"Without the newspaper we never would have found out about it."
Translation:Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir es nie erfahren.
39 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir darüber nie erfahren." should be OK too, in my opinion.
No it's no god german. It would be ok this way "ohne die Zeitung hätten wir darüber nichts (nothing) erfahren" or "...darüber nie etwas erfahren" also ok is "hätten wir davon nie erfahren"
I wrote "Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir darüber niemals erfahren" and it was accepted!
With darüber the sentence should be " ohne die Zeitung hätten wir nie etwas darüber erfahren"
It seems to me that sometimes this is a question of whether or not you're translating exactly what they have requested, versus a translation which conceptually could work basically to make the point.
What standard should be used? I think it would depend on for whom the translation was being made. So, yes, on one hand, but not to classroom learning standards on the other.
Sufficient might be a good comment, but not specifically what was requested...
I think so, 'though none of the "natives" so far responded to your and my question. :(
I'd have said nie darüber instead of darüber nie because temporal information first.
Is "Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir nie darüber herausgefunden" a correct translation?
No, it's not correct. "Herausfinden" takes a direct object (Ich habe das herausgefunden), i.e. you don't use the preposition "über" with "herausfinden" in German. So you could say: "Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir es nie herausgefunden".
Too late :)
I think "nie" is more common than "niemals". "Niemals" is a bit more hard than " nie". "Ich werde das niemals tun!" is a bit more directly than "Ich werde das nie tun!" But in general both means the same.
No, you can't.
1) "gefahren" means "driven" or "gone". It's the past participle of the word "fahren".
2) "Es" (it) is the accusative object and a pronoun. For these reasons, it has to come before the adverbial "niemals". See here ("No variation with pronouns"):
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Thank you. I'm still struggling with word order. It keeps slipping away from me, but eventually I will win. ;-).
Typo on my part re "erfahren" vs. "gefahren." [Smacking head on desk.]
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Is this the only grammatically correct word order, or is this just a case of Duolingo requiring an exact translation? Normally, Duo allows you to mess with order a little bit, since German is less strict (word order, save a few strict rules, is mostly about emphasis). But for this exercise, absolutely no order except starting with "Ohne die Zeitung" was accepted. It's somewhat annoying, as I often play around with word order even when it is not as literal of a translation in order to gauge what is and is not grammatically acceptable.
I'm not sure why my answer is incorrect. Is niemals inappropriate here or is it just that "es" needs to come first?
"Ohne die Zeitung hatten wir niemals es erfahren."
"Niemals" is okay. The problem is the word order and the missing umlaut (ä): "Ohne die Zeitung hätten wir es niemals erfahren."
"niemals" is fine, but "es" has to come first. Also, be careful not to forget the umlaut in "hätten".
Weisst jemand, warum ist "ohne die Zeitung würden wir nie darüber erfahren" Falsch? Was ist die Unterschied zwischen darüber und davon? Thanks
In this case, "....found out about it." I checked the hints and used ...davon entdeckt." It only mentions "erfahren" in the answers. reported.
What about, "Ohne die Zeitung hátten wir davon nie herausfinden" ? It didn't count it as correct.
You need the past participle "herausgefunden" (for the same reason we say "had found out" and not "had find out"). Also you would just use "es," not "davon"; "herausfinden" doesn't use a preposition for what you find out (about).
Does anyone know why this is incorrect?
Ohne die Zeitung, hätten wir sie nie erfahren.
Thank you.
Generally, Duo expects you to translate "it" as "es," even though the object could potentially be grammatically masculine or feminine. If you were thinking that "it" in the English sentence is referring to the newspaper, I would say that's not a possible interpretation; the "it" is something else previously mentioned.
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The sentence in English is wrong. We must write it this way. "Without the newspaper, we would have never found out about it".
It's not wrong. Your wording is correct too, but there's nothing wrong with Duo's sentence.
Pronouns like "es" belong before any other objects or adverbials, i.e. right after the verb (if they're not before it). So you need "Wir hätten es ohne die Zeitung nie erfahren."