# Dieses Bild ist aber schön! (Modalpartikel)



## kimko_379

Can you paraphrase this as follows? :
"Dieses Bild ist aber schön!"
　　　　　　↓
"(Nun) Aber!  Dieses Bild ist schön!"
Thank you so much in advance for your kind answer!


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## elroy

No, you can't.


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## Hutschi

Aber: Es hängt vom Kontext ab.
It depends on context.

Mostly it means:
"This picture is really beautiful. I am delighted." So usually elroy is right. Your  paraphrasing does not fit.


I give context for your variant and correct the spelling of sentence markers.
A: Dieses Bild gefällt mir gar nicht.
B: (Nun) Aber: dieses Bild ist schön. Siehst Du das wirklich nicht?
"Aber! Dieses Bild ist schön." this is theoretically possible, too, in this context, it is more impolite.

Please give context - so we can improve the answer. I just gave examples so you can see an example for the kind of context I expect.

---
Often a meaning is hidden if no context is given. We even cannot see whether it is a typo or an error in word definition.


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## Hutschi

PS: Meinst Du wirklich “Modalwort“, Koiti?
Das hatte ich überlesen. Dann geht es nicht.


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## j-Adore

kimko_379 said:


> "Dieses Bild ist *aber *schön!"



This "aber" is not used in the sense of "but/しかし" but rather as an intensifier: "それにしても(美しい)".


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## Hutschi

As I wrote this is mostly the case. But it depends on context. 
It can be "but" in certain context. I am not sure whether it is a modal particle then. Elroy denies that if I understood correctly -- because Koiti gave "modal particle" as context it is excluded.

If I see a picture and say "Das ist aber schön!" it is an amplifier.


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## kimko_379

Hutschi said:


> As I wrote this is mostly the case. But it depends on context.
> It can be "but" in certain context. I am not sure whether it is a modal particle then. Elroy denies that if I understood correctly -- because Koiti gave "modal particle" as context it is excluded.
> 
> If I see a picture and say "Das ist aber schön!" it is an amplifier.


I may have blindly followed the example of calling "aber" etc. "modal" by Gerhard Helbig:  "Lexikon der deutschen Modal- ... ."  But was it completely wrong?  Isn't also an amplifier an expression of the speaker's mood/emotion?:  like "Wow, the number/rock is rrreeealllyy sooo terrrriificccally enooormous!" =? "Wow(?), die Nummer/der Felsen ist ja so wunderbar riesig!"


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## kimko_379

j-Adore said:


> This "aber" is not used in the sense of "but/しかし" but rather as an intensifier: "それにしても(美しい)".


Thank you, thank you so very much!  For me, a Japanese, no other explanations are clearer than your translation!


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## kimko_379

Hutschi said:


> PS: Meinst Du wirklich “Modalwort“, Koiti?
> Das hatte ich überlesen. Dann geht es nicht.


Now I remember:
Helbig was completely correct in acknowledging both the epistemic modal words and the emotional modal words.
Because Minoru Nakau:  "Ninchi-Imiron no Genri/The Principles of The Cognitive Semantics" (in Japanese) says:

The core/base proposition/Aussage
+
The epistemic/cognitive/ideational sentence-modalities
+
The emotional/interpersonal sentence-modalities (like "must" in "You must try this cake I just made. = Please try eating it." or the "diplomatic 'wäre' " in "Wie wäre Ihr Wunsch?")
+
etc. (I forgot what and what.)
+
The epistemic paragraph/text-modalities (like "Therefore," "Because")
=
The intra-paragraph/text sentence.

So, after all, the amplifiers ARE kinds of emotional-sentence-modality-showing "Modalwörter" , just as Helbig classified.


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## kimko_379

Probably you can say even that all adjectives/adverbs as comment-words/Bestimmungswörter are modal = modality-indexes/indicators:

He is so tall! = I acknowledge and marvel at how so tall he is!
He runs fast! = He runs (there), and how fast his running is!
He sure/surely went there. = I'm sure ( = I believe/feel_it_sure = It's sure/believed) that he went there.

Also, auxiliary verbs as comment-words are another group of modality-show-ers:

He must have gone there. = I'm sure that he went there. = There is/are evidence(s)/trace(s) that/which I can acknowledge and that/which show(s)/mean(s) that he went there.


