"Läuft es darauf hinaus?"
Translation:Is that what it boils down to?
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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?'...
I see this word the first time in an idiom. Is it used in any non-idiom ways? Shouldn't we learn the most common "normal" usage of the word before learning the idiom? It seems this phrase teaches me nothing about the normal usage of darauf?
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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 agree entirely. This approach is not helpful, and makes it difficult to learn.
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.
Firsly, put idioms in the idioms lesson. Seconly keep the translations consistant. Finally show the article in the dictionary eg m. Hund
We're working on better hints for idiomatic phrases. This one can also mean "Is this what it comes to?". Hope that helps! :-)
I think idiomatic phrases should come with their literal translation as well. It would make it much easier to understand the regular usage of the words that form them, and it would help to shed some light on the culture in which they live. Trying to teach them like single blocks that translate to completely unrelated blocks in another language doesn't make much sense.
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I agree. Both together would be useful. Either the literal words alone or the idiom alone is not very helpful. With both the individual words and also the entire phrase, students could probably make the connection between the words and the phrase AND remember the idiom better.
I agree completely. I would like to see both the literal and the idiomatic translation. Great suggestion!
Hi, Myra. I love idiomatic phrases - when I understand WHY they mean what they mean. Perhaps a separate section for idioms like this, where there is extra time/space to give more details on meaning. If not, this is just a list of words put together in a way I don't really understand, and will struggle to remember.
I know some of the really clever students think frustration helps people to learn. I've spent a lot of time teaching - that is not my experience at all. Anything you can do to help will be appreciated.
Thanks, :)
Thank you for this on the idiomatic phrases! I’d love to see this kind of hinting on more of them; this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I think a lesson should be provided to clarify these da + (auf, an, nach, in...) words
This might help you:
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Giving us the entire idiomatic phrase is much better than giving us hints for a bunch of words that don't add up, but maybe Duo can provide both. Thanks, at least, for the idiom hint.
Better hints won't really help. We're instead learning the entire idiom as if it was one word. I just don't fell it has its place here to introduce words, since we just learn the phrase, not the word. The "Idioms" bonus skill is a good example of how clumsy the Duo format is for teaching this, so play to the format's strengths -- and let the learners learn the idioms from outside sources because the one's who really want to speak the language know Duo alone won't cut it anyway.
by the way, the Man pronounciation in the learning section is not German, his German pronounciation is very poor
This is an idiom, idioms should be left out of normal lessons to learn word usage :(.
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?
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they should put this answer at the very beginning before of all the other answers. Danke schön margusoja!
https://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/hinauslaufen+auf.html» hinauslaufen | auf
to result in something. to boil down to sth. [fig.]
to amount to, to add up to, to be equivalent to, to be tantamount to, to come to [amount to]
auf nichts hinauslaufen to amount to nothing
auf das Gleiche hinauslaufen to amount to the same thing
auf ein Verbrechen hinauslaufen to amount to a crime
auf ein Vergehen hinauslaufen to amount to an offense
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Does this sentence mean "Is this the reason for it?"? The English translations provided here are also idioms. As a non-native speaker, I'm not sure I get it.
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?"
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that is not the meaning. ...reason is too narrow in meaning. Is this what it has come to ... means more a whole situation.
No, it doesn't mean that. As an example of how it might be used (and one of the few times it is) imagine if it were the final penalty in a shoot-out, or the last play in an American football game, where the result could be changed by the penalty/play. Everything depends on the next action - "it all boils down to this".
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Yes, it would be good to have the thing broken down word by word in translation. Otherwise we really just learn the whole thing if that and don't know what the individual words mean.
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.
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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.
in the hints it says "is this what is comes to", i think it should say "is this what it comes to"..
so can this sentence not be translated as: "is it what it comes down to?" (it was marked wrong)
We need the literal translation and then an explanation of the idiom if you are going to teach this way
If we accept a slightly less colloquial translation - "that is what it comes to" we can get some equivalence between the words and the meaning. My literal translation would be something like - "subsequently, it runs out"
DL sneaks in idioms in the Italian course. I have found that the best way to deal with idioms is to just write them down and try to remember them. Remember , idioms often make little literal sense when translated into or from any language.
That's exactly what I was thinking.. One has to write down these idioms and memorize them.
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What method did you use to learn all these "crazy" constructs like darauf (hereof?) and hinaus (back-out?). Maybe I'm doing it wrong but even after 6 months I have no grasp of these.
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.
i am sorry but course of ''adverb 3'' is really horrible in teaching. Sincerely, i even forgot the adverbs i know due to strange idioms.
https://www.dict.cc/?s=hinauslaufen Accepting that the verb means " to result in", "imply", "come to", the idiom is not so outrageous: "Is it resulting on that". "Is that what it boils down to?"
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the hint also says "is this what is comes to" which I assume is a typo but "is this what IT comes to" is not accepted.
The German sentence absolutely does not mean what the English sentence is saying. The German sentence translated is: " IT RUNS OUT ON IT".. I have no idea what it means.. But most certainly not anything close to the German sentence.
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A literal translation is often not correct (especially, I am finding, in German). According to my German source, the given English is a quite acceptable translation of the meaning of the German sentence.