"The cat is drinking its milk."
Translation:Die Katze trinkt ihre Milch.
19 Comments
Yes, if I use the word Katze for it.
If I specifically wanted to point out that it's a male cat, I would use der Kater instead, which is a masculine word: Der Kater trinkt seine Milch.
But that would be like "The tomcat is drinking its milk" -- a possible sentence, but usually you don't specify the sex of the cat when it's not important, and you would just use "the cat" (die Katze) rather than specifically "the tomcat" (der Kater).
Why is the translation "Die Katze trinkt ihre Milch" but if I use 'Wasser' instead of 'Milch' it goes from 'ihre' to 'ihr'? is it because one is feminine and the other isn't?
The "correct solution" had Unlike English, German has no "-ing" form. So "Ich esse" means "I eat" < strong>and< /strong> "I am eating". with the strong html code in it.
Why not: Die Katze trinkt seine Milch. It thought we used it when referring to animals, so why would the possessive be feminine? The english sentence has its milk, not her milk, so why is ihre used?
So does this mean that in German there are no reflexive possessives, just like in English? Can this sentence mean, without further context, "The cat is drinking her milk (someone else's milk)" as well?
When you're referring back to a particular noun, the pronoun has to agree with the grammatical gender of the noun.
In this case, "it" refers to the cat, and since Katze is feminine, "its" has to be ihre here.
If it has been masculine (e.g. der Hund) or neuter (e.g. das Pferd), then "its" would be seine.
