The German language never fails to interest me as I learn new words and phrases, even after living here for 9 years. When learning how to drive in Germany, I discovered a very interesting German word that has two meanings. There are of course some words in other languages that also have more than one meaning, but this word I found very interesting as it means the complete opposite to one another. Let’s take a closer look.

Meaning One: UMfahren

The first meaning of this word means “to drive around”, “fahren” means to drive, and “um” means in this case “around”. The way to differentiate between the two meanings is through the emphasis on the word. For this meaning, you have to emphasize the first part of the word: “UM“. 

Here are some examples of how to use it in a sentence:

umfahren Sie das Hindernis– drive around the obstacle (note the Sie is formal).

ich umfahre die Baustelle – I drive around the construction site

ich kann es nicht umfahren – I can’t drive around it

UMfahren or umFAHREN? Photo by PublicDomainPictures on Pixabay. CCO

Meaning Two: umFAHREN

So now we come to our second meaning, which is where things begin to get a bit more interesting. If you say “umfahren” this way, you mean “to run over”. That’s right, instead of driving around, all of a sudden you would be driving someone/something over! 

Here “um” takes on another meaning which is “at”, and “fahren” remains the same as before, meaning to drive, so it can be translated into “to drive at”. For this meaning you need to emphasize the second part of the word: “FAHREN“.

Here are some examples of how to use it in a sentence:

Ich werde dich umfahren – I will run you over 

Ich bin fast umgefahren geworden – I was almost run over (note that here umfahren is in past tense)

You can see how this could get confusing for drivers! Hopefully you will never need to use the second meaning, but I still find it very interesting to see how the same word can have two opposite meanings. If you want more information on driving in Germany, you can find another blog post here and here. 

Have you ever driven in Germany? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading,

Larissa