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| Wer? Wie? Was?Der! Die! Das!Wieso? Weshalb? Warum? <\/strong><\/p>\n Wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm!<\/p>\n Tausend tolle Sachen,<\/p>\n die gibt es \u00fcberall zu sehen.<\/p>\n Manchmal muss man fragen,<\/p>\n um sie zu verstehen!<\/td>\n Who? How? What?This! That! This!Why? Why? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n | Who doesn\u2019t ask, remains dumb!<\/p>\n Thousands of great things<\/p>\n can be seen everywhere.<\/p>\n Sometime you have to ask<\/p>\n to understand them.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n You have just read the lyrics of the theme of the German version of Sesame Street.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What strikes the eye of the German lyrics are the question words: wieso<\/em><\/strong>, weshalb<\/em><\/strong>, and warum<\/em><\/strong>. A reader of the blog asked what is the difference between these three words because all of them are translated with \u201cwhy\u201d in English.<\/p>\n I checked my German grammar book but couldn\u2019t find a paragraph that discusses this problem. Thereupon, I surfed the net to find some answers and convincing explanations but could not find anything plausible. There are even a lot of native speakers of German (beside me) who ask themselves about the distinctive meaning of each of these question words and they are discussing this topic in various chat forums.<\/p>\n One theory is that the German question word warum<\/em><\/strong> asks for the REASON, wieso<\/em><\/strong> for the CAUSE, and weshalb<\/em><\/strong> for the PURPOSE. I find this explanation far-fetched and very confusing because a reason can also always be the cause and\/or purpose of something. Therefore, I cannot give a satisfactory answer because basically there is no difference between these three question words. In other words, you can use them synonymously.<\/p>\n However, after I thought about that for a while, another German question word came to my mind, which is weswegen<\/em><\/strong>, and I decided to put these four question words to the test. In English, you can ask \u201cWhy are you late?\u201d This has four German translations:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Warum kommst du zu sp\u00e4t?<\/p>\n Wieso kommst du zu sp\u00e4t?<\/p>\n Weshalb kommst du zu sp\u00e4t?<\/p>\n Weswegen kommst du zu sp\u00e4t?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It took me a lot of my Sprachgef\u00fchl<\/em><\/strong> (feeling for language) to recognize a slight difference between these four question words, all meaning \u201cwhy\u201d in English. The words warum<\/em><\/strong> and wieso<\/em><\/strong> are more, let\u2019s say, innocent and open. That is, when you ask a question with warum<\/em><\/strong> or wieso<\/em><\/strong> you indicate that you don\u2019t know whether there is a particular reason at all. For example, children often ask Warum machst du das?<\/em><\/strong> (Why are you doing this?) because they are just curious. Whereas, when you ask your question with weshalb<\/em><\/strong> or weswegen<\/em><\/strong> you already presuppose that there must be a particular reason \u201cwhy something went wrong\u201d or, according to the example above, why someone is late.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hope that was helpful \u2026 ?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wer? Wie? Was?Der! Die! Das!Wieso? Weshalb? Warum? Wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm! Tausend tolle Sachen, die gibt es \u00fcberall zu sehen. Manchmal muss man fragen, um sie zu verstehen! Who? How? What?This! That! This!Why? Why? Why? Who doesn\u2019t ask, remains dumb! Thousands of great things can be seen everywhere. Sometime you have to ask…<\/p>\n |