- Forum >
- Topic: German >
- "Hast du Eltern?"
74 Comments
The verb has to go second.
- Voldemort hat meine Eltern getötet
or maybe
- Voldemort tötete meine Eltern
but I expect the first one is more likely.
[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,
-
I ate apples.
-
I have eaten apples.
but not
-
I apples eaten.
-
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
-
Voldemort killed my parents. (Here "killed" works like "ate")
-
Voldemort has killed my parents. (Here "killed" works like "eaten")
In German, those are two totally different words. Literally:
-
Voldemort killed my parents. = Voldemort tötete meine Eltern.
-
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."
Your sentence didn't have a verb. getötet is a participle, and needs to go with a main verb (haben).
So his sentence means 'Voldemort has killed my parents'. If you want to say just 'Voldemort killed my parents', you can't use getötet. You must use tötete like in his second sentence.
132
@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.
Because usually when only one parent is spoken of in normal conversation, it would be either "a mother" or "a father" or "one of [your] parents" rather than just "a parent"
I don't know, but this word itself does not have singular, it is always plural - Die Eltern.
Usually you'll say, "My parents" Otherwise, when speaking of a specific parent (ok, I can see that a singular word would work in that sense), you'd just say, "My mom/ dad"
'Lass einen deiner Eltern dieses Formular unterschreiben' (Have one of your parents sign this form) if you want to be exact, but since one signature is normally enough you would just say 'Lass deine Eltern dieses Formular unterschreiben' (Have your parents sign this form)
Nicht so schlecht! There are always workarounds if native speakers don't want to say something! Danke schön!
"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)
Is this understood to mean "Do you have parents here?" at a party or something?
Hast du eltern? Why was hast first? But when translated: Do you have parents.. Im confused..
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?)
In english it can be rude because in a nasty tone it may sound like an insult. Whats wrong with you. Do you have parents? You litter all over the place. Etc. But we are trying to understand eachother. In English it is more assumed to be an insult because it is commonly used that way.
How are we supposed to know the correct pronunciation, when the fast and slow examples sound so different? For example: in this passage, the woman pronounces Eltern two different ways.
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:
I'd like to keep this to my movie, can we please not discuss my private life?
It makes sense; it only needs the context. It's not a sentence you'd imagine between adults, but perhaps from an orphaned child to someone else.
It can make sense in context. it is a question which enquires whether one's parents are alive or not.
Thats true i bave parents but there not my real parents. My real parents were killed in a shooting accident.
I agree this is odd translated this way in English. (It sounds vaguely offensive to me, like, "Were you born in a barn?") I'm not sure what a German would mean with this question. Is it, "Are your parents living?" or "Are you adopted?"
In the sense of living parents; this is especially likely to be applied to the circumstances of one who never knew their parents.
-
"Hast du Eltern?" = "Do you have parents?"
-
"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.
my dad said he went to get milk 20 years ago. I'm still waiting for him to return
