German Hin Meaning Use

The meaning and use of "hin" | German is easy! https://yourdailygerman.
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Word of the Day – “hin”
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Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of

the Day. And this time, we’ll take a look
at the meaning of one of your least
favorite words…
hin
Hin is really confusing for a lot of

learners and even advanced speakers
often make mistakes with it. Or better,
without it. Like here…
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This is wrong, it should be:
1 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
The meaning and use of "hin" | German is easy! https://yourdailygerman.com/german-hin-meaning-use/
Ich bin da hingegangen.
Forgetting hin is a really really common, I’m sure many of you have made it. And even though you’ll still be
understood, a missing hin sounds quite bad and really really ruins your language swag. Kind of like this:
I drinks a beer.
It’s just a letter, it’s understandable, but it sounds like I am an A2 student.

Today, we’ll take a thorough look at hin and see what it does and why it sounds so bad if you forget it. And
we’ll talk about its weird nature and how it can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a prefix or not.
So, are you ready to jump in?
Let’s go…
The purpose of language is ultimately to convey information – of any kind. Be it facts, opinions or feelings.
There’s an unlimited amount of information to choose from and for the most part, what we say depends on
what we … well… want to express. But to an extent, it also depends on the language we’re using. Because each
language has a different focus on certain aspects of reality.
Arabic for instance finds it really important to make a grammatical distinction between “you two” and “you
many”.
Japanese and other Asian languages abound with information about the status of the speakers in relation to
each other.
Many of the Slavic languages really care about whether an action is brought to an end (perfektive) or not and
English, while generally quite easy going, does care about whether something is ongoing or not.
And German?
Many of you are probably now silently screaming “gender”. And yes… German does care what grammatical
gender a freaking chair has.
But besides that, there’s another area where German cares a great deal to be precise.
And that is … location.
German and OCD

Courses and textbooks usually don’t talk about that, because it’s not generally considered “a thing”, but
German actually makes a big effort to be precise and explicit about spatial relations. All those prepositions, the
two way prepositions, hin and her… all these are symptoms of German really caring about being precise in that
area.
And there’s one aspect in particular that German really is kind of OCD about and that is… OCD!
The distinction between origin, current location and destination.
Well, actually it’s mainly the distinction between current location and destination, but then it wouldn’t be
OCD.
Anyway, let’s look at an example in English:
I am coming from the market.

I am at the market.
I am going to the market.
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destination and current location.
2 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
I am there.
I am going there.
English leaves this up to Captain Context and he does a pretty fine job.
German on the other hand can’t help it but to make it explicit, resulting not only in it being super clear, but
also in a massive headache for learners because they have to deal with seemingly pointless bits of grammar.
One tool German uses for that are the so called two-way prepositions.
Just in case you don’t know what those are, here’s a fictional example with a fictional character…
Thomas kotzt unter dem Tisch.

Thomas kotzt unter den Tisch.
Both sentence translate to “Thomas vomits under the table.”. But the Dative in the first one marks “under the
table” as a fixed location, where the vomiting takes place while the Accusative in the second one marks
“under the table” as the destination of the vomit. This is gross, by the way. I really need to have a talk with my
peons… erm… I mean interns.
Anyway, so yeah… these two-way prepositions are one way for German to make clear whether or not
something is a destination.
And another important tool is hin.
The core of hin

Hin is a cousin of her and hier and together they form a trinity that is kind of similar to the OCD one we just
learned about.
her – hier – hin
Hier is the stationary here, the current location of the speaker.

Her expresses a very general idea of toward the current location/speaker, while hin expresses the very broad
notion of outward, toward another location.
Here’s an example
Ich jogge immer her. (I always run here.)

