Reply to: Du aber Sie?

[darmstadt]

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

The best one to use is 'Imbiß' or 'Bude' Deutsch. As even Germans have problems then just use the 'd' or 'n' as in: "gib mir noch n'Bier" or "Ich möchte d'Pommes mit d'Soße." Some here: Imbiss-Deutsch

[stek]

That's awful.

She's a lovely woman from the Ukraine, no shelf is too high for dusting, couch pulled for the vacuum. Until recently I employed someone from England, attention to detail was absent and he would disappear with the money the moment my back was turned only working a couple of hours when three were paid. Lazy so in so.

Does she have the right to work in Germany?

[darmstadt]

Mann beißt Hund:

[VectraMan]

What amazes me is that a) something so unbelievably complicated evolved among primitive uneducated people, and b) in the couple of thousand years since nobody thought it would be nice to simplify it. In English we dropped all the cases (apart from with pronouns), drastically simplified our conjugations, got rid of the nonsense of assigning arbitrary genders to inanimate objects, AND adopted one form of you, and somehow we all manage to communicate fine.

[petergriffin]

Ok everybody and now please halten Sie die Fresse!

[VectraMan]

Isn't it same in all cases? 'Das' all the way!

Das = dem in the dative:

N A D G
der den dem des
die die der der
das das dem des
die die der den

Simples.

[stek]

Also accusative neuter.

Isn't it same in all cases? 'Das' all the way!

[Sysman]

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

Also accusative neuter.

[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

[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.

[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

[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?

[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....

[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.

[VectraMan]

Not sure about adjectives tho...

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