Does "Uns" come with ist or sind
Hi all, this exercise seams to be not correctly answered Ist Ihnen Kalt? Nein, Uns ist nicht kalt
The Ihnen stands for formal you. but Uns means "us" (in some way) pluse "Uns" does not come with "ist", but instead "sind". Am I correct?
Thanks
7 Comments
317
This is a construction with dative, if I translate it literally to English: (Achtung, it is not really correct English)
Ist Ihnen kalt? = Is it cold to You?
Nein, uns ist nicht kalt = No, it is not cold to us.
So the subject is "it" in both sentences, just somehow the "es" is omitted. Therefore "ist" is correct in both sentences.
Not always, though -- es gibt needs to have its es even though I'd call that an impersonal es as well (for example: Auf dem See gibt es Enten even though Auf dem See sind Enten has no es).
Verbs only agree with their subject in German, and uns is never a subject.
So the verb will depend on the (grammatical) subject of the sentence.
For example, Uns ist ein Auto gestohlen worden (We had a car stolen) but Uns sind zwei Autos gestohlen worden (We had two cars stolen) -- the subjects are ein Auto and zwei Autos, respectively.
As jzsuzsi said, in Uns ist nicht kalt, the grammatical subject is third person singular, a kind of "it" that doesn't need to be expressed if there's already something before the verb.
