"We do not understand it."

Translation: Wir verstehen es nicht.

[Burgos69]

When nicht should be put at the end of the sentence and in other cases not, any rules, please advise?

[Medgenie]

Why cant i say wir versteden nicht es . i thougt negatives occupy the third unit in a sentence

[mizinamo]

i thougt negatives occupy the third unit in a sentence

That's not a general rule.

Also, personal pronouns (such as es) generally come right after the verb, even before any adverbs that may be present.

[Rachel387953]

I thought verstanden meant to understand, no?

[quis_lib_duo]

verstehen = infinitive, but also (here) 1st pers. plur. present tense
verstanden = past participle of verstehen (and also 1st and 3rd pers. plur. past tense)

[az_p]

(In other words, verstanden means "understood", not "to understand").

[Rachel387953]

Thanks. I can see now that I got the wrong part of the verb - however, I feel I did get the right verb, and so should have been corrected about the tense not told it was the wrong verb. I have never heard of begreifen!

[mizinamo]

Duo is unfortunately not very smart about its corrections -- its corrections are not necessarily what a human teacher would have considered the closest correct alternative.

[tinkerbell_08]

Why can't i say es verstehen wir nicht

[mizinamo]

For some reason, es as a direct object sounds bad to me at the beginning of a sentence. I wouldn't front es if that is the direct object.

[jiten_poddar]

Why "Das verstehen wir nicht" incorrect?

[mizinamo]

Because that is "We do not understand that" rather than "We do not understand it".

[AdnanGaleeb]

Nicht before es ? Would it work

[mizinamo]

No.

[AdnanGaleeb]

Is there a rule for when to put it in the end or before the object?

[BhanujKaushal]

Why havent we used 'wir keinen verstehen?'

[mizinamo]

kein is used before a noun; it means "not a" or "not any" or "no" (as in "we have no water").

verstehen is a verb, not a noun, so you can't use kein here.

[ChristianV37526]

i thought it was on accusative, so i wrote ich versthen ihn nicht

[mizinamo]

Accusative is correct, but ihn is the accusative case of er "he".

Here, you need the accusative case of es "it", which is also es.

[Muhammed.Faris]

I was wondering if "Es verstehen wir nicht" would be righr or not

[mizinamo]

I was wondering if "Es verstehen wir nicht" would be righr or not

No. Using es as an object at the beginning of a sentence sounds wrong to me.

Das verstehen wir nicht (We don't understand that) would be possible, but that's a slightly different sentence.