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"BEschützt" vs. "GEschützt"

German Language Asked on February 23, 2021

I am teaching my 7 year old German grandson chess. It is hard enough for him to learn the rules and tactics without his grandad’s strange German confusing things so I would appreciate some help with the correct usage of certain terms in Chess, and generally.

My biggest problem is the use of prefixes "ge…" and "be…" I tend to use the prefix ge… because I know it from using the "Plusquamperfekt" but I feel I am using the wrong prefix and I would appreciate some advice on when to use prefix "be…" generally.

For example:

"Die Königin ist geschützt/gedroht"

or

"Die Königin ist beschützt/bedroht"?

One Answer

There are a number of issues here:

  • ge- is not a prefix as be- but just an indication of past participle, so geschützt is a form a prefix-less schützen and boils down to a pretty generic protected.
  • beschützen is a sort of active protection by somebody, so while a child may be considered as von seinen Eltern beschützt, you would not say der Wagen ist in der Garage beschützt
  • In chess, queen is mostly translated to Dame and only seldom to Königin.
  • Also in chess pieces are bedroht or angegriffen (the participle gedroht is grammmatically wrong in this context), and the counter-measures is typically phrased as gedeckt.

Correct answer by guidot on February 23, 2021

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