste.*

Because of the good atmosphere there are always many guests.

*Note: The verb gibt is in the second position and because another element is in the first position
(time, reason) the subject comes in the third.
 If you would like to ask a yes/no question ie. Is there ? or Are there ? simply start the sentence
withGibt es ?

Ex.

Gibt es ein Opernhaus in Zrich? Ja, es gibt ein Opernhaus in Zrich.

Is there an opera house in Zurich? Yes, there is an opera house in Zurich.

Gibt es viele aktive Leute in der Schweiz? Ja, es gibt viele aktive Leute in der Schweiz.

Are there many active people in Switzerland. Yes, there are many active people in
Switzerland.
If you would like to practice building sentences with es gibt try out these activities from the
BBC:http://bbc.in/fDRV05

Speaking of there many people ask about the word for there as in a place. Is it da or dort and
what about here, is that hier or da. And if da is there, how can da also be here. It sounds
confusing, but is actually quite simple if we chart it:

hier dort da

In the Southern German speaking realm (Southern Germany, Switzerland and parts of Austria) more
people tend to use da over hier. To avoid confusion either use the more formal variations (youll
always be clear and correct) or use hand gestures.

Reference to da/dort/hier from the Universitt Augsburg: http://bit.ly/gHtNrA

http://marathonsprachen.com/138/

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 dort vs da
seino
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for there, I've seen both 'dort' and 'da' come up in the same lesson - what is the
difference between these? (assuming there is one...)

4 years ago

4 Comments

[deactivated user]

'da' is more general. It can refer to both places and time. 'dort' refers specifically to places.
(think of 'dort' as 'da Ort') e.g. Mnchen? Dort/da habe ich viel Bier getrunken. Letzte
Woche hatte ich Urlaub. Da habe ich mit meinem Sohn viel Tennis gespielt (da = during that
time). There are other uses of 'da,' but I guess too many details won't do any good at this
point :)

4 years ago
 Darien

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I like tho think of "dort" as being like someone pointing to a specific location and saying
"there". "Da" is general, as Ionuion said.

4 years ago

Timmo

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"Da" also has some of the sense of "Here" in English. There is no way you would translate
"Der Winter ist da" into "Winter is there". Maybe this version of "da" might be short for
"dabei". Who knows, only goes to show that German can be slightly ambiguious where it
comes to these/those, this one/that one, here/there.

4 years ago

OsoGegenHest

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They are both from Old High German dar, and thus cognate with the English "there".

Dar ("there") merged with do ("then") to form da. So, it is vague and can refer to time or
place.

Dar gained a t from somewhere and formed the word dort. I guess it's possible there some
influence from the noun Ort. This is a more explicit word for "there" or "yonder". It doesn't
mean "then" or "here". In NW Germany, people don't say it much, and substitute da.

Da combined readily with other words, e.g. darben, which contracts todrben. You can see
this further combined as da drben or dort drben.