German sentence questions

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Neurotip
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Re: German sentence questions

Postby Neurotip » Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:18 pm

Random Review wrote:sometimes it is helpful to think of "aber" as "however". In the long term, I reckon it's best seen as neither, but rather as a discourse particle in this kind of use. German likes these little words (eben, doch, etc) for expressing subtle discourse meanings. You should make a study of these on their own terms.

I am not an expert on German by any means, but I think this is very helpful. Possibly the OP may not have thought explicitly about these very different uses of 'aber'. Note for example: 'Und ich brauche ganz dringend eine.' but definitely not '*Ich brauche und ganz dringend eine.' - 'und' doesn't have the 'discourse particle' meaning.
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