5

I came across the sentence (slightly simplified): "Wegen uns bist du nicht rausgeflogen." I took this to mean "Because of us you weren't expelled." But the actual meaning is "It wasn't because of us you were expelled." Was I reading the sentence wrong or is it ambiguous without context? My thinking was that "nicht" appears before what is being negated, so "nicht rausgeflogen" is "not expelled". Also,"wegen uns" is on its own in front of the verb, but it seems like the adverbial phrase should be "not because of us" or "nicht wegen uns". So I would have translated it as "Du bist nicht wegen uns rausgeflogen." Would that be wrong or less natural than what is given?

Context: This is from the subtitles to Season 1 Episode 1 of the series "Wednesday". Wednesday's parents are sending her against her will to boarding school after she was expelled from high school. Wednesday is being sulky and resentful about it (though she hardly needs a reason), and her mother is trying to get her to accept the situation.

Improve this question
3
  • Are they expelled? Not because of use. Are they not expelled? Because of us.
    – Bernhard Döbler
    Commented 5 hours ago
  • 1
    Something like "you weren't expelled because of us" could also be ambiguous in English. Subtitles often need to be succinct for reasons of space, but the authors ought to be more careful than this.
    – misterben
    Commented 5 hours ago
  • @misterben - Nice example. Netflix (at least for this show) has both subtitles and closed captioning, with the closed captioning being closer to what's spoken in the German dubbing. It seems subtitles are usually abridged a bit to allow for slow readers. I don't imagine the people writing dubbing scripts spend a lot of time wordsmithing the dialog, so perhaps they just missed the double meaning. As pointed out in André's answer, intonation can do a lot to resolve ambiguity like this.
    – RDBury
    Commented 4 hours ago

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
7

The meaning can indeed be ambiguous without context in written German. In spoken German the pronunciation would help:

  1. "Wegen UNS bist du nicht rausgeflogen." = "Wir waren nicht der Grund, dass du rausgeflogen bist." - You have been kicked out, but WE were not the reason/cause.

  2. "Wegen uns bist du nicht RAUSGEFLOGEN." = "Ohne uns w?rst du rausgeflogen." - If it were not for us/our contribution, you would have been kicked out.

In the context of your example, you correctly assumed the first version is the applicable one. Your alternative is grammatically correct, but sounds odd. As a native speaker I would rather just say "Wir sind nicht Schuld (daran), dass du rausgeflogen bist." / "Es ist nicht unsere Schuld, dass du rausgeflogen bist."

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    Ich fürchte, die Schreibweise klärt die möglichen Betonungen nur unzureichend, habe aber selbst keinen Vorschlag, wie es besser gehen könnte. Man kann das UNS betonen und trotzdem mal das eine, mal das andere ausdrücken. Vielleicht doch darstellbar: "Wegen UNS bist du nicht RAUSGEFLOGEN." vs. "Wegen UNS bist du NICHT rausgeflogen."
    – user unknown
    Commented 18 hours ago
  • Switching to the German audio, I can can hear that "uns" is stressed; in fact she says "uns beiden" and I didn't think the "beiden" would make a difference. I'm pretty sure "we/us" would be emphasized in English in both versions, since the intended meaning would be implied by word order. When I typed the sentence into Google Translate it came up with version 1, so somehow it cam up with the correct answer without intonation clues. Of course with AI that could have been due to shear luck.
    – RDBury
    Commented 18 hours ago
  • Agreed that this is not a necessary pronunciation. I just wanted to express that it is possible to distinguish using explicit pronunciation.
    – André
    Commented 10 hours ago
  • 1
    For me, the expected intonation for the first and intended meaning would be: rising tone on uns, falling tone on nicht: Wegen UNS ↑ bist du NICHT ↓ rausgeflogen (with falling tone being optional).
    – David Vogt
    Commented 9 hours ago
2

This sentence is ambiguous. Let's explain the meanings.

  1. Because of us you weren't expelled. (You're still a member. We prevented you from being expelled.)

    Wegen uns bist du nicht rausgeflogen. (Wir haben verhinderst, dass du rausfliegt.)

    This means: They were about to kick you out, and without us you would definitely have been kicked out, but we put in a good word for you and we managed to convince them to keep you. So you're still a member.

  2. It wasn't because of us you were expelled. (You're no longer a member. You were expelled, but that wasn't our fault.)

    Wegen uns bist du nicht rausgeflogen. (Du bist rausgeflogen, aber nicht wegen uns.)

    This means: You were kicked out, but that was entirely your own fault. We did absolutely nothing to get you kicked out.

Improve this answer
4
  • I think you could make 1 more clear by substituting "Dank" for "Wegen", so something like "Thanks to us you weren't expelled." For future reference, in English you can't be a member of a school, though you can be a member of the staff or student body, or various student associations: student council, choir, band, sports team, etc. Apparently you can be "ein Mitglied eines Gymnasiums", which I did not expect.
    – RDBury
    Commented 17 hours ago
  • Side note: I never heard "ein Mitglied eines Gymnasiums", one would rather say "Schüler eines Gymnasiums" or simply "Gymnasiast"/"Gymnasiastin".
    – André
    Commented 10 hours ago
  • "Dank" can unfortunately also have a negative meaning and thus does not really help here. "Dank dir wurde ich nicht befördert. Du hast mich verpetzt." or "Dank dir kommen wir jetzt nicht weiter.", which both are somewhat ambiguous as well.
    – André
    Commented 10 hours ago
  • @André - I found (via DWDS) "Mitglied" with "Gymnasium" in a Wikipedia article Rosenheim. But I gather it's not a common combination.
    – RDBury
    Commented 4 hours ago

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.