"The girl eats."
Translation:Das Mädchen isst.
33 Comments
why "Mädchen" is a neuter noun if it's referring to a girl, which is a female word?
The gender of the word does not always match the gender of the actual thing. For example, in Spanish, the word for "dress," a mostly female piece of clothing, is masculine: el vestido.
Language is weird sometimes.
A girl is female, but the word 'a girl' is not - here it is neuter because the ending ('chen') is a neuter ending.
Yes, all words ending in "-chen" are neuter - "-lein" as well (it's the other neuter diminutive suffix).
Something I have found (but doesn't apply all the time) is that children and baby animals are usually "das." It's just the weird way of German.
How do you tell "ist" from "isst"? They're two completely different words, but very similar. Is it just the context of the sentence?
If you are doing it on an Android phone, press the letter for an extra second and you will have all the accented options to choose from :)
Neuter nouns are nouns without gender - "das" nouns.
And I found a helpful link on cases: http://german.about.com/library/blcase_nom.htm
There are different verb endings for 'I', 'you', 'he/she/it', 'we', 'you' (talking to more than one person like, "you's two') and "you formal'.
When do you use isst and esse? How are they different and in what position should they be placed?
I am using duolingo on the phone, normally there are some explanations about the new grammar things like the difference between die and das...could someone explain me? My laptop broke up today so... :)
