{"id":10101,"date":"2014-06-12T10:48:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T10:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=10101"},"modified":"2014-06-12T10:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T10:48:00","slug":"going-through-the-motions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=10101","title":{"rendered":"Going through the motions"},"content":{"rendered":"

In German there are two main verbs that mean ‘to go’: gehen<\/em>, which is used in expressions about going in general, and particularly going on foot \/ walking; and fahren<\/em>, which refers particularly to going\/travelling in a form of transport (car, train, bus, boat, etc). <\/p>\n

So I could said, “Am Samstag gehe ich nach Berlin” (I’m going to Berlin on Saturday) and this would indicate that I was walking there – which is possible, but would take rather a long time from Bangor. I am actually going to Berlin on Saturday for the Polyglot Gathering<\/a> – getting the train to Manchester Airport, then flying to Berlin via Amsterdam, and getting the bus into Berlin from the airport – so I could say, “Am Samstag fahre ich nach Berlin” (I’m travelling to Berlin on Saturday).<\/p>\n

In Dutch similar verbs exist – gaan<\/em> and varen<\/em> – however they are used in different ways. Varen<\/em> as a verb means ‘to go, to travel, to sail, to navigate, to ride’, and as a noun means sailing. Gaan<\/em> is the generally word for to go, which also means to travel, to ride and to go on foot (te voet gaan<\/em>). So in Dutch I could say, “Op zaterdag ga ik naar Berlijn.” (I’m going to Berlin on Saturday), and this wouldn’t necessarily indicate that I was going on foot. If I said, “Ik vaar naar Berlijn.”, that might indicate that I was going there by boat \/ sailing there – at least that’s how I understand it.<\/p>\n

There’s also my favourite Dutch verb lopen<\/em> (to go, walk, run, march, step, stride, stroll), which seems to be cognate with the German verb laufen<\/em> (to run, go, walk), and I’m sure there are other verbs of motion in both languages.<\/p>\n

Do other languages have separate verbs for different kinds of going?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In German there are two main verbs that mean ‘to go’: gehen, which is used in expressions about going in general, and particularly going on foot \/ walking; and fahren, which refers particularly to going\/travelling in a form of transport (car, train, bus, boat, etc). So I could said, “Am Samstag gehe ich nach Berlin” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,104,116,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dutch","category-english","category-german","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}