# Wie kommst du drauf?



## Mozzerfan99

Hi.
I have found this sentence:
Wie kommst du drauf, mein Leben nähme den falschen Verlauf?

In the dictionary, it says draufkommen means to catch on or remember... 
Is this what it means here?
Because that doesnt really make sense to me, so can it also mean something more similar to assume?

Thanks in advance.


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## ayuda?

*Wie kommst du drauf*, mein Leben nähme den falschen Verlauf?
My opinion:

*Wie kommst du drauf means *=
Why do you think...
Where do you get the idea that...
Why do you say that…
What do you mean...

To me, it is something like saying: Wie kommst du auf den Gedanken, dass…

Of course, we’ll see what one of the native speakers says.


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## perpend

I agree with ayuda, but would just add that "draufkommen" does mean "to catch on", to me, in the sense of "to get the drift of".

So, maybe:
A) How did you catch on that my life ...
B) How/why do you get the drift that my life ...

For me, there's a little difficulty reconciling the "nähme", which B) does a little better, in my opinion.


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## JClaudeK

ayuda? said:


> it is something like saying: Wie kommst du auf den Gedanken, dass…


That's the idia.


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## elroy

perpend said:


> A) How did you catch on that my life ...
> B) How/why do you get the drift that my life ...


 B is better meaning-wise, but it doesn't sound like something that's likely to actually be said.

A I think expresses a different meaning.  To me, "How did you catch on that X" implies that X is true, whereas in German, "Wie kommst du drauf" typically implies the exact opposite (that what follows is not only not true but in fact very unlikely).

An idiomatic phrase in American English that will work at least some of the time is "How do you figure?".


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## bearded

perpend said:


> For me, there's a little difficulty reconciling the "nähme", which B) does a little better, in my opinion


I agree that B (''how do you get the drift'') corresponds better to _wie kommst du drauf, _also because it is in the present (not 'wie kamst du drauf').
As for the _nähme, _since it is a subjunctive (Konjunktiv II) due to the indirect speech, I think it would suit even if the main clause were _wie kamst du drauf/how did you get the drift._   In my opinion, also a Konjunktiv I could be acceptable (nehme) in both cases, anyhow Konjunktiv II expresses more clearly the fact that the opinion is absurd and to be denied.


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## Kajjo

_Wie kommst du darauf...?
Wieso meinst/glaubst du, dass...?_

gemeint ist: Welche Umstände haben dazu geführt, dass du so denkst? How did you come to the conclusion/idea, that...?

Elroy is right with his explanation in #5, that the speaker usually opposes the idea and wants to know, how or why the other one came to that conclusion.


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## Mozzerfan99

elroy said:


> B is better meaning-wise, but it doesn't sound like something that's likely to actually be said.
> 
> A I think expresses a different meaning.  To me, "How did you catch on that X" implies that X is true, whereas in German, "Wie kommst du drauf" typically implies the exact opposite (that what follows is not only not true but in fact very unlikely).
> 
> An idiomatic phrase in American English that will work at least some of the time is "How do you figure?".



Ah, that is what was confusing me. The definitions seemed to imply that X is true, whereas it makes more sense that he implies X isn't true.

So 'wie kommst du drauf' always means loosely 'why would you think'? Implying that what follows isn't true? Or is at least unlikely?


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## Sowka

Good evening 



Mozzerfan99 said:


> So 'wie kommst du drauf' always means loosely 'why would you think'? Implying that what follows isn't true? Or is at least unlikely?


Yes, I think so.

In the other case, it would be the perfect tense: "Wie bist du darauf gekommen...".

_Wie kommst du darauf, dass ich noch genug Geld habe, um dir diese Brosche zu kaufen?_ (= Ich habe nicht genug Geld)
_Wie bist du darauf gekommen, dass ich noch nie in Australien war? _(= Ich war tatsächlich noch nie in Australien)

I realized this only after reading this thread. We live and learn.


