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- Topic: German >
- "Er ist bei seinem Partner."
119 Comments
So can I read into this that 'he is with his (male) partner' or is that too specific?
Yes you can. Der Partner is a male noun and refers only to male individuals, thus the "-m" dative
What if you don't know the gender of the person's partner? It's my understanding that Germans default to the masculine, generally.
Technically, no.
"If I HAVE a female partner, would I change it to 'seiner Partnerin'?"
But if HE (the person you are talking about) has a female partner, then yes.
also if "She was with her female partner" it would have been: "Sie ist bei ihrer Prtnerin."
prompt me if this is wrong so i delete this answer.
Now, is this partner like business partner, or partner like married partner? Just curious :3
both of them.
Ehepartner = marriage partner
Spielpartner = playmate
Vertragspartner = contractor or contracting party
Geschäftspartner = business partner
Gesprächspartner = interlocutor
It can be. This would be a more appropriate way to discuss homosexual couples than the marriage phrases duo keeps throwing out, since gay marriage is not a thing in Germany.
Just updating your comment, same-sex marriage has been legal in Deutschland since 1 October 2017.
Why not "Er ist mit seinem Partner", does bei in this situation mean together as in they are in a relationship?
"bei" means "by" in English, not "with", although it could be translated as such. For example: bei dem See - by the lake, not with the lake
Oh, I'd really appreciate a better explanation on this case.
I'm still very confused with the use of "bei" and "mit".
When can they be used as synonyms?
Ich liebe mit meiner Familie.
Ich liebe bei meine Familie.
I'm really clueless here...
Bei is more like near or around I believe, but mit is more like with in doing something... So dativ vs akkusativ.... But to be fair, im not entirely sure and German is much more fluid than english.... Words can mean entirely different things in context. I hope that helps
That would likely be "neben". For people, "bei" means with in the sense of "staying with" / "at their house/place"
how is 'mit' used for people then? is there any overlap? or is it more of a... spiritual adjacency?
"mit" is used when talking about activities.
Er ist bei seinem Partner.
Er ist mit seinem Partner im Kino.
Er geht mit seinem Partner spazieren.
How come on a german menu you will see a meal and it will say mit this and also that. Thats not an activity, or does that rule only apply when referring to humans?
You've got the right idea. "Mit" is the general "with", but when talking about people there are several nuances.
His place? You mean his house? In English "at his place" means at his house. I don't think that's what you mean.
You made a mistake. You should have written: - He is at his partner's. Duo accepts it.
I think because that doesn't make sense in English. Prepositions usually don't translate 1:1. "Bei" can only be loosely translated as "at." It works in some cases, but not all. The sentence means that person A and person B are together somewhere. In English we would say "he is with his partner."
Why is "He is by his partner" accepted, but "He is next to his partner" isn't? "Next to" is more specific, but both by and next to refer to physical proximity.
Next to doesn't work precisely because it is more specific, and therefore not a direct translation. I don't know the German term for "next to" but I'm sure somebody here does
In English , 'He is with his partner.' Is a little bit ambiguous, the 'he' and 'his' could be referring to the same person or two different people. Is this the same here?
Is there something wrong with translating this as, "He is by his partner"?
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at hedgehog69 - when i was a child in kenya i had hedgehogs as pets in our garden and miss them so much since living in south africa... LOVE your "name"!!!
It's not really specified. You could understand it as his partner's place, at his partner's house, at his partner's home, or something similar.
In that case you must still use a possessive ('s). Even though it feels like slang, the grammatical artifact still remains.
"He is at his partner's" - he is at his partner's house
"He is at the doctor's" - he is at the doctor's office.
Do not say "He is at his partner" or "He is at the doctor".
:)
Why cant it be "He is by his partner"? duolingo counted that as wrong but it means the same thing as with in this context.
So should He is at the home of his partner be accepted? It isn't, currently.
Why is the Dative case used here? I thought that was used for indirect objects, but wouldn't "Partner" be the direct object?
"bei" always takes the dative case.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/Prepositions/Prepositions.html (see "Dative Prepositions")
Not in this sentence.
You could if the two were somewhere together, i.e. they accompany each other -- the mit implies that you're doing something together, e.g. Er ist mit seinem Partner auf einem Konzert "He's at a concert with his partner".
so if you want to use "sein" "ihr" or "mir" for example, you cant use beim because they dont need "dem"... so it is okay to say "bei seinem partner" than "beim seinem partner"... Am I right?
it depends on the case. since partner is masculine and we are using the dative case you use seinem. here is a cart telling you when to use each. http://almancam.com/silan/isd/yukle/db/resimupload/possessivartikels.jpg
this is a link where someone on duolingo explains it awesomely. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/266283$from_skill=76574d50a1125d56a58f6cfae395d242
and this helps you know what gender a word is to help you when referencing the chart above. http://www.rocketlanguages.com/german/learn/gender-in-german/
Christian's comment above said No! I'll copy-paste it for you...
