Oh god, I'm so frustrated, and it has to do with German.

I went to the site of the "official German language dictionary" (I'm always skeptical of something that purports to define a language - which is a constantly evolving entity, after all) - Duden. Got greeted with an invitation to a survey. Accepted it because I was feeling generous. Never going to get that quarter to half an hour back...

I'm still not sure how that flies, since they at one point asked for my work email, which I would expect from professional scammers, not dictionary makers. I guess I was able to refuse, which is one point in their favor.

Anyway, one thing I should have remembered, that is a good reason to avoid such surveys from foreign countries is education. Every country actually has its own system, with its own naming. For example, I still don't know what my higher education qualifies as in American units. And much less in German. Their concept of Fachschule requires me to read the entire Wikipedia article each time I come across it.

And then I was presented with at least 3 pages of various printed media which I'd never heard of, much less held in my hands, and with good reason since I don't live in Germany.

Well, that's done at least (with a bunch of "Nie" and "Keine" clicked through). Now the reason I came to a dictionary... and that only adds insult to injury.

I'm going over the words I marked in the book I occasionally read. So, everybody seems to use the combination "schon mal" to mean "already". Except in this sentence it doesn't fit!

"Wenn man die Bullen schon mal brauchte, dann kamen sie zu spät" - "When you needed the cops *already*, then they were too late."

******mit... Well, the "mal" part of it is among the German words that I've kind of grown to hate, because it seems to get used without any rhyme or reason.

I mean, what makes sense in that sentence, would be something like "actually", but that's normally "eigentlich".

...Okay, maybe if I deconstruct it very analytically:

"mal" is colloquial for "einmal" and that can be used to mean "ever".

"schon" is, according to Duden, used to "strengthen" (or accentuate) the meaning. Which is kind of hard to visualize, but I suppose I could try translating "schon mal" to "ever at all"...

Anyway, a look at the dark side of the German language, or something like that?