Breakdown of Er hat irgendwas vergessen.
haben
to have
vergessen
to forget
irgendwas
anything at all, something or other
Questions & Answers about Er hat irgendwas vergessen.
Irgendwas isn't an adverb of time or place. How does it fit with words like irgendwo and irgendwann?
While irgendwo (somewhere) and irgendwann (sometime) are adverbs, irgendwas is a pronoun. However, they all use the exact same building block: the prefix irgend-. You can attach irgend- to many question words and pronouns to make them completely indefinite or vague.
Is there a difference in meaning between irgendwas and irgendetwas?
No difference in meaning at all! Irgendwas is simply the shortened, highly common colloquial version of irgendetwas. You will hear irgendwas constantly in everyday spoken German, while irgendetwas is slightly more formal and more common in writing.
Why does this translate to "something or other" rather than just "something"?
If the sentence just used etwas (Er hat etwas vergessen), it would mean a plain "He forgot something." Adding the irgend- prefix emphasizes that the speaker has absolutely no idea what the forgotten item was. Translating it as "something or other" captures this extra layer of vagueness perfectly.
Why doesn't the past participle vergessen have a ge- at the beginning?
The verb vergessen (to forget) starts with the inseparable prefix ver-. Verbs with inseparable prefixes (like ver-, be-, ent-, or er-) never take the standard ge- prefix when forming the past participle. Because it's also a strong (irregular) verb, its past participle happens to look exactly identical to its infinitive form.
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