Ich jogge immer hier. (I always run here.)
Ich jogge immer hin. (I always run there.)
The first sentence says that I’m jogging to here, the second sentences says that here is where I do my running,
and the last one expresses that I run to there from here. As you can see in the translations, English doesn’t
mark these things. The first two sentences are the same and we’d need context to tell what they mean. And
the last sentence could also mean that I do my running there.
In German, it’s clearly marked whether we’re in one location (hier) or not (her, hin) and where the new
location is.
Now, technically her and hin both express directed motion. But her has this vibe of inward, toward the speaker
and in essence it’s only referring to one location: here. Sure, “here” can be anywhere but in any situation
there’s just one of it.
Hin on the other hand with its notion of outward, away from the current location can refer to any location
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3 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
And that makes it a very useful word because we’ve learned just how important this is for our favorite
language (German, I mean German).
Now, hin can be used in two slightly distinct ways. The first one is as a sort of destination-tag.
hin – #destination
Take this sentence:
I’m going there twice a week.
When people want to say this in German, a LOT of times they say
Ich gehe zweimal pro Woche da.
All the words are translated correctly. And yet, it’s wrong. And with what we’ve learned about German’s OCD,
we can understand why.
You see, the German word da is a metaphorical pointer to a location. Just like there. The problem is that it can
only answer at the question “at what place”.
The sentence, however, is obviously about me going to some place. So the location is in fact a destination and
giving an answer to the question “to what place“.
You’re probably like “Okay… so what.”
And English is like “Yeah, whatever, it’s fine.”
But German REALLY flips its shit.
“WHAT?! You’re trying to answer to what place with an element that answers at what place?!?! OMG, this is
outrageous! I … I’m out of words.”
And that’s what we need hin for.
Ich gehe zweimal pro Woche da hin.
Hin is basically like a hashtag #destination that’s added to the static location da.
Here’s another example.
I’ll put the book here.

Ich lege das Buch hier… NOPE!
Ich lege das Buch hier hin.
Again, the sentence involves a destination. But hier by itself only indicates a fixed location. The directional part
is missing and we can add that by using our little tag hin.
Now you might think like “Ah okay… so I’ll add hin whenever there’s a destination.”
But not so fast, young Jedi. Work that will not.
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4 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
It’s the same as the one above, only that I’m serious about my fitness goals this time around, and there’s this
really hot Pilates trainer there. She is so freaking gorgeous it’s unreal. Makes me get off topic if I even think
about her. Where was I… oh yeah… hin.
So yeah, the other difference in the example is that we now replaced the generic da/there with an actual
location (the gym).
Now what would you say… which of the following translations is considered correct, or at least idiomatic.
Number one, number two or both?
1. Ich gehe fünf mal pro Woche ins Fitnessstudio.

2. Ich gehe fünf mal pro Woche ins Fitnessstudio hin.
The answer is… only number one is considered correct.

Why?
Well, for one thing, the location is already unambiguously marked as a destination by the preposition (and
case) we’re using.
to the gym
ins Fitnessstudio
Those two phrases are clearly destinations, they answer the question “to what place” , so there’s no need for
an extra marking.
But the bigger problem, the thing that makes it sound really weird to add hin to that is the fact that hin isn’t
only a tag – it can actually be a destination itself.
hin – the generic destination

Take the following sentence:
I’m putting the book.
This sounds wrong, right?

The reason is that to put involves a location, a destination to be precise. It wants an element that answers “to
what location/whereto” but no such element is in the sentence.
You could add it by saying “on the table“ for example. But there are also more generic options you can use
I’m putting the book down/away.
And in German, the most generic option for a destination is … hin.
Ich lege das Buch. NOPE!

Ich lege das Buch auf den Tisch. Yup
Ich lege das Buch hin. Yup
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stand why the sentence
we had earlier sounds at least weird.
5 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
Ich gehe fünfmal pro Woche [ins Fitnessstudio] [hin].
We have two fully functional, complete sounding answers to to what place here: ins Fitnessstudio and
hin. And that sounds weird, and often wrong.
Cool.
Time for a quick recap:
Hin expresses the notion of “destination (other than “here”).

