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- "Wir geben diesem Mann einen …
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diesem Mann - Dativ (whom) einen apfel - Accusative (what) Now I know this rule. ☺
I wrote "we are giving that man an apple" it was marked wrong It said it should be "this man" Is there another word that would mean "that man"?
"dem Mann".
If you want to be more explicit about "that man" rather than "this man" (since "dem Mann" could be either), you could say "dem Mann da".
Or, if you want to be really formal, "jenem Mann". That form is not used much outside of books, though.
But "dies-" is always "this", never "that".
Thank you philip But somtimes before the application accepts that diese could mean this or that
I think you should report it as a mistake if "dies" is accepted for "that".
As I said, dem Mann da. So Wir geben dem Mann da einen Apfel "We give that man an apple."
Is this kind of like the english phrase "that man there" in that the da emphasizes the dem by restating that it is this particular Mann?
Hi, Mizinamo! Very serious use of languages, wow. A real polyglot. And nice profile pic too! ;D (If you may have any questions regarding Hungarian, just tell me - a native speaker of Hu) A.
Is "Diesem Mann geben wir einen Apfel." a correct sentence? Playing with the word order is a good way to learn its boundaries, I think.
why can not be "to this man" I was certain that dative implies "to a/the"
These two sentences should work:
- We give this man an apple.
- We give an apple to this man.
But "We give to this man an apple" sounds odd to me in English -- if you put the man first, then he is the recipient because of the position and the fact that there is no preposition, and adding a preposition seems odd to me.
it is "diesem" because Mann is singular and in Dative case. Right?
I put " we give this man a apple" and it said i was wrong should have been an i thought einen means an a and one? So i should have been right?
708
The general rule is that if the noun begins with a vowel sound, use "an" not "a".
This means that you may have a history class that takes an hour.
You might also have an uncle who wears a uniform.
Then, to keep you on your guard, you might find an American who likes to put an herb or two on his pasta, but a Brit who won't put a herb on anything. (Yanks pronounce "herb" as "erb", but British pronunciation keeps the h-sound.)
"a apple" is not correct English.
Also, hints are not sentence-specific; if there are three hints given, it does not mean that all of them will work in any sentence. Often, only one of them works, and sometimes none of them, because a word may have more meanings than fit into the hints.
No - the man, as recipient of the giving, is the indirect object and needs to be in the dative case (diesem Mann or perhaps dem Mann).
Your sentence not only has the wrong case (nominative or accusative) but also the wrong gender (neuter das instead of masculine).
It would always have to be in the dative case in this sentence, so if you use der Mann instead of dieser Mann, then you need dative dem Mann instead of diesem Mann.
das Mann is never correct.
If the sentence was 'We give a man an apple' would there then be two dative, two indirect objects?
No; the man would still be the recipient of the giving and would still be an indirect object in the dative case, and the apple would still be the thing given and would still be a direct object in the accusative case: Wir geben einem Mann einen Apfel.
Note the different case endings (dative -em vs. accusative -en) on the articles of those two masculine nouns.
How do you know this "Man" from this "husband"? I purposely translated it as husband to see if Duolingo would accept it.
Rule of thumb: Mann means "husband" only in a possessive context such as mein Mann or hast du einen Mann?. Use Ehemann for "husband" otherwise, e.g. in a newspaper headline 37-jähriger Ehemann .... "37-year-old husband ....".
Because in general, dies- = "this".
"that" would be better as der, die, das, possibly with the addition of da or dort, e.g. der Mann (da) for "that man".
In English, the sentence should be, "We give the apple to the man." There the apple is the direct object and the man is the indirect object.
That is one correct sentence, but it is not the translation of this sentence. "diesem" means "this" and "einen" means "a". "We give an apple to this man." is also correct.
So what is this "dieser" "diese" "diesem" stuff? Whatcare they called? I don't think there is a lesson on them..
I've been looking for the same lesson and find none for "dies" or "unsere"
"we give this man an apple" sounds like improper English to me and I have no clue as to why i feel this way, however, I feel like "we gave this man an apple" or "we are giving this man an apple" are the only two ways in which "this" should be used in this sentence. "This" in present tense outside of a possesive context sounds off-putting to me.
- 708
Understood. However, there are a number of people who not only use this course to learn German, but also English. It would be unfortunate if we made an already confusing and contradictory language even more so by giving the impression that a perfectly correct usage of "this" is somehow, to any extent, and without an objective reason, incorrect or improper.
Probably you would feel better if we added an adverb, such as "often" or "sometimes" or "daily" or even an adverbial prepositional phrase, such as "for dessert" or "in the afternoon". It is what we do on a regular basis. "We give this man an apple and we give that man an orange." It is just that we tend to use the present continuous if that is all we want to say, but the simple present is often used with more information. The past tense "gave" is simply wrong for this sentence, but the present continuous should also be accepted as correct.
"we give the man an apple" has been evaluated wrong. But using the definite (der/the) article indicates that we all are talking about the same certain man. The same goes for "pointing" version diesem/this. It is neither wrong nor exact translation. But in practice, imho, well interchangeable.
This course does not treat the English words "the" and "this/these/that/those" as interchangeable, and so German dieser etc. are expected to be "this/these", not "the".
I have no problem with understanding the sentence, but why was one of the word blocks " 're "? Is this something I have not learned or is it just a bug?
Probably so that you can form "we're giving" with the blocks "we 're giving".
