"Er hat Pferde in verschiedenen Farben."
Translation:He has horses in different colors.
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The English expression “He has horses in various colors” would only be correct if they're not real horses, for example if they're paintings, so that the color is not inherent in the horse. For real horses, the correct translation is “He has horses of various colors.”
There's an old saying (in English) "that's a horse of a different colour" meaning "" "you are talking about something else entirely"
It's ‘in verschiedenen Farben’ because ‘in’ takes the dative case when there is no motion of the subject into the object. The preposition ‘in’ is one of a number of German ‘dual’ prepositions that take either the dative or the accusative case, depending on whether it specifies a location or a destination. This holds even for abstract spaces like the color space of this sentence, where a verb of abstract motion would take the accusative, as in ‘Er wandelt Pferde in verschiedenen Farben um.’ = “He changes horses into different colors.”
The common dual prepositions are ‘an’=“at”, ‘auf’=“on”, ‘hinter’=“behind”, ‘in’=“in”, ‘neben’=“beside”, ‘über’=“over”, ‘unter’=“beneath”, ‘vor’=“before”, ‘zwischen’=“between”.
I wrote he has different coloured horses. This seems ok to me, can anyone explain why it is wrong please?
“He has different coloured horses.” could mean “He has horses in different colours.”, but it could also mean “He has horses of a different colour.”, or “He has coloured horses that are different.”.
Not seeing the difference between "He has horses in different colours." and "He has horses of a different colour".
"In different colors" would mean horses that are different colors from each other (e.g., some are black and some are brown). "Of a different color" would mean that they're all one color that's different from some color already mentioned (e.g., "She has black horses, but he has horses of a different color" (maybe his are all brown or all white)). "Different colored" would make sense for both.
I agree with SallyWard above. In fact the given translation for me was " He has horses in different colours" which was one of your explanations.
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That would be "Er hat Pferde mehrfarbige Pferde."
A respond to the sentence on the top would be: "I would like to have a red one and for my daughter a blue one, please." - "Ich hätte gerne ein Rotes und für meine Tochter ein Blaues, bitte." (The adjectives are copitalized, because the noun, they refer to, is missing. topic for researche: Nominalisierte Adjektive)
By the way, I would say "Ich will eins mit hellblauem Fell und Regenbogenfarben im Schweif." without "einem" because every horse has (a and one) coat. It is not a thing, but a material.
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Literally that would be "Er hat verschieden/unterschiedlich gefärbte Pferde." But in German that means that he colours the horses himself. I don't know if it is the same in English, because I am German native and not English.
Even though I think you are right.
What about "He has horses in a variety of colors"? Instead of "in different colors".
this is confusing. in here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension - according to the table for adjective inflections, the ending for accusative plural in the strong inflection (because there is no preceding article) is -e (and not -en) So I think that, as in other sentences in this lesson, this is in the Dative. Strong inflection for dative plural adjectives: -en. Is the "in" used here to describe a certain way, state or behavior, what makes it dative?
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You found out correct: "in" is sometimes used with Akkusativ and sometimes with Dativ. With Akkusativ it is usually a direction (physically or concerning states), with Dativ it is a location or state.
Ich gehe im Haus. - I go in the house.
Ich gehe in das Haus. - I go into the house.
AndreasWitnstein gave a very good answer to jdgomezm's question.
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"verschieden" is an adjective, "der Unterschied" is a noun meaning "the difference".
But "verschieden" and "unterschiedlich" are synonyms.
I'm intrigued as to why "He has horses in many colours." does turn out to be correct. Is this a function of how some English speakers treat many/various/different? Or is verschiedenen particularly specific in its mean such that 'many' is not covered?
"He has horses in different colours" sounds like he spray paints them a new colour every other week. Normally in English it'd be "He has horses of different colours" meaning the colours they were born with.
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I wrote: 'He has different coloured horses'. Apart from the UK spelling of 'coloured' the two translations are identical, yet it was marked wrong.
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"He has different coloured horses."=Er hat verschiedenfarbige Pferde.
Ok, this is very smart arse. If you say "different coloured" and "in different colours" mean the same, "verschiedenfarbig" and "in verschiedenen Farben" do, too.
"Verschieden" means "different from each other," and "anders" means "different from something else." So in this sentence the horses are different colors from each other, but we could say something like "Ich habe braune Pferde, aber er hat Pferde in anderen Farben" to compare his horses to horses of other colors.
Often you can translate "verschieden" as "varying" ("horses of varying colors"--compared to each other) and "anders" as "other" ("horses of other colors"-- compared to separate horses), which may make the distinction clearer.
So from what I gather verschieden means "different within the group" and anders means "different from another group"?