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## kimko_379

kimko_379 said:


> Now I remember:
> Helbig was completely correct in acknowledging both the epistemic modal words and the emotional modal words.
> Because Minoru Nakau:  "Ninchi-Imiron no Genri/The Principles of The Cognitive Semantics" (in Japanese) says:
> 
> The core/base proposition/Aussage
> +
> The epistemic/cognitive/ideational sentence-modalities
> +
> The emotional/interpersonal sentence-modalities (like "must" in "You must try this cake I just made. = Please try eating it." or the "diplomatic 'wäre' " in "Wie wäre Ihr Wunsch?")
> +
> etc. (I forgot what and what.)
> +
> The epistemic paragraph/text-modalities (like "Therefore," "Because")
> =
> The intra-paragraph/text sentence.
> 
> So, after all, the amplifiers ARE kinds of emotional-sentence-modality-showing "Modalwörter" , just as Helbig classified.


Correction:
Read "just as Helbig classified" as "just as Helbig classified/included into his books".


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## kimko_379

j-Adore said:


> This "aber" is not used in the sense of "but/しかし" but rather as an intensifier: "それにしても(美しい)".


The Japanese phrase "so-re ni s-shi te mo" = Gegen/In Widrigkeit zu alle(r) Erwartungen.
So, didn't "Dieses Bild ist aber schön" imply that "I did not expect it to be so/this beautiful."?  That's why that "aber" is an amplifier AND (or AND SO) also an epistemic and/or emotional modal word.
Helbig includes "aber" in his "Lexikon deutscher Partikeln", not in his "Lexikon der Modalwörter", but he includes in his latter book also "kaum", "keineswegs", and "möglichenfalls".  Therefore, his classification criteria are kind of arbitrarily/subjectively insufficient, it seems.

I have read that every word holds/contains the speaker's feelings/emotions, even if it seems only epistemic/cognitive:
"Does he have to be _that/so _evil ?!" not only contains an epistemic amplifier "that/so" but also shows the resentment/indignation by it.


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## Kajjo

kimko_379 said:


> "Dieses Bild ist aber schön" imply that "I did not expect it to be so/this beautiful."?


"Aber" can be used as flavour particle to mark emotional involvement. I agree that in a very wide sense such an "aber" carries a kind of "exceeds expectation" connotation (but only connotation). It does not really imply that you expected less, just that you note the special quality. I feel this to be an important difference.

Duden, 2b: Duden | aber | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Herkunft


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## kimko_379

Kajjo said:


> "Aber" can be used as flavour particle to mark emotional involvement. I agree that in a very wide sense such an "aber" carries a kind of "exceeds expectation" connotation (but only connotation). It does not really imply that you expected less, just that you note the special quality. I feel this to be an important difference.
> 
> Duden, 2b: Duden | aber | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Herkunft


I see.  Thank you so much.  The etymologies do not necessarily mean/entail the present usages or vice versa.  I just forgot that basic simple fact/truth.


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## j-Adore

Your confusion most likely comes from the fact that "Dieses Bild ist aber schön!" does not follow your expected structure: "*A *aber/but/だけど B".

This specific "aber" is used *emphatically *when you've just experienced/seen something *ungewöhnlich*/*unexpected *etc. Imagine a situation where you happened to meet an old friend from school. You can say, for instance:


<_there's no preceding sentence, there's no _*A*> „Du hast dich *aber *verändert! Ich hätte dich ja kaum wieder erkannt!“

*いや～(それにしても)*、ずいぶん変わったな～  あやうく気づかないところだったよ。


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## kimko_379

j-Adore said:


> Your confusion most likely comes from the fact that "Dieses Bild ist aber schön!" does not follow your expected structure: "*A *aber/but/だけど B".
> 
> This specific "aber" is used *emphatically *when you've just experienced/seen something *ungewöhnlich*/*unexpected *etc. Imagine a situation where you happened to meet an old friend from school. You can say, for instance:
> 
> 
> <_there's no preceding sentence, there's no _*A*> „Du hast dich *aber *verändert! Ich hätte dich ja kaum wieder erkannt!“
> 
> *いや～(それにしても)*、ずいぶん変わったな～  あやうく気づかないところだったよ。


I must seem awfully stubborn and/or stupid ( = slow to learn), but couldn't that "Iyaa (, sore ni shi te mo)," translate into "Oh, no!  (Despite/Against all possible expectations in the world,)"?
And isn't it that "iya" = hassen = Widrigkeit = Widerspruch = ablehnen = Nein/No?
I fail to know if it is cognate with "iya-mashi ni" = "iyo-iyo".  Maybe it is:  ablehnen = (sich) sprengen/wegschleudern = Grenzen (finit/unendlich) überschreiten (lassen) = (sich) vermehren/zunehmen = vergehen/passieren = convergence into a limit including "convergence into infinity" ( = divergence) = endlessly-increasingly and endlich/at last.


