If you want to specifically emphasize "then", then use "dann" or even "da". That might be another way to think of it. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Easy rule of thumb To make the distinction between "denn" and "dann" a bit clearer we should learn the most common translations for both: denn: than , for , because dann: then , afterwards Of course - as always - there is an overlap in usage and sometimes a distinction is not clear.
Why is the distinction between "denn" and "dann" so difficult? The reason why the distinction between "denn" and "dann" is diffcult even for Germans lies in their common etymology: dann Adv.
DWDS By this we can see that the distinction between "dann" and "denn" occured as late as in the 18th Century. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Takkat Takkat Here "es steht " is an explanation. As already answered you can use all of the forms you mentioned. Or extremely colloquial don't use this in more official circumstances : Hm, dann Well, thanks for your answer. But the question is about "denn" and "dann" rather than that special case.
You might want to add that part to your answer. Harald G Harald G 27 1 1 bronze badge. Ah nice, no one pointed that out. It's no temporal context in the given context. In your example, you should use Dann, not Denn. Dann, keine ahnung. Which can cause the same confusion amongst learners of German sense in brackets : Wann-When? Father: When Wenn it stops raining, then dann we will go, then denn we won't get wet.
Martin Good Martin Good 11 2 2 bronze badges. So, in my eyes both Keine Ahnung dann. Kage Kage 4 4 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. I have noticed this "Keine Ahnung" recently.
It sounds ugly and I recommend to avoid this. Thanks to this question I realized tha it is an 'Amerikanimus' where a phrase is taken literally. But this is no translation but only some words taken from dictionary. Next time I would here "Sie sind willkommen" instead of "Gerne" orde "Bitte sehr".
Kage: I have no real idea about the interchanging "denn" and "dann", but I think that a real person rather would use some of the sentences that nem75 proposed. I'm positive that I hear and use it myself for more than 10 years. Denn creates the connection to what was there before, BUT for that to work, there has to be something. And the pizza -part is not connected to the denn- part at all and that makes its sound wrong. Now you might be wondering if the only difference between denn and weil is how you have to set up your statement.
And in most everyday contexts, we can say yes to that. But because of their different functionality, there is one aspect where the two words do indeed have different skills. And that is scope. It is pretty much a part of a sentence just like a noun. The denn -part on the other hand, being a main sentence on its own, can ONLY refer to other main sentences.
The weil -part come after the meeting -part and thus the native speaker brain automatically assumes it is part of it. The New York-part gives the reason for the meeting being cancelled. The denn -sentence on the other hand can ONLY refer to the main sentence and that is the sauer- part. Denn can NOT be understood to refer to the meeting-part because the meeting-part is just a box in the main.
For the most part, it comes down to style and personal preference which one people use. Sometimes the denn- sentence just sounds better and the same expressed with weil would be boring. Google-ngram which shows frequency in books suggests that both of them are used equally often with a slight edge for weil. For you it will be enough to use weil and let denn slowly unconsciously sink into your active vocabulary. And speaking of active… I want you all to get down to the floor and give me 20 push ups.
Denn, the particle. Just like doch or halt or schon , denn is also used as a flavoring particle. Here is an example from daily speech. If you look at how denn is used here, you might notice one thing: it is only used in questions. But what exactly does it do? Well, in many instances it is basically padding.
Yup, padding. To make this sound friendly you would need to lengthen it a lot while doing all kinds of turns with the melody… whaaaaaat?
Both languages, English and German try to soften this by adding some filler like oh, and or was it or … denn. Denn just makes you sound less harsh and it gives you more options to express your feelings with tone and melody. What it really is is padding , an extra syllable that gives you room to express yourself tonally. You can make it sound annoyed, surprised, super curious, angry… whatever you want. However, probably on account of its padding-power denn always sounds a bit casual.
A detective would never ask the suspect where denn the money is because the padding-power of denn would take away the sharpness. The detective is VERY interested in the answers, even without denn.
As you can see, denn is not restricted to super short questions. Sometimes it has a slight undertone of at least …. Contemporary German hahaha… writing that was a real joy for some reason uses the word als for unequal comparisons. But a few hundred years ago, German actually used denn for this purpose. No idea why people switched to als at some point, but be that as it may, there are two occasions in which denn is still used that way.
The first is to avoid double als. Here we have a comparing als and a whatever you want to call that — als.
I have to say though, that this sounds really high class already. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content Dann vs denn, when to use which is often confusing. Dann vs Denn Dann The usage of dann is limited to once instance. For example: Erst essen wir, dann gehen wir ins Kino. First we eat, then we go to the movies.
Denn Denn as Because Denn can have two meanings. Firstly, it can mean because: Ich gehe ins Kino, denn ich Filme mag. I go to the movies because I like films. Take a look at these two sentences: Ich sitze im Garten. I am sitting in the Garden. Die Sonne scheint hell. The sun is shining brightly. Now, if we were to combine these sentences with denn, we would simply stick them together such as this: Ich sitze im Garten, denn die Sonne scheint hell. I am sitting in the garden because the sun is shining brightly.
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