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- "Kommst du aus Deutschland?"
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Also, it sounds very weird saying that in English. It's correct, but it sounds unnatural. "Do you come from Germany?" is a much more correct sentence from a grammatical stand point, and I assume that very sentence has a much different translation in German.
If you're at the customs counter at an airport, it's not at all ungrammatical to hear the customs agent ask "are you coming from Germany?"
Because, I believe, in this case the person is asking for the nationality. "Are you coming" instead indicates movement. You can actually use it in both cases, but this particular sentence, in this part of the course, focuses on introductions.
There are often different ways to say pretty much the same thing, compare for example English “Are you from Germany” and “Are you German”.
In this case, there is a very slight difference: “Kommst du aus Deutschland” can either ask for somebody’s nationality or for the starting point of their journey (this second one is a bit less common unless you also add an adverb of time like gerade “at the moment”).
Where would you put the "gerade"? Kommst du gerade aus Deutschland? Or "Kommst du aus Deutschland gerade"?
Kommst du gerade aus Deutschland? "Are you coming from Germany [at this moment]? Have you just come from Germany?"
Insofar as the German sentence can mean either “Is Germany your native country” or “are/were you just on the way from Germany to this place”, yes. I just can’t think of a situation where I would use the English sentence you suggested. But if you’re a native speaker and find it acceptable, then go ahead and report it. Otherwise I would ask for a native speaker to confirm it.
Hope that helps.
"Do you come from Germany?" is perfectly correct English, as well as a literal translation of Kommst du aus Deutschland.. I would report it.
Almost. We invert subject and verb, and the subject can consist of multiple words. So for example: “Der Mann kommt aus Deutschland.” (the man is from Germany) becomes: “Kommt der Mann aus Deutschland” because the subject is the whole phrase “der Mann”.
Actually English used to do it the same way (and in a way still does, though often obscured by auxiliaries): “Comest thou from Germany?” So if it helps you, think of the word order being a little bit like Shakespeare speaking :)
So, just to clarify, the rule that the verb comes second in a sentence doesn't apply to questions?
It does not apply to yes–no questions nor to commands; both of those sentences start with the verb.
But WH questions (which have a question word such as "who, what, how, how many, why, ..." in them) do have the verb second.
I have a question, is there so-called inversion (grammar point) in German like in English? Thank you
Basically yes, although I personally wouldn’t call it “inversion” in German. The pattern is:
(question word) – conjugated verb – subject – (rest)
So the pattern is the same as in English (with the exception that you never add anything like “do”). The reason I don’t particularly like the term “inversion” in German is because the subject can easily come after the verb even in declarative clauses:
“Morgen fahre ich nach Berlin.” (Tomorrow I’ll go to Berlin. Literally: Tomorrow go I to Berlin.)
This is because the conjugated verb always has to come in second position in declarative sentences. So if you pull something to the front (in this case heute “today”), the subject has to move behind the verb, so it can remain in second position.
So Germany and England are lands, that registers. Austria is a reich though, is that like kingdom? What is the difference between the suffixes?
A Königreich (king-realm?) is a kingdom, a Kaiserreich (emperor-realm?) an empire. Perhaps "realm" might fit Reich by itself.
In English, people sometimes form questions using the same word order as statements, but with a higher tone on the last syllable. So, I think "You come from Germany?" should also be correct.
This is often the word order used when the speaker is surprised or doubtful, written sometimes with !? or ?!. "You come from Germany!?" Frequently, it is a rhetorical question.
Yep, same in German:
- Kommst du aus Deutschland?(Are you from Germany/are you coming from Germany?)
- Du kommst aus Deutschland?! (You’re (coming) from Germany?! [I wouldn’t have guessed!])
So seeing as there is a much closer German equivalent to “You come from Germany”, I don’t think it should be accepted. But I agree that it’s debatable. You could go ahead and report it next time it comes up and see what the moderators think.
kommen is completely regular in the present tense, so you can simply use the endings shown in the lesson notes of the first two units under "Conjugating regular verbs" -- https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/Basics-1 is for the first unit and https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/The for the second one.
Please read the lesson notes before you start a new unit -- you'll need to visit the Duolingo website to do so as they're not available in the mobile apps, and you may need to do so from a computer as the website often behaves like the app when viewed on a small screen such as a smartphone's.
No, you need the 2nd person singular form of the verb because the subject is du.
I would say yes as far as grammar and meaning are concerned. But I’m not sure if “duestchland” would still be close enough to “Deutschland” for Duolingo to recognise it as a typo.
Are you coming from Germany? Do you come from Germany? Are you from Germany? Which is incorrect ?
"Are you coming from Germany?" is incorrect because it could be asked of say an American..
The German sentence is ambiguous in that regard. Depending on the context it can either ask for the other person’s nationality or the point from where they are just arriving. So “are you coming from Germany” and “are you from Germany” are both correct.
An American would never say "are you coming from Germany?" as an inquiry as to one's nationality. Rather it would be "are you from Germany?"
No but as an inquiry about the place from the other person is making a trip to wherever the speaker is. Granted that would not be my first interpretation when seeing the German sentence in isolation, but it’s a possible one.
Is anyone having it correct as France rather than Germany? It says Deutschland not Frankreich!
I've removed the answer with "France"; it was probably added by mistake as there is a similar question with France in it.
I'm a contributor to the "German for speakers of English" course.
