"Er hat Pferde in verschiedenen Farben."
Translation:He has horses in different colors.
26 Comments
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.”
1470
There's an old saying (in English) "that's a horse of a different colour" meaning "" "you are talking about something else entirely"
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".
- 1419
"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.
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”.
- 530
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.
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?
- 530
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.
Difference between verschieden and unterschied? Can I use them as synonyms?
- 530
"verschieden" is an adjective, "der Unterschied" is a noun meaning "the difference".
But "verschieden" and "unterschiedlich" are synonyms.
- 1809
Couldn't it be translated as "He has horses that are variously colored"?
- 530
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.
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?
