"Are your shoes white?"
Translation:Sind deine Schuhe weiß?
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If I'm not mistaken all of these translate to "Are your shoes white?" :
- Sind deine Schuhe weiß? 2. person singular
- Sind eure Schuhe weiß? 2. person plural
- Sind Ihre Schuhe weiß? 3. preson plural (formal, polite you)
1 note: ending -e is added to possessive pronouns (dein, Ihr) because Schuhe is a plural noun in nominative.
2 note: euer is inflected to eure http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euer
more info here: http://goo.gl/rKXQGm
I hope I got it right.
Yep, you got it right, but "Sind Ihre Schuhe weiß" is second person formal. (i.e. its meaning is 2nd person formal. It's inflection follows the 3rd person plural).
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Even in Germany you can write "weiss" when you do not have the Eszed in your keyboard; if you do have it, you should use it. In Switzerland they use 4 languages and probably it can happen rather often that they do not have the right keyboard
Would I be able to say "Seid Ihr Shuhe weiss?" or would I need to say "Sind ihre Shuhe weiss?" because it's "die Schuhe"? I hope that makes sense.
No. "Seid ihr Schuhe weiß?" (note the 'ihr', the Esszett and the 'Sch') would be a direct address to the shoes: "Are you shoes white?"
My understanding is that Ihre is used with the formal you (Sie). The lower case ihre is used for her and their.
what is the difference between "ihre" and "ihr"
ihr before masculine and neuter words: ihr Löffel (her spoon, their spoon), ihr Messer (her knife, their knife)
ihre before feminine and plural words: ihre Gabel (her fork, their fork), ihre Bücher (her books, their books)
i THINK TWO OF THE CORRECT AND STANDARD TRANSLATIONS OF THIS IN GERMAN IS : either Sind deine Schuhe weiss? or Sind eure Schuhe weiss ? let me know what you guys think :)
I put "Sind deine Schuhe weiße?" and it marked it wrong. "weiß" isn't capitalized in the answer, so it's not a noun. So as an adjective shouldn't it take the number of the noun it would modify, in this case the plural Schuhe? And even if it doesn't HAVE to, why would the plural be wrong?
I do not understand why "Sind deine Schuhe weiße?" is wrong. Shouldn't the number of the noun and adjective match? Others have had the same or similar question, but there hasn't been a clear answer.
I already answered this above:
If used predicatively, adjectives are uninflected in German.
I saw that and it was confusing. I guess I'm not familiar with "un/inflected" being used in this way. So adjectives are only declined if it is a predicate statement (e.g. "The shoes are white"), or if it's just a regular adjective (e.g. "White shoes are fashionable"). Sorry to be nitpicky, I just like detail! In some of the other sentences, it seems more intuitive (e.g. "deine Jungen sind schnell") but for some reason this tripped me up.
It's acutally quite simple. Adjectives can be used attributively (i.e. in front of a noun like in "Das sind weiße Schuhe") or as a predicate (bascially after the verb "sein", but there are some other linking verbs, too) like in "Die Schuhe sind weiß". In the attributive case they are declined according to preceding determiner, number, gender and case. In the predicate case they don't change at all.
Okay, I think I have it now! It's been a long time since I took a German class, and this doesn't seem to be the case in Spanish (which I've been learning more recently). Thank you for your help and for understanding my nagging questions! :)
If used predicatively, adjectives are uninflected in German. Apart from that, it'd have to be 'weiße Schuhe'.
I put "Sind Sie Shuhe weiß?" and I understand why it's wrong but what does it translate to? Is it "Are you white shoes?"
If you talk to your shoes (like Mma Makutsi does), and address them politely, you could ask:
"Sind Sie, verehrte Schuhe, weiß?
This suggests you are unable to see them, for some reason - maybe you put them on in the darkness, or else you could just look yourself. The shorter form: "Sind Sie, Schuhe, weiß?" sounds unelegant, but is technically possible.
Note that the commas are essential for the sentence to have some kind of possible meaning.
so... du becomes dein/deine ... sie/sie (she & they) become ihr/ihre ... Sie (formal you) becomes Ihr/Ihre ... ihr (plural you) becomes euer/eure ... is that right?
why on earth would they change "Bist dein Schuhe weiss?" to "sind dein Schuhe weiss?" that just doesn't make sense
"Sind" is the verb you would use when talking about plural things, since you use the plural "Schuhe" to describe multiple shoes, "Sind" makes the most sense.
In English "You are" and "They are" both have the same verb conjugation "are." In german it is different; "Du bist" and "sie sind" mean the same thing as in english but the verb "to be" is conjugated differently for each.
The upshot of this is that "sind" makes more sense than "bist" when referring to multiple "Schuhe" as opposed to a singular "Schuh."
Simply hold down the alt key while you hit the S key. alt+S = ß
Also, if you hold alt and hit the U key, it will create an umlaut which will be applied to the next letter you type. So if you want to umlaut something, just go alt+U to get ¨ and then type whatever letter you need after it and the umlaut will move to that letter. alt+U+(A, O, U) = ä, ö, ü,
Singular: dein Schuh, Plural: deine Schuhe. There are other similar discussions in this thread, and you might find a better answer if you read through them all.
I get the ß by holding down the letter "s" and choosing the letter I want.
I'm confused about when to use "sind" and "haben". An earlier lesson said "you skirt has which color" "Ihre Kleid hat welche Farbe“ and this time we're using "sind weiß“