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## Mozzerfan99

So wouldn't that be the other way around then?
Wie kommst du darauf, mein Leben nähme den falschen Verlauf?
Wie bist du darauf gekommen, mein Leben nähme den falschen Verlauf?

So which one means which? 
Would it make a difference if it was nimmt rather than nähme? 
Does draufkommen just generally usually mean to catch on, and can you give me some examples of its different meanings?
Thanks.


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## Mozzerfan99

And I can't see daraufkommen in the dictionary, so is drauf actually short for darauf in this context?


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## berndf

The verb counts as a colloquialism and therefore isn't present in all dictionaries and if it is then usually in the shortened form _draufkommen_. The elided _a_ practically only reapears in separated forms, i.e. people usually say _draufkommen_ and _draufgekommen_ but _Wie kommst du d*a*rauf?_


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## JClaudeK

Mozzerfan99 said:


> Does draufkommen just generally usually mean to catch on, and can you give me some examples of its different meanings?


Meines Erachtens muss man zwei Bedeutungen von "_draufkommen" unterscheiden 

1) _to find out_ (cf. Duden)_
Da wär ich, auch wenn's eigentlich einfach ist, so schnell nicht draufgekommen!
ich hatte nur die mathematische Lösung, aber das hat mich verwirrt, und ich bin nicht selbst draufgekommen... http://www.matheboard.de/archive/3/thread.html
.... habe ich mir das nur selbst sagen lassen und bin nicht selber draufgekommen. Ich habe es aber jetzt wohl verstanden. http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f149/wie-kann-man-den-frametime-wert-senken-1069373.html

2) to think of s.t.
Auch wenn mir diese Einteilung sofort einleuchtete, ich war noch nie darauf gekommen, Applaus genauer unter die Lupe zu nehmen.
Herr Präsident, ich wäre nie auf die Idee gekommen, Herrn Duisenberg mit dem Papst zu vergleichen,
Darauf wäre die Firma, die schon lange nach neuen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten für ihre Produkte sucht, nie gekommen.
http://www.linguee.de/deutsch-englisch/uebersetzung/ich+wäre+nie+darauf+gekommen.html



> Darauf wäre ich nie gekommen. - It would never have occured to me.
> Ich wäre nie darauf gekommen, dass ..... - I would never have thought that
> http://www.dict.cc/?s=Darauf+wäre+ich+nie+gekommen





> auf Lösung etc:
> ich bin einfach nicht draufgekommen - it just didn’t occur to me
> http://www.wordreference.com/deen/draufkommen



In der OP ist die Bedeutung N° 2 gemeint.


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## Kajjo

I do not really see two meanings here. It's the same for me. Of course, in English we would use different translations, but in German the basic notion is the same: to occur to someone / to think of something


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> I do not really see two meanings here. It's the same for me. Of course, in English we would use different translations, but in German the basic notion is the same: to occur to someone / to think of something


Yes, I agree. _To occur to someone_ is the "true" meaning. If the English rendition _think of_ is more natural in certain precise contexts this doesn't mean that there is a semantic difference. It is just a difference in the choices different languages make as to the preferred way to express certain things.
_Ich wäre nie darauf gekommen, dass ..... = I would never have thought that...
Ich wäre nie darauf gekommen, dass ..... = It would never have occurred to me that...
Ich hätte nie daran gedacht, dass ..... = I would never have thought that...
Ich hätte nie daran gedacht, dass ..... = It would never have occurred to me that..._​All four combinations are possible without any significant semantic differences.


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## elroy

In English, for a fact, you can say "I would have never thought that..." or "it would have never occurred to me that...".
For an action, you can say "I would have never thought to do..." or "it would have never occurred to me to do..."

Bernd, "would have never" is the most natural word order here.  "Would never have" is unusual, especially in speech, where "would have" is almost always pronounced "would've," which doesn't allow intervening adverbs.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> Bernd, "would have never" is the most natural word order here. "Would never have" is unusual, especially in speech, where "would have" is almost always pronounced "would've," which doesn't allow intervening adverbs.


