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I would like to know how do those 2 words, stimmt and so, when used together, mean keep the change?

user unknown
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Ahmed Mohaisen
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    I love that there are 3 answers with 3 different translations of "stimmen" which are all correct somehow :D – JayTheKay Jan 17 '20 at 15:38

3 Answers3

73

The verb "stimmen" means "to be correct". "Stimmt so" is short for "es stimmt so" or "der Betrag stimmt so", which means "it's correct like that" or "the amount is correct like that", or more verbosely, "This is the amount I intend to pay, you don't have to give me any money back".

Uwe
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7

In German, "so" has different meanings:

  • like the English "so" - use it to exaggerate "du bist so schlecht"="you are so bad"
  • it can also be used to talk about a current state of something "behalte es so"="keep it so"

"Stimmt" means "right".

So when you say "It is right so" in English, you mean "keep the change of it/keep it like that" as you finally got the answer right, so you can keep that final change (for example).

Same in German - when you say "right so", the literal translation is "stimmt so" so when you say "keep the final change of the document/keep the document like that" which means "the document is right so", you can say "das Dokument stimmt so".

user unknown
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PolarBear123
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    ........ Stimmt! – Christian Geiselmann Jan 17 '20 at 09:23
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    @ChristianGeiselmann so so ... – Volker Landgraf Jan 17 '20 at 17:02
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    The English stentences sound to me like false friend translations into English, i.e. never heard or would expect to hear "It is right so" or "the document is right so" in English. Are you an English native speaker? Or did you just try to 'mock-translate' the German sentences to make their meaning clear? – Frank Hopkins Jan 18 '20 at 18:19
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    I also speak English. Nobody in English would say "right so" in the most cases. I was just trying to come up with a good sentence with "so" in it. Sorry for the unclarified stuff here. – PolarBear123 Jan 18 '20 at 23:44
  • @PolarBear123 Your intention was clear anyway, I believe. – Christian Geiselmann Jan 19 '20 at 09:38
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    "Make it so" would be an example where so refers to the specified state. However as we know naval/space and old form – eckes Jan 19 '20 at 13:22
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    generally "so" is an absolute horror of a word for beginners because its meaning is 99% dependent on ints context and can vary widely from not having any meaning in the sentence to changing it considerably – Hobbamok Jan 19 '20 at 21:27
  • @ChristianGeiselmann Well 'So when you say "It is right so" in English, you mean" makes it sound to me like that is a thing you actually would say in English. Since that sounds awkward to me, I second guessed and assumed the other interpretation, but as for improvement suggestions, imho that could be expressed more clearly. – Frank Hopkins Jan 19 '20 at 23:05
  • "It is right so" does not scan well to my modern American English ear — but "it is so" (meaning "that's true") sounds a perfectly correct (although a bit formal). – mattdm Jan 20 '20 at 01:51
6

You can say stimmt so or passt so. So meaning in this way and stimmen/passen means to fit. So you say, that the amount of money you give is fitting the price and imply you don't expect anything back, because it fits and there is no excess amount (then it wouldn't be fitting).

user unknown
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infinitezero
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