Help Finding Antonyms for German Adjectives?
In practicing adjective declension by trying to craft a bunch of example sentences I realized I don't have an easy way of finding the common antonym/opposite words for german adjectives that I already know. It doesn't seem to readily come up when using Pons or dict.cc...but maybe I'm just blind? What can I use for this, any suggestions?

I hesitate just looking up the german translation for english words that are the common antonyms in english because I realize that might not always translate into the common antonym in german. (For instance, in english "dark" and "light" are opposites, but I'm not confident that "licht" is the right antonym for "dunkel" or if it would be the german word for "bright" -whatever that is.) So what do you suggest?

I also ask because I just realized that looking antonyms up for every adjective I come across would probably be a good way to learn German faster :)

Thanks!

Question

Help Finding Antonyms for German Adjectives?
In practicing adjective declension by trying to craft a bunch of example sentences I realized I don't have an easy way of finding the common antonym/opposite words for german adjectives that I already know. It doesn't seem to readily come up when using Pons or dict.cc...but maybe I'm just blind? What can I use for this, any suggestions?

I hesitate just looking up the german translation for english words that are the common antonyms in english because I realize that might not always translate into the common antonym in german. (For instance, in english "dark" and "light" are opposites, but I'm not confident that "licht" is the right antonym for "dunkel" or if it would be the german word for "bright" -whatever that is.) So what do you suggest?

I also ask because I just realized that looking antonyms up for every adjective I come across would probably be a good way to learn German faster :)

Thanks!

Answer

When you look up antonyms, you should make sure how to use them. Just learning vocabularies without knowing how to use it is counterproductive, as you might learn a wrong meaning by equating the German translation to the English meaning. I would suggest to check up the exact meaning of the word in a dictionary (e.g. duden, there are many examples). When you are still not sure, write some sentences and paste it in the notebook section for corrections. Licht is for example not the opposite of dunkel. The opposite would be 'hell'.

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Maybe it's a good way to ask your German friends ? (I think "hell" is the opposite for "dunkel")

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Yes. I just double-checked and they all seem to usually have a spot for synonyms and antonyms. Antonyms seem to always be the last thing listed. Was somewhat surprised that pons and dict.cc didn't do this as well...

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I still find your approach a bit strange. If you take words and expressions from your native language and try to find the equivalent in your target languge, you will always run into the kind of problem you described here. In my opinion it is much easier to take native German input as a starting point and try to understand how the language works. This will also give you an idea of the sometimes subtle context clues that can change the meaning of a word quite drastically.

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Out of curiosity: Where would you look up antonyms for English adjectives? Do dictionaries normally list them?