"mit" is used when talking about activities.
Er ist bei seinem Partner.
Er ist mit seinem Partner im Kino.
Er geht mit seinem Partner spazieren.
i think it's a perfectly normal phrase.. i just googled it, and found 338 000 results. i think "mit" implies not the place where he is, but the fact that he is with his partner. for example, in reply to "is he alone there?" - "no, he is with his partner" would be "mit". but "where is he?" - "he's with his partner/at his partner's place", then "bei" is needed.
I was sure the "bei" is translated as "at". But the translation: "he is at his partner" isn't admitted? Could somebody explain me the difference, please ??
"he is at his partner's" is accepted, with the meaning "at his partner's place". "he is at his partner" doesn't make sense in english
Would Er isst bei seinem Partner work? As in like "he eats at his partner's place"?
After "bei", "aus", "gegenüber", "mit", "nach", "seit", "von", "zu" there's ALWAYS Dativ.
Because it (probably) can't mean that in this sentence.
seinem means the owner is grammatically masculine or neuter, so it could apply for example to das Mädchen spielt mit seinem Ball "the girl is playing with her ball", where English uses "her" according to her natural gender and German uses seinem according to the grammatical gender of Mädchen.
But here the subject is er, and seinem most likely refers to the subject's partner rather than to the partner of some other object or person which might happen to be grammatically masculine or neuter but would use the pronoun "her" in English.
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hi, i have been looking for an opportunity to ask you a question cos your explanations i always find so much easier to understand... some folk use such technical words and when i was at school 50-55 years ago english grammar never taught these terms so i still dont understand!!!! please may i ask you to explain the following to me? i am probably being very stupid but cant see why "einem andereN" in the sentence "Sie sind Besucher von einem anderen stern."? i understand einem after von and stern being masculine gender but i just dont get the N in anderen... please help!!! a million lingot thank you's!!!!!!!!!!
ps thanks so much for the clarity of the girl playing with her ball example xxxxx
also translated as "by" his partner, so what is wrong with "beside"? I would never describe anyone as "by" someone, apart from "by himself", which is not quite the same.
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You would need the " 's " because: He is at his partner's means that he is at his partner's place/location- the place belonging to the partner,
therefore: partner's .
If something belongs to someone or some thing a -'s- is needed to show the relationship. For example: The partner's apartment; the girl's toy..
In English "In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns" there is a pretty good article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive
If you said " he is with his partner" the -partner- would not need an apostrophe.
"She had a child by him" has a different meaning from "She had a child with him".
I think that to translate the full meaning of the sentence we need to say "...at his partner's place".
As Duolingo wouldn't accept 'beside' just now, I put 'alongside', which I believe is also a perfectly acceptable translation. But no; now they want 'beside'!!!!
Could be.
Or it could be a life partner/relationship partner.
The German is ambiguous.
Why not 'Er isst bei seinem Partner' ? The pronunciation is the same and the sentence is grammatically correct.
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@ tangavango
Because "ist" and "isst' are not the same word. " Er/sie/es ist" is a conjugation of "sein -to be" and "er/sie/es isst" is a conjugation of "essen -to eat".
Er/sie/es ist = he/she/it is*"
Er/sie/es isst = he/she/it eats"*
As to how you can tell the difference if you do not see the spelling, from context/from what makes sense.
you can always check words with a dictionary, whether paper or online. I really like dict.cc .
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Transcribing the audio, there are two possibilities: 'Er ist bei seinem Partner', but also 'Er isst bei seinem Partner'. Of course, the meaning is not the same, but both seem to be accepted, and it is a good point.
Seinem can apply to a neutral object right? Why can't the partner be of neutral gender (provided that the answer "He is with its partner" is wrong)? Like his car is a partner, or something else...
Well, cars typically aren't seen as "partners" but even in such a situation as one is which the partner's gender is unclear, the possessor of said partner is still male, so the sentence would translate as his.
If you're asking why the owner of said partner couldn't be a gender neutral object or person, I think that makes sense, but isn't something you'd hear often, especially if the subject is originally male. It just makes more sense to be translated as "his partner" rather than "its partner."
