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Comment by vanderZwan | Hacker News Reader

> The other day my friend S., an American Berliner, said that he had noticed his English-language social circle starting to use the word « spontaneously » wrong. When Germans say they’ll organise a social event spontan, they mean they’ll work out the details at short notice. To socialise spontaneously, in English, means something rather different. But S. and I and our Neukölln friends have started using it in the sense of spontan. « OK cool text me Sunday and we’ll choose a place spontaneously. » This error is becoming part of our little language, our ultra-local dialect, just among us.

On behalf of the entire Netherlands also using this wrong in the same way: what does the Anglosphere consider correct usage of spontaneously then?

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Definition: a result of a sudden impulse and without premeditation

Spontaneously would be "Let's go do x right now at y place." not "Let's pencil this half-baked plan into our calendars and finalize some details at that time."

In English, we have the abbreviation TBD (to be determined) if you want to note that some details haven't yet been finalized.

We also have "to be determined" as an expression in Dutch, but in this particular context that would imply "to be determined later than now but before we meet" to Dutch (and presumably German) ears.

Other comments insist that something is only spontaneous if it was done without forethought. If we decide to not think about where to go until we meet, then have we given "where to go" any forethought? My gut feeling says we haven't in a meaningful sense. In a meta-sense perhaps, because the decision is to think about it when we meet.

The reality is that if people know there is an event coming up that they have some say in, they will tend to think about where to go or what to in the interim. It will probably result in a different decision than a truly spontaneous decision with no prior contemplation.

That's not a bad thing. It will probably tend to improve the outcome on average.

It's just not what the word spontaneously means in English. And you asked.

Living language evolves. It's not a big deal. But that's simply not the current meaning of that English word for the Anglosphere.

To my ear, to do something “spontaneously” means to do something without having planned it. So to make plans with someone to do something “spontaneously” sounds oxymoronish.

IDK, it sounds OK to me: you make plans for meeting, you'll decide what to do on the spot, "improvising".

Meeting is definitly not done spontaneously. Neither is choosing the activity. The choice, however, may be spontaneous.

Spontaneity implies impulse, without forethought. You just wouldn't say something was something spontaneous if it was at all planned. Having a plan to do X, but working out the exact details later is not spontaneous unless there's a radical departure from the plan.

Situation 1: On your way home from work you run into an old friend and decide to go to the nearest bar. In retrospect you would call that outing spontaneous - it was the result of unplanned, unexpected circumstances.

Situation 2: You plan to meet a friend for a drink but haven't decided a location. The two of you meet up and decide to go to a particular bar, and then walk to that bar. There's nothing about this that is spontaneous, because each step involved some amount of forethought, even if there was an amount of "winging it" in meeting up before deciding where to get a drink.

Situation 3: You plan to meet a friend for a drink, meet up and decide to go to a particular bar. On the way to the bar you spot a comedy club, and in the spur of the moment decide to go see a show instead of just grabbing a drink. This could be considered spontaneous because you had no pre-existing intention of going to see a comedy show, it just happened because of circumstance.

In short, spontaneity sort of involves departure from the expected. If your plan is to work out the details later, then it's not spontaneous. It's only spontaneous if the event disrupts what you would have expected to happen.

You meet your friend at a pre-arranged time, walk down the street and spontaneously choose which bar to enter.

That still sounds weird. You knew you were going to choose a bar to enter, just not which one. That's not really spontaneity. It's just postponing the final details of your plan.

Spontaneity isn't going to the restaurant as agreed, but without being sure what you would order to drink.

It's bumping into an old friend on the way back from the post office and deciding "fuck my conference call at 3, let's go catch up for coffee right now."

The Germans even plan being spontaneous ;)

This is the crux of the matter!

Actually, as a native Berliner I'd never use spontan when making plans. I guess this usage might be the result of talking about the future the way you'd like to reminisce about it once it's become the past. "We spontaneously decided to sit down at a café to have some jelly doughnuts." sounds more interesting than "We couldn't be arsed to decide beforehand where to eat", IDK?

But it's still understandable, same as when people call jelly doughnuts something other than Pfannkuchen, so no big deal.

About 30 years ago, I met a vivacious German-Brazilian woman at a party who complained at length about how miserable it was visiting her relatives in Germany. This precise issue was her main complaint.

Without any prior forethought. Immediately, on a whim.

E.g., "We were in Vegas and saw an Elvis chapel, so we spontaneously decided to get married!"

They were in Vegas without any plans of marriage, saw a venue, and decided immediately to marry.

That seems like exactly the meaning that "spontan" has in Germany. It's like you plan to be in Vegas but there you spontaneously decide to get married. In German, you would say "Wir sind nach Vegas in den Urlaub geflogen und haben dort spontan geheiratet", so pretty much identical.

That's different than vanderZwan's quoted description of what spontan means in the GP comment.

Yeah. The article is confused.

In its example deciding spontaneously is fine since you're not deciding what to decide but you're deciding that you will decide and then later you'll suddenly decide what to decide. The decision to decide was planned but the substance of the decision is yet to be decided.

Something spontaneous is something that happens on its own. If you can say that you will do something, then it is not spontaneous. You cannot decide to do something spontaneous next week because then you’ve planned it. Improvised may be better suited in that case, from what I understand. It’s similar in French: “il y aura un rassemblement spontané” (there will be a spontaneous gathering) is nonsense. Even if it is understandable, it would label you as a foreigner or uneducated.

Similar words generally have different scopes in different languages, or have more meanings in a language than in another. So you have to go further than the first meaning in a dictionary to make sure that a word is right in a given context.

For the sake of the argument, if we assume that a word with one meaning in English has the same meaning in German plus another one, then using it with the second meaning in English is wrong. Native speakers are very sensitive to words being slightly wrong or use in slightly wrong places. It happens all the time with foreign languages, and I am sure a native English speaker could point out one example in this very post.

“spontan” means in fact both spontaneously and, when used in a planning context, “let’s play it by ear”. So you plan to have lunch but keep it “spontan”, meaning for example that you expect each other to plan closer to the date, maybe even the same date. It’s a very Berlin thing I have to say. At the same time, spontan is even mocked to be a way to kindly part ways. You don’t really want to have another date? Then at the end you don’t make plans and say “lassen wir uns mal spontan treffen”, meaning you won’t probably ever meet again.

Y‘all overthinking this. As I have written somewhere below:

Words usually have multiple meanings, common ones and less common ones. "False friend" words usually swapped their common and rare semantics when entering a different language. In this case, the common meaning for "spontaneously" is "without direction" but not "on short notice". But it's the other way around in German. There actually is the German term "spontane Ordnung" ("order from chaos") using the English connotation in this case.

Spontaneously in English usage is something done without pre-planning. Spur of the moment. As in "we spontaneously decided to drive to LA"

In this German context it's more like "we will figure it out". As in, we plan to meet up yes, but whatever we will do we'll figure it out at that time. As in "we'll meet at 3, hang and figure out what we'll do. Maybe we'll go somewhere"

For native speakers struggling with spontan, just translate it as “let’s play it by ear”

For native English speakers, the German "spontan" translates as "improvised" rather than "spontaneous".

"on the spur of the moment"

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