64 Comments
You change the ending to match the gender of the accusative noun. So it is seinen Reis, but would be seine Katze. It's the same thing you do with adjectives.
this is one tough aspect of German...changing the endings of articles and possessives, and so many other things, based on gender AND case. arrghghghghghhh!!!
I hate it, from the bottom of my heart. God. Why can't it be like a literal translation of English? How I wish
I think if any language was a literal translation of another it would tarnish it's uniqueness.
Agreed, that is just part of learning to think and speak in another language.
You might find this useful: http://esl.fis.edu/learners/fis/german/kasus/caseTables.htm
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Missing here on other side of Pacific also. Looks like disappeared in 2016. But available via wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20161120002014/http://esl.fis.edu/learners/fis/german/kasus/caseTables.htm
But "we're eating its rice" is gramatically correct! if you're qualifying logic too, then you should correct a lot of previous questions too, "the bear is wearing her clothes"? what the hell?
The bear got into the clothes hanging out on a line to dry. It happens up north. Come on, your turn now. Come up with the German neuter noun that could own the rice.
Das kleine Mädchen war überaus großzügig und freundlich. Wir schlürften seine Suppe, wir aßen seinen Reis, und auch der Bär hat etwas abbekommen!
And there you go, in German it works to say its rice, because "das Mädchen" is neuter and could own rice. The problem comes when you translate to English, because the girl is feminine. Yet, in children's stories you will find animals with food that people eat such as in Goldilocks and the three bears. So, maybe there is a story out there with food that is designated as "its rice". Who knows? Of course, in that particular story, the bears are actually given genders: Papa Bear has his bowl, Mama Bear has her bowl and Baby Bear has his little bowl.
How about "Papa Bear finished his dish of rice, but Baby Bear did not quite eat up its rice."
Lolz to the whole question, but to explore it...yes to 'THE baby bear ate its rice', but 'Baby Bear' without a 'the' is a very specific bear with a name, so to me it must have a known gender. It jars in the way 'Rover ate its dinner' does, but 'the dog are its dinner' doesn't.
Yes, why not? In some story books, they dress up the bears so we know what gender they are, but in other books they do not and this would work fine.
No, way up north in the outskirts of towns which are next to wilderness
Why is eßen not accepted? I was taught by someone from Germany that any double s can be written as ß.
The other way around is true: if you have a word with ß in it and you are typing on a keyboard without that character, it is good form to replace it with ss (of course, if you have the ß symbol then you should always use it appropriately). Or if you are writing to a Swiss-German, they do not use the ß. However, as with everything, there are specific rules for proper use of s, ss, and ß in German-German, and in this case, the word is certainly "essen."
Nothing, if the rice belongs to e.g. a dog. Anyway, that's not very likely.
Yeah, I wrote its rice, and as unlikely as that is, it is grammatically correct
That would be "ihren Reis". See the possessive adjectives here: http://www.germanlanguageguide.com/german/grammar/possessive-adjective.asp
The one you're looking for is accusative case, masculine noun.
Thank you - no substitute for a table in these cases! Even if you don't remember it all at least you can refer to it, and really it's the only way I can get my head round it. Thanks again!
So you're saying this table is incorrect? It has his, hers, its as sein/e.
http://german.speak7.com/german_pronouns.htm
I'm really trying to learn my cases and if this resource is inaccurate I worry what else I may have learned.
good question...everything is a he.. even for the questions about "der Rock"
so I wrote "their" I know its wrong but what if we want to use their what is the proper pronoun in Accusative and Nominative ??
I think accusative is "ihren" (Wir essen ihren Reis)and nominative is "ihrer" (Ihrer Reis schmeckt gut).
Is this table wrong? Using the chart I replied "we eat her rice" and was marked wrong.
I have trouble understanding when I have to change it to another ending ,can I see "accusive" as like accusing, something from someone ? As in pointing at a particular word/thing ?
So "sein" and its forms are for a masculine pronoun and "ihr" and its forms are for a feminine pronoun (along with "their")?
- 1034
Oh dear, my brain is going to explode with all this grammar, so many different endings to the same word. I am thinking I shall never speak German properly :-(
