Show and welcome to another German Word of the Day – What is the Difference Special. And today, we’ll look at the difference between kennen and wissen A real problem. Unless your mother tongue is Spanish. Or Italian. Or French. Or Portuguese. wissen vs kennenWhen you look for the difference between wissen and kennen online, you’ll likely find something that talks about the “kinds of knowing”. Like…. “wissen is about facts while kennen is more about being acquainted with something or someone.” “Wissenis for information that is expressed using a verb.” Tadah! I’m really proud actually :).
In the first sentence, we know an entity – a speaking tree. So we use kennen. In the second example, we know verb-based information the fact “Trees don’t talk.” And so we use wissen.
At least to me, the two parts in this statement express basically the same. Just the phrasing is different. So making a decision which translation to use based on meaning is kind of
difficult.
The first one is kennenbecause her is an entity, the second is wissen because it is a sentence. Pretty simple, right?
Using kennen in such sentences is just wrong; even if to be acquainted/familiar would work in English.
Kennen is used a lot with names, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a person or a song or a CD or a book.
And we cannot say:
Even if we know every second, every line of dialog, every shot, and every plot hole of the movie, the sentence would still be wrong simply because The Rise of Skywalker is a name. An entity.
We could respond using either verb here.
And they do NOT mean the same.
The kennen-version means that I myself can’t sleep at full moon either. It is kind of like a short version of
Cool. Exceptions… sortaBehold the example :)
Based on what we’ve learned, this should be kennen. And kennen is indeed the better choice. But people use wissen, too.
Both sentences can express exactly the exact same thing. The kennen-version has a second notion though. It can also mean that we’re familiar with the way in sense that we’ve gone
that way a few times already. We’re familiar with it.
Again, kennen sounds better to me but people do use wissen as well. Both can mean the same but also here, the kennen-version could theoretically express something else. It could mean that we’ve heard that name before, that we’re familiar with the name itself. Like…
The wissen-version only means that we know how someone is called. So essentially the wissen-versions are purely about how the world is, the kennen-versions are more ambiguous and can express general acquaintance with a thing. But in these examples they’re usually used just like the wissen-version. So the structural aspect kind of beats the meaning-aspect. If you know a noun, then you use kennen, even if being acquainted is not really the focus.
This is clearly about a fact and still both versions have about the same amount of hits on Google,and I feel like the kennen-version is the more literary one. Now, there are a few sentences out there, where wissenand kennenare both used with a noun, and mean different things.
Kennen would be about knowing the content of the chapter while the version with wissen is kind of a shortened version of I know which chapter is it?”. So in the end this ties back in with what we had… that wissenworks well with all kinds of questions. Now, there’s one more thing we should mention. German does use the phrase nicht mehr wissen a lot where English uses to not remember something.
And that only works with wissen, regardless of whether we’re dealing with verb-based information like in the example we just had, or with a noun.
The kennen-version would sound super odd and serious… like… “Name! You’ve changed! I don’t even know you anymore.” But on the whole I think going by structure is an easy and pretty fail safe way to decide which one to use. Here it is in a nutshell…
All right. So this was a pretty mechanical take on wissen and kennen. Mechanical in so far as that you don’t have to think much about what kind of knowing it is. You just look at whether it is an entity or a statement and you make your decision based on that. And that’s it for today. This was a kind of new way to tell wissen and kennen apart. And I’m really curious what you think about it? Does it make sense? Is it easy to apply? Or do you like the other way better? 4.9 38 votes Article Rating Was ist der Unterschied zwischen wissen und Können?Nicht nur allein theoretisches Wissen reicht aus, um erfolgreich zu sein. Wenn Sie wirklich auf dem Arbeitsmarkt überzeugen möchten, erreichen Sie das nur mit Können. Und dieses wiederum erlangen Sie durch die Umsetzung der Theorie, das ständige Üben und die Unterstützung eines erfahrenen Experten.
Können wissen kennen?In diesem Beitrag erkläre ich dir, was der Unterschied zwischen den 3 Verben ist.. Kennen. Kennen + Nomen / Pronomen. ... . Wissen. Wissen + Nebensatz Mit „wissen“ spreche ich über genauere Informationen. ... . Können. Können + Sprachen und Fähigkeiten (skills): „Ich kann kein Englisch, aber ich kann gut Deutsch.. |