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- Topic: German >
- "Nein, du bist toll."
31 Comments
"Terrific" is closer than "cool" to the modern meaning of "toll".
The old meaning "toll" = "mad" is outdated and forgotten - it just still exists in a few combinations like "Tollwut" = "rabies"
English "cool" in German is "cool" (often pronounced with a slightly different "oo" -more straightforward, less of a diphtong - and the "l" a little bit more to the front of the mouth.)
I don't know about toll meaning mad but vutand is the German word for angry. I hope I spelled it correctly.
When the person said "mad" they meant in the sense of "insane." Have you sometimes heard people say, "Have you gone mad?"
I've also been told by germans that "geil" is another way of saying "awesome". this true?
In principle, yes.
But that word originally meant "horny, sexually excited" and so some people consider the word rather crude.
So be careful when you use it. (Just like you probably wouldn't say "This new game is the ❤❤❤❤!" to just everybody, for example.)
I feel sorry for the woman who had to say this stuff . Or am i being dumb and sie ist ein komputer
The "big" courses use text-to-speech (German, French, etc.) The other courses are recorded by voice actors.
294
Whenever this word comes up in audio, I hear the same thing you do: a definite "oi" sound.
It's neither "toll" /toʊl/ nor "toil" /tɔɪl/ but somewhere in between, approximately "tawl" /tɔl/.
Has anyone had the same issues as me, where it refuses to accept your translation even thought it is completely identical to their one? Its very frustrating.
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Usually the problem is its asking you to "write" the german words you hear and you're "translating" the words you hear.
When it isn't that, then the article is incorrect.
I wrote toll with single l "tol" and duolingo said that it is correct. How can I learn language with these incorect samples? Sometimes it hapened also with a missing umlaut in some words.
Why is it that sometimes ist is used for are instead of sind or seid?
ist is third person singular -- he, she, it.
Do you have an example sentence you are thinking of where "sometimes ist is used for are"?
Besides words where German uses a singular word but English uses a plural word, e.g. die Hose ist blau = the pants are blue / das Gemüse ist teuer = the vegetables are expensive?
How do you know when to use du versus ihr?
Use du when speaking to one person.
Use ihr when speaking to several people.
Du is informal and should only be used if you know the person well. Ihr really means you all and Sie is the formal way to say you and should always be used if you don't know the person very well, otherwise Du is considered to be rude.
Does toll mean great as in Romance languages? (great = grande = colossus = big = optimus = wonderful person)