It can add this notion to words like da or hier, which by themselves can only answer “at the place”.
And it can be used to “fill” the “to what place”-box by itself.
This is pretty much all you need to know if you want to understand what hin means and does.
What we haven’t talked about yet, is the grammatical side of it.
Is it a prefix? Is it a stand alone? What about wohin? Is it da hin or dahin?
And that’s what we’ll talk about in part two.
Yup, that’s right… we’ll take a break here :). Originally, I wanted to do it in one post, but besides grammar, I
also want to go over the most common phrasings with hin and I realized that all of it together would have
been a little too much for one article.
So, for now just let that sink in and test yourself in the little quiz we have prepared.
And of course, please ask all your questions and your friends’ questions in the comments and I’ll try to clear
them up. Oh, and let me know if you found this clear and helpful so far. Using hin correctly isn’t the most
crucial thing in terms of being understood but it makes a huuuuuuge difference in how your German sounds,
so it’s really important to me that you understand what’s going on.
So yeah, let me know your questions and feedback in the comments.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
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daschles
“But to an extend, it also depends on the language we’re. ” ugh. “But to an EXTENT, it also depends on
the language we’re “USING” (?) “IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH” (?) TORTURING (?).
As usual just a wonderfully idiosyncratic way of ripping apart grammar.
thanks
Reply
German-is-easy
“using” is what I had in mind :). Danke für die Korrekturen!!
Reply
daschles
And now it makes more sense to me about da itself – it is a needy little thing demanding something else
to complement it – da vorn, da hinten, da oben da drüben etc. It
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7 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
German-is-easy
Well, it doesn’t ALWAYS have to be complemented. “da” is a generic fixed location pointer.
– Ich wohne da.

– I am living there.
“Da” can refer to my finger pointing as well as to a location mention in a sentence before that.
Have you read my article on “da”?
Reply
Daschles
I hadn’t. Now i have and wish I’d done so weeks ago.
Reply
Napay 1
First time on my phone, everything good as always but a bit tricky to log in
Reply
German-is-easy
I know… I really have to fix that. Sorry for the hassle !!
Reply
SuperEllipse
Thanks for the article. I think instead of “to what place” “to which place” probably sounds right. Can you
also cover hinaus and heraus, they really stump me, when native speakers just sepate the root verb and
add hinaus at the end and i am supposed to get it. Great work, thanks for making it fun
Reply
German-is-easy
Thanks :) I’m not sure what you mean with the question though. hinausgehen is a “normal” separable prefix
verb like “ausgehen”, so that’s why it is split. Is that what you’re wondering about?
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Aargh, the iMprecision!!!! I CAN’T!!!
8 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
When someone mixes up IN- , IM- and UN-

:))))) Great articles – keep going!
Reply
German-is-easy
Hahahah, ja genau :)
Danke dir!
Reply
Ein Deutscher
I am wondering about the second question in the quiz. You are asking what is NOT a translation for “I
want to go there.”
The options you give are:
1. Ich will da hin.
This is a viable translation, where ‘go’ is the seen as the generic verb for getting somewhere, as the closer
equivalent to the German sentence would be “I want to get there.” or “I want to make it there.”
2. Ich will da hingehen.

This is a straightforward translation, very similar to your example “Ich bin da hingegangen.” But for some
reason you mark this as not a translation (ie the “correct” choice.)
3. Ich will da gehen.

