"Die Schuhe"
Translation:The shoes
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It is not great for many listeners. I am in the North of England, the English sounds quite different from London and the South. Sometimes the air and ear thing sort of works, except nobody says air or ear quite like that around here. So, I am listening for Err and eihr. Elimination works,-if it is not an err sound (Er) it must be ihr,- and the verbs help sometimes. Duo never mentions Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland,- the three countries that make up the UK with England. They have their own very marked accents. Scotland is really lucky, lots of their sounds are similar to German, presumably from their Norse (Viking) history!
Nouns can have three articles in German: die, das, and der. Der is masculine, for example a singular shoe, der Schuh. Die is feminine and put in front of feminine words like die Frau. And das is neuter in words like das Mädchen. When nouns become plural, ALL NOUNS change to die article. Die Frauen, die Schuhe, die Mädchen (note how the article is the only thing that changed to make Mädchen plural).
82
"Schuhen" is the dative plural form: den Schuhen. Duo doesn't usually indicate the case in the suggestions, but almost all plural, dative words get an "-en."
Der Ball ist neben den Schuhen.
Der Felsbrocken steht unter den Bäumen.
Die Krawatte liegt bei den Hemden.
The only exceptions, I believe, are certain loanwords with non-German endings:
Das Krokodil schwimmt zwischen den Flamingos.
Die Hauptgerichte sind in den Menüs aufgelistet.
Note, however: "Die Daten sind nicht in den Computern."
82
It would be if it were in the dative case. All regular plural nouns in the dative take an -en ending:
der Schuh → mit den Schuhen
das Pferd → bei den Pferden
die Stadt → in den Städten
However...
die Blume → mit den Blumen → sie sind Blumen
So in the case of words ending in "e" (which are almost always feminine), the plural is -en in both the dative and nominative. Otherwise, the plural is usually formed simply by adding an -e: der Schuh → die Schuhe.
There are always exceptions, of course:
das Haus → sie sind Häuser → von den Häusern
der Mann → sie sind Männer → bei den Männern
das Kind → die Kinder → mit den Kindern
Some don't change at all in the nominative:
der Computer → sie sind Computer → in den Computern
And some, so-called "weak nouns," do in fact take -en in the plural nominative:
der Planet → die Planeten → auf den Planeten