Language change in action:
Nov. 9th, 2012 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckWhen I bring chocolate to school, I share it with my colleagues. I also might share the latest gossip.
Whereas I can use the same word in English, in a German sentence I'd probably use teilen or verteilen in the first example and "verbreiten" or "mitteilen" in the second. - My first theory was that teilen is only for physical objects that are divided among a group of people, but we also use teilen with joy or pain - Geteiltes Leid ist halbes Leid. The important factor seems to be that you divide something and then re-distribute it - hence we use teilen when we talk about numbers too: Was ist 4 geteilt durch 2?".
There is a shift going on though, because teilen is increasingly being used in contexts where I wouldn't expect the word. Social media, and especially facebook, is behind this, I think, because this is where we do our sharing of stories and pictures and suddenly there is "das meistgeteilte Photo auf twitter" which sounds rather odd, because no, the picture is still intact, it wasn't cut up in lots of tiny bits.
I wonder whether I'm alone in my feeling that this use is unusual, (I don't think so) and whether it is only older people who share my opinion (here we use teilen, too!) or whether the line is along frequent users of German social media and those who stay clear of it.
Edited to add some ideas that came to me after a twitter conversation about the same issue:
German can use prefixes to make teilen more specific: I'll say verteilen or austeilen when I hand out copies of a text or picture or poster. Mitteilen is used for (verbal) sharing of news or stories.
But it looks to me like we just don't do much sharing in German - when we share ideas, we say austauschen which is closer to the meaning of exchange - I give something to you and you give something to me. "Thanks for sharing" is difficult to translate - if it's just a helpful hint you've received you might say Danke für die Mitteilung, but if someone has just told you an amazing and touching story or showed you beautiful holiday snaps? I don't know what I'd say. Maybe thank them for telling me the story or express my gratitude for showing the pictures, but I wouldn't expect the verb teilen.
But as I said, it's starting to change, as a result of a direct translation of share in the contexts of social media.
Whereas I can use the same word in English, in a German sentence I'd probably use teilen or verteilen in the first example and "verbreiten" or "mitteilen" in the second. - My first theory was that teilen is only for physical objects that are divided among a group of people, but we also use teilen with joy or pain - Geteiltes Leid ist halbes Leid. The important factor seems to be that you divide something and then re-distribute it - hence we use teilen when we talk about numbers too: Was ist 4 geteilt durch 2?".
There is a shift going on though, because teilen is increasingly being used in contexts where I wouldn't expect the word. Social media, and especially facebook, is behind this, I think, because this is where we do our sharing of stories and pictures and suddenly there is "das meistgeteilte Photo auf twitter" which sounds rather odd, because no, the picture is still intact, it wasn't cut up in lots of tiny bits.
I wonder whether I'm alone in my feeling that this use is unusual, (I don't think so) and whether it is only older people who share my opinion (here we use teilen, too!) or whether the line is along frequent users of German social media and those who stay clear of it.
Edited to add some ideas that came to me after a twitter conversation about the same issue:
German can use prefixes to make teilen more specific: I'll say verteilen or austeilen when I hand out copies of a text or picture or poster. Mitteilen is used for (verbal) sharing of news or stories.
But it looks to me like we just don't do much sharing in German - when we share ideas, we say austauschen which is closer to the meaning of exchange - I give something to you and you give something to me. "Thanks for sharing" is difficult to translate - if it's just a helpful hint you've received you might say Danke für die Mitteilung, but if someone has just told you an amazing and touching story or showed you beautiful holiday snaps? I don't know what I'd say. Maybe thank them for telling me the story or express my gratitude for showing the pictures, but I wouldn't expect the verb teilen.
But as I said, it's starting to change, as a result of a direct translation of share in the contexts of social media.
