"From the outside?"
Translation:Von außen?
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Basically außen means “on the outside, on the outer surface”, whereas draußen means “not within”. Confer here for more details.
Because außen is an adverb rather than a noun (it is technically possible to turn it into a noun but in normal conversation you probably never hear it).
So, if you said that "Ich komme von Außenseite", would that be correct since it is a noun?
I’m afraid not. For one thing you’d need an article: von der Außenseite. More importantly however, Außenseite quite literally means the outer side of something in German. For example if we’re talking about a window, its Außenseite would be the outer glass pane. It is not used to refer to the general area “outside” – that would be außen or draußen (or as a preposition “outside the window”: außerhalb).
Btw, a small clarification in case my original correction to PhilipMars9 generated confusion: I did not mean that you can’t combine the adverb außen with a preposition like von; in fact you can. What I was trying to say was that an adverb like außen cannot take an article because only nouns take those.
Thank you, AbunPang. Your explanations are always very full, clear and helpful.
Yes. Von außen and von draußen (the latter being the closest equivalent to “from outdoors”, though it is more general and literally means “from a place outside”) both use von.
No, that sounds like an oxymoron because aus literally means “out of”, so you can only go/come aus something if you are in it to begin with.