hang/hängen

[pne]

You know how English has two different forms for the simple past and past participle of hang, one strong and one weak, depending on whether the meaning involves killing someone?

German also has a strong and a weak form for the preterite and past participle of hängen, but they're chosen according to whether the meaning is transitive (he hung the picture on the wall) or intransitive (the picture hung on the wall).

Never thought about that; I'd just have chosen the correct form for the correct meaning without realising that there are different forms with the same infinitive.

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"Never thought about that; I'd just have chosen the correct form for the correct meaning without realising that there are different forms with the same infinitive."

Oh, lucky you.
I always got those confused. My mum (almost?) always said "gehangen" as in "Ich habe die Wäsche aufgehangen" etc., so I didn't really learn the distinction as a child and I'm pretty sure at one point I was of the opinion that "gehängt" was just bad German. I only really learnt the difference later when reading books about German grammar.

[meeps-hitchie.livejournal.com]

I have to teach that kind of stuff... :p
But since it's private lessons mostly, I usually live on adapting to the customer and thinking very fast to find explanations for things I've never explained before.
Now that I've got some experience, however, some explanations I just repeat. Which is a lot less exciting than figuring things out in a matter of a few seconds.

[relax-sven.livejournal.com]

Now, in Dutch you have the same thing, but more in the English way... I mean, the past participle is different when the meaning is different, the one means to hang somebody and the other is to hang something (on the wall e.g.). And YES I'm promoting Dutch :-p which was almost the first language in America if it hadn't been for the stupid weather that delayed the presentation of a very important pro-Dutch man... well yeah, anyway ... go Dutch! ;)