27 Comments
I don't know if this has anything to do with the origin of the word, but the way I remember begeistert = excited is to imagine someone being like a geyser, about to blow.
AFAIK, "geist" = "ghost". The German and the English words share the same origin. So, if something has a "geist", it means it has a spirit, or a heart, then it is "enheartened", "animated" (remembering that the Latin word "anima" means "spirit" too), thus "excited".
Because as easy as it is to translate to an english word that "sounds like" the german word, you have to be careful. No one really says "All are excited" in normal english.
All what? All elephants? All bees? All austrians?
It's accepted now. Which I put but does seem unnatural if referring to people. Back translating would 'Jeder ist begeistert' be more normal in German for 'Everyone is excited'?
521
I think it is. It's not typical for conversational speech but for certain written passages or descriptive speech such as coverage of an event, it is certainly used.
I submitted "lively" as a translation for begeistert, which I think should be a valid translation, as it is synonymous with "enthusiastic"- otherwise I think it is a good translation, seeing as how begeistert derives from "Geist"- spirit.
I think enthused should definitely be accepted, its actually a more accurate and literal translation than excited, since the origin of the word enthusiasm is to be possessed by a god or a spirit.
it seems the other day someone said alles is singular, and dictionary says so too
- 25
after almost two decades of on and off german, this is the first time I have ever seen the word for 'excited' in german
just saying
but sind means are.. wouldn't "everyone is excited" be "alle ist begeistert"
- 521
I don't think so. It seems to be just a matter of convention. English and German both treat a lot of collective nouns as singular. But I see more instances in German where the plural is used.
I put down 'everyone is captivated', I thought this could also be used for 'begeistert' and on linguee they do use begeistern as well as the more commonly used gefesselt (both meaning captivate). I'm not sure how wrong I am here, because I have used the word like this in German conversation before. That is not to say that I agree that 'excited' is the better translation here, im just wondering if captivated should also be considered correct.
