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- Topic: German >
- "Du siehst den Kaffee."
15 Comments
I did the same mistake. See and look both are verb then if "looking" is okay then why not "seeing"!
The coffee is the direct object of the sentence, hence in accusative case.
der goes to den after any verb except sein (ich, bin, er, sie, es, wir, ihr)
Same rule applies with werden, heißen, bleiben and kosten - all use the nominative case for the direct object. Some verbs even use the dative case, such as danken, helfen, gehören, usw. But otherwise yes, the direct object takes the accusative case.
Unlike English, where we just have one definite article (the), other languages have more than one, perhaps to indicate there is more than one of an object, or the grammatical gender of the object or the grammatical case of the article and the object in a sentence, as in this example.
You cannot "look the coffee". You can look AT the coffee, but that would be a different verb.
I agree. I also used "You are seeing the coffee" but the correct answer was "You see the coffee." Looks confusing 'cause in German, there's no continuous aspect. Both forms should be okay.
don't understand why Duo sees "do you see the coffee" as wrong/falsch. I do not see the any error ___ both mean exactly the same!
"do you see the coffee" is a question, not a statement. That would be a correct translation for " siehst du den Kaffee?"
