"Your boys read a newspaper."
Translation:Deine Jungen lesen eine Zeitung.
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Why isn't Euer used instead of Deine. In these lessons, unless you anticipate what is wanted, you get it wrong. This course routinely introduce words but NEVER provides their various forms or how to use them other to tell you are wrong when you use them wrong.
You can use "euer", but you have to take the correct form, which is "eure" here. I am pretty sure this would be accepted.
why Deine and not Dein, how would I know if the sentence is being referred to a mom or a dad.
Mom or dad play no role here: it is the gender of the object that matters. It is 'deine' because the object is plural.
I do not understand when you say thebgender of the object is plural. Gender in other languages is macsuline or feminine and has nothing to do with plurals. Is it defferent in German? Thanks
Gender in German can be masculine, feminine and neuter. But of course there exist singular and plural forms for (almost) every noun, too.
"The gender is plural" is not a valid sentence. But e.g. "the word is plural here" is.
And one specialty of German is that the articles in plural are the same for all genders.
Of course in languages a gender is masculine, feminine or neuter. So the pronoun to be used with 'Junge' is 'dein'. But here we have the plural 'Jungen', therefore here we use 'deine'. The person asking the original question thought that the gender of the parent of the boys played a role. Side note: looks like I understood this better one year ago. But I'm catching up again.
Why isn't Ihre acceptable? As in using the more formal "you" in situations where you don't know the people that well?
Ihre Jungs lesen eine Zeitung.
This the correct answer given par Duo. What is this "jungs ? "
"deine" is informal singular, "eure" is informal plural, "Ihre" (capital "I"!) is formal (can be singular as well as plural). "ihre", however (small "i") means either "her" ot "their".
"Deine Jungs lesen eine Zeitung", is another version that is commonly used.
I put "Eure Jungen lesen eine Zeitung" and it was listed as also correct. Is there one over the other (deine vs eure) that would be the PREFERED, or better way of saying this?
There are three different translations for the English "you". None of them are better or worse than the others, but they are simply used for addressing different kinds of persons:
- "du" is for informally addressing one person (child, family member, close friend)
- "ihr" is for informally addressing several persons (children, family members, close friends)
- "Sie" is for formally addressing anybody else, be it one or more persons (strangers, your boss, ...)
Thus there are three valid translations of the given sentence:
- "Deine Jungen ..." informal, one person
- "Eure Jungen ..." informal, many persons
- "Ihre Jungen ..." formal.
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If i understood this correctly there is a difference between "Jungen" and "Jungs".
Singular das Junge - plural die Jungen meaning cub - cubs And Singular der Junge - plural die Jungs meaning boy - boys
Nearly. There are indeed the two words "das Junge" for young animals (of any gender) and "der Junge" for "the boy". But the plural is usually "die Jungen" for both. There is a regional variant "die Jungs", which can only be used for the latter.
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It would have been helpful to learn the plural forms of these posessive pronouns in the grammar note.
It used to be there. No idea why it has disappeared. Here's what can be found using duome:
Personal Pronouns in the Nominative Case
A pronoun is a word that represents a noun, like er does for der Mann. In the nominative case, the personal pronouns are simply the grammatical persons you already know: ich, du, er/sie/es, wir, ihr, and sie.
Possessive pronouns
German uses possessive pronouns similar to the English ones. For example "my" is mein in German, "his" is sein, and "her" is ihr.
personal pronouns possessive pronouns
ich mein
du dein
er/es sein
sie (feminine) ihr
wir unser
ihr euer
sie (plural) ihr
Remember that in German, eu sounds like "boy", and the ending -er normally roughly sounds like "ma". Nominative forms
Unlike English, these possessive pronouns change their endings in the same way as the indefinite article ein.
<pre>mein Bruder (ein Bruder)
meine Mutter (eine Mutter)
</pre>
This is mostly straightforward (just append the correct ending according to the noun). There is a slight irregularity: euer does not become euere, but eure (it loses an internal -e-).
The following table has the forms in the nominative case. These are used for subjects, as in
<pre>Meine Katze ist super. (My cat is great.)
</pre>
der Hund das Insekt die Katze die Hunde
indef. article ein ein eine (keine)
ich mein mein meine meine
du dein dein deine deine
er/es sein sein seine seine
sie (fem.) ihr ihr ihre ihre
wir unser unser unsere unsere
ihr euer euer eure eure
sie (plural) ihr ihr ihre ihre
As you might notice, ihr has several different functions, so make sure you understand the context it is used in.
Vielen Dank, this is amazing. I took screenshots of the entire comment. The different uses of ihr/Ihr have been giving me fits.
"Deine Jungen haben eine Zeitung gelesen"?
Could be past tense, it's ambiguous in English as written.
Case and gender.
"ein" is nominative masculine or neuter as well as accustive neuter.
"eine" is nominative and accusative feminine.