Germany: a language with an exact word for it
But it is also, for exactly that reason, one of the most satisfying. When a German sentence works, it clicks shut like a good lid.
The word I stole permanently is "doch". It is the reply that contradicts a negative — someone says you didn't, and you say doch, and the argument is over in one syllable.
I tell students who are afraid of German grammar that they are not learning rules. They are learning a machine that removes ambiguity, and that ambiguity is what was making them nervous in the first place.
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