Thread: Choice of verbs.

English uses love, alot with out actually meaning love. Like I love to ski.. Does German use Lieben the same way, or is there another word?

There are two constructions which I am most familiar with: "m

You will quite often hear "Ich liebe es, dies oder jenes zu tun".
But that is an anglicism and it is bad German.

so then is the "Ich Liebe es" on McDonalds cups wrong?

What does it mean that an expression is wrong? If an expression is used by a large number of speakers for an extended time span it will get more and more accepted and in the long run it will be a normal part of the language.
A lot of people think, that it is cool to use English words and expressions or grammatical constructions which are influenced by English.
Often just those persons who have only a very basic knowledge of English like (love?) to use anglicisms.
In my ears "Ich liebe es" is clearly an anglicism. And I'm quite sure that exactly this fact was decisive for McDonalds choice of this slogan (if they did so. I' m not what you would call a regular customer of McDonalds').

Originally Posted by Tyder

so then is the "Ich Liebe es" on McDonalds cups wrong?

Yeah, a native German (which I am not, I would just like to point out) would probably say, "Ich hab' es gern."

Originally Posted by Тостер

Originally Posted by Tyder

so then is the "Ich Liebe es" on McDonalds cups wrong?

Yeah, a native German (which I am not, I would just like to point out) would probably say, "Ich hab' es gern."

I think a native would actually say, "Ich hab's gern."

Anyway, gerne is a bit stronger than gern I think.

So you can say Ich habe blabla gerne.

Also, instead of ich m

Using "lieben" when talking about something you like is, as has already been said, bad English influence. The two most common (and neutral in terms of address) ways of saying you like something, as already pointed out, are "etwas gern machen" or "m

There is another word in German that has to with likes. The word is Lust which usually translates to "desire". I've mostly seen it used in advertisements. It is more frequently used than desire is in English.

Yes, I had forgotten about that one. I don't think it's used too frequently though; I've only heard it in Rammstein songs and yes, on advertisements. We use it in our exams though, to add some variation onto the rather boring English word "like", however we are discouraged to use the word "lieben".

Es gef