This is a viable translation (although it feels odd when the other options put you into a ‘go to destination’
mindset), where ‘da’ indicates where you want to go at, for example the route you want to take.
So as far as I can see, none of your options is correct as “not a translation”, but the one you choose seems
to be the most straightforward translation of them all…
Reply
German-is-easy
Big fat mistake on my part!! I marked the wrong answer as correct. I think I might have confued myself with the
“not” but anyway.
To me, “Ich will da gehen.” is not correct.
I can see your point though. Technically, “there” could be understood as the location where the going takes
place.
I think that might be influenced by us being native speakers of German though.
I’m pretty sure that a native speaker of English perceives the sentence as having a sense of destination, and
they’d have to consciously shift that.
I’m not sure about that though, so maybe a native speaker can jump in and confirm or negate :)
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9 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
I thought the correct answer to #2, i.e., what’s NOT a translation for “I want to go there”, would be “Ich
will da gehen.” Am I missing something?
Reply
Божидар
Yea, me too… Can someone please explain?
Reply
German-is-easy
The explanation is that I did sloppy work :/. My apology for the confusion!!
Reply
Elisabeth Schabus
Du hast Recht. Signed: the German native speaker :)
Reply
Amy
I’m wondering the same thing.
Reply
Jeanne
Me too!
Reply
German-is-easy
Damn it, now I feel guilty for confusing so many people!! Sorry for the mistake!!
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10 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
I messed up the marking!! My apologies!!
Reply
German-is-easy
No, I marked the wrong answer as correct :(. Shame on me!!
Reply
pmccann
Hmm: seems question 2 is either inordinately tricky, or you’ve chosen the wrong answer, slashing my
dreamed-of 100% down to a miserable 80% *just because you can*. Ah well, a moral victory will have to
do… ;-)
Reply
German-is-easy
Hahaha… my sincere apology for ruining your score. I mean… I’m aware that a mistake like this one (I indeed
marked the wrong answer) can really confuse a learner, but I wasn’t aware of the fact that it also destroys the
score. I hereby vow to pay better attention next time :)!!
Reply
pmccann
Haha: all good with me, but thanks anyway. I know it’s ridiculously tough to pull the “on” switch and have
everything 100% perfect. It might actually be good for the learner (Ich schaue hier in den Spiegel!) to
sometimes wrestle with such confusions, before ending up convinced that it’s an error.
Reply
Reinhard Pflug
Ich jogge immer her. Ich jogge immer hin. Beide Saetze wirst Du nicht gesprochen oder geschrieben
finden. Ich jogge immerhin. Koennte die Antwort auf eine Beschwerde Deiner Frau sein dass Du nich
genung Sport treibst. Frage mal Deine Inerns ein paar bessere Beispiele zu finden.
Reply
German-is-easy
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“Ich fahre immer hin.”
11 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
Ja, das Verb ist ein bisschen komisch, aber ich bin mir sicher, dass irgendein Deutschsprecher das schon gesagt
hat.
Und grammatisch ist der Satz ja völlig in Ordnung. Oder bist du anderer Meinung :)?
Reply
Shailendra Gahlot
I still d don’t understand the answer to the second question
Reply
German-is-easy
Sorry, sorry, sorry… I marked the wrong answer as correct!!!
Reply
Amerikanerin
Montreal, eh? Takes me back – my mother was shot in the leg on a visit to Montreal when I was about 10
years old. Otherwise, it’s a nice place.
Reply
Anonymous
wow thats crazy – if it isn’t prying too much, what happened?
Reply
German-is-easy
Yeah, tell us the story!
Reply
German-is-easy
God damn!!! What a story! Also, that’s not so long ago… like around 2000, right?
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12 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
Haha! 29 forever!
We took the opportunity to see Montreal because my father was giving a bid on some construction job.
One evening, after dinner we took a postprandial stroll and Bang! My mother gets shot in the leg.
The theory was that the bullet was addressed to my father but missed – we had no bodyguards with us as
he didn’t think anyone even knew we were in Montreal – we didn’t live in Canada, we are not even
Canadians. Seems like good news travels fast and someone didn’t want him bidding on the job. Probably
around early to mid 1970’s.
My father is Italian and was operating out of Chicago. Figure out the rest yourself.
Reply
aoind
I’m so glad you decided to do this article Emanuel. Definitely one that will benefit from your clear
explanations.
Is it idiomatic to drop the “gehen” from “hingehen” in some circumstances? For example might a taxi
driver ask “Wo wollen Sie hin?”
Can I make a little comment on your sentence “I’m going to the gym five times per week.”? This would
normally be a stative use of “to go” (i.e. “I go to the gym…”) since it seems to be referring to something
repeated and habitual. It could be dynamic (“I’m going to the gym…”) if you are expressing that this is not
habitual but an aberration applying only to the current time frame, like you might say “I’m going to gym
five times a week… at the moment/ for as long as I can hack it/ as part of my new year’s resolutions”.
Reply
German-is-easy
Yes, dropping the “gehen” in statements like yours or the one in the quizz is absolutely common. So much so,
that I even kind of feel like “hinwollen” is a thing.
And thanks a lot for the puzzle piece about present continuous. One day, I’ll finally get all of them right, I hope
:)!!
Reply
Elsa
Hello!
Nice to know you’re having a great time in Canada!
You have NO TYPOS this time, at least none I have detected!
As a visual learner, I found your little diagram her – hier – hin extremely useful! I do admit I get very, very
confused with “her” meaning away, as it’s so similar to “here”, but I guess it’s a question og getting used
to it!
When I was reading the article, I thought I’d need to ask why “da hin” and not “dahin”, but I see you’ll be
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that “Ich bin da gegangen” is wrong. Is it me or is it because the question is formulated the other way
13 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
round?
Another question:
Would we say “Ich by davon hergekommen” to say we’re coming from there (some place already referred
to)?
Bis bald!
Reply
German-is-easy
“Please don’t take a year to write the second half “… touché! I did do stuff like that in the past :).
I have no intention to do it again!!!
The second question in the quizz is kind of my typo for this time… I just marked the wrong answer as correct, so
“Ich will da gehen. ” is the one that doesn’t work.
As for the other question… “her” it’s similar to “hin”. If we have an origin marked/specified in the sentence, then
we don’t use it.
– Ich bin von da gekommen.
This only indicates from where.
– Ich bin von da hier hergekommen.
Here, the “her” marks a destination, just like “hin”, because “hier” can only establish fixed locations.
Does that make sense?
Quick follow up question: you said “her” means “away”… did I say that in my article about “her”? That one is
quite old, so it might need a review. But “away” doesn’t really capture the essence of “her”.
Reply
Elsa
No, you didn’t by any means say that in your article, it’s my thoughts that are still a bit botched up on this
issue, what I should have said is “coming towards you”. I have a lot of trouble with this hin/her issue, so
whatever tricks I use to try and interpret it in my head are all my fault and not yours :)
Reply
Sumitra Kannan
Thanks for this. This is precisely the kind of help I need.
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German-is-easy
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14 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
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Paul Ed
This is just what I was thinking about last week. I’ve always found ‘her’ confusing … there seems to be
sentences where ‘her’ is used both with the verb AND again to signify something (location?) …
presumably the same thing happens with ‘hin’?
Reply
German-is-easy
Wait, do you mean there are two “her”s in one sentence? Can you give me an example?
Reply
Elisabeth Schabus
Good thing I’m a native German speaker. “Ich will da hingehen” ist sehr wohl eine richtige
Ausdrucksweise. Just sayin’
Reply
German-is-easy
I marked the wrong answer as “correct”.

