"Zweiunddreißig Katzen"
Translation:Thirty-two cats
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The pronunciation of two digit numbers are KILLING me!!! I can seem to get any right!! ((
839
I even tried to cheat, I pressed button that Duo would pronounce it, and it recognises only "Katzen"
It has to do with some Old High German phonotactic stuff that comes down to the fact that 'drei' ends in a vowel sound, which changed the pronunciation of the following consonant so that it's now an ß instead of a z.
- 1000
I don't think one would ever substitute a "z" for the Eszett, aka "sharfe ess" (ß). You will find, however, "ss" used for ß now and again, in a manner similar to "oe" for ö.
Thank you! Drei is the only one that uses the ß instead of z and it was driving me crazy!
How come twenty turned into zwanzig?
The word for "2" used to have gendered forms -- zween, zwo, zwei in German. The masculine form zween ended in a consonant, -n. (Compare "between" and "never the twain shall meet" and "twenty" in English.)
zwanzig is from the old masculine form zween rather than the old neuter form zwei that turned into the single modern German form.
And since that form ended in a consonant, zwanzig has the form -zig rather than the form -ßig after a vowel.
- 1678
I don't think it ever did. German did not descend from english, both languages came from a common ancestor.
I have been speaking german since 1985 and just want to expand the vocabulary since it has been a couple of years but the pronunciation of words i have never forgotten, now this app tries to tell me that i can't pronunce numbers correct, not only is that false but i can do it i severel dialekten
I turn the speaking exercises off. Their only real purpose is to get people to try speaking since nothing else really prompts you to do so. The accuracy of the speech recognition software is... questionable at best. Sometimes it has trouble understanding you even when you say the correct thing. Sometimes it thinks you said the correct thing even if you say a completely different word or sentence.
I completely agree with you. The speaking exercises fail to understand me at the best of times, even when I am saying it right and have to repeat it 3 times.
I have also turned the speaking part off. If I can barely understand what they are saying at the best of times, how can they possibly understand me. I am however improving on my reading and writing in German.
So frustrating!!!! It's not recognizing the pronunciation of the number since the app updated.
I said it correctly three times! Please help the computer understand German!
I turn the speaking excersises off. The speaking exercises fail to understand me at the best of times.
Are two digit numbers usually written all as one word like this? I've only seen them hyphenated, but that was in a textbook, not in "real life."
- 1000
I believe R.Sandler was asking about the English translation. The answer to that is yes, two-digit numbers above 20 are written out using a hyphen:
- Forty-two (42)
- Ninety-nine (99)
- Seventeen (17)
- One thousand six hundred eighty-seven (1687)
- Four hundred six (406)
For reference, see this, but note that there is an error: two or three examples after the author there correctly states that "and" is used to indicate a decimal point--and should not be used within the whole number portion (115 is "one hundred fifteen", not "one hundred and fifteen")--he then incorrectly inserts the "and".
32 cats haha that's bearly nothing. Because there's one woman that has 100! cats
She pronounces it like Zweiundd--reissig. Very confusing! Is this how it's actually pronounced?
The hardest part in these lessons about numbers is to turn the German in the English writing system. I (native Fleming) have to visualize the numbers first (as we use the same number order as Germans do), before turning that into English. It is always double work. I can't imagine how hard it must be for English-speaking people, who don't use this system at all!
