"Please?"
Translation:Bitte?
22 Comments
wie can be translated in various ways depending on the context; it has several meanings.
I'd recommend learning wie bitte? as a fixed expression, used to ask someone to repeat something that you didn't hear, and roughly equivalent to "Excuse me? Pardon me? Come again?" or whatever it is you would say -- rather than trying to break it down into the individual words.
(Just as "Pardon" does not mean "Come" and "me" does not mean "again", just because "Pardon me?" as a whole means "Come again?" as a whole, in this context of not hearing someone.)
Oh good grief, I see just now that the English phrase to be translated here is "Please?", rather than "Pardon me?".
Apparently, the Pearson course has changed this around. The current exercise makes little sense to me.
76
The phrase is "Please", it wants "Biitte?,Wie bitte?" That's what I type, but it keeps telling me that I'm wrong. What gives???
No, that's not what it wants.
Those are two options it's suggesting as correct.
Pick one or the other of them. But not both at once.
If they want the "wie bitte" reply, they should be asking a different question... though in English, we say things like "Excuse me?", as well as "pardon me?" or "Say again, please?", where neither "Entschuldigung" nor "es tut mir leid" are a direct analogue. I'm glad they accept the literal, "Please" - "Bitte", though I did want to translate this in German as "Wie Bitte", as others have commented.
Agreed; "Parden?" or "Excuse me?" would be better.
But the Pearson editors apparently disagree and think that "Please?" is just fine.
Report it if you'd like.
"Please" is not accurate translation of "wie bitte" the literal translation would be "how, please?", but in reality "wie bitte" is the german way of asking someone to repeat what they've just said. anything along the lines of: "pardon me" "im sorry what?" "come again?" "one more time please", etc
- 250
From living in Germany years ago, I understand the language this way:
"Wie bitte? " = "What did you say?"
Used for the case of understanding:
For example: You would ask "Wie bitte?" if you did not understand something the German person said, such as their meaning or their instructions. = The person would then know to explain.
For the case of hearing, use:
" Was haben Sie gesagt? " = Formal " What did you say? " " Was hast du gesagt? " = informal " What did you say? "
For example You would ask "Was haben Sie gesagt?" if you couldn't hear what the German person was saying to you in conversation. = they would know to repeat.
Personally: I am going through this course to refresh my grammar skills.
To Duolingo: this phrase would be better if given within a context. Perhaps Duolingo could simply offer a context example - in English - as a reference (not to test student on) at this early stage of phrases, since the student understandably might have limited vocabulary & German language skill in this beginning level.
- 463
'Wie bitte?' does not mean 'Please', 'Bitte' means 'please'.
'Wie bitte!' means 'Pardon me?', 'Say again!', 'I'm sorry, could you repeat that?' or the less polite 'What did you say?' or even the impolite 'What?' and would all be much better translations.
- 11
Thylacaleo, thank you. I wish they would remove Wie bitte from this answer, as it needs context.
please means 'bitte' in german then why do we write 'please?' as 'wie bitte' does the usage of words change in a statement and in a question what is the meaning of wie?
So far im finding ALOT of german words and phrasing rely heavily on context i discussed this with a german friend and she agreed that this is mostly the case especially with the translations to english being so strange at times. The biggest floor in this app is definitely the lack of context. but if you use your head a bit and a bit of common sense its a minor issue especially if you can just accept the german your learning is correct and its the translations that really needs some work