“Ich will da gehen” is the one that doesn’t work :). My apology!
Reply
Anonymous
I’m also confused by the answer to number 2…
Reply
German-is-easy
My mistake!
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Alan
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15 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
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German-is-easy
Glad you like it :)!
Reply
Christian
Hello Emanuel,
nice post about this tricky little word, but I hope you don’t mind me nitpicking a little as a native speaker?
My cell phone keeps suggesting your posts to me since it runs on English system language and whenever
I leave the city I study at, it thinks I’m taking vacation in Germany (when I’m really just visiting my family
back home…).
There’s three little things I would like to point out.
First off, about ‘her’. I think your explanation about it is extremely simplified, but this was a blog entry
about understanding ‘hin’ and you contrast what you wanted to, so it’s okay. That word definitely has its
own Eigenleben though, in particular:
“Ich jogge immer her. (I always run here.)”
This is a sentence I don’t think any German speaker (below ~40 years of age?) would ever say. Of course, I
cannot account for everyone in this country at once, but my impression is that ‘her’ is not really used
without ‘hier’ in spoken language when it comes to marking the origin of an action. I would always
instead say: “Ich jogge immer hierher.” I don’t think I can even remember reading a sentence like yours in
a book from the top of my head.
The sentence is not incorrect though and you might not want to edit this for the sake of making the
comparison easier. I wanted to point it out, though, because ‘her’ is one of those words that is used in
one way in PRINCIPLE, but not in reality. (There are other contexts, of course, like “Her damit!” or “Ich
kann nicht glauben, dass das schon so lange her ist.” where you could never even say hierher instead.)
Secondly, about two of the questions at the end. As many other people have already pointed out, the
correct answer to question two is of course “Ich will da gehen” since it is the wrong sentence, but I’m sure
you just clicked on the sentence that was correct and forgot how you phrased the question.
More importantly, for the first question… I know you said “proper” translation, but I cannot really agree
with the fact that “Ich bin gefallen.” isn’t a viable translation for “I fell down.”. ‘Fallen’ can be used with hin,
sure. “Ich bin hingefallen.” is probably the more “proper” translation, if you wanted to call it that. But
there isn’t anything inherently wrong with “Ich bin gefallen.”, since ‘fallen’ isn’t one of those words that
actually needs a destination. I think this is one of those cases where there just is no other context
available and over time people stopped caring about the ‘hin’, despite the theoretical inprecision. Maybe
other native speakers might also feel differently about this? But I personally wouldn’t discourage anyone
from believing that this is a correct sentence, because I can assure you, you will hear somebody say this in
Germany sooner or later.
Sorry for the long rant, but I thought you might appreciate input from a different point of view.
Freundliche Grüße,
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German-is-easy
Wow, three comments from native speakers on one article :) (yours is the third). That’s great!! Vielen Dank!
You’re right that I simplified “her” a LOT. I do have a separate article where I talk about it detail.
I disagree about “hierher” though.
I have said “Ich bin hergelaufen” several times in the last year, and I can find instances for “bin hergelaufen” in
e-Books. Not many, but people do say that.
Actually, wouldn’t using “hierher” feel a bit weird in the following dialogue?
– “Schön , dass du da bist. Aber warum so spät?”

