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- Topic: German >
- "Hast du Eltern?"
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[Edit, sorry, I didn't see either of your responses before posting or I would have saved you a little more grammatical fuss. Anyway, there's my shot at an explanation.]
Suppose you wanted to talk about eating apples. You could say,
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I ate apples.
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I have eaten apples.
but not
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I apples eaten.
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I eaten apples.
because a past particle cannot stand on its own; you need the "have." It's the same with this sentence. "Getötet" means "killed," yes, but "killed" could be part of two different sentences
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Voldemort killed my parents. (Here "killed" works like "ate")
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Voldemort has killed my parents. (Here "killed" works like "eaten")
In German, those are two totally different words. Literally:
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Voldemort killed my parents. = Voldemort tötete meine Eltern.
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Voldemort has killed my parents. = Voldemort hat meine Eltern getötet.
Except, using the simple past tense is not actually very common at all in German, unlike English, and tends to get replaced with the past participle construction; that is, even though in English it sounds most natural to say "Voldemort killed my parents," in German it is much more natural to say "Voldemort hat meine Eltern getötet." You can verify this for yourself by putting each sentence in turn into Google within quotation marks so that it shows you only exact results. When I just did this, I got only one result for, "Voldemort tötete meine Eltern" and 934 for "Voldemort hat meine Eltern getötet."
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@Sninguistics Them my sentence translated to something like "Voldemort, kill, my parents"? (The 'kill' being grammatically inappropriate)
This is a lot of German grammatical fuss over a tragedy.
"ein alleinerziehender Haushalt"
There is a specific adjective for a single parent: "alleinerziehend"
And it can be nominalized:
der/die/das Alleinerziehende
[M] ein Alleinerziehender
[F] eine Alleinerziehende
[N] ein Alleinerziehendes (I'm not sure about this last one, I can't find an entry for it on Duden)
In German, questions are formed in two ways.
1) By adding a question word, such as "warum," "wo," "wer," "wie," "welcher," etc.
Where are my shoes? = Wo sind meine Schuhe?
Who is talking? = Wer spricht?
2) By inverting the subject and the verb. We do this in English, too, actually, it's just that we often drop the "do" in positive statement, which makes it less obvious.
He is talking. --> Is he talking? (Er spricht. --> Spricht er?)
You will go. --> Will you go? (Du wirst gehen. --> Wirst du gehen?)
She has seen it. --> Has she seen it? (Sie hat es gesehen. --> Hat sie es gesehen?)
They are there. --> Are they there? (Sie sind da. --> Sind sie da?)
We (do) have bread. --> Do we have bread? (Wir haben Brot. --> Haben wir Brot?)
I (do) eat an apple. --> Do I eat an apple? (Ich esse einen Apfel. --> Esse ich einen Apfel?)
You do not have any water. --> Do you not have any water? (Du hast kein Wasser. -->Hast du kein Wasser?) ("kein" = "not any")
He (does) play with the cat. --> Does he play with the cat? (Er spielt mit der Katze. --> Spielt er mit der Katze?)
Well, in normal, everyday speech, you probably would actually pronounce things a bit differently if you were trying to talk really slowly to help a language learner out. My favorite example of this is "I am going to go to the store," which is often slurred into, "I'm'n'a gotothe store," when said quickly, or at least, "I'mgoingte gotethe store" or "I'm gonna gotethe store" or some other such thing. But if you slowed down, you would pronounce it much more clearly. Of course, with the computer, it could well actually be the faster version that is more accurate, depending on how the sound files are constructed. . . I'm not sure, but in any case, if you ever have a doubt about how a word is pronounced, you can look it up in several online dictionaries, and check their sound files, or you can look it up on forvo.com:
http://www.forvo.com/word/eltern/#de
Also, it might help to read up on German pronunciation rules:
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"Hast du Eltern?" = "Do you have parents?"
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"Du hast Eltern?" = "You have parents?"
Both are valid ways of asking a question, but they are used in different contexts. The first form, with the subject and verb properly inverted, is used when asking a simple, factual question. For example:
- Space Alien: "I don't have brothers. I don't have sisters. I don't have aunts or uncles or grandparents."
- Human: "Do you have parents?"
The second form, with the sentence phrased just like a normal declarative sentence but spoken with a question inflection, is used to express surprise, or to request special clarification. For example:
- Robot: "I like to navigate complex mazes on my birthday. It is my favorite activity. My parents take me every year."
- Human: "Wait, what! You have parents?"
You wouldn't use "You have parents?" as the response in the first scenario, nor use "Do you have parents?" as the response in the second scenario, right? So we need to keep them straight in our translations as well.