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- "Wir haben Suppe."
40 Comments
IMO no.
As Standard German doesn't distinguish between the simple and progressive aspects, a sentence such as "Wir lesen" can mean both "We read" and "We are reading".
That's not the case here, however. The German sentence "Wir haben Suppe" means only that soup is available, that we "own" it. It's the same meaning as in a sentence such as "We have a book".
The English sentence, "We are having soup", by contrast, means that we are eating or planning to eat soup. That's not what the German sentence means.
"Wir essen Suppe." (present tense) or "Wir werden Suppe essen" (future tense).
Depending on the context, another possibility might be "Es gibt Suppe." as an answer to the question "What's for dinner?" (Was gibt es zum Abendessen?).
Agreed Katherle, therefore I deliberately translated it as 'We possess soup' instead of the literal 'We have soup' (which would also be correct) and glad to say Duo accepted my version.
Got to love when you accidentally hit the wrong button and it reads we we soup, haha
In german wir haben suppe means that the soup is available unlike Englisg it doesn't mean we eat the soup it just mean we own the soup
"Wir haben Suppe." Is that a correct sentence? Wir = we, and haben = We/they have.
Isn't the "Wir" redundant?
My mental translation: We We have soup.
"Haben" is the form of the verb that is used with "wir." In English, the verb is taught as "I have," "you have," "he/she/it has," "we have," "they have," to show what verb form goes with which person. It's the same here. The pronoun is not part of the verb.
Yes. The German does not talk about eine Suppe (a soup) but about (an unspecified amount of the uncountable substance) Suppe "soup".
Please get rid of the female responses. You need to get a new female voice Responce. This one must be older than Methuselah's Mother. Good Lord I could have finished this course last year.
I was thinking the same thing about the male voice. I CONSTANTLY misunderstand what he is saying.
Just as English, which soup is uncountable noun, are that most uncountable nouns in german as same as in english?
"We are having soup" was marked as wrong. I understand that this translation is progressive rather than simple, but in English it would be much more common than "We have soup" (unless saying, "We have soup in the cupboard...")
No Bart, that's not a good translation as it implies 'we are eating soup' which is not what the German phrase means.
this is a meaningless translation!! this is contrary to all language learning we're having soup is correct grammatically and in use.
Not all languages are the same.
The difference between German and English is obvious, with them having a singular and plural second person (you), every noun starting with a capital letter and the different versions of "The". When said "We are having soup" is, at least to me, equivalent to "We are eating soup", but, as Katrherle said above, it isn't used as such in German.
"We're having soup" is immediate future, which is not at all the same as owning or eating soup. It would be equal to "we are going to have soup." The confusion is simply that no one in America has ever uttered the words "we have soup" unless a small child is crying for a can of soup in a store. It's a thought we've never had!
