Using German Synonyms - Free

IntroductionxxiAustrian and Swiss variants, in particular, are commonly found in allregisters of standard German in those countries. And there are a fewwords, like schauen (see sehen), which most German speakers use mainlyin more formal registers (R3), but which are used commonly in allregisters in some regions (in this case, S).4 Consulting this book4.1 The entriesAs explained in 2.1 above, each entry in this book consists of a semantic®eld, i.e. a group of German words of related meaning. Each ®eld isgiven under a head-word which was felt best to represent the coremeaning of the ®eld. In most cases it is that word in the ®eld which hasthe most general meaning or the widest range of usage, or which is usedmost frequently. In many instances, it will be a superordinate term asexplained in 2.4 under hyponymy, but that is by no means always thecase, as many ®elds lack such a word. These head-words are arranged inthe book in alphabetical order.Obviously, if a book of this nature were to cover the bulk of thevocabulary of German it would be too huge and unwieldy to use, and aselection had to be made of those semantic ®elds which were felt to bemost useful for the advanced English-speaking learner of German. Asexplained in 1 above, this choice was typically determined byconsidering which ®elds experience has shown to present mostdifferences to English in terms of their meaning structure, i.e. wheremost semantic distinctions are present which are unfamiliar to theEnglish learner. In some cases, though, an entry was felt to be justi®edbecause of the large number of register or regional variants which itcontained (see 3.1 and 3.2 above).4.2 The layout of the entriesEach ®eld treated is presented in the same way. The German head-wordis given at the top left, with an English equivalent at the top right whichis intended to indicate the general concept covered by the ®eld. Thehead-words are ordered alphabetically throughout the book. Theindividual German words which make up the semantic ®eld are listed inalphabetical order in the left-hand column below the head-word,together with any relevant grammatical information (see 4.3 below) and,if necessary, an indication of whether it is speci®c to a particular registeror region (see 3). English glosses are given underneath each Germanword together with any relevant comments on the usage of the word, inparticular any collocation restrictions (see 2.4). The primary purpose ofthese English glosses is to bring out the distinctive meaning of theGerman word as clearly as possible, and to show how its meaning differs