English verbs there is only one personal ending: the -s for when the subject is “he/she/it”. But in German each person has one:
- 1st singular: ich komme (I come)
- 2nd singular: du kommst (you (one person) come)
- 3rd singular: er/sie/es kommt (he/she/it comes)
- 1st plural: wir kommen (we come)
- 2nd plural: ihr kommt (you (several people) come)
- 3rd plural: sie kommen (they come)
The form for 1st and 2nd person plural (wir and sie) is almost always the same (the only counterexample I can think of is sein (to be) which is more irregular than other verbs in most languages). The forms for 3rd singular (er/sie/es) und 2nd plural (ihr) also is the same in present tense for a lot of verbs but far from all of them (and in past tense the two are always different), so I suggest you think of them as separate.
That originally meant something like "land of the people".
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany#Names_from_Diutisc .
"Dutch" comes from the same origin as "Deutsch" (Gulliver's Travels still refers to "Low Dutch" (in the Netherlands) versus "High Dutch" (in Germany)).
Because that's not question word order in English -- it's statement word order just with a question mark at the end.
Statement word order with question intonation is usually used to signal surprise and to request confirmation that you heard correctly.
A neutral question, one asking for information, would be "Do you come from Germany?" with helping verb "do" first.
The German literally asks, "Do you come from Germany?"
But the more common way to ask this in English is probably "Are you from Germany?"
This is a case where the translation is not literal (word by word), but rather translates an entire expression to the culturally equivalent expression in the other language without regard to whether any individual part matches.
There is no separate progressive form in German; we just use normal present tense where English would use “am/is/are verb-ing”.
Are you come from Germany ? is right ..according to me, I don't know why its wrong ?
"Are you come from Germany?" is not correct because the spelling is wrong unless you're Starfire from Teen Titans Go.
I'm confused. would "Did you come from Germany?'' be an acceptable question or no because of past and future tense?
Nein. Ich komme aus PR.
Was that good? I'd like corrections, please. Danke! :)
Good in principle, but I think most Germans know "PR" only as "Public Relations" if they know the abbreviation at all, so it would be best to say "Puerto Rico" in full if that is what you meant.
No - that's not the basic way to ask such a question in standard English. It should be "Do you come from Germany?" with do-support.
Using statement word order with a question intonation is special: it's used to request confirmation that you correctly heard something surprising, rather than asking for information in general.
Yeah, I told that to them but I don't know if they are tring to be Starfire if they are they are not doing a good job.
That sentence is missing a verb. “Do you come from Germany” should be accepted, though.
If anything is missing in a sentence it is counted wrong like he forgot the verb.
It depends on the subject. It’s basically the same thing as the English rule that you have to add “-s” if the subject is a “he/she/it”, only in German there is an ending for every grammatical person:
- ich komm-e
- du komm-st
- er/sie/es komm-t
- wir komm-en
- ihr komm-t
- sie komm-en
Maybe its because my english is bad or its a regional thing, but I'd never say a question like that. I would say "You from germany?" Probably wrong, but w/ the are its seems tedious and people don't really speak that way.
People DO speak that way. It's the most prevalent way of asking where someone is from. "You from Germany?" could sound rude or harsh or just too informal.
Because "du kommst aus Deutschland" would be a statement. To form a question, certain words have to be switched. In this case, you'd have to switch the verb with its subject.
So I thought of something: To change a statement to a question, simply switch the verb with the subject.
Ex: Du kommst aus Deutschland.
Kommst du aus Deutschland?
Is this always true or am I wrong?
The general rule is that statements have the verb in the second position, while yes/no questions have the verb in the first position (usually followed by the subject).
Your rule ("switching") only works if the subject is in the first position of the statement -- which is the default and most common word order, but not the only possibility.
If something else comes first, such as an adverb or an expression of time or an object, then your rule doesn't work.
For example: Heute lese ich ein Buch. "Today, I am reading a book." -- the question is not Heute ich lese ein Buch? but rather Lese ich heute ein Buch? "Am I reading a book today?".
It depends on the subject. Remember how in English you have to add an ending -(e)s whenever the subject is a third person (“he/she/it”)? In German all grammatical persons have their corresponding endings. So for instance komme goes with ich and kommst goes with du. For more detailed information please refer to more complete tables (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_conjugation for example).
Because that is not the way to form questions when the verb is “to be” in English (“are” is a form of the verb “to be”).
Baesd on previous explanations, it is an informal type of question. Why do I say if i want the formal type?
If I wamt use "Kommst Sie aus Deutschland" as a formal way of asking.... should I use kommen instead of kommst or not?
If you use Sie as the subject, you have to use the verb for, kommen.
kommst is only for du.
That’s incorrect English I’m afraid. Either “are you coming…” or “do you come…”
That would have been correct in Shakespeare’s time, but in modern English you need to use “do” (at least if we ignore contexts where the speaker deliberately talks in a Shakespeare-like manner for purposes of humour).
No. "German" is the name of the language. The name of the country is "Germany".
Am I from Germany? Cosidering my last name is pronounced in German surpriseingly no. If my last name is in German doesn't mean I am from Germany.
Is it correct to say "du aus deutschland" instead of "du kommst aus deutschland" ??
Is it correct to say "du aus deutschland" instead of "du kommst aus deutschland" ??
No, not at all.
"Do you come from Germany" should be accepted as it means the same thing.
