60 Comments
I especially love it when it's the last question and I have no hearts left and it asks for that translation....
relations is fine but not relationships? seems bit restrictive..wouldnt either be correct?
No, I think that's stretching the definition too far. Mostly because there's a better word for "relationships": Beziehungen
Can anybody kindly tell me the difference between Englisch and englische? I keep losing my hearts!!! Danke.
They are different inflections. See here for an overview: http://is.gd/Dp1kpY (Don't be scared. You're looking for attributive use, positive, no article, plural, nominative)
Thank you for answering my question so quickly. It looks so intimidating but I can try.
That's an intimidating wall of tables. Any same person would run screaming. I prefer these rules: http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar/adjektivendungenexpl.html (they're still complex, but learnable).
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Thank you! That is the first time I feel something akin to "the possibility of understanding all this." Whether it will happen or not still remains to be seen...
Englisch with a "capital E" is a noun, "englische" is an adjective (attributive).
"Englische" is plural or feminine or neuter, as in "Sie ist eine Englische Frau" ("she is an English woman") and "Englisch" is masculine as in ("er ist ein Englisch Mann" (he is an English man") or can be a noun as in: "Sie sprechen Englisch" (they speak English"). Hoped this helped a bit! :-)
And yes, "Er ist ein englisch+er Mann" (because of "ein", which means that the mixed declension is used).
BTW it isn't capitalised in German. The only capitalized adjectives are those made from a city's name with the ending -er (they don't change case or number, also) like Berliner, Moskauer, Londoner etc
It's incorrect. "Englisch" is a form used as part of the predicate "Er studiert Englisch". Englische - is a form (not the only form, look up declension of German adjectives) used before a noun.
Ich habe englische Verbindungen. I translate: I've english ties, i think that is correct, but i lost a heart.
I thought 'I have English acquaintances' should be correct? I've reported it but would just like to know if I am wrong
Although "acquaintance" can refer to the connection between people, it's usually meant to refer to the person themselves. Verbingung strictly refers to the connection. You can see some other words that better translate from "acquaintance" here: http://www.dict.cc/?s=acquaintance
Was sind die Unterschiede zwischen "Beziehung, Verhältnis, Zusammenhang, und Verbindung"?
It's in the Oxford English Dictionary as a variant in the "connection" entry.
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Thanks. It says chiefly British but since there are no Brits kicking up a fuss, I'm guessing it must not be common.
Could someone please define the root words in Verbindungen? And maybe Verbraucher as well? I get them mixed up.
I can't but my (uninformed) guess with Verbindungen would be 'ver' meaning 'for' and 'bindung' being similar to the English word 'binding' (tying together).
Why is "relationships" not acceptable? That's how Verbindung was introduced in a previous lesson. Other language learning websites (memrise) define Verbindung in a dating/marriage context. So which is it? Because I wouldn't refer to a dating couple by saying "They're in a connection".
The first best translates to relationships and the second to connections (which is a more general term).
Told me that relatives was wrong and then the correct answer was relations?
I would think "I have English relatives" would be acceptable, but apparently it is not.
It isn't explicitly relatives. Your English "connections" could be from your family, work, hobbies, friends of friends, etc.
It's the contraction. It seems like DL uses mainly American English as its base, and we don't generally use that contraction that way. Report it.
I think without further context "connections/contacts" (to people) is the only reasonable translation here. "Links" would be another possible interpretation. "ties" just doesn't work in this construction. (They mean "ties" in the sense of "links").
To clarify: I didn't want to say that 'ties' cannot be used in the sense of 'connections' but that if someone told me 'I have English ties' I probably would suppose he's talking about the latest fashion from London and not about people. At least not without context. But I'm not a native speaker.
Without context, your intuition seems sound to me, too, and English is my first language. I usually try to imagine the phrases on Duolingo in some sort of conversational context--bearing in mind that the programme is clearly aimed at habituating semantic translation of common document sources--so I was just trying to explain a context in which "ties" would make sense.
Except there is context; at least with the module in which I saw this sentence. We are learning about people....hence. links = connection.
just saying
