Answers
Jun 29, 2015 - 04:31 PM
Ok..*cracks knuckles.. :) This is a great question. *disclaimer: I consider myself in no way completely fluent in German so take at your own peril. But I have been studying German for awhile and would like to provide what I think is a satisfactory explanation. "Ich möchte eine Freundin aus den USA anrufen" I would translate to : I want to call a friend (who nationality is American). The friend comes from and was born in the USA. The friend's current location isn't meant. "Ich möchte eine Freundin in den USA anrufen" I would translate to: I want to call a friend (who is currently in the USA). The friend's location is the USA but was not necessarily born there. And here is what I believe is a little nuance: "Ich möchte aus den USA eine Freundin anrufen" I would translate to: I want to call a friend (from the location of the USA). The location in which the speaker wants to call is the USA. Because we switch the word order, it changes the emphasis of the sentence. Having said this however: I believe the original sentence has both the meaning of: The friend comes from the USA or the USA is where he/she would like to make the call from. It is very difficult sometimes with grammatical exercises to gain understanding of context, but in a normal conversation you can normally infer what is meant. Great question, hopefully this helps you!
Jun 30, 2015 - 06:31 AM
Toll! Vielen Dank. I came to appreciate from Latin that inflected languages' word order played a large role in emphasis, and thus overall intention. For me, while German is possibly less inflected than Latin in that respect (SO many endings in Latin!), it seems from your example to use such emphasis to make the meaning less ambiguous...at least for those who are fluent! Someday, with luck (and a lot more study).....
Jul 06, 2015 - 02:20 PM
A sequel to this "ambiguity" thread. In L2S17 there is given the German sentence "Ich habe heute noch ein Treffen für unser Projekt" and the English is given as "I still have a meeting for our project today.". I would suggest that better English would be "I still have a meeting today for our project." since that seems to be the emphasis in the German, i.e. the project's daily meeting. The translation that's given suggests there may be daily projects, i.e., that "today" modifies project rather than meeting. Just a thought.