"I was not at my house today."

Translation: Ich war heute nicht zu Hause.

[umair86]

Ich war heute nicht zu meinem Hause , falsch ist ? :-/

[josh2021]

why 'hause' and not 'haus'?

[SelphieB]

'zu Hause' is a set phrase meaning 'at home'. I think it would be better translated as 'I was not at home today', rather than 'I was not at my house today', but I'm not a native speaker so I could be wrong.

[WellingtonCatnip]

Why was this wrong? ''Ich war nicht heute zu Haus''

[Levi]

@ajdedinburgh : "nicht heute" would mean 'not today', and the sentence is trying to say "nicht zu Hause" as in 'not home'.

@SelphieB : I believe 'zu Hause' and 'nach Hause' are set expressions, and we can use 'Haus' and 'Hause' freely in other contexts. Hope native speakers will correct me if I'm wrong.

[SelphieB]

The expression is 'zu Hause'. You might also hear 'zu Haus' but this is a colloqualism, I believe, not textbook German.

[jajajaja1234]

Could you not say "Heute war ich nicht bei meinem Haus"?

[lvarriale]

@levi when do you use nicht at the end of a sentence and when do you use it in the middle ?

[Levi]

@lvarriale : The position of nicht: http://german.about.com/od/grammar/a/The-Position-Of-Nicht.htm

[Kavadera]

I wrote "I wasn't at my house" but Duolingo replaced "at" with "in". Is my sentence really wrong? Why could I be standing directly AT my house?