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- Topic: German >
- "er, sie, es"
155 Comments
In which part of Germany "er" is read the way it is here? The sound here is more like "Ihr", not "er". Isn't this a mistake?
Er is pronounced more like English err, as in "to err is human." Ihr is pronounced like English ear.
The female voice pronunciation of "er" is really unintelligible. It sounds like it begins with a "v" and has two distinct syllables.
Agreed, which is especially unhelpful for me as I'm partially deaf. It's like she's saying all one word most of the time.
Full sentences would be great. Even individual words are fine. But this is just a collection of words that don't make sense together, and therefore does not constitute German language.
No, they are not.
They sound more or less like "air" and "ear" in a (non-rhotic) British accent.
Does the same apply for an American accent?
Not for most American accents, which are rhotic (they pronounce the "r" after vowels).
For example, non-rhotic "air" is more like "eh-uh" than like "eh-rr".
The pronunciation seems rather strange. The recording of the male voice saying these same three words is far more intelligible than this one (this one is with a female voice).
Well, I've a question. But it is not related to "er, she, es". I'm wondering why my friends in Germany and Austria tell me "Pst" to quickly invite me to make silence/to shut up and to hear (to a noise, to the music, to birds, ...), while here I read it written in the English way: "Shh". Are both possible in Germany? Or is it an anglicism?
The pronunciation is so slow and labored it sounds like "ay yer." I'm not sure this is actually helpful this slowly.
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There's a slow one and a fast one. I usually use the fast one, but sometimes the slow one is useful.
That was very confusing. Not only is the voice off, but by first receiving this phrase as audio, I could not figure out what the sentence was supposed to be. "Ihr sieht es?" No, bad conjugation. "Bier sie es?" What would that mean? I finally went with "Vier sie es," because the audio on this one is so bad.
I notice that punctuation is irrelevant in the translations. This is because many of the translations in question are fractions of sentences, and not whole sentences, correct?
This being audio, it is not clear that it is just the three pronouns rather than an actual sentence ('Er sieht es,' or possibly 'Ihr sieht es' )
Why do "sie" have sound like "z-ee" but "es" sounds like "eh-s"? Shouldn't the S in Germany sound like Z?
Coming from England, this sounds fine to me. I'm not ridiculously educated on these but I'd imagine that sie sounds like it does because the letters combined sound like z, not the s specifically.
Not sie -- Sie.
sie (lowercase) is "she, her, they, them".
Sie (uppercase) is "you" (formal)
I heard a "v" sound in the first word, so I thought it was the word "wie". Turns out it's "er". I checked my notes and that word does NOT have a "v" sound in it. Inconsistent teaching leads to inconsistent learning!
First of all, the pronunciation is entirely wrong... And second of all, i hv written the correct ans but hv added a capital E to er... I dont think that can be counted as a mistale tho...
I think "er" does sound a bit like "Ihr". But "Ihr" means us and "er" means he.
ihr never means "us".
It can mean "you" or "her" or "their", among other things, but not "us".
I can't write commas, it is not in the choice we have so I am wrong all the time ...
I forgot to leave commas, but spelled everything right. I was still docked. Not cool.
I forgot to leave commas, but spelled everything right. I was still docked.
Duolingo ignores commas completely, as far as I know, so I would be highly surprised to hear that missing them out is the reason for being marked wrong.
Do you have a screenshot of your rejected answer? If you will share it with us by uploading it to a website somewhere and telling us the URL, perhaps we can help you find the real error.
Duo: "Type what you hear: 'Air, zee, ess'" Me: "Oh, that's Er, sie, es. It means 'He, she, it." Answering: [He, she, it.] INCORRECT, YOU ANSWERED IN ENGLISH.
Ok first off, you're punishing me for correctly understanding and translating your sample? Second off, you said "type what you hear" not "transcribe this voice sample into its original German."
The point of this site is to learn a language; taking points off for, well, doing so is a bit insane.
I don't know why you're complaining. The exercise clearly said what you had to do and you did a completely different thing. It's not the program's fault.
Yes. The program can't read your mind and automatically assumes you wrote the wrong word because you don't know its actual meaning.
He she it.
Why is it not he she they?
Or er and es dont they both can be used as it?
Im so confused
Good mornig.
You wrote "... er and es dont they both can be used as it?"
They are not the same thing. You can use "er" for masculin words (grammatically speaking). And use "es" for "neuter" words.
For example: "I love Peter, he is a great man." could be "Ich liebe Peter, er ist ein toll Mensch."
But also (while Apfel is a masculin word): "I like this apple, it is so sweet." could be translated "Ich mag diesen Apfel, er ist so süß."