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## kimko_379

Or maybe it is that "sore ni shi te mo" means "Against all your own possible/potential (opposing) expectations that you haven't at all changed". Because "sore" shows "at/on your side," while "are" is far from "both of us":
"Are da yo, are!" = I mean that, that, you know?  (Both you and I temporarily fail to recall "that" completely yet now; "that" is a bit/short-distance outside our now-properly-functioning memories.)  You also know the difference between "so-no jishin/earthquake" and "a-no jishin".


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## kimko_379

I must confess I'm a beginner on Hegel's contents-logic in his "Wissenschaft der Logik".  But does anybody know whether he talked about the relation between "Grenzen" and "Attraktion und Abstoß/repelling/Ablehnung" that is closely connected with the above "Iyaa, sore ni shite mo," that Mr/Ms j-Adore has brought up?


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## kimko_379

To Mr. j-Adore:
See one of Mr. Hutschi's and my conversations some days back on the fact that
after = against = again = aber (etymologically).
In it, I touched on
After all, ... . = Against all possible expectations or oppositions, ... .
And see:
Sore ni tsuke te mo oyatsu wa Kaaru/Curl!  (a curled porous cakes snack commercial)  =  After all, (speaking of) the snack, Curl is the best!

So, that kind of "sore" must be called an abstract pro-noun-phrase/Pro-NP.  (I am now discussing Pro-formen in another thread.) And this "sore" Pro-NP stands for now-nonexistent but potential/possible fact(s)/event(s) that is/are "on/at your side".

This might be related:
それって!?実際どうなの課 - Wikipedia


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## j-Adore

It seems you're reading too much into these things, making things much more complicated than necessary. This "aber" is one of those so-called flavour particles in German that are hard to translate into other languages. My Japanese translation is not intended as a strictly literal translation but rather focused on capturing the _feel _of "aber" and the tone of the entire sentence. This is what we do when interpreting, at least.

At any rate, it would be practically impossible for you to get the hang of these flavour particles just by looking at a single example. This is not just about "aber"; it takes some getting used to across the board.


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## kimko_379

j-Adore said:


> It seems you're reading too much into these things, making things much more complicated than necessary. This "aber" is one of those so-called flavour particles in German that are hard to translate into other languages. My Japanese translation is not intended as a strictly literal translation but rather focused on capturing the _feel _of "aber" and the tone of the entire sentence. This is what we do when interpreting, at least.
> 
> At any rate, it would be practically impossible for you to get the hang of these flavour particles just by looking at a single example. This is not just about "aber"; it takes some getting used to across the board.


Excuse me:  Mr. Hutschi has already helped and endorsed my etymological research, and I've been studying translation theories myself; so, I should say I can see your translation fitted to the "feel".  
Or maybe you are perfectly right.  But in that case, too, I have already admitted the point of Mr. Kajjo that etymologies do not always entail the present semantics and vice versa. And in that case, I am going to gladly take back my hypothesis; that's all there'll be left to my speculations. 
Thank you so much anyway.  Take care!


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## kimko_379

kimko_379 said:


> Now I remember:
> Helbig was completely correct in acknowledging both the epistemic modal words and the emotional modal words.
> Because Minoru Nakau:  "Ninchi-Imiron no Genri/The Principles of The Cognitive Semantics" (in Japanese) says:
> 
> The core/base proposition/Aussage
> +
> The epistemic/cognitive/ideational sentence-modalities
> +
> The emotional/interpersonal sentence-modalities (like "must" in "You must try this cake I just made. = Please try eating it." or the "diplomatic 'wäre' " in "Wie wäre Ihr Wunsch?")
> +
> etc. (I forgot what and what.)
> +
> The epistemic paragraph/text-modalities (like "Therefore," "Because")
> =
> The intra-paragraph/text sentence.
> 
> So, after all, the amplifiers ARE kinds of emotional-sentence-modality-showing "Modalwörter" , just as Helbig classified.


Eijiro Iwasaki:  "Abhandlungen über deutsche Adverbien und Partikeln" (Tokyo:  Doogakusha) (a book in Japanese), pp. 897, ff. supports Nakau's modality view and give the word "modal" the broadest/most_stretched interpretation.
His theory seems to have a problem, though:  he sees Modallverben/modal-auxiliaries like "can" as in "The baby can talk now."
as non-Modalwörter.
But Kelly Itoh, a Japanese-Canadian native English-speaker, shows in his books that  all the modal aux.'s do show the speakers' interpersonal/diplomatic/toward-the-world attitudes, against Iwasaki.


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## kimko_379

Addition:
It's only that Iwasaki's theory/interpretation can be said to support Nakau's theory; Iwasaki has never explicitly shown any such active support.

Ideational modalities = ideational congruence forms + ideational/abstract-verb(s) grammatical metaphors.

Interpersonal/emotional modalities = interpersonal congruent forms + interpersonal grammatical metaphors.

Please see also my postings about GMs [ = grammatical metaphors], too, just for your reference/information.  
Grammatical metaphor: What do we mean? What exactly are we researching?


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## kimko_379

kimko_379 said:


> Eijiro Iwasaki:  "Abhandlungen über deutsche Adverbien und Partikeln" (Tokyo:  Doogakusha) (a book in Japanese), pp. 897, ff. supports Nakau's modality view and give the word "modal" the broadest/most_stretched interpretation.
> His theory seems to have a problem, though:  he sees Modallverben/modal-auxiliaries like "can" as in "The baby can talk now."
> as non-Modalwörter.
> But Kelly Itoh, a Japanese-Canadian native English-speaker, shows in his books that  all the modal aux.'s do show the speakers' interpersonal/diplomatic/toward-the-world attitudes, against Iwasaki.


Also, as I may have said above, all the utterances have emotional messages/values:
Like Shoko Watanabe:  "Gaikoku-go no Manabi-kata/How to Study Foreign Language(s)" has shown, the merely cognitive sentence of
"This rose smells so good!"
obviously has such emotional value, literal or ironical (depending on the context, linguistic and/or non-linguistic).
That means mind and heart always go hand in hand, inseparably.
And that further implies that knowing and digesting/absorbing the Christian Teaching of Love heals/soothes/pacifies the mind, namely, brings peace of mind.


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## kimko_379

j-Adore said:


> Your confusion most likely comes from the fact that "Dieses Bild ist aber schön!" does not follow your expected structure: "*A *aber/but/だけど B".
> 
> This specific "aber" is used *emphatically *when you've just experienced/seen something *ungewöhnlich*/*unexpected *etc. Imagine a situation where you happened to meet an old friend from school. You can say, for instance:
> 
> 
> <_there's no preceding sentence, there's no _*A*> „Du hast dich *aber *verändert! Ich hätte dich ja kaum wieder erkannt!“
> 
> *いや～(それにしても)*、ずいぶん変わったな～  あやうく気づかないところだったよ。


In this case, your original German context must have made your translation fit the "feel" of the "aber" in the original context to a T or un-mistakably, I suppose.  Thanks anyway!


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## kimko_379

kimko_379 said:


> To Mr. j-Adore:
> See one of Mr. Hutschi's and my conversations some days back on the fact that
> after = against = again = aber (etymologically).
> In it, I touched on
> After all, ... . = Against all possible expectations or oppositions, ... .
> And see:
> Sore ni tsuke te mo oyatsu wa Kaaru/Curl!  (a curled porous cakes snack commercial)  =  After all, (speaking of) the snack, Curl is the best!
> 
> So, that kind of "sore" must be called an abstract pro-noun-phrase/Pro-NP.  (I am now discussing Pro-formen in another thread.) And this "sore" Pro-NP stands for now-nonexistent but potential/possible fact(s)/event(s) that is/are "on/at your side".
> 
> This might be related:
> それって!?実際どうなの課 - Wikipedia


Correction:  Read "oppositions" as "objections".


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## kimko_379

I was wondering if anyone could possibly tell me what the below "aber" means.
Thank you so much in advance for your kind help!
Beide aber sind notwendig – evangelische aspekte


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## Demiurg

kimko_379 said:


> I was wondering if anyone could possibly tell me what the below "aber" means.
> 
> _Beide aber sind notwendig_



You can use "jedoch" (_however_) instead:

_Beide jedoch sind notwendig. - However, both are necessary._


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## kimko_379

Thanks a million, Mr. Demiurg!
I wonder what are the semantic or info-structural differences between these three:
Beide aber sind notwendig.
Beide sind aber notwendig.
Aber beide sind notwendig.
Thank you again in advance.


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## Hutschi

In my mind they are basically different in phrase structure.

The structur of what belongs together is different.

Brackets show here what belongs together:

(Beide aber) sind notwendig.
Beide (sind aber) notwendig.
(Aber beide) sind notwendig. or Aber (beide sind notwendig).

add-on:
(Aber notwendig) sind beide.
Aber: (notwendig sind beide).


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## Demiurg

kimko_379 said:


> I wonder what are the semantic or info-structural differences between these three:
> Beide aber sind notwendig.
> Beide sind aber notwendig.
> Aber beide sind notwendig.


Not to forget:
_Notwendig sind aber beide.
Notwendig aber sind beide._

I don't see any semantic differences, it's just a matter of emphasis.

_Beide sind aber notwendig_ is the regular word order. _Beide aber sind notwendig_ sounds a bit more elevated, typical for written language.

Edit: crossed with Hutschi.


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