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- Topic: German >
- "Hat er seine Versicherungen?"
21 Comments
The answer that was given, "Does he have his insurances?" is not the way a native speaker of US English would say it. Instead, it would be "Does he have his insurance policies?" If it only refers to one kind of policy, it would usually be "Does he have insurance?" not "his insurance."
No, but it's not how it would be said in British English either. It's possible that it is used in some other form (Australian, South African, Singapore etc) but doesn't conform to either of the major forms.
You used the singular "insurance" here, instead of the plural "insurances". Does he have his insurance? Duo still wants the virtually-never-used-by-actual-English-speakers word "insurances," as of 4/24/14. Böse Eule!
Not an expert myself but maybe insurance is normally in plural in german. Just like scissors is normally plural in english
One thing is certain - "insurances" sounds very awkward in English. The translation should be singular.
I think in German you can use both "Versicherung" and "Versicherungen", like "insurance policy/policies", like ashwoodboy and mukeshp said.
I put "Does he have insurance?" and was marked wrong for omitting "his" before the word insurance. Can someone tell me does this sentence mean to question whether or not the subject has insurance, or is it meant to question whether or not the subject has someone else's insurance?
Here the question is asking about his own insurance and therefore in a sentence it has written "seine" which means "his" so we have to mention the same in answer. Hope this will help !
In English, someone's insurance is usually his own. It's implied, and shouldn't need the 'his'.
Case and/or gender determine the endings...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension#Indefinite_articles.5B2.5D
for accusative nouns as in this case ,we use seine incase the noun is plural or feminine and seinen is used if its masculine
What about: "Is he insured?" I think this is one of those sentences where literal translation doesn't work.
The current official translation is stupid, but yours seems to be a bit too free for my taste. In German as well it's perfectly fine to say "Ist er versichert?" I can't see a motivation for switching between these two ways of putting it just because we are translating.
The German sentence is a bit weird and seems to make sense only in a special context that we are not given. The closest translation that would fit in most such appropriate contexts is probably one of these: "Does he have his insurance?" "Does he have his insurance policies?"
Surely "has he got" = "does he have" (even when I use the stupid word 'insurances')
I agree with all the commentsmade about about the word "insurances" - which I have never heard used in English. I see these comments were made years ago - so Duo's system doesn't respond fast!
