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- "The man has a spider."
"The man has a spider."
Translation:Der Mann hat eine Spinne.
51 Comments
Yup. Thats why i downloaded the german keyboard. Duolingo is changing the keyboard according to the question!! Using google keyboard!
"eine" because Spinne is feminine and feminine nouns take "eine" in the nominative and accusative cases :)
How do we know if it's femine?
You look it up in a dictionary.
Since you can't guess the gender of German nouns (in general), dictionaries will always list the gender of a noun. (Typically as abbreviations m, f, n.)
Then memorise it.
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Der is used for masculine nouns, but also specific masculine nouns. Der is used when using accusative case, which is when you are talking about what a man is doing, for example. Die is not used because it is only used when there is Frau, or when there is multiple things being talked about, like die Frauen, or die Frau.
einen would be used before a masculine noun -- for example, Der Mann hat einen Hund "the man has a dog", since Hund is grammatically masculine.
But Spinne is feminine, so the correct form is eine Spinne here.
And a neuter noun, e.g. Pferd, would have been ein Pferd.
This is what confused me, until i realised i was using the wrong word.
If the man had a spinner, it would be einen, as spinner is masculine.
Spinne (no r) is feminine, so eine.
Spider is Spinne.
Nein! Spinne is feminine therefore eine is the correct word for Spinne. At least that's the German Duolingo taught me.
In general, if a spelling mistake results in another valid word, Duo marks it as an error as it can't tell the difference between an honest mistake and deliberately typing the wrong word (perhaps because you learned it wrongly).
Both man and Mann are valid German words, so if you write der man (or even der Man -- Duo generally ignores capitalisation), it assumes you meant to write that, and marks it wrong.
If you had written der Nann, you would probably have got a typo warning, since Nann is not a word and so it's probably a typo or finger-slip.
hast is only used with du -- when you are speaking to one person whom you know well.
If you are speaking to several people at once whom you know well, you might use "you" in English as well, but in German you would say ihr habt, not ihr hast.
Apart from sounding silly, how would using the incorrect "the" words effect communication? If I said "Die Mann", would that change the meaning of the sentence at all?
Apart from sounding silly, how would using the incorrect "the" words effect communication?
Depends.
It may just sound wrong or it may actually impede communication.
die Mann just sounds wrong, but if you said die Mädchen instead of das Mädchen, you've turned it from "the girl" (just one) into "the girls" (many of them), and if you said die Leiter instead of der Leiter, you've changed the meaning from "the leader" to "the ladder":
Most of the time, using the wrong article will just sound odd and wrong and mark you as a foreigner/learner, but sometimes it can actually cause confusion.
And now you know that man and Mann are completely different words in German, and using man here is not correct. (And there's no such word as mann in German.)
Still dont know whats the difference between der das den and die and how to use them in a sentence
No -- it's Spiderman (pronounced ßpeidermän), not Spinnenmann (which would need a linking -n-).
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Could it be an expression meaning "being crazy/retarded", like in french "avoir une araignée au plafond" ?
Is Spinne supposed to be pronounced like shpinne
Yes.
st- sp- at the beginning of a syllable are pronounced like scht- schp- respectively: Stein, stehen, Stadt, verstehen, Stimme, …; sprechen, Spinne, spielen, Spaß, …
in Animal eine is a and ein is An?
No.
The use of ein, eine, einen depends on the grammatical gender and case of the following German word.
The use of "a, an" in English depends on the sound of the following English word.
The two have no relationship to each other.
"a" is sometimes ein, sometimes eine, sometimes einen.
"an" is sometimes ein, sometimes eine, sometimes einen.
ein is sometimes "a", sometimes "an".
And so on.
habe is for ich -- ich habe = I have.
hat is for er, sie, es (he, she, it) as well as for singular nouns -- er hat = he has, der Mann hat = the man has.
der Mann habe would be like "the man have".
How do you know if a noun is masculine or feminie
You have to look it up in a dictionary and memorise the answer.
Since you usually can't guess the grammatical gender of a noun in German, any good dictionary will give the gender of each noun, often with an abbreviation such as m, f, n for "masculine, feminine, neuter", sometimes with r, e, s as in der, die, das.
There can even be two nouns that are spelled the same but have different genders.... (For example, der Leiter = the leader, die Leiter = the ladder.)
Both der or die for man we can use
No.
The German word man is a pronoun, so it doesn't take articles at all.
And Mann (capital M, two -nn) is masculine, so only der Mann is correct in the nominative case (e.g. as the subject of a sentence).
die Mann is simply wrong.
