Du aber Sie?

[petergriffin]

Is that not "der Mann beisst den Hund" ?

No, because you are just switching the object for the subject:

Den Mann beißt der Hund.

or

Der Hund beißt den Mann

are the same.

[norrahe]

No, because you are just switching the object for the subject:

Den Mann beißt der Hund.

or

Der Hund beißt den Mann

are the same.

Same with Het and De in Dutch, though there are some exceptions where Het is used where you would expect de to be used.

It's also a case of when you would use Uw/U or jij, as one is formal and the other not, but they don't tend to use the formal case these days.

[stek]

No, because you are just switching the object for the subject:

Den Mann beißt der Hund.

or

Der Hund beißt den Mann

are the same.

This example is nothing to do with Du/Sie though, they are both nominative pronouns, 'Den' is (and my German is pants but I can recognise it as 'Der' inflected) - so I would guess 'Den' in this example is masculine accusative case. As we all know, in German articles inflect as well as nouns. Not sure about adjectives tho...

[VectraMan]

Not sure about adjectives tho...

There's 49 possible inflections for adjectives in German. 49!

[scooterscot]

This example is nothing to do with Du/Sie though, they are both nominative pronouns, 'Den' is (and my German is pants but I can recognise it as 'Der' inflected) - so I would guess 'Den' in this example is masculine accusative case. As we all know, in German articles inflect as well as nouns. Not sure about adjectives tho...

But das in more or less be the most frequently used in day to day conversation. Even many young Germans don't get it.

[stek]

There's 49 possible inflections for adjectives in German. 49!

Must be even more in Russian, six cases against four in German, and I understand Finnish has 15 cases....

[stek]

But das in more or less be the most frequently used in day to day conversation. Even many young Germans don't get it.

Isn't 'Das' just nominative neuter? And not inflected so you'd hear it more?

[Sysman]

And I know all about the horrors of Den Mann beißt der Hund (which means the dog bites the man, and not the man bites the dog as any reasonable person used to speaking any reasonable language would assume). How about Die Frau beißt die Katze?

But where the case of the noun is clear, you can alter the order in English too.

• The system was down, so we went to the pub
• The system was down, so to the pub we went
• The system was down, so to the pub went we

[scooterscot]

Isn't 'Das' just nominative neuter? And not inflected so you'd hear it more?

Das ist vielleicht richtig, jede art ton as far as I'm concerned.

[Bunk]

But where the case of the noun is clear, you can alter the order in English too.

• The system was down, so we went to the pub
• The system was down, so to the pub we went
• The system was down, so to the pub went we

I've worked at places where it was more like:

We were at the pub so the system went down