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- Topic: German >
- "er, sie, es"
155 Comments
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?
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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 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.
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
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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?
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.
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.
"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".