Connecting the bones

Word of the week: Gebein

You know the song “Dem Bones”? If you’re an American you probably learned it in kindergarten. Here’s a version that went to college:

What does “Dem Bones” have to do with German? Well, it’s led me to a train of thought which prompts me to break my no-grammar rule.

See, you can’t say “Ezekiel saw dem bones” in German. But you can say “Ezekiel prophesied to dem skeleton.”

Here’s why. First, let us stipulate that the osseous remains in both sentences be referred to as Gebein—a somewhat old-fashioned word for skeleton.

Gebein is gendered neuter. So go ahead and consult that chart of definite articles that, as a student of German, you are required to keep on your person at all times.

If Ezekiel sees the skeleton, it takes the accusative case: Hesekiel sah das Gebein. Or, for more than one skeleton, Hesekiel sah die Gebeine.

But if he does something to the skeleton, such as prophesying to it,¹ it takes the dative: Hesekiel prophezeite dem Gebein. Even then, he can only prophesy to dem in the singular. If there are multiple skeletons in the picture…

There are.

…then Hesekiel prophezeite den Gebeinen.

Skelett, the more usual modern word for “skeleton,” is also neuter, so it can be slotted into all these sentences with no change of articles.

The prefix ge- does many things in German. One of the things it can do to nouns is make them collective. Folge means “consequence”—something that follows. Gefolge means “entourage”—a group of followers.

Hatsune Miku’s Gefolge. (Art by zontik2404, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

So Gebein is skeleton—a group of bones—because Bein is bone.²

Hatsune Miku’s Gebein. (Art by mrcentipede, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Or rather, Bein was bone. That’s it’s root meaning, and survives unremarked-on in compounds.³

But when Bein is by itself, its modern, everyday meaning is “leg.”

Hatsune Miku’s Beine. (Art by VampiricLover229, CC BY 3.0)

1. The only thing, canonically, that he ever did do to a skeleton

2. Bein and bone are cognates, by the way, phonetically separated in the same way as Heim and home.

This can partly be blamed on the Great Vowel Shift, which only affected English. Bein and Heim have remained essentially unchanged since Old High German. But in Old English, bone was ban and home was ham.

3. Old meanings often persist in compounds and derivatives long after they have leached out of the base word. This happens in many languages, but it is especially pronounced in German. Remember Weib and weiblich?