I took the quote _Ich wäre nie darauf gekommen_ in #14 (_in contrast to Ich wäre darauf nie gekommen_) as a starting point for the comparison which puts the emphasis on _nie_.


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## elroy

As you know, emphasis in English is often achieved through prosody and stress.  

"I would have never thought" and "I never would have thought" can be uttered neutrally.  For emphasis, you can say "I would have *never* thought" or "I *never* would have thought."

"I would never have thought" is not likely to be said - again, because most of the time we say "would've" and not "would have."


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## berndf

I disagree, _I would never have thought_ is in my observation much more frequent than _I would have never thought_. NGram Viewer agrees with me.


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## elroy

That may be the case in writing, but in speech - at least in American English - _I would have never thought_ is definitely much more common in my experience.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> That may be the case in writing, but in speech - at least in American English - _I would have never thought_ is definitely much more common in my experience.


We seem to have different register preferences. I roughly speak the way I write, so I may not be the best judge of this but I still doubt you are right.

I just asked a colleague (English speaking South African) next to me whether he would what order he finds more natural and without hesitation he say _I would never have thought..._


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## JClaudeK

Kajjo said:


> I do not really see two meanings here. [....] Of course, *in English we would use different translations*,


*Eben. *
Genau das habe ich (vielleicht ungeschickt) versucht, Mozzerfan99 zu erklären.

*Die Grundbedeutung ist die gleiche*, vollkommen einverstanden.

Aber "draufkommen" wird in 2 verschieden Situationen verwendet.

1) Ich komme nicht drauf. = Ich finde die Lösung nicht. / Ich bekomme das (Geheimnis) nicht heraus.
2) Wie bist du (da) draufgekommen? = Wie bist du auf diese (seltsame) Idee gekommen? / Wie kannst du so etwas denken?


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## Kajjo

JClaudeK: Nein, ich erkenne da nicht so verschiedene Situationen -- außer das Tempus. Die Übersetzung mag verschieden sein, die Grundidee ist aber die gleiche. Es sind nicht zwei Bedeutungen einer Phrase, sondern eine Bedeutung, die verschieden übersetzt werden kann.


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## JClaudeK

Kajjo said:


> außer das Tempus.


Das funktioniert m.E. auch im gleichen Tempus.
"Wie kommst du (da) drauf? (von _*Lösung*_ keine Spur!)

Aber lassen wir's. Anscheinend drücke ich mich nicht klar genug aus.


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## Kajjo

Ja, du hast nicht ganz unrecht, dass in manchen Verwendungen so etwas wie "Lösung" mitschwingt.

Gemeinsam ist aber allen Verwendungen, dass es um eine IDEE oder GEDANKEN geht. Das ist der Kern dieser Wendung. Dass man einzelne Beispiele mit Lösung paraphrasieren könnte, ändert meiner Ansicht nach nichts daran, dass die Idee immer im Mittelpunkt steht.


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> JClaudeK: Nein, ich erkenne da nicht so verschiedene Situationen -- außer das Tempus. Die Übersetzung mag verschieden sein, die Grundidee ist aber die gleiche. Es sind nicht zwei Bedeutungen einer Phrase, sondern eine Bedeutung, die verschieden übersetzt werden kann.


Sehe ich auch so, das sind zwei von sehr vielen Anwendungssituation, die mehr oder weniger willkürlich rausgegriffen sind. Wie man hieraus zwei prototypische Bedeutungen deduzieren könnte, vermag ich nicht zu sehen.


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## elroy

berndf said:


> I still doubt you are right.


 Bernd, if I understood you correctly, your arguments are based on 1) your personal observations, experiences, and preferences as a non-native speaker; 2) written English; and 3) the opinion of a speaker of South African English.  My judgments are based on 1) my personal observations, experiences, preferences, and intuitions as a native speaker; 2) spoken English; and 3) American English.  Your second and third points are irrelevant to my judgments.  Your first point may be relevant, but normally, for obvious reasons, a native speaker's opinion carries more weight than a non-native's, and additionally, I understand that you primarily speak British English, not American English.

