"Die Freundin"
Translation:The friend
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the plural of Freund is the same as boyfriend?
That makes no sense.
Freund is a German word. Its plural is Freunde.
"boyfriend" is an English word. Its plural is "boyfriends".
Those plurals are not the same.
Freund in German can mean either "friend" or "boyfriend". When you say mein Freund, it almost always means "my boyfriend", because possessive + singular implies that there is only one person whom the label mein Freund matches -- and since people often have more than one friend but generally just one boyfriend/girlfriend at a time, people will understand mein Freund as "my boyfriend".
Conversely, in the plural, meine Freunde will usually be understood as "my friends" rather than "my boyfriends" -- again, because most people don't have more than one boyfriend at once.
Is there any context in which "mein freund" will clearly, or mostly, be understood as "my friend" rather than "my boyfriend."?
What if I want to address a friend directly? Would it be okay to say "mein freund" since both parties know they are just friends? For example: "Mein Freund, wie geht's dir?"
Thanks in advance :)
die Freundin. I suppose it could mean friend in a wider context, but so far Freundin has been used exclusively as girlfriend, I think they moved the goalposts.