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4.11 Adverbs of direction
Other common adverbs of place:
außen on the outside irgendwo somewhere innen on the inside nirgendwo/nirgends nowhere draußen outside anderswo/woanders somewhere else drinnen inside überall everywhere
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German usually makes a clear distinction between position, movement away from the speaker and movement towards the speaker by combining hin (away from) and her (towards)with other adverbs or prepositions to form adverbs of direction. -hin and -her are suffixed to other adverbs of place to indicate direction:
Wo wohnst du? Wohin gehst du? Woher kommst du?
Where do you live? Where are you going (to)? Where do you come from? Komm doch hierher! Just come here! Ich bin gerade auf dem Weg dahin. I’m just on my way there. Wie können wir dorthin kommen? How can we get there? Er geht irgendwohin. He’s going somewhere or other. Den Typ kenne ich irgendwoher. I know that guy from somewhere or other. Morgen fahren wir woandershin. Tomorrow we’re going somewhere else.
NB In spoken German you’ll often hear: Wo gehst du hin? and Wo kommst du her?
hin- and her- can be prefixed to PREPOSITIONS to form directional adverbs, e.g. heraus. These directional adverbs can in turn be used as PREFIXES with verbs of motion. They link the direction indicated by the preposition with the idea of movement away from or towards the speaker:
Er kam ins Zimmer herein. He came into the room. Sie ging aus dem Zimmer hinaus. She went out of the room. Er fuhr unter der Brücke hindurch. He drove underneath the bridge. Er zog eine Pistole unter dem Bett hervor. He pulled a pistol out from under the bed. Wir sind die Treppe hinaufgestiegen. We climbed up the stairs. Sie kamen die Treppe heruntergerannt. They came running down the stairs.
NB In spoken German, speakers will tend to shorten hinunter/herunter and hinauf/herauf to runter and rauf.
As the examples show, the directional adverbs with hin and her sometimes repeat the direction given by a preceding preposition.
You can use a noun phrase in the ACCUSATIVE case (without a preposition) to form adverbials which express distance. This is common in combination with directional adverbs in hin- and her-:
