studying n00b-german! - Page 4

On March 23 2011 22:12 mrscheng wrote:
yeah so just got back from test. went really well, especially with the prepositions i think.

probably screwed up alot on imperatives and some verbs in perfect.

can someone tell me what "zeigen" is in perfect? i wrote "geziegt" but in hindsight i think its "geziegen".... its probably neither hehe...

also messed up hard on the plural of Milch, Preis, and .. some other word, saying they didnt have a plural (0) hehe... so messed up some

On April 09 2011 02:55 MoltkeWarding wrote:
In the first place, you are confusing sie, the third-person feminine singular pronoun with sie, the third-person plural pronoun or Sie, the formal second-person pronoun.

Secondly, it is not dative because the person is not the object of the preposition. Seit can only take either a specific time, or a quantity of time as its object. You are literally saying: "since her received the Euro."

On April 09 2011 03:36 mrscheng wrote:


sigh... ty. yeah lol i did confuse them. argh. is it "ihn" if its "sie" in dative?

ty for seit-explanation!

other than that, text is ok?

On April 09 2011 05:05 FA_ViPeR wrote:
Native german speaker here, I'll give it a shot, but my last german grammar class has been at least 15 years ago, so I probably can't give a good explanation for everything. And before saying something wrong I'd rather just correct you

"Wir sind in dem früher Morgen geflogen und landen ungefähr um 11 Uhr."
should rather be
"Wir sind am frühen Morgen geflogen und (sind) ungefähr um 11 Uhr gelandet."
or "Wir flogen am frühen Morgen und landeten ungefähr um 11 Uhr"
I would say the first variant is used much more in day-to-day language. Notice that "sind" counts for both "geflogen" and "gelandet", so you actually don't need the "sind" in parenthesis

"Seit haben wir unserem Mietwagen in den Parkplatz geholt."
"Dann/Danach haben wir unseren Mietwagen vom Parkplatz (ab)geholt"
For "Seit" look at Moltke's answer. Beware of "seid/seit" in german, even many if not most germans can't use them correctly short mnemonic a teacher once told us in class was "seit ist zeit"
"unseren" you own the car, so genitive ("wessen wagen?" / whose car?). Unserem would be dative.
"in den Parkplatz": not really sure on this one, but I'd say you treat "Parkplatz" like a person here, so dative. "in den" is just wrong here, you could have something "in den Haenden" for example.

"Wir fuhren nach unserem Hotel danach."
"Wir fuhren danach zu unserem Hotel"
Basically: Time before place before the rest.
When to use "nach" and when to use "zu" is really tricky i guess, especially as "nach" can relate to time as well as place ("Ich fahre nach Berlin") ("Nach 18.00 Uhr trinke ich keinen Kaffee").

"Es war nicht Hochsaison damit war es fast leer."
"Es war nicht Hochsaison, deshalb/dadurch war es fast leer."
I guess "damit" isn't completely wrong, but it is highly colloquial (is this the right word?) when used in such a context. Uses for "damit" would be "Damit schneide ich meine Haare" (With this i cut my hair) or "Ich sage das damit du aufhoerst" (I say that so you stop, I say that to make you stop)

"Es war ziemlich schön zu allein bleiben."
"Es war ziemlich schön allein zu sein"
Wrong position of "zu". "Bleiben" just sounds weird in this sentence, but the grammar is fine.

"Wir haben in der Sonne auf der Promenade gegangen und Bier im Café getrunken."
"Wir sind in der Sonne auf der Promenade (spazieren) gegangen und haben Bier im Café getrunken."
or "Wir sind in der Sonne auf der Promenade gelaufen und haben Bier im Café getrunken."
Sorry can't really explain why it ("sind" and "haben") is like this, but some other thoughts on the sentence:
Just saying "gegangen" usually means "went somewhere else". "spazieren gehen" or maybe "schlendern" would be "leisurely walk" or "stroll" in english.

"Es war wirklich schön, zu entspannen."
Tricky... really depends on what you want to say
"Es war wirklich gut um sich zu entspannen," or "Es war wirklich schön sich zu entspannen."
Translated a little strange/wrong to show the different meanings: "It made it easier to relax" vs "It was really nice to relax"
Altough reading it again, you could really just say "Es war wirklich schön zu Entspannen". I'm honestly not sure if "entspannen" would become a noun in german in this case. But this version is definitely a little colloquial.


Hope this helped a little, as I said most of my grammar knowledge has been lost to time

Edit: I'm bored so I'll look over another part, will be editing again in a few minutes

On April 09 2011 05:20 matjlav wrote:


The dative form of "sie" as in "they" is "ihnen." But yeah, in this case, you don't need to use dative at all because "seit" is acting as a conjunction rather than a preposition. So it's "seit sie den Euro bekommen haben."

Other things:

"Pesetas sind besser gewesen!" I'm not a native speaker, but this seems weirdly phrased to me. If you meant "Pesetas were better," then it would be more normal to say "Pesetas waren besser." If you meant "Pesetas would have been better," it would be "Pesetas wären besser gewesen" (but I imagine you haven't started with the conjunctive mood yet).

"Wir sind in dem früher Morgen..." -> "Wir sind am frühen Morgen" or "Wir sind in der Frühe." adjectives in the dative always end with -en.

"und landen ungefähr um 11 Uhr" -> "und um ungefähr 11 Uhr gelandet." You need to keep your tenses consistent.

"Seit haben wir unserem Mietwagen in den Parkplatz geholt." - I'm confused about what you're even saying here. "Seit" isn't an adverb. Perhaps you mean "Seitdem," but then "danach" or "dann" would work better.

"zu allein bleiben" -> "allein zu sein". In English as well as German it sounds weird to say "it was quite nice to stay alone." And when you use the word "zu" like this, the only thing in the phrase that can come after "zu" is the verb.

"Wir haben in der Sonne auf der Promenade gegangen und Bier im Café getrunken." -> "Wir sind in der Sonne auf die Promenade gegangen und haben Bier im Café getrunken." When you are going to somewhere with "auf," you need to use the accusative. Also, the perfect of "gehen" is "sind gegangen," not "haben gegangen."

There's more stuff than this. You need to pay more attention to staying consistently in the past tense, using "sein" and "haben" for the appropriate verbs, and make sure your adjective endings are correct.

and i can actually explain when its sein oder haben in perfect. if its ways of "being": sein, werden etc, or when u change state: aufstehen, einschlafen, sterben etc, or if u r moving: gangen, laufen etc. then its sein. evertthing else is haben (ofc, with exceptions as this is german, lol).

On April 09 2011 23:35 Orome wrote:
De Papscht het z'Spiez s'Speck Pschteck zschpat pschtellt.

Pronounce that and you get a cookie, plus you've made your first step towards learning cool German, aka Swiss German.

On April 09 2011 07:03 FA_ViPeR wrote:
"Wir haben auch die nächste zweiten Tagen Golf gespielt auf sehr toll und sehr schön Golfplätze."
"Wir haben auch die nächsten zwei Tage Golf gespielt auf sehr tollen und sehr schönen Golfplätzen."

"nächste" is singular, "nächsten" is plural, i.e. "Der nächste Tag" vs "Die nächsten Tage"

"zweiten" would correlate to one specific thing out of several ("Der erste/zweite/dritte Tag von drei Tagen", just like first/second/third in english).