"She does not have enemies."
Translation:Sie hat keine Feinde.
22 Comments
Why not "Sie hat Feinde nicht"? How do you tell when to use "keine" and when to use "nicht"?
You use 'kein' here because you are denying the object of the verb. You are saying that she doesn't have any enemies, therefore you are denying the object (the enemies). You use 'nicht' when denying the action. For example, "Ich trinke nicht" = "I don't drink" Here, you are denying the action, rather than the object.
The suggestion for 'enemies' is feindliches/feindliches Schiff/Feind, why isn't 'Feindinnen' there if this is the correct word? :)
Enemy - der Feind (the standard word, but also masculine), die Feindin (feminine). Plural of Feindin is Feindinnen. Feindinnen is also correct (we have no context to deter the gender of the enemy), yet you will rarely hear this word. Der Feind is often used to describe the entire enemy side/group. Feind can also describe just a single person, while Feindin always just describes a single person and Feindinnen would describe a number of individuals, but not the group as the whole.
In this sentence feindliches Schiff doesnt make sense and is not a proper translation for just the word enemy. This would describe that she has possession of a ship that belongs to the group of enemies. So it would need to be "She has no enemy ship". Enemy is here an adjective to ship, in the Duo sentence enemy is a noun.
So, back to the translation, we have no context so you cant clearly say one translation is wrong, they might be unlikely but thats it.
Sie hat keine Feinde. She has no enemies, like not a single person on earth is her enemy.
Sie hat keine Feindinnen. She has no female enemies, very unusual but you could describe that she might have male enemies, but no females OR it could be used about situations where the entire or the majority of the environment is female, like a school for girls.
Sie hat kein feindliches Schiff. She has no enemy ship, she has no possession of a ship that belongs to the group of the enemies OR if you make the ship a fictional person (imagine the disnay movies where toys or cars act like humans) then you could also say Sie hat kein feindliches Schiff to describe that no ship is the enemy of her.
Why is "sie hat nicht feinde" nor correct? I think that "Sie hat keine Feinde" translates as "She has no enemies". Am I wrong?
No, you use 'kein' here because you are denying the object of the verb. You are saying that she doesn't have any enemies, therefore you are denying the object (the enemies). You use 'nicht' when denying the action. For example, "Ich trinke nicht" = "I don't drink" Here, you are denying the action, rather than the object.
You use 'kein' here because you are denying the object of the verb. You are saying that she doesn't have any enemies, therefore you are denying the object (the enemies). You use 'nicht' when denying the action. For example, "Ich trinke nicht" = "I don't drink" Here, you are denying the action, rather than the object.
No, you use 'kein' here because you are denying the object of the verb. You are saying that she doesn't have any enemies, therefore you are denying the object (the enemies). You use 'nicht' when denying the action. For example, "Ich trinke nicht" = "I don't drink" Here, you are denying the action, rather than the object.
would a qualified person please answer what is wrong with"sie hat Feinde nicht". Thanks a lot.
You use 'kein' here because you are denying the object of the verb. You are saying that she doesn't have any enemies, therefore you are denying the object (the enemies). You use 'nicht' when denying the action. For example, "Ich trinke nicht" = "I don't drink" Here, you are denying the action, rather than the object.
The suggestion for 'enemies' is feindliches/feindliches Schiff/Feind, why isn't 'Feindinnen' there if this is the correct word? :)
Apparently the hint is wrong and enemy doesn't translate to feindliches.
I'm not sure too surewhat feindliches translates to, but Wiktionary (the wikipedia dictionary things) says feindlich (no "-es") does mean enemy, but it's an adjective. Maybe they're looking for the noun translation or something. So make sure you're aware that there's some sort of difference here.
Hopefully someone who knows more about it can explain :)
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I assume enemies is nominative but I do not know why. I am really struggling with cases. I thought She would be nominative so enemies would be accusative. Is it the other way around?
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Perhaps my sense of the language is faulty, but it feels to me like "Sie hat keinen Feind" would also work.
