Is it a kind of "parlour"?

[donnaimmaculata]

A question to the Americans: what's the difference between "living room" and "rec room/den"? (Bonus points if anyone can tell me how to translate the latter into German.)

Comments

[thistle_chaser]

Rec room/den is always casual -- a place for a family to get together and play or watch TV or just hang out. A living room could be the same thing, but it could also be a fancy room that the family can't set foot into unless company is over. Either/or.

Sorry, no help on the German part!

[donnaimmaculata]

I've never come across "rec room" or "den" before (and the word "den" creates somewhat different connotations). I don't think German makes that distintion, not when it comes to an average, modern family home, anyway. I'll have to think of something - thanks for your help.

[penknife]

If you have both, the living room is usually more formal, the room that's kept perfectly tidy and that you'd use for visiting with company, and the rec room or den is the one with sturdy indestructible furniture where the kids can play and where you can eat in front of the TV without worrying about spilling something on the nice chairs. (Also called a "family room.")

If you just have one, you call it the living room, though.

[donnaimmaculata]

If you just have one, you call it the living room

That's basically my problem here. Because the standard word in German is "Wohnzimmer", which translates "living room", but if you happen to have two, you use a different word for the fancy one, not for the less fancy one. Ah well. Thanks for your help!

[sistermagpie]

The question was answered while I was writing my long post.:-) But I just wanted to say this is really interesting. It does pose kind of a translation dilemma.

[donnaimmaculata]

Yeah, thanks a lot for your detailed answer (and the Brady Bunch tip :-) ) It is rather interesting, because I basically have to invent a phrase to describe the "rec room". There are German phrases I could use for the fancier room - "Salon" or "gute Stube" leaps to mind - but they're not what the English "living room" would mean to a German in the first place. It's always the little things that make you stumble.

[florahart]

In my house they're the same because I only have the one living space, but in general, at least where I've lived, in a bigger house, the living room is the more formal/quiet space, like where you sit with coffee after dinner with guests; the rec(reation) room is where the kids play games, the the watching of TV happens and so forth. I've heard that kind of room sometimes called a den, but haven't ever actually known anyone to refer to their own family room (there's another word for it) that way. Den also sometimes implies private space, kinda, and is sometimes interchangeable with office--and I think there's a pretty clear male/female split there: men might call their home office, which may also be where they do hobby stuff, their dens, and women maybe say office or study--no, wait, men or women might say that; I just don't know that I've ever heard a woman refer to a space that is her home office and hobby area her den.

Hm.

[donnaimmaculata]

Ah, thanks a lot. The problem is, I'm translating a list that makes a distinction between "rec room" and "living room", and it'd sound awkward if I used a formal translation for "living room", because Germans generally associate "living room" with what you might call "rec room". I'll try to work around the problem somehow or make up a word for "rec room".

[sistermagpie]

I can't help with the German but...the living room is more formal. The rec room/den/family room/tv room (in my family we called it the sun room but taht's a special case) is more connected with doing stuff and is a little less formal

[isiscolo]

I've never seen den conflated with rec room. In the house where I grew up, the den was my father's study.

Another term for rec room is family room.

[donnaimmaculata]

Well, the author is a rather casual writer and not exactly very precise when it comes to terminology. - Interestingly enough, leo.org provides "family room" as a possible translation for "den".