(I hope I didn't make mistakes…)
Anyway, this exercise requires a theorical, simple reply. So we simply have to put in the right order: he=er, she=sie, it=es
he she it = er sie es
The male voice pronounces „er“ like the German name of the letter R.
er and R sound the same to me in German.
What difference are you expecting?
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The vowel in er is longer and more closed.
er rhymes with words like der, sehr, Heer.
R rhymes with Herr.
Ah, my northern German accent strikes again.
For me, er, der, Herr all rhyme. Even sehr can have a short vowel (sehr gerne has the same vowel in the first two syllables, for example).
Anyway, reporting issues with the sound is pointless. There's no way for course contributors to tune or modify the sound. What you get is what you get.
How to prevent confusing "es" for "is" when it is actually "it"? Does anyone have any special tricks?
Thanks for bringing back the deep voiced male speaker. I love iy. So easy to hear & listen to
It told me to pick from German words and then told me I failed to translate it.
I said it the right way more than once, but she kept telling me it was wrong What should I do now?!
Switch off the microphone. That is what I did. The voice recognition is pretty bad and seemed to almost never work well for me. I would say a sentence correctly and it would tell me I was wrong, then other times I would say "bleh, blah, cough" and it would tell me that I was right.
why i heard it "zie"?
You should hear sie /zi:/ and and not zie /tsi:/.
German word-initial s- is pronounced /z/ (like in English "zoo" or "buzz").
German word-initial z- is pronounced /ts/ (like in English "butts" or "pizza").
i got this incorrect because the translations said "he, SIE, it. that is crazy
To a German, isst and ist sound completely identical, and er and ihr sound quite different -- about as much as "air" and "ear" in English.
Der deutsche "ER" ist dem holländischen Er sehr ähnlich, zum Beispiel "da ist nichts"
It said that I got it incorrect when I said "sie" was you. I don't understand. It says "sie is only used as the formal you when it is capitalized" It may be obvious, I really don't know
Yes, sie can also mean “they”.
The verb forms will be different, though, e.g. sie trinkt “she is drinking” versus sie trinken “they are drinking”.
Odd exercise cause i heard The er sie es but i didn't see The (which is English and not German by the way)
I've never done this before (commenting). But I got it right. Sooooooooooooo yay?
Puppyperso1: no, not yay.
Comments to ask questions relating to grammar and vocabulary are fine, but please do not post off-topic comments.
Off-topic comments include, but are not limited to, things such as "Yay I got this right!", discussing the content of the sentence rather than its grammar, "I know, right?", "I wanted to know this too", and random jokes.
Those don't help learners, and just clutter up the page making it more difficult to find "real" questions and answers.
Thank you.
er should not sound so much like ihr but more er with a hint of an english a sound to the e.
The hints system easily gets confused.
In er, sie, es, er means "he".
Translating er as "it" is only in special circumstances -- nearly never on this course.
The hints system probably got confused because the correct answer does contain the word "it" -- but as the translation of es.
Er and es both have hints for it. Couldn't the correct translation be it she they
I didn't put kn the commas and i didnt get the mark. Is this something i need to do?
Am a bit confused, Sie und Sie means different things but the same pronouncition. Please help a brother
Sie with a capital letter is the formal "you" (so, you use it when you're talking to a person you don't know to show respect); if it's written in all lowercase, it means "she". Let me know if you understood, maybe I wasn't clear enough.
[Edited because I mistakenly said it's plural. ^^"]
I said it right but it isnt working properly. It keeps saying i have said it wrong. What do i do?
I'm sorry, but 'er' has 2 meanings- he, and it. Therefore, you should get a correct answer at both it, she, he and he, she, it
I know it's language and we have the same with english but I so struggle with prenouns. Is there a German non binary term?
Is there a German non binary term?
None that I have heard of.
Germany recently acknowledged a non-binary gender for ID cards or the like (so we now have the options "male - female - diverse") but I have no idea how one would refer to a "diverse" person grammatically: with what pronouns or what kind of nouns. Would you say Er ist ein Lehrer or Sie ist eine Lehrerin or Es ist ein Lehrer...what? ?
Binaryness is pretty firmly embedded in the language.
Who is 'it' if your queer you call it they im very unhappy this is discrimination.
"it" in English is usually used for objects, not people.
In German, er, sie, es goes by grammatical gender, so es could refer to an object such as das Messer (the knife) or to a person such as das Mädchen (the girl) -- both nouns are masculine. Similarly, er could refer not only to a male person but also to a masculine noun such as der Löffel "the spoon".
You never said anything about ES so why did you make such a big deal that i broke my streak?
The words for this one is: he she it. Say he and say she, it real fast sounds like "he sh*t"