– “Naja, ich bin hergelaufen.”
To me, using “hier” sounds a bit superfluous since the location is already established.
What do you think?
As for “Ich bin gefallen.”
You’re right in that it can be a valid translation. It sounds a bit theatrical or “epic” but it’s not wrong. I’ll rephrase
the question a bit.
“hinfallen” is BY FAR the more idiomatic option for everyday situations. No child would say “Ich bin gefallen.” for
example.
So to an extend, I am okay with the learners kind of ignoring the pure “fallen” :).
Thanks a lot for taking the time and commenting. Many readers read all the comments and having a native
speaker challenge me is REALLY interesting for them. So I really appreciate it :)!!
Vielen Dank und Grüße zurück, Emanuel
Reply
Christian
Hello again, Emanuel,
You’re welcome! When it comes to colloquial, spoken language, the discrepancy in personal experience can
be quite big. That is exactly why I think it’s fun to hear different opinions on it, though. It can be somewhat
shocking to see how far apart those opinions can be even with people who grew up under similar
conditions. I’m glad you are keeping the conversation going with your readers, because communication is
always key when it comes to learning a new language.
After thinking about what you’ve said about ‘her’, I realized that “Ich laufe immer (hier)her” feels very
different from “Ich bin hergelaufen”, perhaps because the ‘her’ is a detached prefix rather an attached one. I
definitely agree that “Ich bin (hier) hergelaufen” can do fine without the ‘hier’. I feel similarly about “Er ist
hergekommen”, “Er hat den Ball hergeworfen” etc..
But to figure out what I did not like about “Ich laufe immer her”, I took a bunch of verbs with ‘her’ as a prefix
and put them to the test by making similar sentences. The result? An unsettingly low amount of logical
conclusions. For some reason, “Er kommt of (hier)her” sounds really stupid to me without the ‘hier’, as does
“Er fährt immer (hier)her”, “Er geht oft langsam (hier)her” or “Er fährt Auto (hier)her”.
fährt immer
Close mit dem Auto her”,
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The only thing I can still say with confidence is that if ‘her’ is attached as a prefix directly to the verb, the
17 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
‘hier’ quickly becomes unneccessary. As for the other sentences… I don’t think I’ll figure that one out.
Sometimes our own feelings about language can be incredibly irrational. The only way to teach somebody
those intricacies might just be to have them talk to native speakers for so long that they stop saying things
that sound weird and have them start forming their own irrational opinions on sentences like these.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Christian
P.S.: If my cell phone decides to keep recommending yours posts, maybe I’ll leave a comment again so
everyone has something to think about again, haha…
Reply
German-is-easy
Yeah please do :). I really appreciate the perspective of a native speaker.

