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A2  ·  40 Wörter

Quantities and proportions

Halves, percentages, rises and falls — and the words for saying roughly how much.

This is the vocabulary of saying how much of something there is, and it is worth more than it looks. It covers the fractions, the verbs for a quantity going up or down, and — most usefully — the hedges: ungefähr, etwa, knapp, gut. Two of those go in opposite directions and are easy to confuse: knapp zwei Stunden is a little under two hours and gut zwei Stunden is a little over.

Die Wörter

Verb (8)

steigento riseVerbB1
Die Preise steigen weiter.Prices keep rising.
sinkento fall, to sinkVerbB1
Die Temperatur sinkt über Nacht.The temperature falls overnight.
zunehmento increase, to put on weightVerbB2
Der Verkehr hat stark zugenommen.Traffic has increased sharply.

Also used of a person putting on weight.

abnehmento decrease, to lose weightVerbB2
Das Interesse nimmt ab.Interest is decreasing.

Also to lose weight, and to answer the telephone.

verdoppelnto doubleVerbC1
Die Zahl hat sich verdoppelt.The figure has doubled.
halbierento halveVerbC1
Der Weg halbiert sich damit.That halves the distance.
zählento countVerbA2
Zähl bitte noch einmal nach.Count it again, please.
rechnento calculate, to reckonVerbB1
Damit hatte niemand gerechnet.Nobody had reckoned with that.

Adverb (7)

insgesamtin total, altogetherAdverbB1
Insgesamt waren es dreißig Leute.There were thirty people altogether.
ungefährapproximatelyAdverbA2
Es dauert ungefähr eine Stunde.It takes about an hour.
etwaabout, roughlyAdverbB1
Etwa die Hälfte hat geantwortet.About half replied.

In a question it means "by any chance": Bist du etwa krank?

mindestensat leastAdverbB1
Wir brauchen mindestens zwei Tage.We need at least two days.
höchstensat mostAdverbB1
Das kostet höchstens zehn Euro.That costs ten euros at most.
wenigstensat leastAdverbB2
Wenigstens hat es nicht geregnet.At least it did not rain.

Emotional rather than numerical: mindestens counts, wenigstens consoles.

kaumhardly, barelyAdverbB1
Es waren kaum zwanzig Leute da.There were barely twenty people there.

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