- Forum >
- Topic: German >
- "The girl did not eat fish to…
"The girl did not eat fish today."
Translation:Das Mädchen hat heute keinen Fisch gegessen.
January 18, 2013
16 Comments
Nekomanna
612
They avoid using this word, because it sounds like animals (dead) body, Aas. Nobody uses the word. Though I learned the word at school, the teacher said not to use it. It should be always "essen" or "gegessen haben."
I don't know why. It's just the way people use the language. The perfect form is not slang. Using the preterite in spoken German often sounds a bit formal. Whether it sounds formal because people don't normally use it or whether people don't normally use it because it sounds formal, I can't tell :) I guess it's a positive feedback loop. BTW: it's the same in French with the imparfait.