35 Comments
Isn't "the" the same as "one"? I put "The woman is eating an egg" and it said I was wrong and that the correct answer was "One woman is eating an egg" Nobody would say that!
Eine is used here for "a/an" and can never be used as "the". So, when you see eine its "A woman eats an egg." Being very general. As in "oneself", "one must overcome the battle of the mind." "The" is much more specific so would notnbe used as "one." Hope I helped :)
Why is 'Ich esse eine Orange', correct, which accusative, and 'Eine Frau isst eine Ei' incorrect, when it too is accusative, and both Orange and Ei are neuter?
Orange is female, so you use eine, but Ei is neuter, so you use ein. Only masculine articles change in the accusitive, and they change to einen, not eine.
slytherclaw is right, "Das Ei" is neuter for some reason, maybe because you don't know what gender chicken comes out of an egg: male or female? :) so Egg is neuter in German. But "Die Orange" is feminin to till its bones. In accusative, only masculine nouns become "ein + en = einen", "der + en = den".
Any tips for hearing the diffetence between "ist" and "isst". Reading is no problem, but I listen and attempt to translate before looking
I am confused and in need of help. Why is it "ein Ei" here, but before we saw "einen Apfel"?. It's the same verb in both cases (essen). I thought the "en" part in "einen Apfel" came from the akkusativ case ("den Apfel"), so can't it be "den Ei"?
'Einen' is the accusative masculine article. 'Ei' is a neuter noun, and so uses the accusative neuter article ('ein', the same as in nominative). 'Apfel' is a masculine noun, and so it's nominative article, 'ein', because 'einen'. Only the masculine article changes between nominative and accusative.
When you have a masculine word. For instance: "Er isst einen Apfel" compared to "Er isst ein Ei", which is neuter.
so let me get this straight einen is masculine and ein is feminine and neutral form of an correct? and do we use an in front of vowels like in english and are vowel letters same or are there any other vowels?
The situation is a little more complicated than this, and can be best described with a table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles . By the way, in accusative, "einen Apfel" (m), "ein Ei" (n), "eine Zeitung" (f). As for "an", that's an English word (of course, you shall properly translate your German sentences into English). But while in English, "an" vs "a" is dependent on the beginning of the next word, in German there are other things to take into account, the case and the genre of the words that follows the article.
thanks Vrexu, i'll take a look at the table in wikipedia and read what is written on german articles.
"eine frau isst ein ei" could someone play explain to me my a woman eats an egg isn't acceptable. I know it's one woman eats an egg but i don't understand
I'm not an expert in German, but I'm quite sure "a woman eats an egg" should be accepted as a translation. I would say that is the most straightforward translation. If it's not being accepted, I'd say someone at Duolingo has broken the translation table for German and English. In fact, at the top of this discussion page, I see the translation being given as exactly that, Translation: A woman eats an egg. Are you sure that's what you entered?
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I'm a little confused here...I was under the impression that "eins" is "one" - not "eine"
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'Eins' is usually a stand-alone word or it can be used after a noun. 'Ein' and 'eine' are used before the noun.
should it not be 'einen' egg ? is "the egg" here not being used in the accusative case here ?
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No. It's just context. Maybe in really careful speech, the i in ist is slightly longer. But that would actually be an overcorrection.
"The woman is an egg" Whoops. Any way to tell between isst and ist besides context?
In formal German, there is no difference; thus, you get away with a saying like this: "Man ist, was man isst" / "You are what you eat," which I find much more amusing in German.
In more dialectal/informal German, though, I'm reading that the "t" in "ist" can be dropped, while the "t" in "isst" won't be, so you'd be able to tell the difference in a conversation potentially. Elsewhere too, you might run into something like "isch" for "ist" and "issd" for "isst," which would also set it apart.
Otherwise, I'd say you would have to trust by context. "A woman is an egg" is essentially nonsense, while "A woman eats an egg" makes much more sense. Homophones exist in English too, and we don't struggle with them because of ingrained context. It doesn't help, perhaps, that Duolingo is somewhat famous for its nonsense sentences.
For some reason, my answer "A woman eats an egg" was wrong-- I was penalized for not using "lady" in place of "woman"
Sorry, I meant "is eating", but still it marked me wrong for not using "lady"
