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- "It does not matter where he …
"It does not matter where he comes from."
Translation:Es ist egal, woher er kommt.
46 Comments
Sometimes "Egal, ..." is correct and sometimes it marks wrong and tells me to say "Es ist egal, ..." Can someone explain if there is a difference or if this should be reported?
"Es ist egal, woher er kommt." Here, "woher er kommt / where he comes from" is a relative clause. The main clause is "Es ist egal", and it needs a verb to be complete.
"Egal, woher er kommt, er ist willkommen." = "No matter where he comes from: he is welcome." Same as in English, you don't need to say "es ist egal / it doesn't matter" here.
30
That doesn't match what's been said about one of the other examples: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/5936474
Why is that sentence different than this one?
No idea. For some reason, we say woher and not woraus in connection with coming from somewhere, even if the answer usually uses aus.
- 590
I think, 'woher' means , 'where... FROM'; 'aus' means 'out'. What do you say in English : 'I come FROM London' or 'I come OUT OF London'? I think, it's the same here...
I think, it's the same here...
It isn't.
Ich komme aus London. is fine in German, even if "I come out of London" is odd in English.
Is saying "Es ist egal, wo er aus kommt." totally wrong in German? Or is it just weird but conveys the message?
Is saying "Es ist egal, wo er aus kommt." totally wrong in German?
Yes, totally wrong.
The closest possible sentences to that are:
1 - Es ist egal, woraus er kommt. (Prepositions come before the thing they modify – but aus was turns into woraus.)
This means "It doesn't matter what he comes out of." and implies that he's inside a small container. We wouldn't use this for talking about a city or country of origin.
2 - Es ist egal, wo er auskommt. (Separable prefixes come at the end of a clause, but if the verb itself also goes to the end, it joins up with the separable prefix.)
This means "It doesn't matter where he makes do." (from auskommen "manage, make do, get along, get by")
3 - Es ist egal, wo er herauskommt.
This means "It doesn't matter where he comes out. / It doesn't matter which exit he uses."
None of them mean "It doesn't matter where he comes from."
And ..., wo er aus kommt. is grammatically impossible.
'Es ist nicht wichtig, woher er kommt' should be another proper translation?
No, that's the wrong word order. "Er" has to come right after "woher".
("Es ist egal, woher kommt er?" = "It doesn't matter. Where does he come from?")
Somewhere along the way I have forgotten why er has to follow woher. Please could you tell me which rule I have forgotten.!! Learning German when you are 70++ is hard work
woher here starts a relative clause.
Relative clauses in German are subordinate clauses and so the conjugated verb - here, kommt - has to be at the end.
Thus you have woher ........ kommt, and since er is the only other word in the clause there's only one place for it to go.
- 2046
As stepintime explains above, just "egal" is equivalent to "no matter," not "it doesn't matter." You need "Es ist egal" to express the latter: "It is no matter" -> "It doesn't matter."
So "Egal, woher er kommt" would just mean "No matter where he comes from" and would need another clause after it to make sense.
I would hold that "it doesn't matter" means exactly the same as "no matter" in this context.
- 2046
"It doesn't matter where he comes from" is a full sentence. "No matter where he comes from" is a fragment and needs another clause to complete the meaning-- e.g., "No matter where he comes from, he is welcome here." You can't just say "No matter where he comes from"; that's not a complete idea and wouldn't make any sense.
So, why is this other example from Duolingo valid?
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/3586909/Egal-wie-teuer-es-ist
"Egal, wie teuer es ist."
By the same rule, it would need a second clause, wouldn't it?
Thanks, Copernicus, for persevering with me. As you see from the timing, I had to go away and return with a fresh head, to appreciate this. And stepintime argues this same point above, from the German side. Thanks to him too.
"I like him... No matter where he comes from." Here is another clause that completes the meaning, though as a dedicated sentence.
No - if you split up the her, it will attach to the verb: Es ist egal, wo er herkommt.
- 590
I wrote 'Es ist egal, wo er her kommt'. Duo accepted it, but told me, I had an extra space (... wo er her kommt) but he expected '... wo er herkommt'. Is the extra space really wrong in German ?
- 2046
"Wo" by itself specifies a location no matter what else is in the sentence (i.e., at some place rather than from some place). You need "woher" to show the movement of coming from someplace (and for going to someplace, you would need "wohin").
"Auskommen" doesn't mean coming from somewhere; just use "kommen." Also, use the "-t" ending since the subject is "er": "kommt."
So "Es ist egal, woher er kommt."
I would say that works, Marcin, but the further you stray from the word for word translations that DL prefers, the less likely it is to be in the DL database.
Why does, "Es macht nichts aus, woher er kommt" not work. I thought that 'ausmachen' also meant 'to matter'.
Woher kommt er ist egal.
That sentence is grammatically incorrect (just like "It does not matter where does he come from").
You need an indirect question here, not a direct question.
Sharing my derpy moment: I typed "Es ist egal, woher he kommt." And it took me way too long to notice my error.
- 2046
The English sentence makes no reference to "me." Correct is just "Es ist egal, ... ."
Why not, "egal woher er aus"
= doesn't matter from where he from
You've got two "from"s and no "is" or "comes".
No.
I'm guessing that es zähnt nicht is an error for es zählt nicht but that means "it doesn't count" rather than "it doesn't matter".
That might work if there were more context, e.g. Es zählt nicht, woher er kommt, sondern vielmehr, was er kann "What counts is not where he comes from but rather what he can do".
- 2046
Simply not a translation of the German sentence, even if it means about the same thing.
- 955
Why "Egal, wer du bist" works
But
"Egal, woher er kommt" doesn't work and we need es ist egal,... ?
- 2046
I believe the exercise you're referring to had just "No matter who you are" in English. This exercise says "It doesn't matter where he comes from," which is "Es ist egal." "No matter" = "egal," and "It doesn't matter" = "Es ist egal."
