Relevant xkcd.com/1022

unless i'm missing something, 'so, it has come to this' (or, 'has it come to this?') doesn't mean the same thing as 'is this what it boils down to?'...

Everytime I get a sentence like this, where an idiom or very colloquial phrase is used to introduce a new word I report it and complain about using sentences like this to use new words. So far no reply from the DL German staff, but hopefully if enough people complain they'll tweak the lessons.

It's a really strange way to introduce a new word.

I think the German DL writers must have had some horrible English teachers. So they either do not know any other way or they are getting revenge. Anyway in 5 years they will probably clean this all up. I do not see this abuse in the other DL languages.

The more common usages come up later in the lesson though right? I don't think it matters that much how it is first introduced if the message comes through eventually. That is kind of how the duolingo system works it seems: familiarity.

agree

We're working on better hints for idiomatic phrases. This one can also mean "Is this what it comes to?". Hope that helps! :-)

agree, at least, limit the number of such idioms not to bore us.

Hi, Betty. Have you ever seen a couple have one strange, silly fight after another - then, eventually, finally, the man* says he's not happy and he's leaving? The woman goes 'Ooooooh!' She gets it. What it all boils down to - he's not happy, he's leaving. Everything else was just noise. This is the 'bottom line', 'what it all comes down to'. Take away everything irrelevant, and you are left with the most important, the main message - what it all boils down to.

When we did chemistry at school, sometimes we heated liquids, boiled off the water (or whatever) to see what was left behind. The stuff left in the test tube is LITERALLY 'what it all boils down to'. The important stuff, the main message.

Any help? :)

[*could be the woman, I suppose ... :) ]

I would say it's used like "This is the way things are?" or "This is the situation?" or "This is the scenario right now?"

More like, "Oh, so that's the situation is it?"

that is not the meaning. ...reason is too narrow in meaning. Is this what it has come to ... means more a whole situation.

First the separable verb hinauslaufen; it means literally "to run out" and can be translated literally, but it can also mean the same as is the English "to come down to, to come out to; to result in/with , to end up with".

The literal translation:

• er läuft auf die Straße hinaus = he runs out to the street.

The idiomatic use:

• diese Methode läuft aufs Chaos hinaus = this method will end up with chaos.

Now our full phrase "läuft es darauf hinaus?":

• läuft es ... hinaus? = does it come out to .....? ;
• darauf = onto; onto it.

Finally the full literal translation: does it come out onto it?

The trouble is that with some idiomatic phrases even when they are broken down word by word - it still doesn't make much sense and also the individual prepositions have different meanings to their usual ones.

Not at all. Lots of idioms are rather abstract. If you learn with a view to the communicative/conversational level, I really can't see how focusing too much on the idioms helps with learning a new foreign language despite them being occasionally lubricant; I have to say before a learner can really sort out the da- adverbs, learning sentences like this can sometimes just be very upset.

There are patterns that can help.

da + preposition = “preposition es/das”

Examples:

dazu = da + zu = “zu es/das”
darauf = da + auf = “auf es/das”
darum = da + um = “um es/das”

Hin and her add direction to some prepositions. Hin adds the meaning towards; her adds the meaning away from.

These patterns can be hard to remember and use, especially because prepositions often don't line up across languages. But they should make it so you don't have to memorize every word.