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- "Das Wasser ist schlecht."
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If it sits stagnant without moving for too long, it breeds lots of bacteria. It absolutely stinks. Not the most elegant of sentences, although I think I'd draw the line before teaching stagnant on a beginners language course.
1727
Well, I used to live in an apartment complex with a couple of duck ponds with signs that read "Effluent Water, Do Not Feed The Ducks".
Weird, huh? I fed the ducks anyway.
It just meant the water was untreated and not suitable for human consumption and might give you some terrible disease if you got into it.
It probably gave the ducks cancer too, but why are there even ducks in the desert? I don't know. Maybe because apartments set up duck ponds and tenants like me feed them?
"I find a duck's opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread." - Mitch Hedberg
If it is water from the ocean then would it taste bad? And maybe Duolingo doesn't mean GO bad maybe she means TASTES bad.
"Badly" is an adverb. "Goodly" is an adjective, not an adverb, and is an archaic form. You don't see "goodly" used outside the Bible and maybe Shakespearean-era literature, in phrases like "a goodly woman" or "a goodly sum".
By the way, you would never say "The water is badly". Doesn't make sense. You might say "The water flows badly". Remember, "badly" is an adverb, so it modifies the verb, not the subject.
The same was: Das Wasser ist schlecht.
In speech, the word das will be emphasised, but in writing, you can't tell the difference.
So, from what I gather, "schlecht", is used to refer to the quality of something, like fruit,water, food, or an item. Correct?
Yes, you are mistaken. "Water" is singular: "The water is cold," "the water is dirty," etc.
Would be a good translation of das Wasser ist nicht gut.
But this one says ist schlecht = is bad.
The two are not necessarily the same. (For example, I'm not rich. But I'm not poor, either. I'm in between.)
das in German can mean "the" or "this" or "that".
Similarly with der and die.
In English, "the" and "that" (which used to be the same word as well) split up several centuries ago, but in German, they did not, so the same word is still used for the definite article ("the") and the demonstrative determiner or pronoun ("that"). And the distinction between close and far ("this/that") is not as strongly made in German as in English, so das etc. can often also be translated as "this".
It could be "these" (plural) or "this" (feminine singular), e.g. diese Blume "this flower".
Oh, so it seems like it's related to die. Is there something similar for der and das?
Yes: dieser Hund, diese Katze, dieses Pferd; diese Tiere = this dog, this cat, this horse; these animals.
Das Wasser ist schmutzig.
or a bit more colloquially, Das Wasser ist dreckig.
From Schmutz, Dreck = dirt.
why "schlecht" instead of "schlechte"
Predicate adjectives (basically: those after a form of the verb "to be") do not have any ending for gender, number, or case.
Der Löffel ist schlecht. Die Gabel ist schlecht. Das Messer ist schlecht. Die Teller sind schlecht.
what do you mean by form of verb "to be"
In English, "am, is, are, was, were" are forms of the verb "to be".
In German, bin, bist, ist, sind, seid, war, warst, waren are some of the forms of the verb "to be" (sein).
Why we use Das Wasser not Der Wasser.
Because Wasser is neuter and not masculine.
why is it wrong
You probably made a mistake.
If you have a screenshot, we can help you find the mistake -- please upload the screenshot to a website somewhere (e.g. imgur) and tell us the URL.
