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- "Du hast eine Mutter, Schwest…
"Du hast eine Mutter, Schwestern, und Brüder."
Translation:You have a mother, sisters, and brothers.
23 Comments
I got the "type what you hear" exercise for this sentence and I felt that the stress on the accented vowel "ü" wasn't adequate in the pronunciation of "Brüder" (plural). For me it sounded more like "Bruder" (singular). Are native German speakers able to clearly decipher that the pronunciation is referring to "Brüder" (plural)?
That "ü" was too soft for me as well and I wrote "Bruder". Then I listened again at normal speed and slow. Both sound more like "Bruder". I'm pretty good at pronouncing the accents, so I expected a clear "ü". Oh well, for missing the plural Duo told me I was wrong. :(
It does sound more like Brüder than Bruder. However, I find the second syllable a little strange. It sounds like Brüdah instead of Brüder.
Isn't that normal for the German 'r' - that more often than not it is like 'h'?
It is normal for an r at the end of a syllable not to sound as such. It does however change the vowel sound. Today, the sentence sounds fine to me. R pronunciation can get quite complicated. There are regional differences. Old theater diction will sound the r at the end. You can find lots of YouTube Videos on this.
Because of the vowel change from "u" to u-umlaut "ü". "Der Bruder" - the brother; "Die Brüder" - the brothers.
Doch is mood particle. Those are hard to explain. Essentially, it means "yes, even though it has been denied before"
http://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/meaning-of-doch/
As fas as I know, "doch" is used to increase the strength of the phrase. For example when you really mean what you are saying.
It's a tricky word that can intensify or negate. It's a little like the English word "indeed." There's a good discussion of it here: http://www.slip-of-the-tongue.com/german/aber-doch-some-tricky-german-words/
764
Both Schwestern and Brüder sounded singular and i just went with it, since it mentioned the ONE mother beforehand and didn't add any sort of differential for number of siblings, so i thought the other nouns were singular. They really gotta fix the audio..
The indefinite article "eine" only fits a feminine noun so a singular Bruder would need to get his own indefinite article "einen". I'd give Schwester her own article, too.
Du hast eine Mutter, eine Schwester und einen Bruder.
There is no plural indefinite article by the way. Hence, no extra articles for Brüder and Schwestern.
This phrase remember be of someone trying to give reasons to somebody else who was about to commit suicide
Probably the person who was doing the audio editing just put the wrong word in. It sure doesnt sound like ü. However it should have einen if there were only one brother.
- 109
Is the comma correct before the und when it writing a list ? The accepted answer here https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/33191/comma-or-no-comma-before-und says never.
The serial (or Oxford) comma is optional in English but non-standard in German, although there are situations, where the comma would resolve ambiguities.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/serial-comma
https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/komma
- There are commas between elements of a list (when they are of equal rank), but no comma after the last element if the sentence continues.
1.1 There are no commas if the elements of the list are interconnected by conjunctions (und, oder, sowie).
1.1.1 An exception are lists of main sentences that are connected bei conjunctions.