And oh, the way you went about analyzing the “her”-issue is pretty much how I work when I analyze
German grammar. I think it losely resembles what in linguistics would be minimal pairs.
Do you have a background in language in any way or are you just an analytic person?
Reply
Ilona Goynes
Christian, deine antwort war klasse.Ich bin seit 1976 in den USA. Ich fand den kleinen test bei zufall. “German is
easy”
Danke fuer deinen beitrag. Ich habe noch nie so genau ueber hin und her gedacht. Euch allen schoene gruesse
aus Oklahoma.
Ilona
Reply
Dance with Shadows
Initially I thought that one part of the cartoon at the top of the thread was a joke. But now I am not so sure. I
observe another German native speaker referring to inprecise. The word in English is imprecise/imprecision.
Reply
German-is-easy
I realized that after I finished the cartoon and then I left it in because I was too lazy to change it and figured
German would make such a mistake :)
Reply
Close and accept
use.
it was indeed a great help. I always wanted to have a clear explanation for this part of the German
18 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10
Grammar.
Reply
German-is-easy
Glad I could help!
Reply
Close and accept
use.
19 of 19 22/09/2019, 10:10

German Hin Meaning Use

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The meaning and use of "hin" | German is easy! https://yourdailygerman.

The blog for all who want to learn German…

The blog for all who want to learn German…

Word of the Day – “hin”

and welcome to our German Word of

Hin is really confusing for a lot of

Ich bin da hingegangen.

It’s just a letter, it’s understandable, but it sounds like I am an A2 student.

German and OCD

I am coming from the market.

Thomas kotzt unter dem Tisch.

The core of hin

her – hier – hin

Hier is the stationary here, the current location of the speaker.

Ich jogge immer her. (I always run here.)

I’m going there twice a week.

Ich gehe zweimal pro Woche da.

And that’s what we need hin for.

Ich gehe zweimal pro Woche da hin.

I’ll put the book here.

1. Ich gehe fünf mal pro Woche ins Fitnessstudio.

The answer is… only number one is considered correct.

hin – the generic destination

I’m putting the book.

This sounds wrong, right?

I’m putting the book down/away.

And in German, the most generic option for a destination is … hin.

Ich lege das Buch. NOPE!

Ich lege das Buch hin. Yup

Ich gehe fünfmal pro Woche [ins Fitnessstudio] [hin].

Hin expresses the notion of “destination (other than “here”).

mark the article as read and

Subscribe newest oldest

As usual just a wonderfully idiosyncratic way of ripping apart grammar.

“using” is what I had in mind :). Danke für die Korrekturen!!

– Ich wohne da.

I hadn’t. Now i have and wish I’d done so weeks ago.

I know… I really have to fix that. Sorry for the hassle !!

When someone mixes up IN- , IM- and UN-

2. Ich will da hingehen.

3. Ich will da gehen.

Yea, me too… Can someone please explain?

Du hast Recht. Signed: the German native speaker :)

I’m wondering the same thing.

I messed up the marking!! My apologies!!

No, I marked the wrong answer as correct :(. Shame on me!!

I still d don’t understand the answer to the second question

Sorry, sorry, sorry… I marked the wrong answer as correct!!!

wow thats crazy – if it isn’t prying too much, what happened?

Yeah, tell us the story!

– Ich bin von da gekommen.

This only indicates from where.

– Ich bin von da hier hergekommen.

Thanks for this. This is precisely the kind of help I need.

I marked the wrong answer as “correct”.

I’m also confused by the answer to number 2…

Glad you like it :)!

– “Schön , dass du da bist. Aber warum so spät?”

Hello again, Emanuel,

Yeah please do :). I really appreciate the perspective of a native speaker.

Dance with Shadows

Glad I could help!

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