"These are my cats."
Translation:Das sind meine Katzen.
20 Comments
I am also confused about this. In the notes, it says use "Die" for "these" or "those".
i had a similar doubt for another question. This is the reply I got. Hope this helps.
"You can't use "diese" here. You can use "dies sind" (uninflected) or "das sind". As a rule of thumb, you should refrain from using "diese" as a pronoun (on its own). Use it only as a determiner (followed by a noun)."
I used "Diese sind meinen Katzen" Which I know to be incorrect, however DL corrected my anwser to "Diese sind meine Katzen", unless DL is wrong it appears you can use "Diese". Note I am not correcting, I am just forwarding DL response to my incorrect answer.
I think in this case, you can't use Diese because you are introducing it for the first time. Whenever that happens, you generally want to use the general or uninflected form. Now if I were to say "These cats are eating fish", then I could say "Diese Katzen fressen Fisch". When I say like "This is _", then I would say "Dies ist (or any conjugation of it) ____". So I guess if your verb is only "to be", then your "this/these" should be "Dies". I hope that helps!
I could be wrong, but I believe it's because Katzen is feminine. Or it could be because it's plural, but I'm pretty sure it's the first one. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Since "Katzen" is plural, then it is definitely "meine" But it is also "meine" for the singular "Katze" because that is feminine. In other words: "meine" is used for feminine singular and for plural of any gender.
Why not "Meinen"? Any ideas? I know in English there is no plural form for possessive "My" like in spanish or french, is it the same case for german? When should we use "Meinen"? Thank you!!!
Meinen is generally used in the accusative form (when it is the object), and it only applies for objects that are males. So if I were to say "My cat likes my dog", then it would be "Meine Katze mag meinen Hund". Notice that the first my is "meine" because it is the nominative (and it is meine instead of mein because it is feminine). The second my is "meinen" because it is accusative (if the object were female it would be "meine", and if it was neuter then it would be "mein"). Hopefully this helps!
Why isn't it "Die sind meine Katze"? Isn't it the accurate translation? Many thanks.
These are my cats : you are using pronoun "these", not the article "the". The english phrase is not saying "The are my cats". Same rule applies when you translate to german, you must use a pronoun, in this case it will be "DAS sind meine Katzen" not the article "DIE"
I wrote "Diese Katze sind meine" and Duo said "Katze" is wrong and the correct would be "Kater" (???)
