"My dog is sleeping again."
Translation:Mein Hund schläft wieder.
41 Comments
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I wonder about that too. Because duolingo says: Wir essen wieder Brot . BUT says: Mein Hund schläft wieder. Weird uh?
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Still fairly new at German so I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I believe the verb should always be the second idea in a sentence, hence it should be 'Mein Hund schlaft ...'. And wieder being an adverb should immediately follow the verb which is why it's before the noun in 'Wir essen wieder Brot'.
This is the most helpful comment I've ever found on any Duolingo comment section. Thank you.
Yvonne, is this to do with the case - accusative and nominative. Your two example sentences seem to be of a different case.
I forgot "wieder" and only typed in "Mein Hund schläft." When it showed me the correct sentence, it said "Mein Hund schläft erneut." Is that another word for "again"?
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Again, my dog is sleeping.
My dog, again, is sleeping.
My dog is, again, sleeping.
The answer which came up on mine was Mein Hund schlaft nochmal , so the answer to your question must be yes.
No. The same difference like between again = wieder and nochmal = once more
No, that doesn’t work. It cannot, because wieder would push the verb out of the second position. The only way to put the adverb before the verb is if you reduce the number of arguments before the verb again by moving the subject behind the verb: Wieder schläft mein Hund. Be aware though that this doesn’t sound neutral. It feels as though the speaker wants to put subtle emphasis on wieder to evoke the feeling of ever unchanging repetition. You do occasionally see this, but outside of fine literature it’s pretty much always in combination with at least one other parallel phrase, for example: “[Again I come home from work and] again the dog is sleeping.”
wieder = again. Something happened before and now it happens another time.
zurück = back. Something/somebody is returning to a place it was before.
erneut = once more. Very similar to wieder but more formal and with more emphasis on the fact that our something is completely repeated from start to finish. And as Grandtricia pointed out, erneut can be used as an adjective (erneute Forderungen “new/renewed claims”) whereas wieder is a pure adverb.
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no difference lexically. But erneut is more formal. It belongs to a higher standard. Plus erneut can be used as an adjective e.g. Das erneute Schlafen meines Hundes stört mich.
“The repeated sleeping of my dog bothers me.” erneut doesn’t really have a good English equivalent, especially when used as an adjective. “repeated” probably comes closest, but be aware that the German word does not imply multiple repetitions of the action. It could be only this one. If I want to capture the meaning better, I would translate: “(That) my dog (is) sleeping again bothers me”.
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wieder = again. Nochmal is the contacted form of "noch einmal" which means once again
Warum es ist "Mein" und nicht "Meine"? (I am trying to experiment my german, so please correct me if my questions is wrong)
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in different languages animals may have different gender ( sometimes quite different from your native language) : for ex.
in French LE chien ( the dog) is masculine and LE chat ( the cat) is masculine too but you have also feminine forms like LA chienne and LA chatte
the same is in Spanish : EL perro and EL gato are masculine and LA perra and LA gata are the feminine forms
in German is the dog ( DER Hund) a masculin animal and the cat ( DIE Katze) is feminin ; the same in Romanian where UN caine ( a dog ) is masculin and O pisica ( a cat) is feminin
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in English you have only one word " MY "for the possesive pronoun 1 .pers. singular ... and say MY dog ... or MY cat
in the other languages mentioned above you can have different forms depending on the gender of the noun you possess :
in French MON chien, MON chat ,,, but ... MA chienne, MA chatte
in Spanish MI perro , MI gato ; Mi perra , MI gata
in German it is MEIN Hund und MEINE Katze
in Romanian it is " cainele MEU si pisica MEA "
Yes, but given the context (or lack thereof), could I not translate the English 'my dog' to German 'meine Huendin'? If my dog is a female dog, I would still just call her a dog in English, but I could call her a Huendin in German, n'est-ce pas?
You are right technically speaking. In practice I would only say Hündin if the dog’s being female is relevant in some way. For example, if I want to tell somebody that I have a dog which is female, I might choose to say Hündin so I can save a sentence. But in situations where the dog’s sex is irrelevant (maybe because all participants of the conversation know it anyway, or because it just doesn’t matter) I would use the base noun Hund, even if that dog happens to be female. Just like you might say “tomcat” in English, but unless the cat’s being male is relevant in some way, you would just say “cat” (of course we do the same for cats: They’re all Katzen unless we specifically want to point out that a particular one is a Kater).
OK, so I THINK that means we shouldn't really use Huendin in this sentence. It sounds like you're saying that if it were relevant to say ' Huendin' in German, then it would be relevant enough to say 'female dog' in English. Would you say?
I think it should be accepted – although I have trouble coming up with a situation where you might be interesting in subtly weaving the dog’s gender into the information that they’re sleeping… Especially considering the listener apparently is familiar enough with the dog to know that it was sleeping before.
So yeah, by all means report it, but be aware that for this particular sentence it’s much, much more pragmatically plausible to use Hund, regardless of biological gender.
Why is it not 'meiner' ? Hund is masculine; doesn't mein match der, die, das? so a male subject = der hund= meiner hund? This is what i really have trouble with in german
The endings of mein (as well as dein, sein etc) are the same as those of the indefinite article ein. There are quite a lot of parallels with those of the definite article der, die, das, but they differ in a couple of are not always the same.
