What's the difference between mehrere & etliche in German? Let's find out in this short blog post.
The difference between the German words mehrere
& etliche
is easy:
The word mehrere
simply means multiple
in English (Notice by the way that it
does not mean many
- that would be viele
). The word etliche
, on the other
hand means countless
or a number of
- you would use etliche
to express that
something has happened very many times - if that makes sense.
German can be a difficult language to learn and comprehend,
and oftentimes the smallest words can be tricky to get a handle on. This is
especially true with the words mehrere
and etliche
, which may look and
sound similar but have very different meanings.
Let's look at both words in turn!
In German, mehrere
is a plural indefinite pronoun meaning
"several" or "many". It is usually used when referring to a
number of people or things, and can be translated to English
as "many", "several", or "a lot of".
For example:
Etliche
is another plural indefinite pronoun that is used to refer to a number of
people or things. However, unlike mehrere
, this word has a slightly less definite meaning.
It can be translated to English as "several", "various", or "quite a few". It also has a slightly stronger emphasis on quantity than "mehrere".
For example: