"Das Kind trinkt."
Translation:The child is drinking.
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Excellent! Screenshots are always helpful.
Can you upload it to a website somewhere, please? For example, imgur, flickr, Google Drive, Dropbox -- anywhere as long as you can get a URL that will let anyone see the image. (Depending on the site you choose, you might need to enable sharing settings.)
Then post the URL of the image in a comment here, please.
Thank you very much!
Not really. Most of the time you "just have to remember it".
I recommend learning new nouns with their matching article. In other words, learn das Kind instead of just Kind.
der is for masculine nouns
die is for feminine nouns
das is for neuter nouns
As you go through the course, you will learn more details and might start to notice some patterns. But for now, just memorise them this way.
How do you know if a noun is masculine feminine or neuter?
You have to look it up in a dictionary and memorise it.
Is there any termination or sign that might indicate it?
In general: no, I'm afraid not.
There are some patterns (e.g. abstract nouns in -ung are feminine, agent nouns in -er are masculine, mass nouns in Ge- are neuter), but for most nouns, there's no indication.
And then you have things such as der Leiter (= leader: agent noun from leiten "to lead) versus die Leiter (= ladder)....
Nouns in German have a grammatical gender: Either masculine, feminine or neuter. This often doesn't have anything to do with biological gender at all - it's just a characteristic of the word for the purpose of grammar. We just have to remember which nouns have which gender. Eventually it becomes more natural, but at the beginning you will need to practice often to remember them.
The gender of the noun affects many things in the sentence. For example, there are (at least) three ways to say "the" in German! Each of der, die and das mean "the", but you need to use the matching one for the gender of the noun. Otherwise you might be misunderstood. The matching forms are:
der - masculine nouns
die - feminine nouns
das - neuter nouns
We can see from Duo's example that it's das Kind. We should always memorise das Kind = "the child" instead of just Kind = "child", because it helps us to remember that the grammatical gender of Kind is neuter. This is regardless of whether the child is a boy or a girl - it's just to do with grammar, not biology.
When there's a der, die or das in front of a word, the best translation is usually "the".
When you're speaking to someone (outside of Duolingo, for example) you can give more emphasis to the word to mean "this" or "that": "Das Kind trinkt" = "That child is drinking".
On Duolingo, maybe some of the sentences won't accept that option - so best to learn that it means "the".
Is there a reason for a lot of random words being capitalized in German?
Please go back and read the tips and notes for the very first lesson unit: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/Basics-1/tips-and-notes
Pay special attention to the second section, "capitalizing nouns".
If you are using a mobile app, you may see "tips" rather than "tips and notes" or may not see anything at all. I highly recommend visiting the website https://www.duolingo.com/ to read the tips and notes before a new unit, even if you later practise the exercises on a mobile app.
You can find the tips and notes by clicking on the lightbulb icon or the "tips" button in the window that appears when you select a lesson unit:
For y'all saying "why is 'this child is drinking' not right", it is BECAUSE "das" is THE, not THIS. See? And you CAN say "the child drinks", but if you think that's an error, I can see right now a very clear red banner hat says DO NOT REPORT MISTAKES HERE. Really people, if you think that's how it should be, submit it, don't "clutter it up", as the banner says, but put that stuff in the right place.
And now for my real question: How do you say "children"? Just curious even tho it will probably come up later.
"trinket" sounds like a German conjugated verb. So:
https://conjd.cactus2000.de/search_en.php?q=trinket
Here in the above website they say that it is for you (plural) = ihr, the second plural person.
(And here in Duo we have learnt here "trinkt" is for "he/she/it" = er/sie/es, the third singular person.)
There is no "to be" form in the German sentence because German doesn't have a separate present continuous tense (formed with the verb "to be") like English does.
So das Kind trinkt can be translated either as "the child drinks" (regularly) or "the child is drinking" (right now) -- the German would be the same in either case.
der translates into English as "the" -- but you can't always translate "the" into German as der.
German has grammatical gender, and you have to use the appropriate article that fits the gender of the noun.
Thus "the man" is der Mann, "the woman" is die Frau, and "the child" is das Kind -- because Mann, Frau, Kind have three different grammatical genders in German.
Also, Kind has to be capitalised, since it is a noun.
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Duo makes it so I can't use capital letters to type Germann nouns on my tablet. Why would they do that? How can I complain to Duo?
There is no difference in meaning.
Which one to use depends on the grammatical gender of the noun it belongs to, and that's simply something you have to memorise -- it doesn't generally follow any logic.
I would recommend not memorising e.g. "Hund = dog" but instead "der Hund = the dog" so that you know that "Hund" is masculine and takes the article "der".
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no, I could not use these words, because the words were given. And so it was only accepted: the child is drinking.
In the nominative case:
- masculine nouns have the definite article der
- feminine nouns have die
- neuter nouns have das
- plural nouns have die
Thus der Mann, die Männer (masculine/plural); die Frau, die Frauen (feminine/plural); das Kind, die Kinder (neuter/plural).
The fact that feminine and plural both have die is a coincidence.
it dings me as wrong
Then your answer was probably wrong.
Nobody can see what you wrote, so it's best if you can show us exactly what you wrote.
The next time this happens, take a screenshot showing the question and your answer, upload it to a website somewhere such as imgur, and put the URL of the image in your comment.
It's easy to miss typos or other mistakes in things you write yourself (as I've found on my own many times), so just claiming "I wrote the correct answer" is not helpful in finding out what happened. Show us, please.