8 Comments
How come it's "haben" here when the person "Sie" is a woman instead of a "they"?
It doesn't state that the person is a woman. "Sie" is capitalized, therefor it is the formal "you", which is conjugated the same as 3rd person plural....so "haben". If it was "Haben sie..." it would be "they". If it was "Hat sie..." it would be "she". Hope that helps!
When listening to this, there's no way to tell if it's formal you, or they...is there any clues I could use to tell me which one, without the context of the conversation?
I might be wrong (still learning myself!) but I think it's because it's assumed the object to be bigger is of neuter gender and -es is the ending for neuter words.
I wrote "Have you no bigger?" and got it right. However, with a meaning such as "Don't you have a bigger one?" which makes more sense to me, I wonder how you make the jump? How do you find the "one" in the sentence? Would appreciate native help, thank you!
Kein means "not a" or "not one" so the sentence (if translated literally) says "Have you not one bigger" which I translated as "Have you nothing bigger" but it could be translated as "have you not a bigger one" or better "don't you have a bigger one" with the "a" being added so that it makes sense in English