But since you were still apparently not convinced by what I said, I asked six native speakers of American English who are fluent in Spanish to translate the sentence "Nunca habría pensado que pudiera llover hoy" into English.  I used this method instead of presenting them with different options and asking them for their preferences, because it is generally recognized in linguistics research that elicited production is a better measure of speakers' preferences than acceptability or grammaticality judgment tasks.  I added a subordinate clause as a distractor so that they wouldn't know what I was looking for, and I also just asked them to tell me how they would spontaneously and intuitively translate the sentence without thinking about it too much.  Only one of the four who responded actually used the target structure (which shows me I probably should have chosen a different context to increase the change of successfully eliciting the target structure), so I asked the other three how they would say it if they had to use "would."  Here are the results:

1. I never would've thought it'd rain today.
2. I never would've thought it could rain today. 
3. I never would have thought that it could have rained today.
4. I never would have thought it would rain today.

As I expected, none of them put "never" between "would" and "have."  Note that Speaker 1, who responded in writing, used the contraction "would've" to reflect what he would have actually said.  Speaker 2 responded in person and said "would've."  I suspect Speakers 3 and 4 spelled out "would have" because they were answering in writing and would have probably actually _said_ "would've."

As I said, in spoken American English it's almost always "would've" so you can't put "never" in between.  It has to be either "never would've" or "would've never."

If you're still not convinced, feel free to start a thread in English Only.


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## berndf

Elroy thank you for your research and it is well noted and interesting but, as I said in my last post,


elroy said:


> spoken American English


is not what I used as a benchmark for


elroy said:


> most natural word order


in my translations. So, this a side discussion that is not really important in the given context.


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## elroy

In Post #22, you quoted one of my posts, in which I explicitly referred to my experience with spoken American English, and you said "I still doubt you are right," which I interpreted to mean that you were doubting what I said about spoken American English.  I had already conceded that the situation may be different in written English, and I clearly wasn't making any claims about other varieties of English.  I guess you may have misunderstood my post.

I think this discussion is relevant insofar as it addresses natural ways of saying "ich wäre nie darauf gekommen" in English.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> with spoken American English, and you said "I still doubt you are right,"


My "I still doubt you are right," still referred back to "natural word order". I doubted (and still doubt) that "spoken American" is the proper or most useful definition of "natural" for purpose of the present context but then I conceded this may be a question of register preferences.


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## Dan2

elroy said:


> "I would have never thought" and "I never would have thought" can be uttered neutrally.  For emphasis, you can say "I would have *never* thought" or "I *never* would have thought."
> 
> "I would never have thought" is not likely to be said - again, because most of the time we say "would've" and not "would have."


It pains me to disagree with anything that elroy might say, but all three orders sound _perfectly_ natural to me.  (My linguistic background is purely American.)  I agree with elroy that naturalness requires reducing "have" to "'ve"; but that means _not _that "never" cannot split "would" and "have" but rather that when it _does_, "never have" becomes "never've", pronounced ['nɛvrv] (where the r is syllabic - I can't easily add the diacritic).

My guess is that elroy is rejecting "would never have" because he is evaluating the phrase with unreduced "have" (perhaps because, unlike familiar "would've", "never've" is not normally written).  Elroy, please let us know what you think of "I would never've thought that..."  Thanks.


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## elroy

Thanks for your input, Dan2!  Yes, I absolutely agree that "I would never've thought" is perfectly natural.  I just hadn't considered that possibility.

I realize now that this whole time I've actually been comparing "would've never thought," "never would've thought," (both contracted) and "would never have thought" (uncontracted), even though I was spelling out "have" in all of them!  For some reason, I didn't contract "would never have" when I first read it in this thread (maybe it's because, as you said, we don't normally write "never've"); hence my reaction to it.

Thanks again for bringing this up!


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## berndf

Good, so all disagreements have been resolved,  as far as I can see.


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