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- "Lunch is at my parents' hous…
"Lunch is at my parents' house."
Translation:Das Mittagessen ist bei meinen Eltern.
68 Comments
Why is "Das Mittagessen ist bei meinen Eltern" correct? It lacks a word for 'house' (i.e. Haus). Or does 'bei' mean 'at someone's house' as well, like 'chez' in French??
I don't like relying on Google Translate, but it gives the translation for "Das Mittagessen ist bei meinen Eltern" as "Lunch is at my parents'" in which it is understood the speaker is referring to the parents' house.
Hi...it is less complicated than you think....if you say bei meinen Eltern....in german it implies where my parents " live" so it is at their house/home( zu Hause).....in Germany not everybody lives in a house...they live in apartments etc....so bei meinen Eltern ...that is the point....so forget the house! genitiv/ dativ... Dont mean to dismiss all your explanations but i think you venture tooo far with it..( native speaker)
Exactly. Since not everyone in Germany lives in a house, the word House should appear in the sentence., as in Beim Haus meiner Eltern... or, the statement should read "Lunch is at my parent's"
@bella1089 Thanks for the explanation so bei means live? Either way this helps a little more, but English is different and we don't say this.
Not really; the direct English translation, word for word, is "The lunch is at my parent's." In this case, "my parent's" is an implied, "my parent's house/apartment/etc". This phrase is said relatively often in English, though now that I think about it, never using a pronoun. I would say something like "Lunch is at Mike's!", But not something like "Lunch is at mine!"
I too feel this to be somewhat of an incorrect translation. In a learning course, you should not have different translations possible for the phrase you are learning. The word “house” not appearing in German is a massive oversight. Why not make the English phrase just “Lunch is at my parents’ ”. That would have worked and been just as effective. I understand the idea of it being something implied for a native speaker, but we are learners, not native speakers. Nothing is implied for us.
I feel that for languages like German that have a direct English translation that is reasonably different to how English is actually used, they should have a two step process for teaching you or give a cultural reference behind it. So with this sentence, they explain that it trainlates as "Lunch is with my parent's" but culturally means its at their living place. It's like with sentences such as "Es gibt Reis"- it means "There is rice" in real English but actually translates as "It gives Rice" and because Duo never explains this properly as you learn it (You end up rolling over the words and get given a combination that makes no sense) you are left clueless.
German really is a language where you need to get inside it and understand how the structure is organised in your own language so you know then what order or what phrasing is required to construct the German sentence. And strangely, I don't believe any language learning programme has ever realised this.
But you'd never say in english: Lunch is at my parents' and not mean that it's at their house, so the fix here is to just remove the word 'house' from the sentence in both languages.
why is "Das Mittagessen ist im Haus meiner Eltern" also accepted. I looked it up and apparently it's genitive case but that hasn't been introduced yet so is it something else?
Only because Gcoid hasn't reached the lesson on genitive case (neither have I, actually...). I understand that it is a correct choice, and because I have been studying grammar away from Duolingo, I recognised this as a correct choice when I saw it, but I wouldn't expect many people to recognise it as correct unless they have learned about genitive case. Replacing the correct genitive case answer with an incorrect one would cause less confusion.
It shouldn't, because it's "zu Hause", rather than "im Hause"
I wrote "Mittagessen ist bei meinen Eltern zu hause". This should be correct, right?
For those of us still wondering, it's wrong because I put Dative rather than genitive. The preposition "bei" causes that.
The addition of "Haus" is not necessary in german; The preposition "bei" already lets us know that that the location is where the person or entity resides, be it a house, apartment, office, or any other place . ( Other examples, "Ich arbeite bei einem Büro" or "Ich arbeite bei einer Firma")
Cathan you got it almost right...first part is absolutely correct..just the examples have a flaw .ich arbeite bei einer Firma. Is correct...also okay is in einer Firma....but you don't say ...arbeite bei einem Büro....that would mean in close vicinity to an office....( if you had a Currywurst stand there ;)... You say arbeite in einem Büro...another example would be....ich wohne bei meiner Tante....oder mein schlüssel ist bei meiner OMA.
Thanks for the clarification. The prepositions always have so many idiosyncrasies.
is this correct guys ? '' Das mittagessen ist beim Haus von meinen Eltern"
Thanks
It's not wrong but it means something different: 'lunch is near my parents' house'.
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I got it wrong saying "Mittagessen ist an meinem Elterns Haus". Is it wrong because of the proposition or because of "meinem Elterns haus" or both ?
Both. You never use "am" for "at" in the sense of "inside of a building". A possible context where "am Haus" would be appropriate is if the house was still under construction and you'd take lunch at the construction site. Concerning the case, you need genitive to indicate possession: "Mittagessen ist im Haus meiner Eltern". Note that genitive attributes aren't normally put in front of nouns: "Mittagessen ist in meiner Eltern Haus" would sound really stilted and out-dated.
What would "Mittagessen ist mit meinen Eltern" mean then? (Duo says it's wrong.)
It means "Lunch is with my parents", instead of at my parents' (place/house). ("mit meinen Eltern" vs "bei meinen Eltern")
Unfortunately, prepositions are some of the most idiomatic parts of any language, so they're often hard to learn.
mittagessen mit meinen Eltern...means" together" with my parents, which can be anywhere...bei meinen Eltern means ...at their place.
No, for two reasons:
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the dative should read 'von meinen Eltern'
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the preposition 'am' doesn't really work here unless you're hanging on the side of the house and taking your lunch there
"Eltern" is a noun that is always plural (like "Leute"), and no case marker ends "-em" for the plural.
A tiny addition just for the sake of completeness: there actually is a singular form "das/der Elter" referring to one of your parents. But it is used very rarely and basically only in sociological or biological contexts. Learners can savely ignore it. http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Elter
I put "Mittagsessen ist bei meinem Elterns Haus" what is wrong with this???
I got it right, but I would like to know a correct translation that includes the word Haus even if it is not necessary in German
The closest to include Haus would be..Lunch ist im Haus meiner Eltern...although" at 'does not translate to" im." dont know if DL would accept it...try it is correct. :)
It is Dativ. Bei meinem Eltern. Antwortet azf die Frage wo? Und nich wochin? Oder ist es wegen Plural? So kann es gut sein..
I'm guessing it's meinen because Eltern Hause is plural, but isn't my parents house a singular object?
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I said "Mittagessen ist bei dem Haus meiner Eltern" I think that uses the right ending for "mein" in Genetiv, is there another reason why it would be wrong?
I am getting very fed up with being given not enough grammatical information to complete sentences. How am I supposed to know it?
I would think "bei meinen eltern" means " By my parents" with my parents , in French " auprés de mes parents", not necessarily at their house. Very confusing
Why is "Mittagessen ist ams Haus meiner Eltern" wrong? Must lunch always have the article?
"Ams" doesn't exist in German. "Mittagessen" doesn't always need the article. E.g. you could say "Mittagessen gibt es im Haus meiner Eltern"
It does exist but you can't use it here. 'To eat at so's place' is 'Im Haus von jdm. essen'.
Just had to have a psychic vision into German culture to predict this answer tbh
